JUST WAR?

Part II of Holy War. Just War. Imperial War.

A soldier once came into my office struggling with crisis of faith. He had served in special forces and had spent years deployed in places most Americans could not easily locate on a map. Through PTSD the war followed him home. Sleep came in fragments. Relationships that had once seemed stable were beginning to fray. He described a kind of internal paralysis that had settled over his spiritual life, as if the part of him that once prayed or hoped had quietly shut down. Much of what haunted him were the moments that had required him to take human life, sometimes at very close range. These were not distant decisions made from a cockpit or a command center. They were encounters measured in feet rather than miles, the kind that leave a face and a voice attached to the memory.

As we spoke, I eventually asked whether he had ever considered forgiveness. He looked genuinely puzzled.
“They were orders,” he said. “These were bad people. And it was either him or me.”

Everything he said was reasonable. Within the framework of military necessity his actions might well have been justified. But justification is not the same thing as goodness. So I asked him a different question.

“Did it feel… right,” I said quietly, “to take a life?”

He looked at me with some frustration.
“No".” He shook his head almost immediately. “At the time it was….” he paused, “celebrated. But No. It was pretty miserable, really.”
“So, safe to say it didn’t feel holy.”
“Yeah, that’s safe to say.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“I understand it was part of your mission but, however necessary it may have been in that moment, taking a life is never how the world is supposed to be. The man on the other side of that moment was not just an enemy. He was someone’s son. Maybe someone’s husband. Maybe someone’s father. Maybe like you he too was following orders.”

He nodded slowly.

“There are moments in this broken world where terrible things may become necessary in order to protect others. But necessary isn’t the same as good or right. It isn’t the same as holy. And the weight you’re carrying now—that stress, and anxiety —may actually be the healthiest part of your soul speaking.”

I paused, feeling I was talking too much. .

In the silence his tears began. In the moments that followed he was able to move safely into sorrow, then grief, and something I would describe as lament. We ended up taking some time to find forgiveness that for him had been elusive— a small act of grace in a difficult world.

The Tradition That Tried to Restrain War

What the soldier sensed instinctively in that moment has long stood at the center of Christian reflection on war. A just war, in the classical sense of the phrase, is neither good nor holy. It is a war that may be morally justified in a world where injustice sometimes leaves no completely innocent choices and refusing to act could allow an even greater injustice to prevail. Because of that tragic reality, the tradition does not attempt to sanctify war. Instead it surrounds the decision to wage it with moral questions meant to restrain violence and force societies to confront the gravity of what they are about to do.

The earliest and most influential attempt to articulate those questions came from the North African theologian Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century. Augustine lived during the slow collapse of the Roman world, when the empire that had structured political life across the Mediterranean was beginning to fracture under the pressure of invasion, instability, and internal decay. Christians who had once imagined themselves as a persecuted minority suddenly found themselves entangled with political power and the responsibilities of governance. That new reality forced an uncomfortable question: if political authorities are responsible for protecting the innocent and restraining injustice, could Christians ever participate in the use of force without betraying the teachings of Jesus?

The Christian tradition has long answered that question with caution. Even when violence may be justified, it remains tragic. The proper response is not pride or celebration but something closer to lament. We bring the whole reality before God—the fear, the anger, the lives lost, and the part of us that wishes the world were different—and ask for mercy, not because God is waiting to condemn us but because forgiveness is how wounded souls begin to heal.

That instinct reveals something profound about the human conscience. However necessary violence may sometimes become, the act still collides with something deep within us. Human beings are not made to kill one another, and even when circumstances force people into situations where violence can be morally defended, the act leaves a wound—spiritual and ethical damage that occurs when individuals participate in acts that violate their deepest moral instincts.

Experiences like those of the soldier sitting in my office help explain why the Christian tradition has always approached war with such caution. They also reveal why the phrase “just war” is so often misunderstood. To modern ears the word just can sound like an endorsement, as though Christianity were declaring some wars morally clean or even righteous. Historically, however, the word carries a far more restrained meaning. The English term derives from the Latin ius and justus, words associated with lawfulness and justification—what can be morally defended under tragic circumstances when all other possibilities have failed.

