Just War Tradition

Much has been written on the types of “woundedness” warriors suffer in combat, including physical, mental, emotional, and even moral injury. However, the U.S. has failed to explore a warrior’s spiritual injury in combat and its debilitating, life-long effects (including for a warrior’s family).

In the Christian view, the normative grounding from which the tradition of just war casuistry springs is the dominical command to love.

This essay provides a brief overview of the just war tradition and then applies the framework to the problem of contemporary terrorism.

The Responsibility to Protect owes its greatest debt to a religiously rooted approach to achieving peace with justice, the Christian just war tradition.

A review of Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge

On September 27, Providence hosted an event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC where some of the signatories of “A Christian Declaration on American Foreign Policy” presented their vision for what a Christian foreign policy and strategy would look like for the US.

The notion of retribution or punishment has long been the scourge of social science. Christian thinkers should develop the distinction between retribution and revenge or retaliation.

As a broad set of ethical principles, the just war outlook is vital to civilized society. However, errors come—and they can be dangerous ones—when proponents of just war take their categories too narrowly and apply their axioms without historical context.

The United States must pursue policies that ensure the U.S. nuclear deterrent is safe, reliable, and credible. Reserving the right to resume nuclear testing is one such means to maintain such a credible deterrent.