Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!stanford.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Just War Theory Message-ID: Date: 26 May 91 05:56:58 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Harvey Mudd College Lines: 52 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , krueger@writeon.physics.arizona.edu (Theodore Krueger) writes: > In article > jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) writes: >>And why not. The 'just' war seems to have been an invention of >>Augustine to allow the 'state' to become compatible with >>Christianity. > I disagree. If Judaism has a historical influence on Christianity > (and I think that it does, since our God is the same guy as theirs) > God (in the OT) has decreed many wars. I think that that would make > them 'just'. It seems obvious to me that our disagreement is simply > that we have different requirements for what would constitute a 'just' > war. Actually, the historical evidence indicates that the early Christians were highly pacificistic and, being the small persecuted "cult" that they were in the first few centuries, were able to get away with non-participation in wars. As Christianity grew and became the official religion of the Roman Empire, this didn't work out as well and just war theory (which has a status as nothing more than theory in the RC church) grew out of that problem. As an interesting aside, there are many who argue that even if we accept Augustine's just war theory, we will find that there is no such thing as a just war in history. There have been some that have started out as just wars (e.g., World War II), but the final tolls on non-participants (consider the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and fire bombing of both Japan and Germany which not only killed many civilians but killed them in particularly unpleasant ways). I personally am not comfortable with the idea of claiming the battles of the Old Testament (particularly the early books) as justification for a modern war. Who is going to claim that George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev or any other modern leader has a direct line to God like Joshua did? If we're going to look for a model for a war in the Old Testament, why not think about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah which was not to take place if just one innocent person was to be found. In my opinion the death of one innocent person is too high a price to pay for any cause, especially if we are going to claim the titles of Christian and children of Abraham. -dh -- Don Hosek dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu Quixote Digital Typography 714-625-0147