Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Part I

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80 Years After Hiroshima: The Morality of Human Knowledge and the Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb

There are certain dates that simply demand our attention. They raise to the front status, the absolute top line status, urgent moral questions. Sometimes, these questions endure generation to generation. Today marks the 80th anniversary of the first nuclear detonation of an atomic weapon used in war. Of course, it was the forces of the United States that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and the world was changed. Warfare was changed. Military strategy was changed. Frankly, the way people think about the world, think about war, think about safety, think about even just survival, all of that changed, and it would change in a way that would come up and wash on the shore in recurring waves over the course of the last several decades, eight of them to be precise.

Most human beings alive on the morning of August the 6th, 1945 did not even know of the existence of atomic weapons. Actually, very, very few human beings knew that such weapons existed, but, of course, there is a very interesting historical background to this, and a part of it goes back to the beginning of what we might call nuclear physics and in the very rudimentary steps the human beings took towards understanding the power of the atom in the early decades of the 20th century. Almost immediately, this tells us something about human beings. Almost immediately, there were those who could jump from, say, the understanding of atomic structure and the ability to divide the atom, and they would go then to the possibility of an awesome, horrifying release of energy in what would be a nuclear bomb.

As you look at the develop of atomic weaponry, it’s really interesting to note that it was physicists largely in Germany who were really pioneering in this area, and not by accident by the way. A lot of this came out of the German university system, the Union of Science and Engineering, and all of this towards not only splitting the atom, but putting that atomic science to use. Of course, it would produce atomic energy. It would produce many, many understandings that transform modern physics. It would certainly also lead to atomic bombs. 

Here’s where history could have gone otherwise. I mean, that’s always the case, but in particular trajectory, it’s important that we go back to the 1930s, and understand that Germany had a great lead over other nations in terms of the development of this atomic technology, atomic physics.

It was because of the advanced nature of physics there. Now, it was also true that in places like the United Kingdom and in the USA, there were atomic physicists very much at work. But, I think most historians would agree the Germans certainly coalesced into a force of physics. You say, “Well, why then did Hitler not get the bomb? Hitler wanted the bomb.” He just didn’t have that at the very top of his priority list. So, one of the horrifying questions of history is what would have taken place? What would’ve happened if Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich had been the first to develop usable nuclear bombs? But, they didn’t, and a part of the reason they didn’t is because, actually, anti-Semitism was a higher value to Adolf Hitler than atomic physics. It was the anti-Semitism of the regime that led to the fact that many atomic physicists went into exile. When they went into exile, eventually, they became a part of what was known as the Manhattan Project in the United States.

The Manhattan Project really would not have been possible the way it was possible if there had not been such an exodus of leading nuclear physicists. The Manhattan Project was also an unprecedented government effort under unbelievable levels of secrecy to find out how to create and then control and release in a bomb the power of the atom. Without going into the scientific detail over which we would need a scientist to explain, the bottom line is that the Manhattan Project turned out to be stunningly successful. But, it’s also very clear that theoretical physics turned into applied physics, turned into the Manhattan Project, was not assured of coming up with a usable nuclear bomb. Even though very early in the project it became clear that such a weapon would be possible, the question then came, “Well, what would happen if one were to be detonated?”

Even when you go to the very first atomic test, there were scientists, there were physicists who were generally concerned and shared that concern out loud that what this could set in place is basically a physical process that would lead to, well, if not the end of the earth and the turning of much of the earth, if not all of the earth, into an uninhabitable landscape. Here’s one of the things that came out in the Manhattan Project. The estimates that something that horrifying could take place were considered to be in the single digits. Does that make you comfortable? Well, it’s also very, very clear that the morality of nuclear weapons in terms of the unbelievable death that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon, and we’re talking about kilotons and eventually megatons. We’re talking about what Zbigniew Brzezinski, later national security advisor to the President of the United States under Jimmy Carter, it’s what he described as “megadeath.” We’re not just talking about death. We’re not just talking about mass casualties. We’re talking about megadeath. 