Augustine’s answer was cautious and morally restrained. War, he insisted, was never something to celebrate. It was not a positive good or an expression of divine will unfolding through human violence. Instead it was a tragic consequence of human sin and disorder, a sign that the peace God intended for the world had already been broken. Yet Augustine also recognized that refusing to confront injustice could allow even greater harm to flourish. In a world where violence and oppression were real forces shaping human societies, rulers might sometimes face situations in which force became necessary to restrain wrongdoing and defend the vulnerable. Even then, however, war could only be understood as a reluctant response to injustice rather than as a righteous act in its own right. As Augustine famously observed, a just war is justified only by the injustice of an aggressor.

Several centuries later the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas gathered Augustine’s insights and organized them into a clearer moral framework. In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas placed this discussion within his broader treatment of charity, the Christian virtue of LOVE. The moral evaluation of war therefore sits within the command to love one’s neighbor and even one’s enemy. The paradox is unavoidable: Christians may sometimes participate in the use of force while still remaining bound by the moral demand to love those they fight against. Nevertheless it is love that guides the theory of just war.

Just War Criteria

Over time these reflections developed into what is now known as the just war tradition, a moral framework intended to discipline the decision to wage war and restrain violence once conflict begins. Though the language sometimes sounds technical, the questions it raises are straightforward and morally searching. Before a nation enters a war, the tradition asks whether certain conditions are present that could make the use of force morally defensible.

The first set of principles is traditionally known by the Latin phrase jus ad bellum, meaning justice before war. These criteria examine the decision to initiate conflict itself. A war must arise from a just cause, such as the defense of innocent life or a response to aggression. It must be authorized by legitimate authority, meaning those responsible for the political community and accountable for the common good. The conflict must be pursued with right intention, aimed at restoring peace rather than revenge, domination, or glory. Even when these conditions appear to be present, force must remain a last resort, undertaken only after genuine attempts at diplomacy and peaceful resolution have failed. The anticipated violence must also be proportional, meaning the harm inflicted by war cannot exceed the injustice it seeks to remedy, and there must exist a reasonable probability of success, since wars that cannot achieve their moral aims only multiply suffering.

A second set of principles governs the conduct of war once conflict has begun. Known as jus in bello, justice in war, these criteria attempt to limit the brutality of conflict itself. Combatants must observe discrimination, distinguishing between legitimate military targets and civilians who are not participating in the fighting. The use of force must remain proportional, avoiding destruction that is excessive relative to the military objective being pursued. The principle of military necessity further requires that acts of violence be directed toward genuine strategic purposes rather than inflicted simply because the capacity to do so exists.

Taken together, these criteria represent a long attempt within Christian moral thought to impose ethical discipline on one of the most destructive realities of human history. The tradition does not assume that war is glorious or inevitable. Instead it insists that whenever a society contemplates war it must confront a series of moral questions that stand above the immediate interests of power, strategy, or national ambition.

What “Just” Actually Means

At this point it is worth pausing over the word that gives the tradition its name, because much confusion about just war arises from the way the word just is heard in modern English. To many ears the phrase sounds as if Christianity were claiming that some wars are morally pure, even righteous. Historically, however, the word carries a far more restrained meaning. The English term traces back to the Latin ius and justus, words associated with lawfulness, legitimacy, and justification—what can be defended within a framework of moral reasoning when competing goods and harms must be weighed. In that older sense, something that is “just” is not morally perfect. It is something that can be justified.

Understanding that distinction clarifies the intention of the tradition itself. The just war framework was never meant to declare certain wars good in themselves. Instead it asks whether the tragic decision to use force might sometimes be morally defensible in a world where injustice has already shattered the possibility of peace. The language of justice does not cleanse war of its brutality. It acknowledges that violence may sometimes be justified while still recognizing the moral cost involved in unleashing it.

This distinction returns us to the soldier who sat across from me describing the moments that still haunted him years after the war ended. Within the logic of military command, the actions he described may have been justified. They were ordered, necessary within the mission, and carried out in circumstances where hesitation could have meant death for him or the men beside him. Yet when I asked whether taking a life had felt good, his answer came immediately. No. That instinctive response reveals something important about the human conscience. Human beings are not made to kill one another, and even when circumstances force people into situations where violence becomes morally defensible, the act still wounds something deep within us. In that light the phrase just war begins to sound very different from the way it is often heard in political rhetoric. A just war is not a good war. It is never a holy war.

