THE JUST WAR TRADITION: THEN AND NOW

by

K. E. Johnson

Box # T-1322

A MAJOR PAPER

Submitted to Dr. Bruce Fields

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
Concentration in Philosophy of Religion
at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Illinois
April 23, 2013
 THE JUST WAR TRADITION: THEN AND NOW

Preface

The just war theory is a Christian ethical teaching that finds its roots firmly

planted in the theology of Augustine.1 Over the centuries it has been developed and

challenged, yet it endures and continues to inform international law. It remains the standard

by which nations judge their participation in military conflict (jus ad bellum) and is the

guiding ethic by which they conduct such actions (jus in bello). Yet while it has always had

its opponents, today it faces new challenges and increased misunderstanding. The face of

modern warfare has seemed to be a clarion call to many that the just war tradition is an

anachronism of the Middle Ages and is either obsolete or in need of significant modification;

opponents argue that both asymmetric and unconventional warfare, neither of which

Augustine and the Church Fathers could have anticipated, have become normative and

complicate already complex moral issues.

Introduction

This paper will briefly look at Augustine’s role in shaping the just war

tradition, survey just some of the challenges to it – beginning with its Christian origins, and

then showing that challenges to its origins open it up to challenges on other issues that might

1
“Augustine is probably the single most influential theologian within the Catholic
and most of the Protestant churches.” Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse and Endre Begby. The
Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 70.

1
 2

not otherwise be called into question, most notably the criterion of right/legitimate authority.

Upon examining this challenge, it will be made clear that one of the original intents behind

just war was not simply obedience to biblical principles, but included a practical public

policy that sought to preserve society from the chaos and destructive effects of war. Finally,

this paper will discuss the changing face of pacifism, examine the misunderstanding of

proportionality and how some of today’s anti-war pacifists have used this confusion to their

advantage, and then offer a brief conclusion in favor of just war.

Augustine and Just War

While the just war tradition did not begin with Augustine, he would become

the most significant thinker to tackle the issue since Cicero and would have a large impact on

thinkers well into the 18th century.2 In fact, he developed what has been called “the first new

definition of just war since Cicero:”3

As a rule just wars are defined as those which avenge injuries, if some nation
or state against whom one is waging war has neglected to punish a wrong
committed by its citizens, or to return something that was wrongfully taken.4

But even though it did not originate with Augustine he is considered the father of the

Christian just war theory, and so influential were his teachings that he is also widely

2
“In formulating their views on war, canon lawyers, scholastic theologians,
Reformation thinkers, and a vast array of modern Christian thinkers have all referred to Augustine
and used his language and ideas.” Reichberg, Syse and Begby. The Ethics of War, 70.
3
Frederick H. Russell quoted in John Mark Mattox, Saint Augustine and the Theory
of Just War (New York, NY: Continuum, 2006), 46.
4
Augustine, Questions on the Heptateuch, 6.10. Quoted in Reichberg, Syse and
Begby. The Ethics of War, 82.
 3

considered the father of the tradition for all of Western thought.5 And while Augustine never

developed a systematic theory or treatise, “the idea of war has deep roots in his thinking,”

and these roots were themselves firmly planted in his understanding of a grand divine order

which “seeks war’s legitimacy in the relationship between God and humankind.”6 This

understanding is important to grasp, because the just war tradition was developed as a

uniquely Christian ethic under Augustine, and later critiques will seek to undermine its

Christian origins and separate the tradition from its moorings.

In Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Augustine states, “A great deal depends

on the causes for which men undertake wars, and on the authority they have for doing so.”7

This concern for the cause and authority drives much of the rationale behind Augustine’s

treatment of just war, as he was concerned to establish the grounds by which a ruler would be

justified in going to war. He followed the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero in this, yet

he was not satisfied simply with the notion of ulciscendi et puniendi, the right to retribution

and/or vengeance. His concern was more profound in that he sought to elevate the

importance of motive, for he knew that God judges the heart of man. Thus, he broke new

ground and is credited with introducing the jus ad bellum criterion of right intention.8 Such

5
Craig J. N. de Paulo and Patrick A. Messina, “The Influence of Augustine on the
Development on Just War Theory,” in Augustinian Just War Theory and the Wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq: Confessions, Contentions, and the Lust for Power, eds. Craig J. N. de Paulo, Patrick A. Messina
and Daniel P. Tompkins (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011), 26.
6
Robert L. Holmes, “St. Augustine and the Just War Theory,” in The Augustinian
Tradition, ed. Gareth B. Matthews (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 324.
7
Quoted in Arthur F. Holmes, War and Christian Ethics: Classic and Contemporary
Readings on the Morality of War, 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 65.
8
de Paulo and Messina, 26.
 4

was the impact of Augustine. He infused the just war tradition with an undeniably Christian

ethic and grounded it firmly in his own theology; that is to say, he built it on a biblical

foundation in which man must be concerned about right relation to God and his neighbor.

