Practical Just War: St. Augustine & His Framing of Just War Theory 

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Practical Just War: St. Augustine & His Framing of Just War Theory

 By Benjamin Elkins

 

Today, the application of moral terms to warfare may seem quite ordinary. Discussions about which military general is or is not a criminal, which states are just or unjust, or who should or should not be held accountable for war crimes are commonplace within modern discourse. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, scholars were quick to call it an unjust war of aggression. As a result, thousands of people bought flags and posters that read “Slava Ukraini” — glory to Ukraine. Throughout the 2023 Hamas-Israel war, numerous opinion pieces have been published evaluating the morality behind either side. These opinion pieces, conversations between friends, and deeply-held beliefs covering the morality of current wars are in fact a manifestation of just war theory’s modern permutation. Today, many feel comfortable dividing wartime actions into the categories of just and unjust, a relatively recent development. Through its extensive history, just war doctrine has seen both supporters and detractors, the latter mainly stemming from realist and pacifist camps. However, despite its opponents, just war theory has a rich history and enjoys great success in the modern world. Originating with the bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, it now manifests itself as the basis of international humanitarian law.1 While many scholars still debate, tweak, and explicate the qualifications and elements of just war theory, this paper seeks to focus on its origin. Scholars often claim St. Augustine as the founder of just war theory, but why is this so? What did Augustine say about justice in war, and why — out of all possible people — was it he who said it? This paper aims to analyze Augustine’s contributions to just war theory, framing them as a specific refutation of pacifism. That is, Augustine’s contributions to just war theory established a punitive concept of jus ad bellum, the right to war, in an attempt to refute Christian pacifism. To effectively execute this analysis, it seems necessary to briefly explain both the general realist and pacifist perspectives on war, then shift to a general summary of just war theory, followed by the context of pacifism in the age of Augustine, and finally conclude with an analysis of Augustine’s personal contributions. Through this, we will uncover the foundation of just war doctrine, one that tirelessly attempts to codify moral laws into one of humankind’s most immoral activities.

War has been described as “a world apart,” where “human nature is reduced to its most elemental forms.”2 From Cicero’s “Inter arma silent leges” (in times of war the law is silent) to the proverbial “all is fair in love and war,” there has long been resistance to establishing a moral code within war.3 This resistance represents the realist point-of-view. In realism, theorists assert that it is foolish to draw a moral line in war. War is about systematically killing enemy soldiers; how can one claim there’s any justice in that? As the saying goes, “war is hell.” And, if war is hell, then the most virtuous action would be to escape from hell as quickly as possible, by any means necessary. That is, the most virtuous actions in war are those that bring the war to its quickest end — sometimes regardless of the price. Realist thinkers trace their philosophical lineage back to Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes.4 They maintain that war is vicious, brutal, and inevitable; sometimes, tapping into that brutality is necessary to achieve strategic victory in the pursuit of peace. For example, in Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue, a foundational realist text, the Athenian generals refuse to allow moral terms to frame their discussion with the weak island of Melos:

 

For our part, we will not make a long speech no one would believe, full of fine moral arguments … we both know that decisions about justice are made in human discussions only when both sides are under equal compulsion; but when one side is stronger, it gets as much as it can, and the weak must accept that.5

 

To the Athenians, the best course of action is a swift and decisive victory. Talking at length about justice only prolongs war.

Yet, if war is hell, then perhaps it never should be waged. This sentiment describes pacifism, the belief that the only moral choice in war is to abstain from it. Perhaps ironically, pacifism stems out of the same location as just war theory: Christian tradition. Peter Brock notes, “there is no known instance of conscientious objection to participation in war or of the advocacy of such objection before the Christian era, and until roughly the last one hundred and fifty years pacifism in the West was confined to those who stood inside the Christian tradition.”6 However, despite this, pacifism today — again, much like just war theory — has taken on a more secular and political veil. A modern pacifist objects not merely to killing in general, but specifically to mass killing for political purposes, an essential component of war.7 These pacifists often take the form of conscientious objectors, people who refuse to perform military service.8 Often they maintain that the benefits from waging war can never outweigh the costs of fighting it; there are no sufficient justifications behind declaring war or proper manners in which to fight it.9

