Any good resources on the ethics on/of war?

Hi, fellow Logosians!

Any good recommendations on the ethics on/of war from a Biblical perspective? On defence/attack perspective? Justified/unjustified war?

While we're at it, please pray for Ukraine and for the the peace of whole Europe, and also for the visit of our Finnish President In the White House today.

Olli-Pekka

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Christian Alexander

Try War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity by Stanley Hauerwas

Olli-Pekka Ylisuutari

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1198797#Comment_1198797

Thanks!

From what I've read Hauerwas, he is good and deep.

Keep remembering!

Mike Hanes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1198799#Comment_1198799

This won't be released until September, but might be helpful.

War, Peace, and Violence: Four Christian Views

https://www.logos.com/product/220994/war-peace-and-violence-four-christian-views

Kathleen Marie

Hi, fellow Logosians!

Any good recommendations on the ethics on/of war from a Biblical perspective? On defence/attack perspective? Justified/unjustified war?

While we're at it, please pray for Ukraine and for the the peace of whole Europe, and also for the visit of our Finnish President In the White House today.

Olli-Pekka

Thanks for asking this question!

SineNomine

Justified/unjustified war?

St. Augustine's City of God and St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae both address the topic.

Scott

Craigie, Peter C. The Problem of War in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978.

https://www.logos.com/product/177285/the-problem-of-war-in-the-old-testament

Scott

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1199020#Comment_1199020

Oops!

https://www.logos.com/product/177285/the-problem-of-war-in-the-old-testament

Scott

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1199021#Comment_1199021

Beaman, Jay, Brian K. Pipkin, and Paul Alexander, eds. Pentecostal and Holiness Statements on War and Peace. Vol. 6. Pentecostals, Peacemaking, and Social Justice. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013.

https://www.logos.com/product/161633/pentecostal-and-holiness-statements-on-war-and-peace

Beaman, Jay. Pentecostal Pacifism: The Origin, Development, and Rejection of Pacific Belief among the Pentecostals. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009.

https://www.logos.com/product/169005/pentecostal-pacifism-the-origin-development-and-rejection-of-pacific-belief-among-the-pentecostals

Olli-Pekka Ylisuutari

Thanks for all the tips! Especially SineNomine on st. Augustine's City of God!

Kathleen Marie

Britannica Great Books has a large article that includes an outline with links to all the Great Books in the set that discuss war, and a list of additional readings divided by time periods. Volume 2 pp 799-819

Great Books of the Western World (60 vols.) is part of the March Madness Sale

https://www.logos.com/product/55052/great-books-of-the-western-world

Here are some excerpts

War and Peace

INTRODUCTION

The 20th century may go down in history as the century of war and peace—the first in which world wars were fought, the first in which men established world peace, and so, perhaps, the last in which peace among nations was merely an armed truce, a breathing spell between wars. Even if world peace is not actually begun in our time, we may prove to be the first generation of men on earth who, under the impact of world wars, have made a firm attempt to draw a decisive conclusion from all the accumulated wisdom concerning war and peace.

It may be thought that antiquity anticipates, and that at all times the tradition contains, the fundamental notions which have recently gained so wide a currency. Socrates and Epictetus, for example, speak of world citizenship. Marcus Aurelius and Zeno of Citium even more explicitly envision a world community. Alexander tries to conquer the world to make it one; Virgil proclaims a peace which will be as universal as the Roman Empire; and Dante, recasting Virgil’s vision, advocates the reenactment of that empire and with it monarchy—by which he means one government—to give all Christendom political as well as spiritual unity.

To neglect these anticipations would be to overlook wisdom’s perennial aspirations for unity. But if, because of their significance for peace, they should not be neglected here, neither should their importance be exaggerated. For one thing, man has always acted at variance with his wisdom, nullifying the hope of peace by preparing always for the next war. For another thing, it is doubtful that peace by conquest or by empire—the only ways in which the past could conceive the world’s coming to the unity of peace—would be a peace perpetual as well as universal. The latter without the former is but a fraction of the ideal.

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 799.

In their spiritual meanings, war and peace are considered in other chapters; e.g., interior conflict is a topic in the chapter on OPPOSITION and interior peace is discussed in the chapter on HAPPINESS. We shall not treat these matters here except in their bearing on the social and political discussion; nor shall we consider civil war except for the light it throws on war and peace in general. The special problem of discord and strife within a single community belongs to the chapter on REVOLUTION.

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 800.

The arguments for the federal constitution of the United States help to make this issue clear. The authors of the Constitution regard it as providing “a more perfect union” than V 2, p 807 p 807 the Articles of Confederation under which the thirteen separate colonies are banded together by little more than treaties or alliances. To the writers of The Federalist, who advocate the adoption of a federal union to replace the loose confederacy or league of states, there is no middle ground between the establishment of peace through federal union and the continuation of the state of war between separate states.

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 806–807.

