The widely misrepresented passage in Matthew 5 where Jesus tells his followers to "turn the other cheek" could not entail an obligation to pacifism without becoming a command that would plainly conflict with Mosaic Law's firm insistence on the situational moral validity of warfare when conducted in a certain way and started for specific reasons if it actually meant that it is immoral to ever verbally or physically fight any kind of evildoer. The criminal punishments of Mosaic Law, which all remain inherently valid at all times on the Christian worldview for sins like murder, sorcery, blasphemy, rape, and kidnapping because they are tied to God's core nature [1], would likewise conflict with this statement of Jesus if it was supposed to prescribe particular acts of mercy, something that would be contradictory due to mercy being intrinsically supererogatory at best [2].
While not as popular as the misunderstanding of Matthew 5:39, a misunderstanding of 2 Corinthians 10:1-5 is also used as an alleged "proof" that Christian morality involves pacifism of some kind. Paul, just after stating "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world . . . they have divine power to demolish strongholds," describes how "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God." This makes it clear that he is talking about philosophically engaging with and disproving ideas that contradict Christianity, which would either be done in individual reflection or in exchanges with others. In other words, Paul is not talking about something that is a separate issue from the nature of nonsinful violence or force.
God's core nature does not change in the New Testament because Yahweh is the same deity in both. The specific types of capital punishment, corporal punishments, and wars prescribed or at least authorized in Mosaic Law cannot be unjust or cruel on the Christian worldview, or else God would be cruel, and Christians would not even have anything more than inescapably vague or largely incomplete moral statements in the New Testament to look to with regard to what exactly makes an act sexually immoral, unjust, or illicitly violent. The ramifications of this render any arguments for "Christian" pacifism false from the start. If the teachings of Jesus truly contradicted the Torah and prophetic writings, or even other parts of the Old Testament which are far less important, it is the so-called "new" doctrines of New Testament Christianity that would be false or at best without a foundation.
The New Testament does not introduce some sudden and asinine pacifism into the Biblical worldview, and, if it did, this would only mean that the Old Testament and New Testament are in conflict over God's nature and morality and that the New Testament is therefore inescapably false: the New Testament can only be true if the Old Testament is true, but the Old Testament could be true even if the New Testament is not. It follows that the New Testament, not the widely misunderstood but clear moral commands of Mosaic Law, would be the invalid part of the Bible if such a nonexistent disparity was present. When the Old Testament universally condemns specific acts of violence like rape and many methods of corporal and capital punishment while prescribing others and when the New Testament affirms the Old Testament, pacifism is exposed as wholly contrary to Christianity.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
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