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In now familiar style, he began with a truth; in this case, a frank and engaging confession of his unworthiness for the prize and the paradox of its award to one presently engaged in acts of war. What a relief from the vulgar folksiness of his predecessor!
He followed up with a pleasing patina of intellectualism admirably summarizing and surprisingly invoking the Augustinian doctrine of Just War. What a relief from the fuck-you bully-blather of Bush!
He then took the moral high ground and with sparkling phrases, devoid of rancour and tinged with due regret, decked out American policy as one which strove in earnest for a better, uplifted, all-inclusive World to Come. What a change from the hostile, self-righteousness of the previous Commander in Chief.
But in what is by now all too familiar Obama, it was all nothing but tinselled packing over an empty box. In fact it was worse. As shall be set out in this two-part feature, Obama dragged a delicate principle of justice through the mud of expediency in order to carry on the Neocon crusade under a banner sullied with greed and stained with tears.
To grasp the depravity of what Obama has done, we must return in time the days of a fledgling but committed Christianity.
A Rich and Mighty Man
As is well known, the Early Church was emphatically communistic and pacifist. It abhorred violence and counted as martyrs those who died on the battlefield for pacifism.
Such heroes included Maximilian of Numidia, a 21-year-old North African draftee who refused to serve, declaring “I cannot fight for this world…. I tell you, I am a Christian.” He was beheaded (295 A.D). More fortunate was St. Martin of Tours who had a crisis of conscience during a military action against barbarian invaders. “Up to now I have served you as a soldier. Now permit me serve Christ. Give my bounty to these others. They are going to fight, but I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight.”
These acts of conscientious objection were not simply exercises of personal moral preference. Early canons of the Church forbade participating in violence.
"Concerning the magistrate and the soldier: they are not to kill anyone, even if they receive the order…. Whoever has authority and does not do the righteousness of the Gospel is to be excluded and is not to pray with the bishop.
"A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God.” (Apostolic Canons of St. Hippolytus XII-XVI)
Wherefrom did this doctrine of pacifism arise? It arose in the first instance from the authority of the Crucifixion which first and foremost was a renunciation of violence even unto death. The trip to Golgotha began with an explicit exhortation against violence in Gethsamene.
Martyrdom of St. Peter at Rome
But the Church’s doctrine of pacifism was not simply an injunction against violence. That injunction was the other half of an affirmative duty for charity -- to love the other as one’s self. The negative and the positive went hand in hand and either is meaningless without the other.
The intersection of the two was most relevantly exemplified in Jesus’s injunction to “walk the extra mile” with the man who asks for help in carrying his pack. As early Christians would have understood, the man in question was an enemy Roman soldier who had the right to command any civilian in occupied territories to carry his pack for up to one mile. Jesus enjoined his listeners not simply to obey the law but to do the law one better -- to assist the enemy in his oppression of you.
This arresting paradox was not as novel as one might think. The conversation in Plato’s Republic began with asking how a just man should behave. Oh, that’s easy, says Polemarchus, a young man from a traditional family, Everyone knows that justice consists in doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.
In short order, Socrates led the young thoroughbred through the thickets of confusion. Who exactly is your friend and how can you tell? And what do you mean by harm?
Certainly to harm something means to make it less or worse than it is? For sure. As in injuring a horse to make it have less of those qualities of strength that make it a good horse? Indeed. And isn’t the quality of justice the highest human virtue? Without doubt. Justice is to man what power is to a horse? It would seem so. So then, according to your rule, Polemarchus, the just man will seek to make his enemy more unjust?
Uh.... I think we’ve encountered a problem, Polemarchus says much less confidently than before. He and Socrates agree that "the injuring of another can in no case be just."
Polemarchus wonders who it was that came up with the traditional definition? Socrates ventures that “the first to say that justice is ‘doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.” must have been “some rich and mighty man who had a great opinion of his power.” “But,” Socrates goes on to ask, “if this definition of justice breaks down, what other can be offered?”
