I recently saw the new movie Nuremberg. The movie is about the trial of Nazi generals at Nuremberg after the Second World War. It was a well-crafted film that featured an incredible performance from Russell Crowe as Nazi leader Hermann Göring. I would recommend watching the film for Crowe’s performance alone. But the movie also touched on three powerful themes that I wanted to talk about here — themes that intersect directly with questions I wrestled with in law school and that I now understand very differently as an Evangelical shaped by Romans 1–3.

1. The Unwritten Law Written on Our Hearts

In the film, the Nazi characters argue that the trial at Nuremberg was unjust because it was just a form of victor’s justice, and they did not violate any written laws. When I was in law school, I found this argument really persuasive. The idea of prosecuting Nazi leaders for “crimes against humanity” that weren’t explicitly written down in international law seemed to violate one of the most basic principles of justice: no punishment without law. How could it be fair to hold someone accountable for violating a standard that didn’t technically exist at the time?

My views at the time reflected the way I then understood my Latter-day Saint beliefs — namely, that “there is no law given save there is a punishment also affixed; and where there is no law given there is no punishment” (2 Nephi 2:13). I believed that people could only be held accountable for the “light and knowledge” they had and that it was unjust to punish people who acted in ignorance. While not all Latter-day Saints would reason this way, this understanding made Nuremberg hard for me to justify. If the Nazi leaders had no clear international statute forbidding genocide or aggressive war, on what basis could they be punished?

(I recognize that this is not the universal LDS position, and many of my classmates reached the opposite conclusion based on the concept of the “light of Christ”)

I now categorically reject that view because of what the Bible reveals about human accountability and sin.

In Romans 2, Paul speaks about how individuals who lack formal knowledge of the law are nevertheless aware of it because it is “written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Romans 2:15). In other words, God’s moral law is embedded in creation and on our conscience. Because we are made in God’s image, we all have His law written on our hearts, whether or not we have read a single page of the Bible.

What’s more, all of us know enough just by looking at creation to understand the reality of God and our accountability to Him. Paul explains that this is “clearly perceived.” When we turn away from God and toward sin, we are not ignorant. Instead, we “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

The atrocities committed by the Nazis were evil and contrary to our very humanity. What happened at Auschwitz was universally wrong, regardless of whether the laws of a particular human government justified it. Punishing Nazi generals for “crimes against humanity” is therefore a vital moral claim. It is a declaration that there is a higher law fundamental to our humanity — and that violations of that law deserve punishment.

Nuremberg wasn’t inventing morality; it was recognizing it.

Ultimately, whether or not the Allied leaders were conscious of this, their decision to punish Nazi generals at Nuremberg aligned with this biblical truth. Morality does not depend on human knowledge or on laws that lawmakers enact. And we will all be accountable to God for how we have violated His holy and just standards. At Nuremberg, humanity tried — however imperfectly — to hold other humans accountable for deeds that defied conscience and creation alike. In the end, that instinct for justice is beautiful, and it points us toward the day when the Judge of all the earth will do right.

2. The Darkness in Our Hearts

The other related theme from the film is that the Nazis were not uniquely evil or inhuman. Instead, their actions were a terrifying demonstration of what humanity is capable of because of the wickedness in our hearts.

At one point in the film, Hermann Göring turns to his psychiatrist and asks, “Years from now I wonder what you will say about us. Will you even acknowledge that we are human?”

Göring’s question is manipulative and an attempt to gain sympathy. But there is nevertheless something profoundly true about what he says. We want to treat evil people as something other than what we are. We like to imagine that we are good and virtuous and not like those who commit evil.

But Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.”

This is the same truth that Paul reflects on in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Pretending that the Nazis were not ordinary human beings lets us deny our own capacity for evil and pretend that sin is something external rather than within each of us.

But the truth is that we are all capable of unspeakable evil. We all have moments when we are complicit in the face of injustice and when we act on our own selfish desires. And we do so even though we know better — not because we lack knowledge, but because we suppress the knowledge we already have.

And the fact that the Nazis were people just like us doesn’t make the trials at Nuremberg less vital. To the contrary, it makes them even more vital. It is precisely because we all have the capacity to do great evil that we need to punish the Nazis for Auschwitz. We need to send a clear message that such actions cannot and will not be tolerated — not because the Nazis were fundamentally different from us, but because they were the same as us.

3. The Cross and Nuremberg

The movie ends with a powerful quote on screen from philosopher R. G. Collingwood: “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.” We do not need to imagine what evil mankind is capable of; we can look at history and see it plainly.

For Christians, the crucifixion is the ultimate “clue” to what we can do. When the King of kings appeared among us, we did not crown Him with rubies but with thorns. We did not seat Him on a throne but nailed Him to a cross. We did not celebrate Him but rejected Him. We did not worship Him, but crucified Him.

And yet the greatest moment of evil humanity has ever done also beautifully reveals God’s capacity for grace. In our darkest moment, God Himself took the punishment that was due to us. At Nuremberg, human judges tried — with mixed motives and imperfect tools — to respond to unspeakable evil. At the cross, the divine Judge took the evil upon Himself.

Human justice can restrain evil; only Christ can remove it.

Because of the cross, even as we take seriously the need to punish evildoing in our midst, we can also have confidence in the triumph of God’s divine mercy. Our imperfect human efforts can only restrain the evil within us, but God will create a world where all tears are dried, and injustice will cease.