Up until the 4th Century, Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire. Many of them were killed for their beliefs, and one of the things that angered the Roman government the most was that the Christians were pacifists: they refused to carry weapons or serve in the army.

Then, the Emperor Constantine made the empire a Christian nation. Many thought this was a good thing, but it caused a moral problem. A few years later, the barbarian hordes were poised to sack Rome. The Christians were no longer just a religion -- they ran the government and had to decide what to do.

If they decided to remain faithful to their pacifist tradition and refused to fight the barbarians, they would be killed, their wives raped, their children taken into slavery, their possessions stolen and their homes and businesses burned. But, if they fought, they would betray their God. It was a horrible decision that they had to make.

They asked St. Augustine for advice. He turned to the philosopher Cicero for inspiration to find a way out of this terrible dilemma. His answer to this question is now called “Just War” and he wrote it down in an essay called City of God. It laid the basic outline for most the moral inquiry into just war in the Christian tradition.His proposal was refined by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, and is still evolving today.

The Just War tradition has evolved into two concepts: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In brief, jus ad bellum means that a war is fought for a just cause, while jus in bello means that the war is fought in a just way.

In all of the just war tradition, there is an implicit injunction against war, an attitude that although war may be at times a necessary evil, it is evil even when necessary.

There is no official list of the criteria for a just war, but here are some that have evolved over the ages:

Jus ad bellum has several components:

1. A war must be a means of last resort. All diplomatic, economic, and political means must be either exhausted or obviously ineffective.
2. A war be declared by legitimate authority. A nation acting alone with no support from other nations is less likely to be considered just when waging war then a large coalition of countries would be; a president acting without the concurrence of congress would be "less just."
3. A war must have a reasonable chance of success
4. A military action must be morally justifiable. This is generally broken down into four scenarios:
   
   (a) It is a defense against aggression; the opponent is the attacker;
   (b) It is the correction of injustice - when conditions in another country become so desperate that not even the most basic of human rights are being upheld,
   (c) it be waged with an eye toward establishing a more perfect political order - revenge or punishment are not enough - and
   (d) it be waged with the end of peace in mind.

Jus in bello requires:

1. The proportionality of the use of force in a war. You don't use a shotgun to kill a cockroach.
2. The combatants discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Innocent, nonmilitary people should never be made the target of attacks.
3. A country is not responsible for unexpected side effects of its military activity as long as the following three conditions are met:
   (a) The action must carry the intention to produce good consequences
   (b) The bad effects were not intended and
   (c) The good of the war must outweigh the damage done by it.

LINKS

• Just War Theory and the Recent U.S. Airstrikes against Iraq,
  by Mark Edward DeForrest, on the Gonzaga University website.

• Meanings - Just War
  This is a section of an online book by Phil Engles. Other sections of interest are On Pacifism and Anarchism and On Peace. Written from a Christian/Roman Catholic perspective, based on the writings of René Girard.

• No Just War in the Fathers
  An article from the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

• War, Violence And The Christian Conscience
  An Article by Yuri Koszarycz, a Senior Lecturer in Religion Studies, Australian Catholic Brisbane.

• Just War Theory and the Faith of Unitarian Universalism

• Just War After the Cold War: An Argument Re-engaged
  Extracts of papers from a January, 1996 conference held by the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

• Somalia
  A thoughtful essay on the application of the jus ad bellum doctrine to the war in Somalia.

• Peace Pledge Union (PPU)
  See especially their sections on just war and What would you do if?.

• Just-War Theory & its Non-pacifist Rivals
  a paper by Kenneth W. Kemp, Department of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

• American University This appears to be a file from their list server.

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  Just war theory section

• Truth and Reconciliation Committee
  Just War Debate transcript from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

• The Ethics of Peace Operations
  A series of 25 slides fro the U.S. Peacekeeping institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.

• Law, Morality, and War
  Billed as "A Succinct, Incomplete, Presumptuous, and Wholly Inadequate Overview of the Elements of Just War, by Nile Stanton", from the University of Maryland University College, overseas division. See also U.S. Army's Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare,, reprinted on this site.

• Confronting the Powers that Be
  A Study Guide by Vern Rossman to accompany Walter Wink's The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millenium. Read it all, but especially the "Beyond Pacifism and Just War" and "But What If?" sections.

• A Just War? Christians Ponder Question
  An article from the Wichita Eagle religion section.

  Just War
  A position paper from the Dutch Reformed Church.

Books