Augustine’s treatment of war would follow this pattern of elevating issues by

emphasizing the internal versus the external and seeking to contextualize the issues within

biblical principles.9 And rather than give it a full and systematic treatment, he would touch

on the issue throughout his life as he deemed it pertinent or when pressed with questions. In

one such exchange, Augustine responds to an official concerned that the New Testament

sanctions nonviolence as the only means of response in a violent world. His answer in this

particular work, To Marcellinus (Epistulae 138), will be become important in answering

present-day challenges to just war and show how enduring Augustine’s work is and how it

continues to be relevant for the 21st century (see page 10). But throughout his work, it is

clear that Augustine’s most significant contribution to the just war tradition is that he framed

it within the Christian worldview and set it in the context of making peace (Matt. 5:9).

Previous thinkers, to include Cicero and Ambrose, valued peace but did not

place the emphasis that Augustine would place on it. “Augustine, far beyond merely

recognizing its desirability, considers peace to be the indisputable end to which all wars are

fought.”10 He understood that peace was desirable and that often war was unavoidable, but

9
“Augustine…required an unchallengeable biblical authority for his ethics.” Robert
Dodaro, “Ethics: Lying and War,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D.
Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 328.
10
Mattox, 46.
 5

he never lost sight of the fact that war is a means to peaceful ends and that sometimes it is the

only means at our disposal (i.e., criterion of last resort); he believed that war is often the

means to achieving lasting peace:

Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a
necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity
and preserve them in pace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of
war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. Therefore, even in
waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker, that, by conquering those
whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantage of peace; for our
Lord says: “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children
of God.”11

This emphasis on peace as the aim of war sets Augustine apart from previous thinkers. For

he not only sets the conditions by which participation in war and armed conflict are merely

permissible, but he affords a “special moral status” for the soldier as one who is charged with

the achieving and preserving of peace.12

Thus Augustine’s influence on just war altered the inflection of the argument

well into the 20th century, when anti-war pacifism would rise up to challenge Augustine’s

presuppositions. He defends war with precision and careful qualification (his work often

reflects his response to his contemporary challenges rather than setting forth a maxim that

can be equally applied down the ages).13 Ironically, it is this emphasis on peace and the

prominence he continually places on the virtue love14 that have likely led some, like Robert

11
Augustine, To Boniface (Epistulae 189.6), quoted in Holmes, 62-63.
12
Mattox, 84.
13
Reichberg, Syse and Begby. The Ethics of War, 70-71.
14
Mattox, 125: “Love is also the motivating force behind all action in Augustine’s
philosophical system…Hence there can be no virtue in the pursuit of the traditional warrior
virtues…for their own sakes.”
 6

Holmes, to label Augustine a pacifist. But such claims fail to account for the robust

argument that Augustine makes for God’s justice and the fact that he often sees war as the

manifestation of God’s will, which is yet another profound distinctive of Augustine’s theory.

Augustine taught that some wars were a result of divine decree, citing numerous Old

Testament examples to demonstrate that God has at times directed war and that he was not

precluded from doing so again.15 This teaching struck a blow to the pacifism of his day and

strengthened the jus ad bellum argument. He assigned just war a teleological nature, the

purpose being to secure peace and achieve the decrees set forth by God. Thus, Augustine

was the strongest proponent of just war to date (and probably remained so for at least the

next 900 years until Aquinas) placing it within God’s greater divine purpose. So, as John

Mark Mattox rightly retorts, if Augustine was a pacifist, he was not a pacifist “in the usual

sense of the word.”16

Augustine’s influence would be felt throughout the Middle Ages when the just

war theory would begin to take its familiar form under Aquinas in the 13th century. Aquinas

would build on Augustine’s foundation and more formally codify the theory’s precepts as it

began to take the shape in which it exists today. The just war theory, in its current form,

consists of two main teachings into which criteria are organized. The teaching of jus ad

bellum (“right to war”) consists of three main criteria that must be satisfied in order to engage

15
Henrik Syse, “Augustine and Just War: Between Virtue and Duties,” in Ethics,
Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Gregory M. Reichberg
and Henrik Syse (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 38.
16
Mattox, 82.
 7

in war: just cause, legitimate/right authority, and right intention. More criteria were added to

these three “core criteria” as the theory was refined and developed. The main additions

include: reasonable chance for success, proportionate cause, and last resort. The teaching of

jus in bello (“justice in war”) is broken down into two main criteria: discrimination and

proportionality (not to be confused with the jus ad bellum of proportionate cause). It was

under Aquinas that what I have termed the “core criteria” were formalized in his Summa

Theologica (II-II.40).