By the time you get to my lifetime and the late 1950s, early 1960s, the reality of nuclear weapons was so much on the consciousness that it became at least conceivable that human beings could exterminate human life on the planet by the unleashing of these nuclear weapons. J. Robert Oppenheimer, very interesting figure. Almost all the figures involved in this story are very, very interesting. Among the atomic scientists, there were those who had been, at least to some degree, Nazi sympathizers. There were others who were victims of the Nazis, and eventually had to flee the Nazis. There were others who were actually Soviet spies. So, you look at all this. You recognize every drama of the 20th century basically comes into this, and that’s quite understandable when we just conceive the depth and breadth, the cataclysmic nature of World War II itself, and of the new world order that came out of that truly global war. J. Robert Oppenheimer, when the first atomic test bomb was fired, when that now instantly recognizable mushroom cloud began to go towards the sky, indeed, some at the time described it as reaching nearly to the heavens, fire reaching to the heavens, that unbelievable destruction that was unleashed. Oppenheimer, who himself had a very strange worldview, he said, “I have become death,” citing the Bhagavad Gita. Now, there are scholars who say he had mistranslated the passage. The important thing is what he said, “I have become death.”

In other words, death is now unleashed. Oppenheimer, along with others, had grave moral qualms about how such a weapon could ethically be used. But of course, it was used. The story behind that is itself a story that from our vantage point right now in the year 2025 looks like an inevitability. Actually, the closer we look, it was an inevitability. It has to do with the morality of knowledge too. This is where Christians just have to pause for a moment and say, “This is where we have to deal with the morality of knowledge.” Once something is known–and this is of course just parabolic in its scale–once something is known, it cannot be unknown. 

Christians understand that this goes right back to Genesis 3 and the knowledge of good and evil of Adam’s sin in eating of the one tree that was forbidden him, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As God’s statements to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 make very clear, this was a knowledge that they now cannot not have. This gets down to the Christian principle about sin. That is that in our fallenness, we cannot not sin. This knowledge once among us is there. That’s one of the problems right now. You fast-forward to 2025, and people say, “We should get rid of all the nuclear weapons.” Well, let’s just say in some kind of utopian sense, you could get rid of all of the material substance of atomic weapons. The fact is that atomic weapons will continue to exist right here. By that, I don’t mean in my own mind, but in the cumulative mind of atomic physicists who would know how to do it all over again very quickly. It’s all there. The knowledge is already there.

Well, we also know a whole lot more about what happened going back to August of 1945. Once it became known that the nuclear bomb was a usable weapon between the time of the tests all the way just fast forwarding to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima on August the 6th of 1945, a lot of deliberation went on, but again, there was a sense of inevitability. So, let’s just frame that inevitability for a moment. Where was the war, speaking of the Pacific Theater at that point, in August of 1945? Well, at this point, remember that victory in Europe had already been achieved. Nazi Germany had surrendered. So, it really was not a question as to whether or not atomic weapons, nuclear weapons would be used in the European theater. The war in Europe was over at that point. The Pacific Theater, well, there, the war was not over at all. As a matter of fact, some of the deadliest fighting had taken place just in the months leading up to August of 1945. 

In August of 1945, the United States was also facing the fact that Imperial Japan showed absolutely no sign of surrender. So, the battle plan without nuclear weapons was for a United States-led allied invasion of the homeland of Japan. That meant facing off against millions of Japanese troops under the imperial army that were still very much fanatically committed to the defense of the Japanese homeland, and more than 60 million citizens who were going to be armed and brought into the battle. So, the civilian-soldier distinction in Japan, which had already become quite confused at that point, it was going to be even further confused if there had been an allied invasion of the Japanese home islands, which by the way couldn’t even happen immediately because there were other territories still that would have to be controlled and captured there in the Pacific.

But once the invasion of the Japanese islands had begun, even Japanese Imperial staff estimates of casualties were upwards of 20 million, and that was Japanese casualties, civilian and military. At that point, the vast majority would’ve been civilian. They had been factored in. Again, that’s coming from the imperial staff in Japan. American and allied forces understood that the invasion of the Japanese home islands would be one of the costliest, deadliest invasions ever undertaken in terms of world history, military history. So if a way to avoid that invasion were possible, it becomes largely inevitable. That’s the way it was with the nuclear detonation. Once it was known that an atomic bomb was not only possible, but it was actual, and there had been an actual detonation, the sequence was pretty much set in motion that if the war continued at the point such a bomb could be used, the bomb would be used.

