Just War, Pacifism, and Just Peacemaking for the 21 st Century

Transcription

1 Just War, Pacifism, and Just Peacemaking for the 21 st Century

2 Overview of the Week: Today: Just War Thinking Tomorrow: Pacifism and Just Peacemaking Thursday: Contemporary Challenges to the Three Traditions: Political Technological Environmental

3 Getting Oriented, Part I: Scripture

4 Over the next 45 minutes (or so): Have a sense of both the range of biblical perspectives on war and peace and the comparative weight of those perspectives. Have the opportunity to think about your own assumptions about war, peace, and scripture. See the importance of knowing the way the church s traditions of scriptural interpretation have shaped its thoughts about war and peace. Have the chance to interact with each other in reflecting on the matters above.

5 I. The Old Testament

6 War and the Old Testament Question: What images of God do you associate with the Old Testament? Wrathful or loving? Plays favorites or treats people equally? Distant or close at hand?

7 War and the Old Testament Question: What images of war and peace do you associate with the Old Testament? The world is mostly violent wars going on all the time. The world is mostly peaceful most time is taken up in family matters and whatnot. The world is a particular place where cosmic battles between chaos and order occur.

8 An Initial Point: The images we carry with us into conversations about war and peace (not to mention about the Bible and God) can have a powerful effect on the way we think and converse.

9 The Variety of Old Testament Images of War and Peace Some images are profoundly violent: When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy... Break down their altars, smaxh their pillars, hew down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire. Deuteronomy 7:1-5

10 The Variety of Old Testament Images of War and Peace Some images are profoundly peaceful: The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11:6-9

11 The Variety of Old Testament Images of War and Peace And many images are in between: When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses an chariots, an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God is with you... When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace... If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees. Deuteronomy 20, selected verses.

12 The Variety of Old Testament Images of War and Peace Including images of God and war: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea... Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. from Psalm 46

13 The Variety of Old Testament Images of War and Peace In the days to come, out of Zion shall go forth instruction. God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Isaiah 2:1, 3-4 The Lord has spoken. Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war, stir up the warriors. Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say, I am a warrior. Joel 3:8-10

14 Some more conclusions: There are many ways in which the Old Testament talks about war and peace. The way we understand an Old Testament conception of war turns to a considerable extent on the preconceptions we bring into our reading of the text. As Christians, we help make sense of the Old Testament by reading it through the lens of the New Testament.

15 II. The New Testament

16 A Bit of Background Palestine had been under foreign occupation since around 300 B.C.E: First by Alexander Then by his generals Then by Rome There had been some resistance to this (e.g., the Maccabean revolt) There was, during Jesus life, an uneasy truce in effect: Zealots on one side Essenes on the other

17 Turning to Texts Break into groups of 3 or 4. Make sure you have a Bible or two handy. And explore one of the following texts with an eye to two questions:

18 1. Can you summarize this text? 2. How does this text speak to/about matters of war and peace? Matthew 5 John 18:28-38 Romans 12 Luke 9: Matthew 26:47-56 Luke 3:7-14 Matthew 24:3-8 Acts 10:1-8 Luke 22:35-38 Luke 12:49-53 Romans 13 Hebrews 11:32-34

19 Insights?

20 Two initial conclusions about war and peace in the Bible: It won t be enough for us simply to go to the text to answer our questions. We carry too many assumptions into that process and the text is too ambiguous to allow it. Instead, we must be self-conscious about how we interpret the texts of the New Testament. So we have to do theology, history, psychology, anthropology and cultural studies as well as biblical studies. This is what pacifists, just warriors, and just peacemakers are doing.

21 Getting Oriented, Part II: Just War Thinking

22 Over the next 45 minutes (or so): Get a sense of the history of just war thinking Explore just war criteria: what are they, where have they come from, why do we have them, and how useful are they? Name some of the strengths and weaknesses of just war thinking Explore some thorny traditional and contemporary just war questions

23 A bit of history: Aristotle St. Augustine F. de Vitoria Paul Ramsey Contemporary Debates Cicero Thomas Aquinas Hugo Grotius Michael Walzer

24 Just War Criteria: Jus ad bellum Criteria: Legitimate Authority Just Cause Right Intention Announcement of Intention Last Resort Reasonable Hope of Success Proportionality Jus in bello Criteria: Right Intention Proportionality Discrimination

25 Just War: Benefits Recognizes human failings but also human possibilities Recognizes that some goods do accrue through warfare Promotes the maintenance of society Limits, rather than promotes, warfare and the actions taken in it

26 Just War: Criticisms Harder to justify, given the presumption against taking human life Can be used to rationalize rather than justify Disagreement on how the criteria function Doesn t necessarily take modern war and weaponry into account

27 An important note: The just war criteria, which tend to be the focus of attention in reasoning about justification for war, were codified by the early 1500 s. Taken as a whole, they reveal the context in which they were codified.

28 Just War Jus ad bellum Criteria Legitimate Authority Just Cause Right Intention Announcement of Intention Last Resort Reasonable Hope of Success Proportionality Jus en bello Criteria Right Intention Proportionality Discrimination

29 SOME THORNIER MATTERS FOR THE JUST WAR TRADITION

30 Traditional thorny questions about Christian just war thinking: 1. Is it a tradition or a theory? A theory is an ordered set of arguments; a tradition is an argument extended through time about how to think about war and peace. 2. Is it one thing or many? (Roman Catholic vs. Protestant; Realist vs. Principled, etc.) 3. What grounds it? Maybe it isn t so much a tradition as a series of conclusions that follow from particular types of theological claims about what it means to be human, the relation between divine authority and that of the state, the relation of justice to human responsibility, etc.

31 A proposal: attend to the theological doctrines and virtues that sit behind each of the Just War traditions Doctrines: Anthropological Communal Political Eschatological Virtues: Vulnerability Cooperation Interdependence Continuity

32 Newer thorny questions (by way of some troubling distinctions raised since 2001): War on Terror vs. War in Afghanistan or Iraq Preventive vs. Pre-emptive vs. Responsive War The decisions to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq vs. the decisions to stay in those countries Intention vs. Strategy The presence of WMD s vs. the use of WMD s The use of WMD s vs. the use of conventional weapons American values vs. American interests

33 III. After Afghanistan and Iraq Questions about the role of nation/states Questions about the role of religion Questions about economics and globalization Questions about humanitarian intervention Questions about the use of private security firms Questions about how much to emphasize jus post bellum Questions about a foreign policy guided by national interests vs. one guided by national values Questions about the U.S.A. in a unipolar(?) world Questions about what to do with wars you don t support Note: All these questions can have religious inflections.

34 These are (some) of my questions. What are yours? Gather in groups of 4-6 people (preferably people you don t know well and who don t necessarily serve in the same branch or same role you do) and spend some time in conversation.

35 Some possible starter questions: What is the most common moral issue you deal with in your work? What is the hardest moral issue you deal with in your work? From whom do these issues usually come? Where do you go for guidance/wisdom? What moral issues used to but no longer bother you?

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37 Questions? Comments?

38 Some additional readings: Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Women and War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Johnson, James Turner. Can Modern War Be Just? New Haven: Yale UP, Kelsay, John. Islam and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, Miller, Richard B. (ed.). War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, Ramsey, Paul. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. San Francisco: Basic Books, Yoder, John Howard. When War is Unjust: Being Honest In Just-War Thinking. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996.