On PBS News Hour, David Brooks quoted St. Augustine to criticize President Trump’s response toward the Saudis for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Was Brooks right about Augustine?

St. Thomas Aquinas’ ideas about just war still affect how Americans feel about wars, including World War II and the Persian Gulf War.

When is lying permissible in war? Mark Coppenger indicates several instances in the Christian just war tradition but insists there is no room for perfidy or treachery.

Christians should remember this: any political theology that treats its own people as a divinely chosen political community treads on heretical soil.

Following the Christian just war tradition, could the assassination of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad be justified, despite its illegal nature?

Force is always only the form love takes against terrible evil in the last resort when nothing else will protect the innocent, restore justice, and bring about the conditions for peace. The old Chestertonian nugget remains: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

Augustine’s influence runs deep and broad through Western Christian doctrine and ethics. This paper focuses on two particular examples of this influence: his thinking on political order and on just war.

We can make a clear and convincing case that the Christian tradition may support the idea that lies told for the public good are justifiable. When spies tell such lies in the line of duty, their deceptions fall into that category and, so, are justifiable. Can the same be said for sex in the line of duty?

St. Thomas Aquinas knew more than his modern emendators do about grounding his just war deliberations—and much else—in the cardinal moral virtue of prudence.