Polemarchus wonders who it was that came up with the traditional definition? Socrates ventures that “the first to say that justice is ‘doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.” must have been “some rich and mighty man who had a great opinion of his power.” “But,” Socrates goes on to ask, “if this definition of justice breaks down, what other can be offered?”
Plato’s answer was the Republic -- that image of the just State which was a mirror reflection of the just man. Jesus’s answer, somewhat more simply, was to “walk the extra mile with your enemy.”
Such conversations were entirely familiar to the early Church Fathers. As the so-called pagan world progressed beyond tribalism and toward an ever more embracing global economy, perceptions of friends or enemies and conceptions of justice and just action also evolved. As of the close of the Third Century, the Church took it as axiomatic that “the injuring of another can be in no case just.”
Ambrose enjoins Theodosius
The highwater mark of Church pacifism came in 390 when St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, threatened the Emperor Theodosius with excommunication for an act of violence, the circumstances of which are worth recalling.
The Empire was by then officially Christian. In 380, pursuant to treaty, Theodosius allowed large contingents of Goths to settle, semi-autonomously, in portions of Thrace, in Northern Greece. This arrangement was considered essential to what today would be called “homeland security”.
In 390 the local population rioted against the Gothic presence and killed the local Gothic commander. Furious, Theodosius, ordered a reprisal in which 7,000 men, women and children were indiscriminately slaughtered as they sat watching the circus games.
“The anger of the Emperor rose to the highest pitch, and he gratified his vindictive desire for vengeance by unsheathing the sword most unjustly and tyrannically against all, slaying the innocent and guilty alike.... like ears of wheat in the time of harvest, they were alike cut down”
Ambrose was equally inflexible. He forbade Theodosius from entering church or receiving the sacraments and required him to publicly assume the garb of penitent on the steps of the cathedral.
Dramatic and exemplary as the episode was, it nonetheless incorporated a subtle shift in thinking inasmuch as Ambrose had only condemned the emperor’s “unjust” killing. As of Ambrose’s day, the Church leadership had begun a cautious retreat from its earlier and purer pacifism. The reason is not difficult to fathom. For over a hundred years the Empire had been under assault from so called “barbarian invasions.” In large measure, these “invasions” were in fact mass migrations -- ordinary people fleeing demographic pressures from further east and seeking a better life within the boundaries of the Empire. These migrations presented an array of vexing social, economic and military problems which successive Roman administrations met with alternating policies of assimilation, accommodation or resistance.
By the close of the Fourth Century, the situation had become critical. The migrations, whether characterized as peaceful or not, were of such magnitude and impact as to constitute a destructive invasion. The incursions, were indeed often accompanied by acts of violence, pillage and “unrefuseable offers”. What was an emperor, now Christian, to do? Retreat the extra mile?
The Church is not on record as having so counselled. But while it is true, overall, that the Church began a slow process of what it considered to be a necessary moral accommodation, what is more significant was the reluctance -- indeed refusal -- of either Ambrose (337-397) or his more famous pupil, Augustine (354-430), to explicitly promulgate a theory of just war. To say that Augustine expounded a doctrine of just war is an overly convenient way of saying that such a theory can be distilled by implication from a mass of writings on other topics.
That distillation was in fact made in the 12th century by a canonist named Gratian, followed upon by St. Thomas Aquinas; and it was their theory of just war -- claiming Augustine as authority -- that became the basis for current Church Doctrine.
The difficulty with the distillation is that it falls into the category of what lawyers call dicta; i.e., words, phrases, bon-mots, general principles, and good quotable stuff which -- whether true or not -- was not what a case actually held given the question presented for decision. Such patch-works of dicta reflect the vision of the stitcher but they do not necessarily reflect the understanding or the desired conclusion of the authority to whom the pastiche is attributed.
Whatever the merits of Gratian’s distillation, what is more worth examining is the reluctance of Augustine, or Ambrose to expound a doctrine of just war when it would have been easy and natural to do so.