Before moving into some of today’s challenges, it’s important to note a few

things about Augustine’s attitude about war. While he formulated strong arguments for just

war, he was critical of militarism.17 And “although he considers military force morally

justified in certain cases, he never stops lamenting the fact that such violence has to be used

at all. He defends just wars, but never with a light heart.”18 Augustine may not have been a

pacifist, but neither was he a warmonger. It was because Augustine feared the abuse of such

a devastating power and lived within a context in which he would have to live with the

results of war that he developed such a robust theory of just war.19 His emphasis on right

intention and right motive elevated the discussion of just war making it a more righteous

affair. And by placing it within the divine framework and giving it a teleological nature, he

17
Mattox, 47.
18
Reichberg, Syse and Begby. The Ethics of War, 70-71.
19
“Augustine, Aquinas and their successors did not shape their ideas only by abstract
reflection, as though they were in monastic cells.” Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan, The Just
War Tradition: Ethics in Modern Warfare (New York, NY: Walker & Company, 2007), 7.
 8

placed human magistrates on notice that they were answerable to a higher power and did not

possess carte blanche.

Augustine laid the foundation for the Christian ethic of just war, and it is a

foundation upon which he affords war an instrumental status versus one in which it is

fundamentally evil.20 He reinforced the duty of the state to establish and preserve good order

and discipline and armed them with the sword in order to do so. He married duty with a

solemn accountability to a higher authority, and he introduced a “moral stringency” that the

theory did not previously possess.21 This would set the stage for what would become the just

war tradition and he irreversibly set the tradition upon Christian underpinnings. Augustine’s

teachings on war influenced thinkers well into the Enlightenment and Reformation periods,

thinkers such as Aquinas in the 13th century, Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez of

the Salamanca School and John Calvin in the 16th century, and Hugo Grotius in the 17th

century.

It is worth mentioning that interest in the just war theory waned between the

18th and 20th centuries.22 It was not until World War II (WWII) and incidents like the 1945

British attacks on Dresden or the bombing of Hiroshima that propelled interest in just war

back into the spotlight. Post-WWII conflicts and the threat of war between the U.S. and

Soviet Union led to the theory being addressed at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s,

20
John Langan, S.J., “The Elements of St. Augustine’s Just War Theory,” in The
Ethics of St. Augustine, ed. William S. Babcock (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 199), 178.
21
de Paulo and Messina, 26.
22
de Paulo and Messina, 48.
 9

and the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) continued the discussion when

published. Messina and de Paulo summarize the Augustine Christian contribution to the just

war tradition and its status in the 21st century well: “the Augustinian just war theory that

develops in the West, for better or ill, belongs to Christianity,” and the fact that it is uniquely

Christian will play an important role in determining the direction of just war.23

Today’s Challenges

One of the most effective strategies today to weaken the just war tradition is to

directly challenge the validity of its Christian justifications. Andrew Fiala attempts to do this

in The Just War Myth where he asserts that biblical arguments used to support just war

require “substantial interpretive effort that has to reconcile the martial values of the Old

Testament with the pacific values of Jesus.”24 This reconciliation, he contends, consists of an

“enormous emphasis” on Romans 13 as well as a focus on the various Old Testament wars

commanded by God. Fiala argues that this “substantial interpretive effort” can be seen as

early as Augustine, specifically in his Reply to Faustus the Manichaean.25 But what Fiala

discounts is that Augustine was well aware of the complexity of this issue, and that

addressing it requires a nuanced reading of Scripture. Allan Fitzgerald corroborates this:

23
de Paulo and Messina, 49.
24
Andrew Fiala, The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 31.
25
Ibid., 31.
 10

Augustine did not believe that even the best scriptural interpretation exhibits
direct knowledge of the divine reason, and, hence, an absolute moral
certainty…[so that] in effect, no single Scripture passage ought to be abstracted
into a binding moral norm, and that Scripture passages ought not to be
interpreted literally when, in order to do so, other, countervailing biblical data
are ignored.26

Augustine did not need to attempt biblical contortions in order to reconcile the

Old and New Testaments. In fact, in To Marcellinus – a text of which Fiala seems unaware –

Augustine deftly drew upon the New Testament to defuse the concern that it taught

nonviolence and did not even need to invoke the wars of the Old Testament. For example, he

contrasted the Gospel passages in which Jesus exhorts people to turn the other cheek (Matt.

5:39, Luke 6:29) with the passage in which Jesus, instead of turning his own cheek, rebukes

the one who slapped him in the face (John 18:23).27 Augustine also cites the passage in

which soldiers approached John the Baptist in order to ask what they should do (Luke 3:14).

