War and

Christianity
▹ The early Christians were
divided in their attitude
towards the use of military
force by the state.
▹ The dominant view among the
leaders of the church was that
political authority was
divinely instituted for the
benefit of the individual.
▹ When force was used justly,
they believe, it was good and
not a moral evil.
▹ The state may resort to force at
times as an instrument of justice
for the common good.
▹
“
The decision to initiate violent hostilities
could not be taken by a private individual,
but only by public authority. Rulers were
enjoined against resorting to war unless
they were morally certain that their cause
was just (jus ad bellum) that is, that their
juridical rights had been violated by a
neighboring ruler.
▹
“
Even then, they were exhorted to exhaust all
peaceful means of settling the dispute before
initiating the use of force, and these means
usually included arbitration.
▹ Furthermore, there had to be a reasonable
prospect that the resort to force would be more
productive of good than of evil and would restore
the order of justice.
▹ The war had to be waged
throughout with a right moral
intention, and it had to be
conducted by means that
were not intrinsically
immoral (jus in bello), for
what begins as a just war
could become unjust in its
prosecution.
▹
“
Emphasis was placed on what would later be
called the principles of proportionality and
discrimination. Under the first, the suffering
and destruction caused by the war should not
be disproportionate to the cause justifying the
resort to war; under the second, innocent
populations were considered immune as
targets of military action.
▹
“
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic
Church attempted to impose ethical controls on
the conduct of war by specifying times when
fighting could not be carried on, sites where
battle was prohibited, types of weapons that
could not legitimately be employed and classes
of persons that were either exempted from the
obligation of military service or protected
against military action.
 “
▹ In the period of transition from medieval
to modern Europe, three outstanding
exceptions to the dominant theory and
practice of morally limited warfare can be
identified. These were invariably
expressions of ideological conflict that ran
counter to the distinctive tendencies of
medieval culture:
1. the Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, fought against an alien and infidel
civilization
2. the wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, especially between the French and
English, in which the forces of national
feelings made themselves felt for the first
time on a large scale
3. the religious wars that followed the
Reformation
 “
▹ In these cases, war ceased to be a rational
instrument of monarchical policy for the defense
of juridical rights. The concept of war as a small-
scale affair of skirmish and maneuver lost its
primacy when large numbers of nonprofessional
(i.e., nonchivalric) warriors, both volunteers and
mercenaries, became enmeshed with cultural,
national, or religious antipathies