Just war theorists, however, find a middle ground between pacifists and realists. Just war theorists argue that it is possible to both declare war and wage it in a just way. To build this theory, they break the doctrine into two main parts, jus ad bellum — the moral evaluations behind declaring war — and jus in bello — the moral evaluation of conducting war. Within jus ad bellum, just war theory requires that states claim a just cause when declaring war. Justifications accepted under this criterion typically tend to revolve around either self-defense or correction of a wrong received.10 The former qualification is often explained using a domestic analogy: just as individuals are entitled to use force to defend themselves against violent aggressors, so too are states. The latter qualification expands upon the first. Philosopher Michael Walzer notes that international aggression is not merely a crime between two private parties but “a crime against society as a whole.”11 As a result, the qualification of just cause is expanded to include not only self defense, but the punishment of an aggressor by any state — not merely the one directly affected — so long as war is declared with the right intention. Here, just cause becomes an expansive qualifier aimed at correcting international wrongs and restoring geopolitical stability. If a nation adheres to this qualification — holding the right intention in declaring war, having exhausted all other political options before war is declared, and having sufficiently calculated the proportion of the war’s potential benefit to destruction —  then that nation is deemed just within jus ad bellum. Yet, for a war to be fully just, it must also satisfy jus in bello, the proper conditions in which war is waged.

Today, it seems as though most discourse, not only within just war circles but in the public sphere as well, centers on jus in bello. Scholars, pundits, and the public seem to care deeply about how war is waged. As war becomes more easily documentable and casualties more easily calculable, the public’s concern for atrocities grows. The tenet of jus in bello seeks to address these concerns. As reflected in international law, the concept requires that states meet three principles:

  1. It is impermissible to target non-combatants.
  2. The collateral harm of noncombatants sustained during an action must be proportional to the desired goals.
  3. The collateral harm of noncombatants is permissible only if the action chosen is the least harmful option.12

Through these criteria, jus in bello effectively divides war actors into two categories: combatants — those whom one may target justly — and noncombatants, who hold some form of special status and to some extent immunity. Yet, combatants too contain basic rights. While permissible to target and kill combatants, actors may not use means mala in se — acts “evil in themselves” — against other actors.13 These means include actions such as rape, torture, use of illegal weapons, or coercion of prisoners. Through these prohibitions, jus in bello establishes a legal and moral paradigm through which to judge war conduct. As mentioned, the modern public seems exceptionally more focused on jus in bello than jus ad bellum. Yet, such was not always the case. At its inception, the original thinkers of just war theory seemed to be less concerned with jus in bello and much more concerned with jus ad bellum. Such was the case especially for Augustine, often cited as the father of just war theory. But why was this the case? Now that sufficient background on the general theory of just war has been established, it is appropriate to explore that question as it relates to Augustine.

Augustine’s focus on jus ad bellum stems from the Christian context around him: a pacifist religion morphing into a militaristic one. The early Christian church had preached pacifism under the pagan Roman empire’s rule. Whereas the Old Testament detailed descriptions of the Hebrew forces slaying their foes in warfare, early Christians viewed this militarism as having been overridden by the perceived pacifism of Jesus. The Hebrew Torah commanded Israel to love their fellow countrymen, but Jesus extended the command outside Jewish society, preaching that Jews should love their enemies as well.14 These enemies, Richard Bauckham notes, referred to national enemies, not individual enemies which were already included in the original “love thy neighbour.”15 Thus, if followers of Christ were commanded to love their national enemies, many took Jesus’s teaching to imply a deep adherence to pacifism. Even Jesus’s crucifixion exemplified his nonviolent ethic and rejection of physical force.16 As a result, early theologians taught strict abnegation of violence: around 200 CE, Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Christians, are not allowed to correct violence by sinful wrongdoings.”17To Clement, engaging in battle would surely have violated this precept. Additionally, a deep emphasis on peace and the chastisement of war was developed. “Nothing is better than peace, by which all war …  is abolished,” wrote Ignatius in an epistle.18