In the work that Fiala himself cites to support his attack on biblical

justification for just war (Reply to Faustus the Manichaean) Augustine points out that if

Scripture prohibited violence then John would have told the soldiers to “Throw away your

arms; give up the service; never strike, or wound, or disable anyone. But [he knew] such

actions in battle were not murderous, but authorized by law…” and as such did not condemn

the soldiers but instead instructed them in the way of salvation.28 Augustine’s view of

26
Dodaro, 328.
27
Ibid., 328-329. In Reply to Faustus the Manichaean 22.76, Augustine says that
what is required by the command to turn the cheek “is not a bodily action, but an inward disposition.”
28
Augustine quoted in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 64. Additionally, in To
Boniface (Epistulae 189.4), Augustine states: “Do not think it impossible for any one to please God
while engaged in active military service.”
 11

Scripture as a single, unified work enabled him to contrast and harmonize passages to show

that, at a minimum, the Bible does not condemn the judicious use of just force. Thus, there’s

not much weight to Fiala’s contention that special interpretative efforts are required to

support the just war tradition. Fiala would likely not find this satisfying, and certainly there’s

more to a full argument for the just war tradition, but neither is it as easy to dismiss the

Scriptural underpinning of the tradition as one that requires the equivalent of biblical special

pleading nor is it “absurdly mythological.”29

Fiala’s attempts to depict Augustine’s theory of just war as basic and outdated

betray his own bias. Augustine developed a rich understanding of just war and presented

sophisticated arguments across a broad range of works. It seems that Fiala is only aware of

Augustine’s work in the Reply to Faustus the Manichaean when, in fact, to fully understand

Augustine when it comes to the just war theory, one must conduct a survey of his numerous

works, most notably: On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio); In Answer to the

Letters of Petilian, the Donatist, Bishop of Certa (Contra Litteras Petiliani Donastistae

Cirtensis, Episcopi): The City of God (De Civitate Dei); Questions on the Heptateuch

(Quaestionaum in Heptateuchum); Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (De sermone Domini in

monte 30); To Marcellinus (Epistulae 138); To Boniface (Epistulae 189); and To Darius

(Epistulae 222).30 And as is characteristic of Augustine’s work, it is very much relevant as to

29
Fiala, 32.
30
This list culled from Mattox, 44-45 and Holmes, “St. Augustine and the Just War
Theory,” 339. For a concise compilation of pertinent selections of these readings, see Holmes, War
and Christian Ethics, particularly section II.6.
 12

which stage of his life and the contemporary situation in which he was writing. His theology

and ethics evolved over the course of his life and he often tailored his work to address the

unique situations of his day, and his views on just war are no exception. So to do justice to

Augustine’s views on war, Fiala would do well to give closer scrutiny to his entire corpus.31

New Challenges

By attempting to undermine the expressly Christian foundations of the just

war tradition, Fiala and those like him seek to move the argument to where some of its major

assumptions can then be called into question, assumptions that have been accepted as the

proper outworking of a Christian ethic. Fiala, for example, calls into question the jus ad

bellum criterion of legitimate authority. He argues that at the root of Augustine’s rationale

for just war is his insistence on obedience to God via legitimate/right authority – that it is

man’s responsibility to obey the divinely appointed monarch – and that this argument is no

longer valid. Fiala asserts that today “Liberal democratic societies do not believe that

political power is ordained by God” and that the “tradition also includes some other ideas

that should be rejected by those of us committed to liberal secular values.”32 And Fiala is not

alone in this view.

Shawn Kaplan has called into question the state’s rights to both maintain a

standing army and order its citizens to fight, stating that just war theorists have assumed

31
It is not uncommon for ethicists (e.g., Robert Holmes) to charge Augustine with
contradicting himself and for being scattered in his “system”. While there is likely some truth to the
charge, it is more probable that they have not sought to place Augustine’s thoughts into context.
32
Fiala, 32.
 13

these (and other) rights.33 Kaplan subtly tries to shift the argument of the criterion of right

authority from the duty of the state to it being a question of the state’s right. He argues that

the criterion of right authority is not enough to satisfy today’s liberal democracies. He states

that no war could be just in which the state “pressed soldiers into service,” and that includes

members of a standing army who were not conscripted into service!34 Kaplan attempts to

erase any duty or obligation of the state to protect its citizens and interests and to pursue

peace, and he endeavors to return the status of war from being instrumental to one of being

fundamentally evil. It is easy to see that if Fiala and Kaplan are successful, all of the

“Christian assumptions” of the just war tradition are up for debate and Kaplan is justified in

asking, “Why?”35

But Keith Pavlischek provides a defense for the criterion of right authority,

and he does so from both a biblical and a public policy standpoint. Drawing from Aquinas,

Pavlischek argues that while much of the Biblical support indeed comes from Romans 13,