What the examination will show is that the emergence of a just war theory, as Church doctrine, was not simply a question of creep and compromise. To a substantial degree it was the result of sloppy analogies and confused terms. More fundamentally it flowed from a poisonous question: can charity ever require violence?
Tracing the evolution of the just war theory as it passed from pagan hands into the Church and from ecclesiastical writers to us will show the moral struggle behind the legal formulae and ultimately how the doctrine of a just war is a deceit.
A Just and Sinful Empire
The early Fathers wrote at the close of a thousand year civilization. They and their audience were imbued with the motifs, themes and intellectual monuments of so-called “pagan” culture so that, a word, metaphor or cliché could reference volumes. (FN-1 A Wealth of Writ) Plato’s Republic would have been as familiar to them as Oprah is to us. So too the Roman lawyer Cicero...
Four hundred years before Augustine, Cicero had formulated his ius bellum theory of just war.
“Unjust war is that which is begun from wrath rather than lawful reason. Unjust wars are those begun without a reason. For there is no just reason for war outside of just reparations or self defense." (De Officiis 36.)
"No war is to be considered just unless it was openly announced and declared, unless reparation has first been demanded." (Op Cit., 38.) (FN-2 "Just Vengeance")
Reduced to a formula, these paragraphs set out three conditions for a just war:
1. There must be a just cause (retribution/defence);
2. There must be a formal declaration of war by the king or emperor preceded by a demand for reparations;
3. War must be conducted justly (eg. unarmed civilians should not be attacked).Cicero’s formulation was little more than a rhetorical gloss on Polemarchus’s received definition of the just man. The discussion with Socrates did not end with the conclusion that the just man would not do injustice to his enemy but rather with the conclusion that the just man will never do harm to another. To say that the just man will not act unjustly was simply an evasive tautology.
Cicero Expounding by the Pilar of JusticeBut it was an important tautology given that the Romans were a very superstitious people with a near phobic obsession for “doing things the right way”. It was extremely important for them to have “right” -- and hence divine favour and assistance -- on their side. Accordingly, no war could begin without a litany of causes accompanied by a reading of avian and ovarian livers. In Latin, the word ius means “right” as well “just” and the Roman doctrine of ius bellum might be better translated as Rightful War.
At bottom, Cicero’s definition did no more than state the lex talionis (“an eye for an eye...”) and it is certainly dubious whether Christ would have agreed with Cicero’s other famous dictum that “A just war is better than an unjust peace". But mise en scene Cicero’s formula fares somewhat better.
Rome was one of those nations that defended its way to empire. From their earliest “defences” in Latium the Senate was always careful to specify how Rome was the rightfully aggrieved party. Still, not all was fair in love and war. When the Sicilian Greek temple of Juna Lacinia was despoiled of its tiles by Fulvius Flaccus, following a campaign, the Romans themselves had a fit,
“Protests were heard in the House, and there was a general demand that the consuls should bring the matter before the Senate. Flaccus was summoned, and his appearance called forth still more bitter reproaches from all sides.....It was said that, even in the case of private buildings such conduct would be thought disgraceful, but he was demolishing the temples of the immortal gods. By building and beautifying one temple [in Rome] out of the ruins of another he was involving the people of Rome in the guilt of impiety, as if the immortal gods were not the same everywhere.” (Livy, History of Rome Bk. 42.)
The Senate unanimously voted that the tiles should be put back and that expiatory sacrifices should be offered to Juno.
“The religious duty was carefully discharged, but the contractors reported that as no one understood how to replace the tiles they had been left in the precinct of the temple.” (Livy, Op.Cit., Bk 42.)No doubt they tiptoed away in the dark.
Were not the immortal gods the same everywhere? The redeeming force of Cicero’s formula derived from the fact that it was a reflection of an emergent pan-Mediterranean humanism which those very Roman conquests had made possible. Whether or not built through violence, at the end of the day, Romans discovered that others were not very different from themselves; that a ius gentium appeared to infuse all men in common. As Cicero put it,
"True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; ... We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, ..."Not surprisingly, Cicero was popular among the early Church Fathers. Universal humanism metamorphosed into Catholicism.