It is a war that may be morally justified under tragic circumstances in which failing to act could allow an even greater injustice to prevail. Once the concept is understood in those terms, the moral terrain of war begins to look far less like the clean categories of right and wrong that dominate public debate. More often societies confront a darker moral calculus in which the alternatives are not right and wrong, but wrong and less wrong.

Moral Injury and the Cost of War

That moment in my office reflects a reality many soldiers understand long before theologians or ethicists try to describe it. War may sometimes be justified, but it is never clean. Even when violence is carried out under legitimate orders and within the framework of military necessity, it leaves marks on the human soul that do not disappear when the war ends. The soldier sitting across from me was not wrestling with whether his actions had followed the rules of engagement. He was wrestling with something deeper: the moral weight of having taken another human life.

In recent years chaplains and scholars have begun using the phrase moral injury to describe this experience. Unlike PTSD, which often arises from fear and trauma, moral injury refers to the spiritual and ethical wounds that can occur when individuals participate in acts that violate their deepest moral convictions. Soldiers often carry burdens that go far beyond the visible scars of war. Even when the killing they carried out may be justified within the framework of just war reasoning, the experience can fracture a person’s sense of moral coherence and their understanding of themselves before God.

The soldier in my office had not lost his conscience. Quite the opposite. His anguish suggested that it was still working exactly as it should. Human beings are not made for violence, and when violence becomes unavoidable the soul often recognizes the tragedy before the mind has fully processed it.

This insight lies close to the heart of the Christian just war tradition itself. Augustine of Hippo insisted that even when war may be justified, the injustice that makes it necessary should be a cause of grief for any good person. War may sometimes be defended as a tragic necessity, but it should never become something the human heart learns to celebrate.

That instinct of grief runs throughout the biblical tradition. The Psalms give voice to lament again and again, crying out from the depths of suffering and injustice. The prophet Jeremiah wept over the destruction that violence would bring upon his people, and in the Gospels Jesus Christ stands outside Jerusalem mourning the path of conflict and destruction the city is about to follow.

If a war must be fought—and given the criteria we have just examined, it is far from clear that this conflict meets the conditions of a just war—it should be fought with tears.

That most human instinct of grief has largely disappeared from modern political language. When news emerges of a bombing that destroys a girls’ school—killing 170 girls and leaving many more grievously wounded—the public response often arrives in the form of sterile procedural statements: “the military does not target civilians;”; “an investigation is underway;” “the situation remains under review.” These responses may be necessary within the machinery of policy and command, but they also reveal how easily the moral gravity of violence and its all too human dimension disappears behind the language of strategy and procedure.

Graves being dug for victims of a strike on an elementary school in Southern Iran.

.The just war tradition was meant to resist precisely that drift. It insists that even when violence may be justified, the destruction it brings should never become morally invisible. War may sometimes be necessary in a broken world, but necessity does not erase tragedy. If anything, the greater the necessity, the deeper the grief ought to be.

When War Becomes Imperial

Seen in this light, the Christian just war tradition offers a remarkably sober way of thinking about violence. The language of holy war sanctifies conflict, casting battles as moments in a divine drama where violence becomes obedience to God. The language of just war, by contrast, attempts to restrain violence by surrounding the decision to fight with moral questions meant to discipline political power. It does not bless war; it interrogates it.

Yet history suggests that neither framework fully explains how wars are actually fought in the modern world. Nations rarely describe their conflicts in terms of conquest, domination, or strategic expansion. Instead they speak the language of security, stability, deterrence, and the defense of order. These explanations may contain elements of truth, but they also often conceal another reality operating beneath the surface.

Many of the defining conflicts of the modern era bear the unmistakable marks of empire. They are fought over territory, influence, trade routes, natural resources, and the strategic advantages that powerful nations believe they must secure in order to preserve their position in the world. The motivations may be wrapped in the language of defense or justice, but the underlying logic frequently reflects the familiar dynamics of imperial power.

It is that pattern—the logic of empire—that the final essay in this series will examine.