Aristotle describes how the family is formed by the union of man and wife, parents and children; and from this first of all social units, the tribe or village is formed by a union of families, and the city or state by a union of villages. He does not carry this series on to its V 2, p 809 p 809 natural terminus, but Augustine does. “After the state or city,” Augustine says, “comes the world, the third circle of human society—the first being the family, the second the city.”

Yet Augustine, who orders earthly peace to the peace of heaven, does not prophesy a single political community of all men living together under one government. The heavenly city, he says, “while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that, however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace.”

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 808–809.

    3a.      The distinction between just and unjust warfare: wars of defense and wars of conquest

            4      Aeschylus, 9–11, 21–22
            4      Euripides, 347–362, 533–554
            4      Aristophanes, 757–758
            5      Herodotus, 144
            5      Thucydides, 425–426, 430–431, 432–434, 461, 469–470
            8      Aristotle, 450
            13      Plutarch, 55–56, 108–109
            14      Tacitus, 272
            16      Augustine, 583–584
            18      Aquinas, 578–579, 581–582, 584
            19      Chaucer, 349–350
            21      Machiavelli, 36–37
            22      Rabelais, 58–59
            23      Montaigne, 481–484
            24      Shakespeare, 146, 487–490
            27      Cervantes, 344
            33      Locke, 25–29, 60–61, 64, 65–70, 72–73, 76–81
            34      Swift, 23–25
            38      Gibbon, 383–384
            39      Kant, 413
            40      Federalist, 33–37
            43      Hegel, 116
            51      Tolstoy, 12–13, 344–355
            58      Weber, 219
            59      Shaw, 73–74

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 812.

    10g.      The making of truces or alliances as a military device

      Old Testament: Joshua, 9
      Apocrypha: 1 Maccabees, 8
            5      Herodotus, 144, 240–247, 289–290, 310–311
            5      Thucydides, 356–360, 371–372, 378–380, 418–420, 450–452, 461–463, 476–477, 485–508 passim
            14      Tacitus, 286–287
            21      Machiavelli, 32
            23      Montaigne, 58–61
            24      Shakespeare, 489–491
            34      Swift, 24–25
            37      Gibbon, 95–96, 495–496, 504–507
            38      Gibbon, 428
            44      Tocqueville, 117–119
            51      Tolstoy, 83–86, 92–93, 307–309, 350–354

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 816.

    11c.      International law and international peace: treaties, alliances, and leagues as instrumentalities of international peace

      Apocrypha: 1 Maccabees, 8, 10:51–58; 12:1–23; 13:34–40; 14:16–24
            5      Herodotus, 206
            5      Thucydides, 485–488
            13      Plutarch, 108–109, 427–428
            21      Hobbes, 159
            24      Shakespeare, 30–31, 384–385, 566–567
            35      Montesquieu, 2–3, 58–60, 63–64
            37      Gibbon, 103, 119, 150–152, 174–175, 378–381, 402–403, 431–432, 433–435, 491–492, 535–536
            39      Kant, 452–456
            40      Articles of Confederation, 5–9
            40      Federalist, 38, 64–65, 71–78
            40      Mill, 428–432, 435
            43      Hegel, 113, 114
            48      Melville, 181–182
            51      Tolstoy, 344–355, 645–646, 649–650
            58      Huizinga, 286–287

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 817.

II
THE ANCIENT WORLD (TO 500 A.D.)

Caesar. The Gallic War

THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE (TO 1500)

Dubois. De Recuperatione Terre Sancte
Maimonides. The Mishneh Torah, BK XIV, CH 5

THE MODERN WORLD (1500 AND LATER)

