“For they have healed the hurt of my daughter slightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” Jer. 6:14, 8:11

•A Christian’s Response to War
•The Classical Roots of Just War Theory
•St. Augustine’s Christian Notion of Just War Theory: ius ad bellum
•Conducting War Justly: ius in bello

A decade ago America responded to the invasion of Kuwait by the armed forces of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Another President Bush created a massive coalition among many nations of the world, built up a huge, international base of operations in Saudi Arabia and in the waters of the region, and planned a vast blitzkrieg-style attack against a well-armed and dug-in enemy.

After a long and methodical build-up, we unleashed Desert Storm and accomplished our goal of effectively and efficiently ejecting the Iraqi army from Kuwait. At the time I was teaching in Georgia. Many of our students were reservists who were called up for active duty. The unanswered questions about American involvement were manifold, and not least among them was the issue of “blood for oil.”

In light of the brutality of the Iraqi regime, of the blatancy of their invasion, and U.S. security interests in maintaining the flow of petroleum from the Middle East, American public response to the build up and assault was strong and positive. In our present circumstances of military planning, there is no troubling question of “blood for oil?”: the provocation that requires a response was too unambiguous and too personal.

We are, at this moment, as a nation, preparing a response to a series of acts that appear to rival the worst that humans have managed to inflict upon humans. We are in the process of framing some kind of declaration of war that recognizes both the unprovoked, brutal and inhuman nature of the attack on America, and the identity of the perpetrators of that act. There may well be an Usama bin Laden who bears important responsibility for the acts, but he is no head of state: no Saddam or Hitler or Hirohito. And while the leaders of one or more states may well bear a significant share of the responsibility, at this time, to public knowledge, none can be made a clear target of a righteous American military response.

Unless matters take a dramatic turn, there will be no huge build up of personnel and materiel, no great gathering of coalition forces in a foreign staging ground, no swift 100 hours of blitzkrieg that cripples our enemy’s ability to harm us or its neighbors. The war being discussed will be of a new type, with new goals and new forms, and new victims.

The violent twentieth century witnessed several shifts in warfare that reshaped this most problematic of human activities: the concentration camps for civilians during the Boer War; the trenches and tanks and planes of the First World War; the rain of death on civilians of the Spanish Civil War and subsequent World War; the vague but real threat of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War; the “frontless” theatres of operations in the paddies and jungles of Southeast Asia; the remote-controlled “smart-weapon” assaults of the 1990s. In some sense, the threat to us, and to the world, is a combination or culmination of these earlier developments, and all the more deadly for it.

A Christian’s Response to War

The Christian’s response to these developments must be shaped by many factors: the Gospel’s call to peace and unlimited forgiveness of those who harm us; the natural, human desire for revenge aimed at those deemed responsible for our loss; our modern understanding of the proper role of the secular nation-state in defending its people and providing a secure and peaceful environment; America’s specific role in leading world efforts to limit and subdue arbitrary or malicious acts of violence -- outside of declared war -- and those who perpetrate or threaten them; the individual’s conscientious balance of  his or her response to the Gospel message; and the patriotic response that we, as Americans, owe our country, if not necessarily our government.

At this writing, our national response appears to be measured, deliberate, cautious, and promises to be well targeted and just rather than vengeful and arbitrary. If these conditions hold, then we may well fight what the Christian tradition has come to call a “just war.”

During his lifetime, Saint Augustine of Hippo (d. 432) suffered the destruction of his world. As he lay dying, the Vandals were at the gate of his own city, and Rome, the “Eternal City,” secure for eight centuries, had been sacked. The enemies of Rome were brutal, and often unmindful –- if not contemptuous -- of the civilization they were bringing to an end.

As Arians, they despised their Roman Catholic opponents, whom they saw as wrong-believers. As this drama unfolded and Augustine learned of it, he developed a response that the Church has since found quite useful. When the Gulf War broke out, St. Augustine’s ideas were brushed off and tried on for size by a new generation. I am afraid to say it is time to do so again. We call these ideas the “Just War Theory.”

The Classical Roots of Just War Theory

Peace was the ideal, preferred condition for ancient philosophers such as Plato and the societies in which they lived. They nonetheless wrestled with the problems of organized human violence, and concluded that war was a legitimate activity of the duly constituted government of a state under certain circumstances, and retained that legitimacy when conducted in certain circumscribed ways.

This rather ‘civilized’ attitude stemmed from the fraternal nature of the Greek city-state system. Non-Hellenes were barbarians and initially outside of this system of courtesy, though early Stoics and Cynics denied any meaningful differences between “Greek” and “barbarian.” Cosmopolitanism developed in the new age of Alexander’s successors: one was a citizen of the world first and foremost: or so some taught. Recognition of fundamental differences between the barbarian and the civilized faded.

