Abstract
Frederick Russell once wrote that ‘warfare has been one of man’s most distinctive activities’. One might expect, therefore, that the Christian Church would have given its members unequivocal and consistent guidance in the matter. Yet this is not what we find.
Jesus seems to have repudiated violence. He called peacemakers blessed. He taught his followers to turn the other cheek. He told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world, otherwise his servants would fight. It is hardly surprising to find, therefore, that the Early Fathers followed Tertullian when he wrote that in disarming Peter in Gethsemane, the Lord ‘unbelted every soldier’. Down the centuries that has continued to be the inspiration for some Christians. Today, it remains the position of some denominations, such as the Quakers and Mennonites, and some individual theologians, such as Stanley Hauerwas.
But as Christianity began to make its way among those who held positions of authority in the Roman empire, there was a growing realization that while war might be seen as a great evil, the pursuit of justice would be seriously set back if force had to be repudiated altogether. Drawing on Cicero as well as the New Testament, Augustine, and then Aquinas, set down ethical principles for bellum iustum – when it is justifiable to take up arms and what criteria should be followed in its conduct. In recent years, certainly since the Vietnam War, both secular and religious apologists for, and critics of, military interventions have taken the principles of just war as their starting point.
There are, then, deeply opposed stances and a continuing debate. Therese Feiler seeks to show how these different ‘logics of war’ are the result of different theological assumptions, implicit as well as explicit, in the writings of both secular ethicists and theologians. (She follows Karl Barth, who said: ‘There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also a theology.’) Specifically, the logic is about how ethicists depend on an understanding of the nature of God and who or what mediates between God and humanity in a violent world.
The focus of the book is on the idea of ‘mediation’, by which Feiler means the way in which ethicists and theologians, given their theological assumptions, formulate their response to the seeming abyss between a loving God and a violent humanity. She takes five writers who are representative of different responses to this tension and explores the extent to which they offer the possibility of mediation and ultimate reconciliation. The argument begins with the two principal approaches to war in contemporary debate – realism and idealism – the just war of the sovereign state and the just war authorized by a supranational authority, such as international law. It concludes with a consideration of attempts to sustain a practical just war ethic through explicitly theological-ethical logics of mediation.
This is not a book for the general reader, but it will be of interest to those who have an acquaintance with at least some of the recent debate about the ethics of war.