Alas! the whole of the Ancient World was collapsing. The economy was in the tank and pestilences ravaged the lands. Cities and fields lay depopulated and fallow. The revenues were falling and the armies were stretched to their limits. The State resorted to hiring mercenary barbarian armies to defend the Empire from other barbarian armies and with revenues falling resorted to the expedient of granting vast tracts of land in lieu of payment, the names of which survive to this day -- Burgundy, (v)Andalusia, Lombardi, Belgium, ultimately, even France. It was somewhat like giving California to Blackwater.
The Universal City, Eternal Rome, which had embodied the unchangeable law valid for all nations and for all times was dying.
Vandal Sack of RomeFaced with this catastrophe -- the collapse of everything known -- Romans fell to mutual recriminations. Pagans accused the Christians of bringing bad luck upon the Empire. For near 1000 years the true gods had been given their just due and the Empire had known increase and prosperity; was it coincidence that the catastrophe began with the turn to Christianity? We are loosing because our cause is unjust and it is so because we have failed to do good to our gods without whom we cannot do harm to our enemies.
Feebly enough, the Christians (Augustine in particular) answered that Rome was loosing her wars because people were sinful -- which was another way of saying the same thing in a different skin. Augustine explained,
“Every victory, even though gained by wicked men [i.e. the Barbarians], is a result of the first judgment of God, who humbles the vanquished [i.e. the Romans] either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. Witness that man of God, Daniel, who, when he was in captivity, confessed to God his own sins and the sins of his people, and declares with pious grief that these were the cause of the captivity.” (City of God, Chapter 15)
It was not a very winning argument, and pagans replied that sin or no sin matters might be helped a tad if Christians stopped their prattling and praying and picked up a damn sword and did some of the necessary dirty work of civilization. The pagan Celsus, excoriated:
“If all men were to do as you, there would be nothing to prevent the Emperor from being left in utter solitude, and with the desertion of his forces, the Empire would fall into the hands of the most lawless barbarians.”The excoriation all but demanded a just war concession which subsequent commentators have fished out from the massive tomes of Augustine’s City of God, quoting the following:
“But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not rather lament the necessity of just wars, once he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, .... (City of God, Book XIX, chapter 7.)
Indisputably, Augustine’s use of the term “just wars” triggered a recollection of Cicero’s ius bellum. But it is far from clear that Augustine implicitly adopted it. The chapter in its entirety reads as follows:
Of the Diversity of Languages, by Which the Intercourse of Men is Prevented; And of the Misery of Wars, Even of Those Called Just.
After the state or city comes the world, the third circle of human society,-the first being the house, and the second the city. And the world, as it is larger, so it is fuller of dangers, as the greater sea is the more dangerous. And here, in the first place, man is separated from man by the difference of languages. For if two men, each ignorant of the other's language, meet, and are not compelled to pass, but, on the contrary, to remain in company, dumb animals, though of different species, would more easily hold intercourse than they, human beings though they be. For their common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another; so that a man would more readily hold intercourse with his dog than with a foreigner. But the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace, so that interpreters, far from being scarce, are numberless. This is true; but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! And though these are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come. For though there have never been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description-social and civil wars-and with these the whore race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set? But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and this wrong doing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man because it is man's wrong-doing. Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling.
Once the full chapter is read it can be seen that not only has Augustine been taken out of context, he has been grotesquely inverted.
Augustine’s topic was not war but rather the condition of the human race; and he began with an implicit dual allusion to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel and to Aristotle’s doctrine that articulate language is the foundation of human society since it is through language that man “decides what is just and unjust” (Aristotle, Politics, Bk I.)
“Justice,” St. Ambrose had said, “is about promoting the fellowship of the human race and about furthering community.” But, retorts Augustine, how is this possible when half the human race speaks German?
Augustine acknowledges that Rome attempted to solve the problem of “community” by force -- by imposing Latin as a “bond of peace”. He did not need to add the obvious fact that, from a certain perspective, the imperial “furthering of community” had been astonishingly successful. But where Cicero had taken off into flights of hortatory, Augustine now played the realist. But at what a cost!! How many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! Augustine did not need to state what was patent to his audience -- Christianity had a better language.
Just then, Augustine shifted his angle and raised a straw man. But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. Who is “they”? The “they” was Augustine’s contemporaries who were arguing that defence against the current incursions qualified under Cicero’s theory of just war.
Having raised a straw man, Augustine ducked: “Yes well... but rather we should lament our sinful human condition which brings such awful necessities upon us. (See Tower of Babel, the original “imperial city”). The City of God, however, is built on the Word and defended with love.
“The safety of the City of God, however, is of such a kind that it can be possessed, or rather acquired, only with faith and through faith; and when faith is lost, no one can attain to that safety.” (Op.cit. Book 22, ch. 6.)
It was an astonishing avoidance. Celsus’s accusation, the crisis of the times, the very topic of the chapter and the Cicero on the tip of his tongue, all imminently demanded a formulation of the ius bellum doctrine -- and still Augustine interrupted the flow to say that we should rather mourn our original sin.
Augustine Pointing the Way Amid The Crumble
It is typically said that what can be distilled from the ecclesiastical writers of this period, Augustine included, is a reformulation of Cicero’s ius bellum into a formula requiring (1) right authority, (2) just cause, (3) last resort, (4) right intent, and (5) proportionality of ultimate good to evil done. That is not a bad doctrine, as doctrines go, and it certainly did emerge in later medieval thinking. But what is truly remarkable is the persistence with which the Church Fathers of this earlier period avoided stating it.
I would suggest that what emerges from the writers of this period both by omission and implication is a somewhat more limited acceptance of war as an unavoidable but necessary evil which Christians, collectively and as individuals, should studiously avoid but which, in strictly limited circumstances, they might be forgiven for being engaged in. The question was not what made for a just war but rather whether violence was forgivable when unavoidable.
Again, it is necessary to take context into account. The early Church Fathers, were primarily concerned with providing guidance for individual conduct and for the clergy. The collapse of the Empire was not simply the result of external invasions. It was accompanied by a chronic, pandemic of internal revolts and convulsions. The rule of law was itself crumbling under an onslaught of breaches and pretexts.
To make matters worse, military service was becoming a business. In ancient times, soldiers were paid with plundered bounties and/or rights of pillage. Armies sustained themselves by living off the cities and lands they marched through to protect. War was an unmitigated disaster.
On the other hand, when garrisoned, soldiers lived off their wives, through gambling or by engaging in small handcrafts and trades. As the economy and empire tanked, men sought security in the brutality of an increasingly “privatized” military life. Being a soldier involved evils totally apart from killing and, at the same time, could entail pursuits which weren’t very evil at all.
To make matters worse, military service was becoming a business. In ancient times, soldiers were paid with plundered bounties and/or rights of pillage. Armies sustained themselves by living off the cities and lands they marched through to protect. War was an unmitigated disaster.
On the other hand, when garrisoned, soldiers lived off their wives, through gambling or by engaging in small handcrafts and trades. As the economy and empire tanked, men sought security in the brutality of an increasingly “privatized” military life. Being a soldier involved evils totally apart from killing and, at the same time, could entail pursuits which weren’t very evil at all.
Thus, throughout the entire imperial period, the primary thrust of ecclesiastical writings with respect to war and soldiering was aimed at formulating precepts for individual conduct: whether a Christian could enlist or allow himself to be drafted or whether a soldier who had converted could remain in the army in some capacity. At least until Constantine’s conversion, there was no need to formulate political or geo-political theories.
As for ius bellum, there was no need to repackage Cicero. Obviously, if war was to be fought it ought at least be just; but the more predicate question was whether a Christian should fight in it at all. The answer, at least in the first and second centuries, was invariably, No.
It might be thought, as Celsus in fact argued, that this was a colossal exercise in self indulgence. I would suggest that it was in fact a more radical answer that went to what was seen to be the root of the problem: man’s alienation from man.