Even before Alexander, however, Plato laid the groundwork for a “just war theory” when he posited that the only legitimate purpose for conducting war was to restore peace after vindicating justice. Peace could not be sustained, however, when the enemy’s resources were destroyed. Indeed, those actually responsible for the outbreak of the war were generally few in number, while the multitude, even if it supported the hostilities, was not directly responsible. A distinction evolved between combatants and non-combatants. Rules of martial conduct emerged among the Greeks, though, as the Peloponnesian War showed, Greeks could be as brutal to each other as to any outsider.

After Plato, notions of natural law and universal humanity evolved in the Hellenistic world. A concept of justice that went beyond mere rectification of injury to life and goods, however, was long in coming, and war for the sake of such redress was deemed perfectly acceptable. Cicero was raised on such notions of humanity, natural law and justice, but theoretically placed the right and burden of the declaration and conduct of war on the state: in his case, the Roman republic. Warfare conducted outside of this purview, such as privateering or rebellion, was not rightly war, and the restraints that, he claimed, stemmed from natural law and humanity, were not applicable. In legitimate military campaigns he could accept the destruction of non-combatants and property, but only as necessary to bring about a swifter or more complete defeat of the enemy.

Battles themselves might be unbelievably bloody, but treatment of combatants and non-combatants was to be consistent with their natural dignity as humans. Where feasible, clemency was to be the watchword, not least of all to help ensure a lasting peace. Such ideas were not merely Cicero’s: despite the fact that Rome built her empire by shedding blood in battle, Roman historians never tired of insisting that the wars were truly and all matters of national defense (vindication of justice?), and not the activity of an aggressive and aggrandizing empire.

The pagan Roman state could bear the human consequences of war with equanimity, but a ‘Christian’ Roman state – as after 392 -- needed to reconcile the unmistakable Gospel imperative to peace and raison d’etat. Early Christian writers seem to have defended a radical pacifism, and enunciate this most clearly in denying the Christian’s duty to serve in the military. Recent critics, however, have re-examined these writings and some conclude that the real issue revolves around the profoundly pagan nature of life in the Roman legions, and not the fact of armed service per se.

The decline and then outlawing of pagan practice through the fourth century eliminated the rationale for denying Caesar his due. Rome’s adoption of Christianity seemed to legitimize her use of force, and by the fourth century Rome could hardly be considered an aggressor, as she began the long and ultimately unsuccessful struggle to maintain possession of her western empire. Rome’s wars hereafter would clearly be defensive, and not only of her territory, but of civilization and Christianity itself. Or so it appeared. It is in this milieu that Augustine formulated his just war theory.

St. Augustine’s Christian Notion of Just War Theory: ius ad bellum

Bishop St. Ambrose of Milan, teacher and inspiration of St. Augustine and later recognized as a Doctor of the Church, supported military service for Christian men, clearly excepting monks and priests. He had been a Roman prefect, and thus responsible in part for the military defense of northern Italy. The biblical Old Testament provided Ambrose with sufficient examples of God’s people fighting in an organized –- and often aggressive -- manner for what was theirs by right, including peace and the vindication of justice.

After becoming Bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa, Augustine wrestled with the issue of adequately applying both testaments of the Bible to the situation of a crumbling state and civilization, both of which were in some manner “Christian.” Like Ambrose, he was no mere theorist, but a bishop, preacher and leader in a most unstable world.

To say that Augustine’s view of natural man was pessimistic would be to engage in gross understatement. The world is inhabited by both Christian and non-Christian, those saved and those damned. The world is the realm of the damned (The “City of Man”), while those who are saved (the “City of God”) merely pass through this world, trying to make it a little better than they found it. Governments are instituted by God to manage the ill effects of sinful humans, but their laws dictate the behavior of all: the Christian is not immune from a citizen’s obligations, as long as those obligations are not counter to Christian teaching. The first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine, allowed the Church to inform the operations of the Roman state. Thus, though the Church was not defined by Augustine as a pure body of the elect, he felt it could still guide the state toward some godly ends.

For Augustine, war was a matter of human conflict that stemmed from the fallen state of humanity, and, following Cicero, was a matter for the state and for no lesser political or social entities to begin or conduct. This is his first condition for a “just war.” The second, that it be fought with a clear eye on re-establishing a just peace above all, had its roots in the older traditions of Plato and the Greeks. The corollary, that it be fought in order to vindicate justice, had the same roots. “Those wars may be defined as just which avenge injuries” (Quaest. Hept. IV 44).

Of course, the governments of fallen humanity are incapable of any level of perfection in such matters, and so intentions are likely to be mixed at best, but Augustine was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the Christian-influenced Roman state. His position was bolstered by the fact that Rome’s enemies were religious heretics and thus enemies of the godly, not altogether unlike the enemies of God’s people in the Old Testament. While every war need not be a crusade, it helps if they may be so construed. In sum, to be just in origin and form war must be waged by a duly constituted authority, with the aims of vindicating justice and re-establishing a just peace. These elements are known collectively as the conditions for ius ad bellum.

Conducting War Justly: ius in bello

For Augustine, the Christian command to love unconditionally could be obeyed even in the act of killing: a rather difficult position for many of us today to maintain or even understand. Augustine’s teaching that love may rightly lead one to harm or even kill another’s body for the good of that person’s eternal soul led eventually to the violence of the inquisitions. In a seemingly ironic extension of this idea, Augustine suggests that the only just warrior is one with real love in his heart. He who fights with hate, rancor, greed or other passions dominating his heart fights unjustly, though the cause for which he fights may be just.

Because love and violence are naturally antithetical, if sometimes circumstantially paired, the just warrior must approach his task with a heavy heart and mournful attitude, in full understanding of the gravity of his task. Yet, for how many soldiers is this really the case? And so, an army, like society and like the Church itself, is a mixture of the pure-hearted and those tainted by ill will, amorality and even sadism..

Later thinkers, especially St. Thomas Aquinas and Francisco di Vittoria, built on Augustine’s model in insisting upon the proper conduct of hostilities as part of the determination of the justness of a conflict. It was not enough for the cause to be just, but the entire army needed to conduct themselves in such a way as to limit the damage done while accomplishing the military objective.

First, the force used must be proportional to the task at hand. A minor aggravation or national insult must not result in annihilation. As the National Conference of Catholic Bishops put it in 1983, “Response to aggression must not exceed the nature of the [original] aggression.” To quote the bishops again, “Just response to aggression must be discriminate; it must be directed against unjust aggressors, not against innocent people caught up in a war not of their making.”

In the middle ages, following Augustine and in recognition of the havoc that war wreaks on the innocent, the Church attempted to limit the effects of war on the innocent -– today sometimes referred to as “collateral damage.” It tried very hard to implement both the Peace of God, which forbade the molestation of clergy, women, children and the otherwise helpless, and the Truce of God, which forbade fighting on certain days of the week and certain religious holidays. In sum, for a war to be conducted justly those who are not responsible for the actions of the enemy must be reasonably protected from harm, and those against whom one is fighting should be afforded humane treatment once they no longer pose a threat.

In their 1983 paper The Challenge of Peace, the Roman Catholic bishops summarized and amplified this long history in a few key points:

-- “The classic case which illustrated [Augustine’s] view was the use of lethal force to prevent aggression against innocent victims... Faced with the fact of attack on the innocent, the presumption that we do no harm, even to our enemy, yielded to the command of love understood as the need to restrain an enemy who would injure the innocent.”

-- Quoting documents from Vatican Council II: “As long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.”

-- “It is presumed that all sane people prefer peace, never want to initiate war, and accept even the most justifiable defensive war only as a sad necessity.”

-- In defining ius ad bellum the bishops presented the following conditions:

1) The cause must be just: “to confront a real and certain danger.”

2) The authority “with responsibility for public order” must declare war, and only for protection of the common good of those under the authority.

3) Given the “presumption against war,” the condition of “comparative justice” demands consideration of “whether “the rights and values involved justify killing.” They go on: “[b]latant aggression from without and subversion from within are often enough readily identifiable [sic] by all reasonably fair-minded people.”

4) Right intention requires the cause to be just and the conduct to be such that it leads as readily as possible to cessation of hostilities and a just peace.

5) All avenues to a peaceful settlement must have been exhausted before resort to war is justifiably made.
 

As of this writing the nature of the American and international response to the unprovoked slaughter of innocent American civilians and destruction of American property has yet to be made known. If you should find this tradition of “just war theory” to be a valid Christian response to the reality of organized human conflict, then you might choose to apply its criteria in judging the appropriateness, or lack of it, of the decisions made by our government. Even if you may find these criteria lacking, I do believe that they establish a rational and Christian foundation for limiting military action, or for criticizing inappropriate military action by the leaders of this “land of the free and home of the brave.”

I welcome responses to this presentation.

Dr. Joe Byrne is associate professor of Honors at Belmont University. He currently teaches courses including histories of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Englightenment, and London.