That’s exactly what did take place 80 years ago today. We know the devastation was absolutely horrifying. 90 to 160,000 casualties eventually in terms of the atomic detonation over Hiroshima, and the vast majority of them were civilian. Then, of course, three days later, Nagasaki, Nagasaki was not the primary target for that day. The primary target was not available for various reasons. So, the secondary target, Nagasaki, was chosen, and by the time you put that together, about another 60 to 80 thousand deaths it is estimated. We’re talking about well over 200,000 deaths between the two bombs together, but we’re talking about it today because today is the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the very first bomb and of the only two bombs yet in human history dropped in warfare. So, let’s think about that for a moment.

Part II

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Was the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb Justified? Just War Theory and the Use of the Atomic Bomb

Well, one thing we as Christians just have to stop and think about is how this fits into Christian moral thinking, because we’re talking about death here on a staggering scale. Zbigniew Brzezinski was absolutely right. We’re not just talking about death. We’re not just talking about massive death. We’re talking about mega death. We’re not just talking about tons of TNT and the explosive power. We’re talking about kilotons and eventually megatons. We’re talking about one of the most horrifying ideas that could enter into a human mind, but we’re talking about actual history. We are honor bound to think through these issues. As I have often tried to remind us, Christians have a long-tested tradition of thinking through the ethical and moral issues involved in armed conflict. It’s called just war theory.

It comes down to two different parts, and it is in both parts trying to answer the question, “When would military action be just, and if it is just, what kind of military action would be just?” That separated between when a war is just and the other how a war is fought justly. So, is a war just number one? Is military action just? Does it meet the demands of justice, and is it necessary? Then number two, if it is a just war, how do we prosecute that war justly? Those are two different things, but of course, they’re largely inseparable. 

So, the first thing is, however, when is a war just? Well, the war was already quite justified by just war theory. Of course, Colonel Tibbets, who was actually the pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped that first bomb, he said himself, “We didn’t start this war. This war was started at Pearl Harbor. Our intention is to end this war.”

So, one of the first issues in Christian just war theory is that it must be the last possible step. Everything else must have been tried, and then it has to be even at the very first point of just war theory has to be defensive rather than offensive. When it comes to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, well, at that point, America and its allies clearly had a just cause to enter into war against Imperial Japan. Then the way Imperial Japan, it fought the war, and we won’t go into all of that, but just think kamikazes, think atrocities, maniacal commitment to the throne and to the emperor, all of this meant that the war in the Pacific was absolutely horrifying. This is not to say the allies never made any mistakes. It is simply to say the war was just, and besides that, even when Japan was not operating by the principle of just war theory, at least overarching, the allied effort was an attempt to meet the demands of just war theory.

By the time you get to August of 1945, the fact is that the people responsible for the war on the allied side, and this means most importantly President Harry S. Truman, who by the way did not know before suddenly becoming president just months before with the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he did not even know that atomic bombs existed. Then he had to make the decision as to whether or not they would be used in war. As I say, he did have to make the decision, and history will record he was the one responsible for making that decision. But, we, as Christians, need to understand there’s also an inevitability at that point, particularly when the question is not death or no death. The question is which means which strategy will bring about the quickest end of the war with the least amount of death?

So when you look at the Japanese high command estimating 20 million Japanese casualties itself had there been an allied invasion of the Japanese islands, it becomes very clear that the math works. The math works in the inevitability. If you can use a weapon, you can drop one bomb or two bombs, and you can destroy two cities and thousands and thousands of people in those cities. Again, we’re talking about over 200,000 casualties in total between the two cities. You can avoid 20 million casualties on the one side, not to mention unbelievable casualties on the other side. Then whichever power has that weapon is going to use it. In a fallen world, I think it’s just fair to say whichever power in this war has that kind of weapon is going to use it. I don’t have any kind of military strategy to share with you on that other than Genesis 3. Once that knowledge is there, and it’s put in operational form, and the devastating potential is clear, somebody is going to use it. 