Adler, M. J. How to Think About War and Peace
———. A Vision of the Future, CH 6
Aron. Peace and War
V 2, p 819 p 819 Bentham. A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace
———. Principles of International Law
Bernhardi. The War of the Future in the Light of the Lessons of the World War
Borgese. Common Cause
Burke. Resolutions
Channing. Discourses on War
Churchill. The Second World War
Clarendon. History of the Rebellion
Clausewitz. On War
Crane. The Red Badge of Courage
cummings. The Enormous Room
Delbrück. History of the Art of War
Detter Delupis. The Law of War
Dos Passos. U.S.A.
Dupuy. Understanding War
Ferrero. Peace and War
Findley. The Wars
Foch. The Principles of War
Ford, F. M. Parade’s End
Franklin, B. On War and Peace
Friedman, R. S. et al. Advanced Technology Warfare
Fuller. A Military History of the Western World
Gentili. De Jure Belli (On the Laws of War)
Godwin. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, BK V, CH 16–19
Gogol. Taras Bulba
Grass. The Tin Drum
Green. The Principles of Political Obligation, (J)
Grotius. The Rights of War and Peace
Hašek. The Good Soldier Svejk
Heller. Catch-22
Hersey. Hiroshima
———. The Wall
Hobson, J. A. Towards International Government
Keegan. The Illustrated Face of Battle
Keegan and Holmes. Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle
Kelsen. Law and Peace in International Relations
Lenin. The Imperialist War
Liddell Hart. Strategy
Liebknecht. Militarism and Anti-Militarism
Lorenz. On Aggression
Luther. Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved
McNeill. The Pursuit of Power
Mahan. The Influence of Sea Power upon History
Mailer. The Naked and the Dead
Maritain. The Problem of World Government
Mockler. The New Mercenaries
Montgomery of Alamein. A History of Warfare
More, T. Utopia, BK II
Nicolson, H. The Congress of Vienna
Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago
Péguy. Basic Verities (War and Peace)
Penn. An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe
Pirenne. Mohammed and Charlemagne
Pound, E. Cantos
Powell. A Dance to the Music of Time
Proudhon. La guerre et la paix
Pushkin. The Captain’s Daughter
Pynchon. Gravity’s Rainbow
Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front
Romains. Verdun
Saint-Pierre. Scheme for Lasting Peace
Santayana. Reason in Society, CH 3
Schiller. Wallenstein
Scott. Old Mortality
Sholokhov. The Silent Don
Sidgwick, H. Practical Ethics, IV
Soyinka. Madmen and Specialists
Spaulding et al. Warfare
Stendhal. The Charterhouse of Parma
Sturzo. The International Community and the Right of War
Suárez. On War
Sumner. “War,” in War and Other Essays
Waugh. Sword of Honor
Wells. The New World Order
West, R. A Train of Powder
Whewell. The Elements of Morality, SUP, CH 4
Wright, Q. A Study of War

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 818–819.

Hamilton Ramos

Hi Olli-Pekka:

To my understanding one of the more prolific authors on the topic of peace is:

https://www.logos.com/search?query=John%20Howard%20Yoder&sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&ownership=all&geographicAvailability=availableToMe

Long time ago I read an article that suggested that there is a difference of violence due to self-defense, compared to the other that is not moved by the right intent. The article suggested that violence to defend what is valuable (life, honor, property, etc) was not considered sin, unlike the violence motivated by envy, greed, hatred (devilish), jealousy, etc.

It is interesting to note that in Buddhism (mostly pacifists), Shaolin monks developed a self-defense system using butterfly swords (twin small ones), to defend against aggression in their time. What is remarkable is that they developed techniques considered "non-lethal" that disabled the aggressors without killing them.

In out time there has been efforts to develop non-lethal means to neutralize violence, but of limited effectiveness.

Ethically non-lethal approaches seem to be correct.

If you believe there could be a possibility for more advanced civilizations to exist in the Universe, some events here on Earth seem to suggest there exists technology (way more advanced than ours), that neutralizes modern weapons. Maybe in the future such technology will be developed.

If you recall, non-lethal neutralizing techniques seem to be a supported way in the Bible, think of Angels causing temporary blindness in aggressors to protect chosen ones.

Hope some of the above is of help.

Mattillo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1199449#Comment_1199449

Maybe of interest though it is obviously one-sided

https://www.logos.com/product/14656/war-peace-and-christianity-questions-and-answers-from-a-just-war-perspective

Mattillo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1199458#Comment_1199458

This one looks super interesting but I don't own it

https://www.logos.com/product/120737/just-war-in-religion-and-politics

Olli-Pekka Ylisuutari

... please pray for Ukraine and for the the peace of whole Europe, and also for the visit of our Finnish President In the White House today.

Olli-Pekka

Time to wrap up this thread. Thanks all for your excellent reading recommendations - and also for your prayers.

Regarding Finland, today has been a historical day in the history of of Finland - but also of Sweden. Our Finnish parliament voted for joining NATO with 188 votes Yay, 8 Nay, total 200. A 94 % Yay vote. Both Finland and Sweden will leave their membership applications simultaneously, maybe even today.

May the sovereign Lord of all the nations lead and guard each and every nation according to his unfathomable and wise plan!

Beloved Amodeo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1207257#Comment_1207257

I'm just seeing your thread. This recommendation is read by West Point cadets

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Unjust-Wars-Historical-Illustrations/dp/0465052711/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GR47AG2SIU0U&keywords=just+war&qid=1652807746&s=books&sprefix=Just+War%2Cstripbooks%2C46&sr=1-1

Kathleen Marie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1207266#Comment_1207266

I'm just seeing your thread. This recommendation is read by West Point cadets

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Unjust-Wars-Historical-Illustrations/dp/0465052711/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GR47AG2SIU0U&keywords=just+war&qid=1652807746&s=books&sprefix=Just+War%2Cstripbooks%2C46&sr=1-1

Thank you for that link!

Gregory Lynne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1198989#Comment_1198989

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm

Kathleen Marie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1207345#Comment_1207345

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm

Interesting article and interesting website. Thanks!

skypeace

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1198989#Comment_1198989

Both Augustine and Aquinas were included in the curriculum of my major in Peace Studies and are quite foundational works. International Ethics was a required course also to fulfill the major, but I don't recall the texts used at the time, about 44 years ago. This post peaked my curiosity as to what might be used today.