This early Christian pacifism largely occurred under pagan Roman rule: why should Christians fight in pagan wars? Pagan wars were to be fought by pagans. For example, the Christian pacifist Origen “clearly allowed for a conditional justification of war and the state on a sub-Christian level,” so long as pagans — not Christians — were fighting it.19 However, despite some Christian allowance for pagan wars fought by pagan soldiers, the disapproval of Christian soldiers continued, much to the dismay of pagan philosophers. In his True Discourse (ca. 178 CE), the pagan philosopher Celsus “accused Christians of a disinclination to fight in the imperial armies and of thus helping to expose the Empire to barbarian attack.”20 Yet, what would happen when the pagan empire became a Christian one? Would Christian thinkers still expect only pagan soldiers to defend a now Christian empire? Evidently not. As the Empire officially became Christian, Christian thinkers of the 4th and 5th centuries found ways to justify participating in war. Theologians turned to the New Testament’s ambiguous stance on war as a prime justification. In Pacifism in Europe to 1914, Peter Brock notes that “no pronouncement is to be found in the Gospels concerning the Rightness or wrongness of military service.”21 Thinkers like Augustine used this ambiguity to reject pacifism and formulate just war theory.

Augustine’s task was to encourage Christian soldiers — the defense of the Christian empire seemed to require it. Yet, despite the growing comfort of Christians in the army, pagan philosophers and pacifist theologians continued their polemics. The former accused Christians of renouncing military service while the latter advocated it. Around the time of Augustine’s childhood, St. Basil the Great sought to punish Christians who served in the military by stating that Christians who had shed blood should not attend communion for three years.22 Meanwhile, pagan polemicists argued that because Christians taught that one should not “return evil for evil” and to “turn the other cheek,” Christian doctrine did not align with the benefit of the state.23 As a result, Augustine worked to develop a framework of jus ad bellum, a scenario in which it would indeed be just for Christians to join the military.

The framework that Augustine develops stresses two tenets. The first is that war should be punitive. That is, Augustine asserts that war is just when it is fought to punish sinners or return the world back to a state of peace. This peace is twofold: the harmony of the body and soul within man and the harmony between man and God.24 To develop this framework, Augustine first qualifies the principle to “turn the other cheek” that the pagans and pacifist Christians touched on: “the right time for [turning the other cheek] to be done is when it seems likely to benefit the one for whose sake it is done, in order to bring about correction and a return to agreement.”25 But what about when it does not seem likely to benefit the subject? Augustine explains that we must work to correct the subject and “act with a sort of kindly harshness, when we are trying to make unwilling souls yield.”26 This kindly harshness may manifest itself in punitive action, ranging from imprisonment to war:

He whose freedom to do wrong is taken away suffers a useful form of restraint, since nothing is more unfortunate than the good fortune of sinners, who grow bold by not being punished — a penalty in itself — and whose evil will is strengthened by the enemy within.27

Surely, if there is nothing more unfortunate than the good fortune of sinners, it becomes a duty to correct this good fortune through punishment. For Augustine, this duty is what defines the just war. In the Decretum, the canon lawyer Gratian quotes Augustine: “those wars are customarily called just which have for their end the revenging of injuries, when it is necessary by war to constrain a city or a nation which has not wished to punish an evil action committed by its citizens or to restore that which has been taken unjustly.”28 Here, one can see the seed of modern just war theory. Augustine paints a scenario in which war is just so long as it is fought to correct a wrong received, much like the stipulations imposed in modern jus ad bellum. However, Augustine’s “wrong received” contains an exclusively religious tone. Who are these enemies? They are specifically enemies of the Church. Gratian continues to cite Augustine: “the enemies of the Church are to be coerced even by war.”29

By framing war in a corrective lens, Augustine strips it of its connotations of personal glory, lust, ego, and malevolence. As a result, he makes war harder for pacifists to condemn. Unlike the mythical figures in Homer’s Iliad, Augustine’s ideal soldiers are not fighting for their own gain but for the moral restoration of the world. As a result, he posits that no “right-minded person would condemn anger directed at a sinner in order to correct him.”30 If war was merely an expansion upon this concept, pacifists could no longer object to it. Augustine builds upon this concept of “anger directed at a sinner,” going so far as to even call it a hatred:

The man who lives according to God and not according to man must be a lover of the good; and it follows from this that he must hate what is evil. Further, since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil because of some fault, he who lives according to God has a duty of ‘perfect hatred’ toward those who are evil.31

By recognizing war as a “perfect hatred,” Augustine absolves Christian soldiers and condemns their enemies. The real evil in war, Augustine states, is not the killing of others but the immoral values held by enemies:

The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce placable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like; and it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men undertake wars, when they find themselves in such a position as regards the conduct of human affairs, that right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act in this way.32

And, by shifting the concept of evil away from the act of killing to the immoral values held by the enemy, Augustine separates Christian soldiers from their actions. They are not killing but punishing. In City of God, Augustine notes that “he who is commanded to perform this ministry does not himself slay. Rather, he is like a sword which is the instrument of its user.”33 That is, the soldier is not a killer, but an instrument of God. And furthermore, the soldier is absolved of any Christian guilt: “those who, by God’s authority, have waged wars … have punished the wicked with death according to his laws … have in no way acted against that commandement which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”34 Through this, Augustine attempts to reconcile violence in war with Jesus’s non-violence.

The second tenet in Augustine’s framework of jus ad bellum is authorization. Wars must be properly authorized by either kings or God. Augustine develops this tenet by referring to the Old Testament. Attempting to reconcile the Old with the New, Augustine points to the Binding of Isaac to demonstrate that God’s authority can make seemingly immoral acts just. Augustine admits that “for Abraham to sacrifice his son of his own accord is shocking madness.”35 Yet, Augustine continues that Abraham in “doing so at the command of God proves him faithful and submissive … therefore, while Abraham’s killing his son of his own accord would have been unnatural, his doing it at the command of God shows not only guiltless but praiseworthy compliance.”36 While Abraham’s authority was divine, Augustine also applies this framework to earthly rulers. So long as war is declared by the proper local authority, Christians will not be blamed for joining the military: “it may be an unrighteous command on the part of the king, while the soldier is innocent, because his position makes obedience a duty.”37 Through this quotation, it seems Augustine even excuses soldiers’ participation in unjust war. Even if the king’s command is unrighteous, the Christian soldier is innocent because of his duty of obedience.

Both of Augustine’s tenets provide a framework for jus ad bellum and provide a justification for Christian participation in the military. Augustine’s requirement of proper authority absolves soldiers of responsibility, placing it instead on the king or other governing body. Further, his requirement that war be fought to punish and correct enemies strips it of its moral iniquities and turns it into a religious act of service: by correcting their neighbors’ sins, the Christian soldiers are acting with love. Additionally, these precepts, though inherently religious, are found embedded in modern just war thought. Modern theorists, like Augustine, maintain that just wars must be declared by a nation’s proper authority and have the goal of “righting a wrong received,” an intention that seems to be largely punitive.38

Yet, what about jus in bello? Does Augustine ponder on which weapons wars should be fought with and how to treat noncombatants or prisoners? The answer appears to be no. Augustine had no need to do so. The origin of his discourse on war stemmed not from condemning atrocities and convincing soldiers to tone down their violence, but from convincing pacifists to fight in the first place. As mentioned earlier, Augustine had to defend Christian militarism against both pagans and Christian pacifists ranging from Celsus to Paulinas of Nola. However, this is not to say that Augustine had no care for jus in bello, it seems that he merely did not focus on it. The few remarks Augustine does make come from a religious view which assumes devout Christians will already act properly. For him, wars are to be fought by “the good.” And, if “the good” are fighting then perhaps it is natural to think they will consequently fight in a “good” way. He writes, “wars should be waged by the good, in order to curb licentious passions by destroying those vices which should have been rooted out and suppressed by the rightful government.”39 Here, one can even see Augustine combining his limited theory of jus in bello with his doctrine of jus ad bellum: he requires punishment — curbing the licentious passions — and proper authorization — a declaration by the rightful government. Touching on the intention behind war, he cites peace as an ultimate goal and cautions against any acts that may violate or blur that goal. In his letter to Boniface, Augustine writes:

Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. Therefore, even in waging war, cherish the spirit of the peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace.40

Here, Augustine’s views on jus ad bellum still remain a focus of the letter — war should be declared only to find peace and only as a last resort — yet his position on jus in bello, though perhaps broad, is poignant. War is to be fought by soldiers who cherish the spirit of peacemaker, keeping the goal of peace in mind even after conquering their enemies. The manner in which the war is fought must preserve men in peace and not support bloodlust, greed, or any other marker of avarice. As a result, soldiers must take care to act in accordance with the war’s purpose, acting to restore moral order.

Augustine’s discussion on war and justice is scattered throughout his works and cannot be found in one single treatise. His arguments stem from his religious beliefs and, usually, act to support a larger work such as City of God or Contra Faustum as opposed to a cohesive theory on war. Most likely, Augustine would not have considered himself to be a just war theorist, merely a theologian commentating on war. Yet, many scholars still credit him as the originator of just war theory. His writings laid the groundwork for over a millennia of just war thought: debates on war’s justification, its intentions, the moral responsibility of soldiers, and so on. Augustine’s teachings came from his context. In an era when the Christian Roman Empire needed Christian soldiers in its military, Augustine faced the ever-present pacifist claim that Christianity was incompatible with war. Augustine believed the opposite. War, like the Binding of Isaac, could be an immoral act made permissible — if done right. To be done right, Augustine required it to be punitive and properly authorized. Yet, even if not done right, Augustine argued that Christians still had a duty of obedience to their unjust rulers. In both cases, Augustine maintained that Christians were in line with the commands of the New Testament. Yet, by no means was the bishop a war hawk. Political scientist Herbert Deane notes that Augustine’s experiences left him with a “deep hatred of war and a great scorn for those who thought that conquest and military victories were glorious and noble accomplishments.”41 In City of God, he queries, “why must an empire be unquiet in order to be great? Consider the human body. Is it not enough to have moderate stature with good health?”42 The brutality in war is a cause for lamenting. However, despite his doubts, it seems Augustine realized the practical inevitability of war in a complex era and argued that it could be conducted justly, a sentiment held by just war theorists today. When the city of Rome was sacked in 410 CE, the pagans blamed Christianity, claiming their pacifism had weakened it. Perhaps, through his inception of just war, Augustine was attempting to build both Rome and Christianity back up.

 

Benji Elkins is a junior studying History at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Endnotes:

  1. “IHL and Other Legal Regimes,” International Committee of the Red Cross, February 9, 2017, https://www.icrc.org/en/document/ihl-and-other-legal-regimes.
  2. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, Fifth Edition (New York: BasicBooks, 2015), 3.
  3. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3.
  4. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 4.
  5. Thucydides and Paul Woodruff, On Justice, Power, and Human Nature: The Essence of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 103.
  6. Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 3, https://doi-org.proxy.library.upenn.edu/10.1515/9781400867493.
  7. Brian Orend, “A Just-war Critique of Realism and Pacifism” Journal of Philosophical Research  26, (2001): 455, https://doi-org.proxy.library.upenn.edu/10.5840/jpr_2001_11.
  8. Orend, “A Just-war Critique of Realism and Pacifism,” 456.
  9. Orend, “A Just-war Critique of Realism and Pacifism,” 455.
  10. Seth Lazar, “War,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/war/.
  11. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 59.
  12. Lazar, “War.”
  13. Brian Orend, “War” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/war.
  14. Richard Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 71.
  15. Bauckham, Jesus, 71.
  16. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 5.
  17. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 8.
  18. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 7.
  19. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 12.
  20. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 9–10.
  21. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 3–4.
  22. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 23.
  23. Saint Augustine, Letters, Volume 3 (Baltimore: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 41.
  24. Michael Hoelzl & Andrej Zwitter, “Augustine on War and Peace,” Peace Review 26, no. 3 (2014): 321, DOI: 10.1080/10402659.2014.937987.
  25. Augustine, Letters, 44.
  26. Augustine, Letters, 4.
  27. Augustine, Letters, 4.
  28. Cited in James Turner Johnson. Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200-1740. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 36.
  29. Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War, 36.
  30. Augustine, and R. W. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 365.
  31. Augustine, and R. W. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans, 590.
  32. Augustine, “Contra Faustum Manichaeum,” in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. IV. ed. Philip Schaff, tr. Richard Stathert, (Buffalo: Christian Literature. 1887), 301.
  33. Augustine, and R. W. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans, 33.
  34. Augustine, and R. W. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans, 33.
  35. Augustine, “Contra Faustum Manichaeum,” 300.
  36. Augustine, “Contra Faustum Manichaeum,” 300–301.
  37. Augustine, “Contra Faustum Manichaeum,” 301.
  38. Orend, “War.”
  39. Augustine, Letters, 4.
  40. Augustine, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. I. ed. Philip Schaff, tr. Richard Stathert, (Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1887), 554.
  41. Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 154, https://doi-org.proxy.library.upenn.edu/10.7312/dean93962.
  42. Augustine, and R. W. Dyson, The City of God Against the Pagans, 104.

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Benjamin Elkins