By the way, having it in this sense, using it as a part of military strategy, it has been, thanks be to God, primarily about deterrent effect. It’s not just having it and dropping it. It’s having it with the potential and during the Cold War, a lot of that morality, a lot of that military urgency came in what was called mutually assured destruction. This has to do with the fact that quite faster than Americans had feared even, the Soviets got control of the technology, largely stealing it, and had detonated an atomic bomb. Then by the time you get to, say, 1960, just as a clean break in history, you’ve got two thermonuclear powers in terms of hydrogen bombs facing off against each other.

You’ve got massive bombers. Eventually, you would also have the military situation scrambled by the development of both missiles and nuclear submarines and submarines capable of firing nuclear weapons as movable platforms. All of this became transformed under the rubric of what was called MAD, M-A-D, mutually-assured destruction. Arguably as insane as MAD might sound, and it almost is parabolic just in the acronym MAD, mutually-assured destruction in one sense worked. In that, even though there were moments of incredible tension, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union used an atomic weapon against the other. A part of that was simply because of that mutually-assured destruction. We know that tension points almost reached the breaking point on this, the early 1960s, the human missile crisis.

One of the things we now know is that Fidel Castro basically made a very strong exhortation to Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, that he should use nuclear weapons to punish the United States because of the attempted invasion of Canada. Then after that, of course with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the American threat against Cuba. Nikita Khrushchev didn’t do that, and nor did American presidents and then future Soviet leaders. The fact is that the nuclear bomb was kept in its silos on the submarines in the bays of the bombers, and we should be very thankful for that. It’s not just the early 1960s. In the 1980s, the United States and allied military joint practice effort, a war exercise known as Able Archer. It coincided, unfortunately, with a particularly high moment in tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and then there was a Soviet site that picked up what appeared to be a massive launch of atomic missiles from the United States towards the USSR.

It came down basically to one line officer in the Soviet military who had a little bit of reason to distrust the data. Turned out it was atmospheric reflections that had caused the bad call here, but thanks be to God he did not report that up the chain of command in such a way that almost assuredly a nuclear attack would’ve been launched. You also had movies like Fail Safe in the United States and others in which it was clear that one of the grave concerns was one side accidentally launching nuclear weapons or accidentally believing the other side had already launched nuclear weapons. With a mutually-assured destruction just saying, “Okay. Well, now we have to do this,” and then you also had warplanes like SIOP, which was the single integrated operational plan. It was in well operational existence from 1961 until 2003, pretty much based on mutually assured destruction. After that, it was O-Plan that was put into place, and even more recently, a war plan known as Strategic Deterrence and Force Employment.

Part III

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The Horror of Nuclear Weapons: The Atomic Bomb is Very Much a Live Issue

You look at all this, and you recognize, “Wow. Wow, this is still very much a live issue.” The Atlantic, formerly known as the Atlantic Monthly, one of those prominent thought magazines in the United States, with the anniversary coming put out a cover photograph and an entire theme issue on nuclear weapons and nuclear history, and also raising it in terms of the contemporary context, asking the question, “Are we really comfortable with the fact that in the United States, the President of the United States alone can initiate launching a nuclear weapon?” By the way, the President of the United States and only the President of the United States as commander in chief has the power and the authority to do that.

You see what is known sometimes as the football being carried along with the presidential entourage, and that would be the link whereby the sequence would be put into effect. That came about, of course, because the president is constitutionally the commander in chief. It came about because it was Harry Truman who had to make the decision. Then once the timeline became what was known by the 1960s in which it could be just a matter of minutes in which a president had to make a decision, it had to be centralized. There’s no time for Congress to meet. There is no time for a deliberative process to take place. There are no checks and balances. It’s the President of the United States. So much so that in some military strategies, the nuclear bomb is referred to in its various forms as the president’s weapon, and it would be basically the president as the single decision maker.

