Jesus’s admonition to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us is a difficult injunction to put into practice. Is it ever permissible for Christians to respond to or retaliate against unmitigated evil? Robert Brimlow grapples with this thorny question in What about Hitler? Throughout the book, he elegantly weaves together scriptural meditations, personal vignettes, and lucid philosophical thinking on various Christian stances toward war and violence. In addition, Brimlow delves into the mind of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of The Cost of Discipleship, who eventually conspired to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Ultimately, Brimlow emerges as a staunch defender of Christian pacifism, yet both advocates of just war doctrine and peacekeepers will find their views strengthened by Brimlow’s incisive and fair-minded approach. This work can be incorporated into undergraduate, graduate, and seminary courses dealing with Christian ethics and discipleship. It can also be used in adult study groups.

This book is an honest examination of the most important challenge to pacifism: Would it not be right to use violence to stop great evil, such as that unleashed on the world by Hitler? Brimlow’s honesty in dealing with the commands of Jesus is refreshing, and he does not shrink from confronting the dilemma of being a pacifist in a ’supreme emergency’ of demonic evil unleashed on society. His answers are profound in their simplicity and honesty because he does not shy away from admitting that although God triumphs in the end, sometimes in this world evil triumphs over good in the here and now. He knows that nothing closes that gap but faith.–Craig A. Carter, author of The Politics of the Cross

With clarity and respect for the best arguments justifying violence, from Augustine and Bonhoeffer to Michael Walzer and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Robert Brimlow responds to the challenges of radical evil (symbolized by Hitler). Brimlow provocatively engages the reader on three levels: a philosophical analysis and critique of just war reasoning; meditations on the gospel and Jesus that support willingness to die rather than participating in violence as the ‘answer’ to Hitler; and the spiritual practices of prayer and daily acts of mercy that habituate persons to being the people of God.–Duane K. Friesen, coeditor of At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross