War and Peace

Overview

Recall questions on the pacifist and just war traditions, jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum, Augustine and Aquinas, a contemporary conflict tested against the criteria, nuclear weapons, the forms of pacifism and peace movements.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Christianity contains both pacifist and just war traditions. How?

   Model answer

   The gospels present Jesus renouncing retaliation, blessing peacemakers and refusing armed defence at his arrest, which the earliest Christians widely read as forbidding soldiering. Once Christianity became the religion of the empire in the fourth century, theologians faced the question of what a Christian ruler owes his subjects, and Augustine argued that love of neighbour can require defending the innocent by force. Both readings persist, so Quakers and Catholic just war theorists appeal to the same scriptures.

2. 2

   What are the conditions for going to war justly, the jus ad bellum?

   Model answer

   Just cause, normally defence against aggression or the protection of the innocent; declaration by a legitimate authority; right intention, aiming at peace rather than plunder or revenge; war as a last resort after other means fail; a reasonable prospect of success; and proportionality, so that the expected good outweighs the harm.

3. 3

   What rules govern conduct in war under jus in bello?

   Model answer

   Discrimination, meaning combatants may be targeted and non-combatants may not; and proportionality of means, so no more force than the military objective requires. Prohibitions on rape, torture, attacking the wounded and using certain weapons follow, and are codified in the Geneva Conventions.

4. 4

   What does justice after war, the jus post bellum, require?

   Model answer

   This third stage, developed by writers such as Brian Orend, requires a settlement that is publicly declared and proportionate rather than vindictive, punishment discriminating between leaders, soldiers and civilians, compensation that does not cripple the defeated population, and a duty to help rebuild institutions. The Versailles settlement of 1919 and the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are the standard test cases.

5. 5

   How did Augustine shape just war theory?

   Model answer

   Augustine treated war as a consequence of sin and always a tragedy, never a good in itself, with peace as the only legitimate aim. He held that a private individual may not kill even in self-defence, but that public authority may wage war to restrain evil, and that the soldier must fight with an inward disposition of love rather than hatred or cruelty. His stress on right intention, on legitimate authority and on the tranquillity of order became the theory's foundation.

6. 6

   What did Aquinas add to just war theory?

   Model answer

   Aquinas gave the theory its formal shape by setting out three requirements: the authority of the sovereign, a just cause in the sense that those attacked deserve it for some fault, and a right intention aiming at good and avoiding evil. He also developed double effect in the case of killing in self-defence, which supplies the later principle of non-combatant immunity.

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