Augustine provides framework for discussion of just war
By Owen Williams · Contributing Writer
Sometimes, violence is the answer. “Save alive nothing that breathes,” says God in Deuteronomy concerning the Canaanites. God was supportive of war in the Old Testament — the walls of Jericho crumbled under God’s command, and Gideon received his battle plan from the same.
We do not worship a different God now; our God is the God of the Old Testament. Our God is a God of war. Declaring war may certainly be moral, and it would not be unreasonable to claim God takes sides or that one side in a war holds the moral high ground, provided you can support your high ground with reasoning.
What reasons then justify war, and justify claiming God’s approval? If you are Joshua, your logic is simple. The commander of the army of the Lord, bared sword brandished, has told you to go to war. Gideon, miraculously saturated fleece in hand, could likewise be confident of divine approval.
God not only approved of these biblical generals, He also battled on their behalf. God was not a sideline supporter of Joshua when He collapsed the walls of Jericho or a mere cheerleader for Gideon when He “set every man’s sword against his comrade” and threw the Midianites into disarray.
God fought for the Israelites and fought against their enemies. What then, of murkier waters, where we do not have an angel to tell us the way? Can we, as humans with fallen minds, make moral judgments of justice from limited information? Or is our omnipotent God the only one who may declare a war just or unjust, moral or immoral? God is the source and creator of morality, so in one sense, it is God alone and only who may determine it. Humans may not usurp the office of determining their own morality.
However, only ignorance prevents us from discovering what God has already determined. We do not need to create an apple ourselves to discover that it is red, we have only to observe what God has already created. Furthermore, we do not need advanced or sophisticated measurements to discover that an apple is red; a passing glance will suffice.
We do not need exhaustive external evidence to discover the moral law — after all, it is already written on our hearts. God’s truth is not hidden to those who have their eyes opened to see. We cannot fully grasp the events of a war, but limited knowledge should not necessarily preclude moral judgement.
Even if our judgements can only ever aspire to be educated guesses at God’s truth, that does not mean we can have no confidence in them. A guess is just another name for a hypothesis, and well-reasoned hypotheses have set human feet on the moon.
It is possible to ascertain truth without the aid of angels because God has created us with capacity and ability to know Him and to know truth. Therefore, provided that we can have valid and definite opinions about the justice of a war (or lack thereof), what criteria should we use to arrive at a conclusion most likely to be true?
Augustine’s criteria on the subject have been sufficient foundation for the church for thrice 500 years. I see little need for amendment, only reintroduction. Augustine said just war is first a tragic necessity. War itself, to be clear, is not a good thing. It is, however, a permissible thing.
Just war must be both prosecuted for a just cause and waged with right intentions. Against the Holocaust might be a just cause, but if waging war motivated by “revenge… savageness of rebellion, the lust of power,” then you are “rightly condemned.”
Just war must also have the aim of peace; war being permissible only to rectify a just cause, and once the cause is rectified, the war is unjustified. Finally, just war can only be declared by a legitimate authority. Augustine levies this final restriction to ensure order within society.
It would be disorderly for society if, for example, Instagram could declare war. More seriously, our own Constitution prevents the president or individual states from declaring war; Congress has that responsibility.
Augustine provides a framework for discussion of just war, but that discussion rests on the premises that we can know with sufficient certainty the mind of God, and we can know from Scripture that, at least sometimes, war is justified.