In the Church’s view, the primary cause of war was that man did not see his brother in his fellow man, and not seeing a brother, saw an enemy. Therefore, the radical solution to the core problem was to make a brother out of one’s enemy -- to learn to speak the same language of charity from empathy.
"The more devout the individual, the more effective he is in helping the Emperor, more so than the soldiers who go into the lines and kill all the enemy troops they can … The greatest warfare, in other words, is not with human enemies but with those spiritual forces which make men into enemies." (Origen Contra Celsum)
This was no poetical idleness. The whole thrust of church missions into the teutonic forests to convert the barbarians was precisely to create “community” with aliens where none had existed. Thus, Clement of Alexandria described the Church as “an army which sheds no blood.”
"If you enroll as one of God’s people, heaven is your country and God your lawgiver. And what are His laws? You shall not kill, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Protrepticus 11, 116)
Few of these writers could be characterized as illiterate or stupid. They knew all about “just war” and they understood clearly that that doctrine implicitly accepted the statu quo of man’s alienation from man. War acts upon a breach but doesn’t heal it. Cicero’s formula may have mitigated the occasions of war, but it did not bring about the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Church (or at least Augustine) had a bigger gambit: to bring about the true universal City of God on earth. And the only way to do that was to do today what you hoped to see materialize tomorrow. “By Hope we are saved,” (Rom 8: 24) The current pope explains:
“In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but 'performative'. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known, it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, I. 2)
Just as the destructive force of an army consists in the accumulated acts of individual violence; so conversely did the healing force of a Christian army consist in the swelling force of individual acts of charity.
The vision was simple and radical. As well as Socrates, the ecclesiastical writers of this period understood that ‘doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.” is a formula that “breaks down”. Conversely, returning good for evil, builds up.
Punt & Shuffle
But what was a bishop to advise once the emperor himself became Christian? The question was a virtual oxymoron given that the office of imperator was first and foremost a military office.
Ambrose was the first to provide an equivocating answer, stating that "fortitude, which in war preserves the country from the barbarians or helps the infirm at home or defends one's neighbor's from robbers, is a form of justice" (On the Duties of the Clergy, Book I, ch.27). Ambrose then went further: "He who does not repel an injury done to his fellow, if he is able to do so, is as much at fault as he who commits the injury" (Op.Cit Bk. I, ch. 36.)
In these passages, Ambrose was laundry-listing desirable character traits for the clergy; and in so doing, he was adopting a typically pagan form of moral literature to Christian use. The enumeration of rules of conduct had been a pastime of the stoics and, in the later empire, had resulted in a profusion of Guidebooks for the Well-Bred Man. It was from this literature that later ecclesiastical writers cobbled up the Seven Cardinal Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins.
The genre had a hoary pedigree, reaching through Cicero back to Plato’s Republic which had begun where Polemarchus’s definition of justice had broken down and which proceeded on the assumption that the qualities of the Just Man corresponded to the elements of the Just State and vice versa.
At first blush, Ambrose’s dictum said little more than “courage is an aspect of justice”. It was the sort of commonplace which would have been met with a kind of yawning agreement. Ambrose’s contribution was to serve up the cliché in a Jeremiah-coloured wrapping, advising his readers that courage in defence of others was a form of justice. In other words, christian courage was inspired by charity moved to succour widows, orphans and those in distress.
At first blush, Ambrose’s dictum said little more than “courage is an aspect of justice”. It was the sort of commonplace which would have been met with a kind of yawning agreement. Ambrose’s contribution was to serve up the cliché in a Jeremiah-coloured wrapping, advising his readers that courage in defence of others was a form of justice. In other words, christian courage was inspired by charity moved to succour widows, orphans and those in distress.
Although Ambrose was speaking about individual duties, it is reasonable to assume that both he and his listeners would have understood the lurking analogy to the State. In fact, in reproving Theodosius, Ambrose in no wise questioned the Emperor’s authority to punish revolt; rather he condemned a massacre that was unjust (“tyrannical”) and went on to praise Theodosius’s father, Gratian, whose troops had trampled the Empire in defence of one just cause after another.
