God is a supporter of war

I will take the position that God is a supporter of war. I am assuming that con is referring to the trinitarian God of the Bible and Christianity. If it is the Christian God we are debating then our chief source of information regarding God's relationship to war is the Bible itself. All verses I cite will be taken from the English Standard Version translation of the Bible. God used war to fulfill his promise to Abraham and as an example of his wrath on sin. In Genesis 15 part of God's promise to Abraham was the land of Canaan. This promise comes to fulfillment after the Exodus from Egypt when God commanded war on the canaanites in Deuteronomy 20:16"18: "But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God." This is a clear example of the God of the Bible supporting war. The wrath against the idolatry of the Canaanites should come as no surprise when reading of the Levitical laws concerning the punishments for idolatry (see Leviticus 20). Also, Genesis 9:6 clearly lays out a death penalty for those that are murderers. So the war on the canaanites is consistent with that, as the canaanites performed child sacrifices. While these were reasons for waging war on the land of Canaan, it was also done (as mentioned above) to fulfill God's promise to Abraham. The land of canaan became the land of Israel, because God had promised Abraham that land. God used the means of war to accomplish this (500 years after making the Abrahamic covenant). A consistent theme within the Bible is that God uses nations and war as a means of discipline (both to God's people and those outside). 2 Kings 17:18-20 is a clear example of God using war and plunder as a means of discipline: "Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight." You will find similar passages all throughout the books of the prophets (e.g. Jeremiah and Isaiah) where God uses war to discipline the nation of Israel to bring them back to him when they turn away. When we turn to the New Testament this theme remains. In Romans 13 Paul is talking about how Christians should submit to the civil authorities they are under, as they are a means of justice. Romans 13:4: "But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he [civil authorities] does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." This illuminates the fact that God will use governments as a means of justice, even citing the sword. A similar passage can be found in 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2: 13-14: "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor[c] as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good." Without discussing the aspect of God's character that makes him a supporter of war, it is clear that God supports war in the Bible in the sense that it is used for his purposes. He has both commanded war and given governments the means of war as a form of justice.