Kerk en Theologie - Volume 73, Issue 4, 2022

Military Chaplaincy in the Dutch armed forces play an important and estimated role in the care-giving systems of the military. What guarantees its independence from military goals? Protestant chaplains also are ordained ministers, being sent to the military by their churches. What can and should be their own role in supporting and inspiring those chaplains? The author asks for a stronger involvement of protestant theology and of the sending Churches into Chaplaincy and the chaplains, and into issues related to war and peace and to the impact of military deployments on the personnel.

The key question regarding the validity of ‘Just War’ is analyzed as a limited one: it is not a theory, rather an approach. The underlying issue is the need for a paragraph regarding ethics in case of escalation of international conflict. Its validity depends on the integration in comprehensive concepts of peace, justice and security – even in case of apreference for ‘Just Peace’. The ethics of peace also requires a contemporary political theology. Military chaplaincy has a legitimate educational role to play regarding ‘Just War’ and its future varieties or alternatives.

This article first of all shows how moral questions arise in spiritual care in the armed forces. The role of the chaplain is not neutral because part of it is opening up, explaining and articulating questions concerning the moral basis of military action. Next, it is examined how contemporary Protestant theological-ethical reflection on questions of war and peace can inform the practice of spiritual care. It is argued that both the just peace approach and the just war tradition as well as Christian pacifism have something to say to spiritual care, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees.

In order to substantiate the contribution of military chaplains to the moral formation of military personnel from a Protestant theological perspective this article examines, first, how an absolute imperative can be found in a relative reality, second, how a faith-inspired view of reality can be combined with a serviceable attitude towards reality, and finally, how a vision on flourishing life should be articulated and lived by military chaplains. The conclusion is that Protestant theological views of morality offer promising perspectives on the moral formation of military personnel.

Three of the stained-glass windows in St John’s church in the Dutch city of Gouda, placed there between 1555 and 1572, contain Hebrew letters. The meaning of the combination of these letters is in most cases unclear and disputed. In this article the history of the development of the windows is studied, with special attention to possible influence of the views of Erasmus on their design. Two new proposals are presented in regard to the meaning of the Hebrew on the basis of the location of the separate windows within the whole of the series of windows, emphasizing the special relation between Jesus and John the Baptist.