Augustine followed up by explaining that just as a surgeon will cut away gangrene, so to the ruler will punish his people when they go astray. Although punishment should never be for the purpose of returning evil for evil; neither the surgeon nor the ruler act from motives of revenge, rather they do so from love. (Augustine, Letter 104 to Nectarius (409), citing 1 Thess 5.15 Rom 12.17.)
Augustine then went further and extolled that special kind of surgery practiced by soldiers,
If all this appears contradictory it is because it was. Amid a plethora of rules for personal conduct (which might or might not be analogized to political policies for the state) one is left with two stunning omissions: (1) a failure to expound a just war theory when it was there for the expounding and (2) a failure to condemn participation in defensive violence when it was occurring daily.
Celsus might well have smiled. All in all, albeit with unmistakable reluctance, the Church began to punt and shuffle now that one of her boys was at the helm.
Augustine followed up by explaining that just as a surgeon will cut away gangrene, so to the ruler will punish his people when they go astray. Although punishment should never be for the purpose of returning evil for evil; neither the surgeon nor the ruler act from motives of revenge, rather they do so from love. (Augustine, Letter 104 to Nectarius (409), citing 1 Thess 5.15 Rom 12.17.)
Augustine then went further and extolled that special kind of surgery practiced by soldiers,
“As for the soldier, in killing his enemy he is the servant of the law, and hence merely does his duty without any evil desire. Moreover the law itself, being made for the protection of the people, cannot be accused of concupiscence.” (St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, I.5.12.)and,
“Greatness and their own glory belong to warriors who are both very brave and very faithful (that is the source of the truer praise), to those who struggle and face danger in order, with the help of God who gives protection and assistance, to bring defeat upon an untamed enemy and win respite for the empire by pacifying the provinces. However, greater glory still is merited not by killing men with swords, but by war with words, and by acquiring or achieving peace not through war but through peace itself.” (Augustine, Political Writings (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,2001), 226.)Thus, while neither Ambrose nor Augustine ever exposited a theory of just war of defence, neither did they condemn what was taking place almost daily. The omission stood in marked contrast to the earlier injunction against Christian participation in those very same wars of imperial defence.
If all this appears contradictory it is because it was. Amid a plethora of rules for personal conduct (which might or might not be analogized to political policies for the state) one is left with two stunning omissions: (1) a failure to expound a just war theory when it was there for the expounding and (2) a failure to condemn participation in defensive violence when it was occurring daily.
Celsus might well have smiled. All in all, albeit with unmistakable reluctance, the Church began to punt and shuffle now that one of her boys was at the helm.
The Unmistakable Charity of War
The crisis that afflicted the Western Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries soon cast its shadow over the Eastern Empire in the eight and ninth, as Islamic and Slavic invaders pressed upon Byzantium.
The Muslim invaders, however, were somewhat more learned than the rustic Germans. During a diplomatic parlay in 851, Caliph Mutawakki’s negotiating team opened up with quotes from the Gospel of Mathew,
"Your God is Christ. He commanded you to pray for your enemies, to do good to those who hate and persecute you, and to offer the other cheek to those who hit you. But what do you actually do? If anyone offends you, you sharpen your sword and go into battle and kill. Why do you not obey your Christ?" (The Orthodox Church and Society VIII.2)To which St. Constantine-Cyril responded
"Christ is our God Who ordered us to pray for our offenders and to do good to them. He also said that no one of us can show greater love in life than he who gives his life for his friends That is why we generously endure offences caused us as private people. But in company we defend one another and give our lives in battle for our neighbors, so that you, having taken our companions as prisoners, could not imprison their souls together with their bodies by forcing them into renouncing their faith."The gauntlet cast down by an astute adversary, Cyril was forced to resolve Ambrose and Augustine’s fudging. To do so he resorted to the dualism that would become such a salient characteristic of medieval thinking.