Christian thought was also eminently practical in that it had the public good in mind. Right

authority referred to “a political authority to which there was no superior…[and] Christian

thinkers repeatedly insisted that warfare was a public issue” (emphasis original); it was the

Church that brought order to a culture in which warfare was often the private affair of

33
Shawn Kaplan, “Just War Theory: What Is It Good For?” Philosophy in the
Contemporary World Vol. 19, Issue 2 (Fall 2012): 9.
34
Ibid., 10.
35
Ibid., 9.
 14

“subordinate nobles, private soldiers, criminals, and [even] the Church.”36 By making

warfare a public issue, the conditions for a more secure and peaceful society were affirmed

and the mercenary tendencies of the medieval period countered. And lest this be seen as an

anachronism of the just war tradition, Pavlischek links this to the present day issue of

terrorism. Terrorism is a return to private warfare, only now the perpetrators are armed with

advanced technology and weaponry that increase their reach and lethality. This, he argues,

strengthens the need for a strong just war tradition in the 21st century. Unless we affirm and

insist upon the criterion for right authority, there are no grounds upon which to condemn

terrorism—we are left only to argue ideology.

This runs exactly counter to the argument of Kaplan, who argues that the just

war tradition and its principles have become “toothless and uncritical” and have been “co-

opted by bellicose leaders.”37 The difference in these two opposing views is that one is

undergirded by a Christian ethic that sees war as instrumental with its ultimate purpose being

peace, while the other is individualist and reductionist in nature and sees war, at best, as a

necessary yet unavoidable evil. This latter view actually places a lesser value on peace and

will, in the end, tolerate more injustice than the former view; hence, Kaplan unravels

Augustine’s work and removes the special moral status awarded to the soldier, negating the

notions of justice, moral obligation, and duty.

36
Keith Pavlischek, “Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist Age,” The Intercollegiate
Review Vol. 37, Issue 2 (Spring 2002): 26.
37
Kaplan, 2.
 15

But giving Kaplan the charity of argument, some of his points must be given

their due. There have been instances in the 20th and 21st centuries in which the tenets of just

war have been manipulated or simply ignored in order to pursue war for interests other than

the pursuit of peace. But this does not call for eliminating or diluting the just war theory.

Given the rising challenge of terrorism and the threat of private war that was highlighted by

Pavlischek, now is when a “strong” just war theory is needed most. We must enforce its

tenets and hold those who violate them accountable, and not simply for political purposes.

By undermining the criterion for right authority (or any other criteria), the door is opened for

non-state actors who wish to engage in warfare to claim legitimacy for their actions. The just

war tradition is timeless in that it was “developed in large measure precisely to confront and

contain the sort of private violence or private war currently practiced by terrorist

organizations of all sorts.”38

The New Pacifism

Related to this issue of right authority is the challenge of a new pacifism.

Traditional pacifism arose from within Christianity, was a minority view, and it accepted

most, if not all, of the same biblical presuppositions as the proponents for the just war

tradition.39 Probably the best example of early Christian pacifism can be found in the

Schleitheim Confession of 1527, which declared that God had established the sword for the

38
Ibid., 27. Pavlischek also argues that just war provides grounds to consider
terrorism acts of war (versus criminal acts) because it is illegitimate warfare that undermines the
authority of legitimate governments/states.
39
Guthrie and Quinlan, 6.
 16

punishment of the wicked and that it was the secular magistrate who was divinely appointed

to bear the sword. The point of dispute was not whether or not God gave the state the

authority to bear the sword (Romans 13), because both the pacifist and just war theorist

accepted this as fact.40 The rub was the belief that God did not intend for Christians to

participate in “secular government” and prohibited them from bearing the sword; it was a

duty delegated to the secular magistrates. Christians are called to a better, more holy life,

one in which it is even prohibited to serve as a magistrate.

Theology and exegesis may have divided pacifists and just war proponents in

the past. Today, however, the pacifist argument has become an anti-war argument,

something James Sterba calls “anti-war pacifism.”41 Traditional pacifism, or “classical

Christian pacifism” as Pavlischek calls it, was not anti-war per se; it simply held that

Christians were prohibited from participating in war.42 But today’s pacifism is anti-war in

that it holds that no war is just nor should anyone participate in war.43 And it is not only

skeptics who have adopted this position, but prominent members of the Christian community

have adopted this as well. For example, the late Cardinal Bernadin employed the “seamless

