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Only in the last brief paragraph, a single winding sentence, does Lincoln come to the point of these theological reflections. He is not a theologian but a politician. More, he is the President of the United States. It is important to understand the war theologically because that is the truth about the war, as vital for a clear-headed view of conduct as a knowledge of supply lines and railroad schedules. God's will cannot be thwarted. The penalty for the offense of slavery must be paid, and it has been paid by both sides. God has not separated them, punishing only slaveholders. He has punished them together. And he has removed the offense that drove them to war. There is no more slavery. The ground for rebuilding the nation in humility, in charity for both sides, is established already by providence. Therefore, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan." Lincoln's concluding phrases have to do with building peace within America between opposing factions, and with the rest of the world.
That, it seems clear, was Lincoln's interest all along. The war was all but over. How to establish peace? How to bring forth from the horrible carnage and hatred something like brotherhood again? Having saved the Union from dismemberment, how could they establish a Union that was more than a legal fiction? Such questions Lincoln could only answer based on an understanding of what God's work had been in the war. All other claims of victory were false, he said. God had won the war, and established the basis of peace.
Reading this speech again, and thinking of its message, one cannot help wishing that God would send another Lincoln. It is now 137 years since his Second Inaugural, and rarely in all time has an American political leader even come close to speaking with such depth and wisdom.
Lincoln's wisdom has currency today, to remind us (whose claim to a righteous cause cannot surpass the North's, certainly) that God's ways are not our ways, that his providence seldom provides precisely what we ask for. The lesson God teaches most commonly in war is humility. As we consider the peace that must follow the war, as contending sides who have claimed God's blessing try to reestablish a way to live together—an altogether necessary project, given our shrunken globe—we need the watchfulness of Lincoln. He was not content, as he might have been, to cheer his victories. He sought to understand God's victories.
Tim Stafford is a senior writer for Christianity Today magazine. Among his many books is Knowing the Face of God (NavPress).
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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