We now know from the testimony of successive American presidents that this has been one of the weightiest issues that has fallen upon them. We also know that most of them were shocked when they actually discovered how the process worked and how little time they would have to make such a horrifying decision. Going back to 1945, August the 6th, 1945, I mentioned just war theory. There are other principles. One of them is proportionality and also the distinction between civilians and armed personnel, armed forces. So, it is very important. It’s the principle of discrimination. That’s how it’s known, is that for a war to be fought justly, the threat of deadly force is to be applied against those involved in combat rather than civilians.

World War II didn’t defeat that moral principle. It did frustrate it. It made very clear that on both sides, and the big change in all of this, quite honestly, was the development of bombs dropped from the air. Once you have the bombing of cities, then you have the bombing of both civilian and military installations. Of course, just think about some of the things going on right now in headline news. Think about Hamas embedding itself near medical facilities and all the rest. That meant that it was to the advantage for all kinds of reasons for, say in Germany, the German war machine, to put the major installations for the development of its ammunition and warfare and bombs and all the rest, its fighters and tanks and all the rest near inhabited cities. For one thing, it’s where the workers were, but that also means that in order to bomb those installations, you brought about civilian death as well.

So, I want to be on the record. I think it’s really important. The principle of discrimination between combatants and non-combatants, that is a very important principle. I also want to say there’s good evidence that the American authorities in 1945 took that into consideration. Again, I remind you the fact that even the Japanese Imperial command believe that the civilian casualties could be in the tens of millions if there had been an invasion of the home islands, basically not a bomb dropped from the air, but a hand-to-hand combat, perhaps even village to village and house to house in Japan.

Part IV

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Theology and the Atomic Bomb: Theology, in a Fallen World, is Often a Matter of Life and Death

There’s no easy conscience here. For Christians, this is just really important. There’s no way out. There’s no easy way just to say, “Well, okay, just war theory doesn’t matter anymore. The development of nuclear weapons means we’re in a whole new game. All the old rules are off.” No, they can’t be off. They can’t be off. We believe they’re deeply grounded in Christian theology, in biblical truth, and in affirmation such as human responsibility and human beings made in the image of God responsible for our actions. We live in a world of evil and sin and horrifying things result, and warfare is one of those horrifying things. By the way, just war theory reminds us that sometimes the use of force is absolutely necessary for one thing to stop deadly force. It’s the same principle if you see someone with a weapon heading towards the killing of innocents, you have not only the right, you have the responsibility to act in some way to try to deter that, and actually to use deadly force if necessary to deter that evil intent.

This is one of those anniversaries that weighs heavily upon us, certainly weighs heavily upon the Japanese people. It weighs directly on fewer who were alive at the time simply because of the passage of time 80 years later, eight decades later. It’s really important that we as Christians understand what is at stake in all of this. It’s true that we not only can think about these things in biblical terms and in Christian terms, but we actually have to. We’re called to, and there is no easy way out of this. This is one of those anniversaries that weighs on us heavily, and it should. It’s one of these anniversaries that reminds us that we are just a few clicks away, so to speak, from something of even greater horror being unleashed when now you’re looking at weapons that multiply the Hiroshima bomb by the hundreds.

One final thought about all of this, and this is all we can talk about today. Frankly, it’s just a moral demand that we think about it as we have today, one final thought. There have been those ever since J. Robert Oppenheimer who have said, “We just may bring about the end of human life on this planet by nuclear weapons. We just might bring an end to the world.” Here’s where I want to say on biblical authority, I believe, that’s not going to happen. That is not going to happen not by nuclear weapons, but we are at risk of unbelievable death and destruction by the unleashing of those weapons, but there is, there is, there is a time coming when this world will be no more, and that’s going to be brought about by the judgment of God, not by nuclear weapons on any side.

I want to be honest to say there is simply no way we can deal with this in a way that’s adequate, but hopefully we can deal with it in a way that’s faithful. There’s no way to bring this just to a neat conclusion about these things. We just have to continue to struggle. This is something that’s true every day, but maybe we need just to remind ourselves of it today. 

Even so, Lord, come quickly.