40
“But classical Christian pacifists understood that Romans 13 holds governing
authorities to be agent’s of God’s wrath, ordained by him to ‘bring punishment on the evildoer.’”
Pavlischek, “Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist Age,” 28.
41
James P. Sterba, “Reconciling Pacifists and Just War Theorists,” Social Theory and
Practice 18 (1992): 21.
42
Michael Walzer, “Responsibility and Proportionality in State and Nonstate Wars,”
Parameters Vol. XXXIX (Spring 2009): 42: “Historically, just war theory was meant to be an
alternative to Christian pacifism; now, for some of its advocates, it is pacifism’s functional
equivalent–a kind of cover for people who are not prepared to admit that there are no wars they will
support.”
43
Fiala, 29: “There is no reason to believe that there are just wars.”
 17

garment” argument to claim that one cannot support both the just war tradition and right to

life issues, and that one cannot oppose euthanasia while supporting capital punishment.44

Another example is the World Council of Churches: In 1958, in a document titled “Christians

and the Prevention of War in the Atomic Age,” they declared that the notion of a just war is

incompatible with Christianity.45

This departure from classical Christian pacifism has moved the debate

regarding war away from its Christian underpinnings and has deprived the world of an

important element of Christian witness. John Langan, S.J. makes an excellent point

regarding the value of classical Christian pacifism:

For there is a long and important tradition of Christian pacifism both as a

theological position and as a form of Christian witness in a world full of the
sorrows and crimes so often found in war…The Christian tradition, if we
conceive it in historical rather than normative terms, includes crusaders and
conquistadors, kings and knights, rebels and sheriffs.46

Langan continues saying that with such a colorful history, it would be a mistake to simply

equate the Church’s history with just war and the justified use of violence. Christian pacifists

have much to offer the world with its message and emphases on Christian community and the

value of peace. He implies that Christian pacifists have served as a sort of check and balance

within the Church, and that abuses arise when the Christian pacifist voice is muted.

Langan further asserts that the Church has a rich history and a wealth of

material on the just war tradition, so much so that he suggests that it might be cause for some

44
Pavlischek, “Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist Age,” 27.
45
Darrell Cole, “Good Wars,” First Things 11 (Oct 2001): 28
46
Langan, 169.
 18

embarrassment on the part of the Church. Here Langan returns to Augustine to help us

understand a nuanced but oft-overlooked aspect to his views on war, one that might have

helped to settle the tension between Christian pacifists and just war theorists. Underlying

Augustine’s view was a belief that while peace was the ultimate goal of war, not all peace is

good. Citing passages from The City of God, he articulates the point that peace must be

accompanied by a just, well-ordered society. It is not enough to have peace that is based on

injustice, oppression, or criminal activity, for example. “The peace of the earthly city is

appropriate to the circumstances of justice and the need of a sinful and divided humanity to

maintain a ‘common agreement’ about the ‘necessities of life.’”47 As such, today’s anti-war

pacifism fails to provide a balanced counter-perspective to just war and actually sets the

conditions for an unjust peace by elevating the “virtue” of nonviolence above the virtue of

justice. The message of today’s pacifism is one of complete abstention from the use of

military force as it sees all coercive action as immoral. The fallacy of this view is that it fails

to distinguish between types of force, sees all forms of killing as murder, and is morally

reductionist by putting a nation that responds in self-defense on the same moral level as the

terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks.48

Pavlischek and Darrell Cole offer a formidable response to anti-war pacifism,

which Pavlischek calls revisionist. Going back to the origins of the just war tradition, Cole

points out that it was built on the notion of justice and the virtue of charity to confront the

47
Langan, 179.
48
Pavlischek, “Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist Age,” 27.
 19

chaos and injustice of indiscriminate warfare and to establish right authority for the use of

coercive force.49 Anti-war pacifists, however, often argue that the just war tradition was built

upon a presumption against violence to justify their anti-war stance, but Pavlischek argues

that this is not the case historically. Citing Augustine and Aquinas and building on Cole, he

contends that the just war tradition was built upon a presumption against injustice.50 To

assume that it was built on a presumption against violence does nothing to prevent violence

nor does it provide any alternatives to war. Anti-war pacifist David Carroll Cochran admits

as much:

Real pacifism is hard; it must carry the burden of watching injustice being
done while maintaining strict moral limits on how we may respond. It has not
solved the moral problem of war…it only offers a moral judgment of war.51

Today’s anti-war pacifism ties our hands. We are not free to prevent violence

and injustice; we are only free to watch and pass judgment. This is a tone vastly different

from classical Christian pacifism, and it has misled many a modern Christian from

understanding the full import of the tradition. Cole argues that for Christians it has always

been question of how best to love your neighbor. The Christian just war theorist believes

that “The Christian who fails to use force to aid his neighbor when prudence dictates that

49
Keith Pavlischek, “Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Just War Theory: A
Critique,” in Christianity and Power Politics Today: Contemporary Realism and Contemporary
Political Dilemmas, ed. Eric Patterson (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 65-66.
50
This is corroborated in Syse, “Augustine and Just War: Between Virtue and
Duties,” 37.
51
David Carroll Cochran, quoted in Michael Neu, “Why There is No Such Thing as
Just War Pacifism and Why Just War Theorists and Pacifists Can Talk Nonetheless,” Social Theory
and Practice Vol. 37, Issue 3 (July 2011): 423.
 20

force is the best way to render that aid is an uncharitable Christian.”52 He concludes by

remarking that Christians who fail to participate in a just war when required is a failure to

love your neighbor (and God).

In contrast, today’s anti-war pacifism is a far cry from classical Christian

pacifism and offers little hope to resolve the world’s issues of justice and violence, and is

likely one reason why pacifists such as Sterba have sought to find a middle ground between

the just war tradition and anti-war pacifism. Sterba has argued that there is a potential point

of reconciliation between anti-war pacifism and the just war tradition that does justice to both

positions and while ruling out most acts of war. The problem with Sterba’s contention is that

once the lines are drawn, “a pacifist who thinks war can be just might as well come out and

admit that she is a just war theorist.”53 It is impossible to reconcile today’s anti-war pacifism

with the just war tradition; you either end up with an overly strict just war theory or a weak

pacifism that is no longer anti-war. The basic presumptions of each position are

incompatible: anti-war pacifism sees war as an intolerable evil while the just war tradition is

built upon a presumption against injustice; anti-war pacifism believes that all killing is

murder while the just war theorist understands that there are different types of killing that can

be distinguished. If faced with an inevitable/unavoidable war, the pacifist would view it, at

best, as the lesser of two evils while the just war theorist could see it as a potential act of

justice.54

52
Cole, 31.
53
Neu, 413.
54
Ibid., 421.
 21

Finally, aside from being historically inaccurate, there is an ethical problem

with the anti-war pacifist presumption against violence that is often overlooked. The jus ad

bellum consists of moral criteria that the state must satisfy in order to rightfully engage in

war, and jus in bello criteria are the moral criteria which guides the state in its war efforts to

“keep its hands clean.” But these moral criteria are not all equally valid. Those criteria that I

have termed the “core criteria” are the most important and carry the most weight. They truly

serve as the core fundamentals of the just war theory, which is why they emerged first in

Aquinas as he sought to systematize just war. These core criteria are of a deontological

nature, that is to say they are morally right in themselves regardless of the situation. The

additional criteria are prudential in nature, and were added on later to bolster and help clarify

the core criteria and prevent their abuse/misuse. Thus, when considering the just war theory,

the core criteria must be weighted more heavily than the prudential criteria. The problem,

says James Turner Johnson, is that anti-war pacifists tend to reverse the order of priority and

give the most weight to the prudential criteria.55 This reversal of ethical priority has resulted

in much of the confusion and “abstract moral ideals, utterly disconnected from political and

military judgment.”56

This final charge may seem a bit academic in that ethicists, philosophers, and

theologians are prone to split hairs on such issues. But the issue of just war is one that has

very real application that can be seen on the nightly news. Since interest in just war was

55
Johnson was paraphrased in Pavlischek, “Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist
Age,” 31. Johnson is widely considered the most important contemporary scholar on just war.
56
Ibid., 31.
 22

revived in the aftermath of WWII, the theory has grown more and more confusing. It has

grown so confusing that even those in the military are not always clear on the criteria and

growing law of war concerns. Drawing from personal experience as career officer who

helped develop operational contingency plans and formal war plans, I was often confused by

the jus in bello criteria proportionality (this will be discussed in the next section). It is

imperative that the practitioners of war and those magistrates who send them into harm’s way

understand the just war tradition. After nine months in the Command and Staff College

where I earned a Masters in Military Studies (MMS), I still came away unclear on the

nuances of the theory. At best, I could distinguish between jus ad bellum and jus in bello and

perhaps list several of the criteria. Now this is not an indictment on the Marine Corps

educational system, as just war was taught by the staff judge advocate (military lawyer) and

not by the professor of ethics on staff. But it is indicative of the state of the just war

tradition: it is confusing. We would do well to return to Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, et al. to

better understand the intention and essence of the theory and not get lost in the accretions that

have occurred over that past 150 years.

The Problem of Proportionality

Another challenge that the just war tradition faces today is one that is rooted

in a misunderstanding about proportionality. Given that today’s warfare employs weapons

like precision-guided munitions, electronic warfare, unmanned aerial systems, and other

modern weapons that are capable of immense destruction with very little effort or risk to

“friendly forces,” proportionality has rightfully been an issue of concern. The jus in bello
 23

criterion of proportionality – as distinguished from the jus ad bellum criterion of

proportionate cause – addresses the military means used to gain a strategic or tactical

advantage or benefit and requires that said means be proportionate to the incidental harm

inflicted. It is not permissible to inflict “an unreasonably heavy price to incur [a] military

benefit.”57 A military commander must ensure that he does not knowingly inflict a

disproportionate amount of harm or damage on noncombatants or infrastructure. Examples

of when it can be argued that this criterion has been violated are the bombing of Hiroshima,

the British attacks on Dresden in 1945, and the use of napalm during the Vietnam War. The

damage inflicted via those military actions arguably exceeds the advantage gained.

The confusion, however, arises when comparing the military might and/or

tactics by opposing sides in a conflict, and it is often erroneously believed that the just war

tradition calls for only that use of military force required to achieve victory. Pavlischek cites

as recent examples the Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006 (also called the Lebanon War) and the

Gaza War of 2008-2009. In each conflict, the Israeli casualties were far less than those of

either Hezbollah or Hamas, and some officials from the United Nations and European Union

charged the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) with violating the criterion of proportionality,

suggesting that the IDF was heavy-handed.58 But this betrays a basic misunderstanding

about the criterion. It is concerned with foreseen collateral damage, that is, harm to

innocents and non-military infrastructure. It does not concern itself with combatants nor

57
Guthrie and Quinlan, 14.
58
Keith Pavlischek, “Proportionality in Warfare,” The New Atlantis No. 27 (Spring
2010): 21.
 24

does it call for scaling down of military action/force against a belligerent. Pavlischek

accurately points out that the principle of gratuitous harm is often confused with

proportionality. This principle requires that military forces avoid inflicting gratuitous harm

on enemy combatants, but it is not a function of proportionality and it is always at the

discretion of “competent military authority.”59 An example of gratuitous harm might be the

use of chemical or biological agents or improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The use of

napalm on enemy combatants, which would violate proportionality if used against

noncombatants, would also violate the principle of gratuitous harm if used on combatants.

Anti-war pacifists have leveraged this confusion to bolster their arguments.

Pavlischek calls this an “abuse of the concept of proportionality…[and] its fundamental line

of reasoning is that all modern warfare—supposedly unlike pre-modern warfare—is

inherently both indiscriminate and disproportionate.”60 This has led to a reinterpretation of

the just war theory and to what Paul Ramsey has called a bellum contra bellum justum (war

against just war), pushing pacifism further from its classical Christian origins. Michael

Walzer corroborates this: “Many…have invented a wholly different interpretation and use,

making the theory more and more stringent, particularly with regard to civilian deaths. In

fact, they have reinterpreted it to a point where it is pretty much impossible to find a war or

conflict that can be justified.”61 Thus, it is imperative that the criterion of proportionality is

59
Ibid., 23.
60
Ibid., 25.
61
Walzer, 42.
 25

understood and that charges of disproportionate warfare are answered with clarity and

precision to ensure that it is not confused or conflated with the principle of gratuitous harm.

Conclusion

The arguments of Pavlischek, Cole, Neu, and Walzer show that just war,

despite claims to the contrary, is as relevant today as it was centuries ago when Augustine

first began addressing it. Fiala claims that it may have been relevant during the Middle Ages

but that “warfare has evolved and our ideas about justice have developed” making it no

longer possible to believe in a just war.62 But I contend that without a “strong” just war

tradition, terrorism and insurgencies will thrust us backwards into the private wars and

mercenary actions of the centuries past. Fiala is wont to cite example after example from

Operation Iraqi Freedom to support his claims that there are no just wars, yet he neglects the

serious moral dilemmas that have been posed by the Nazi aggression of the 1930s, the killing

fields of Cambodia in the 1960s, or the neglect of the world community to intervene in 1995

Rwandan genocide. Certainly there have been abuses of the just war tradition, but abuse is

never an argument against use. The just war theory is not simply a tool to facilitate military

action, but it is also an effective means to prevent war63 and “has been useful for mitigating

the destructiveness of war.”64 What is needed is a stronger implementation of the just war

62
Fiala, 29.
63
Neu, 421.
64
Eric Patterson, “Just War in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Just War Theory
after September 11,” International Politics 42 (2005): 134.
 26

theory, better practice versus a better theory. Because to do as Cochran suggests – to watch

injustice being done – is to commit an injustice in itself.

In closing, I submit that Walzer has captured perhaps the most balanced

approach to just war and is one that Augustine would find quite palatable: “It is a good thing

to stand against militarism; it is a good thing not to be eager to fight—so long as one

understands that sometimes it is necessary to fight or to be prepared to fight, as it was in the

1930s.65 Finally, James Turner Johnson gets to the crux of the matter when he states that

“The question is not so much how can this be relevant for us today as it is how could it ever

be judged irrelevant.”66

65
Walzer, 40.
66
James Turner Johnson, “Thinking Morally about War in the Middle Ages and
Today,” in Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War, eds. Reichberg and Syse (Washington, DC: Catholic
University Press, 2007), 10.
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