Simply put, in contra-Salomonic fashion, Cyril resolved the contradiction by splitting the baby in half. The Emperor had two bodies. What the Christian emperor cannot do as a private person for himself (return violence for violence), he must do as emperor -- not out of lust or wrath but out of solicitude for his subjects. By the same token, in descending fashion, what we cannot do for ourselves, we can and indeed are obliged to do for others, as mere minions of the Emperor (in his imperial half).
Cyril’s exposition explains the Church’s, to us odd focus on “right intention.” The assumption underlying Cyril’s response was that, with respect to domestic matters within the city walls, the judgements of the authorities would be even handed, objective and aimed at insuring the public good. A law against prostitution or theft was not directed out of malice against Sabina or Donatus personally, but applied equally to all for the good of all. In this context, individual subjective “right intention” became subsumed to objective, societal “lawful authority”.
It warrants attempting to grasp the concepts involved. For philosophers writing about the formation of society (civitas) out of the chaos of the un-city, the evil of the chaos was individual auto-nomos; that is, every man being an impulse unto himself, the sole and ultimate Dictator and Executor of what he thinks is right. Killing is murder because it necessarily flows from ego alone and has no character of social lawfulness. It is this disconnected autonomy, necessarily mired in "self," that Augustine calls "original sin". Conversely, Law only comes into existence socially and hence social killing is inherently just because it is done by All unto All for the good of All.
Accordingly, if one were acting under orders and in service of the emperor then presumptively one was not acting for base, selfish and ignoble purposes. The guard who arrests a criminal or the individual soldier who fights in a war against external malfeasors does so with the right intention when he does so solely out of duty and pursuant to a lawfully declared action. He is not acting out of aggressive anger, nor is he even returning “evil for evil” -- but is acting with the dispassion of a surgeon and the solicitude of a father. It was this nexus between lawful authority and just intentionality that warranted individual Christians taking up arms in civic service.
Cyril’s argument illustrates how the Polemarchus-Socrates dialogue spoke directly to the “broader” question of the analogy between the Individual and the Republic. Is society a mere amplification of or analog to the individual, or, is there a qualitative difference between the One and the All? It is, as Plato would point out in Parmenides, a paradox.
Cyril's argument was built on the analogy of the State to the Individual; but his analogy pointed to its own incompleteness in that it danced lightly around the question of who stands above the state; and this calls into question the political relevance of co-related rules for individual conduct. (FN-3 The End? of Dualisms)
Cyril's argument was built on the analogy of the State to the Individual; but his analogy pointed to its own incompleteness in that it danced lightly around the question of who stands above the state; and this calls into question the political relevance of co-related rules for individual conduct. (FN-3 The End? of Dualisms)
There was an undeniably rhetorical symmetry in Cyril’s argument. However, switching between dualisms within analogies can trip up the best dancer. The analogy between the “one” and the “many” bore a critical defect in that it was not completely followed through. In logical terms an analogy should take the form A : B :: C : D. Instead, the components of Cyril’s argument were A : B :: C : C.
But the analogy breaks down when “one of us” is replaced by “all of us”. Who does “all of us” (i.e. society or the nation) come to the defence of? Another "all of them" i.e., country? Obviously not. The “all of us” comes to the defence of “all of us” which is simply self defence. However, it was said at the outset that the individual should not seek to defend himself, but rather should turn the other cheek. If the analogy were fully drawn, the conclusion should be that the State should not defend itself either.
The same defect appears if the analogy is examined in terms of intentionality.
What of our companions in Muslim custody outside the city? Surely the individual is not at fault if he follows an order to unselfishly protect his fellow citizens abroad? Surely not. But what of the emperor -- that “one” who represents society as a whole? An emperor or king is only “lawful authority” within his realms. Whose higher Authority does he dutifully obey when he ventures forth into alien lands? The answer would not be long in coming.
Stated in modern terms, the analogy confused subjective intentionality with objective political policy. It did so because a political rule was being extrapolated from earlier ecclesiastics whose principle focus had been on rules for individual conduct and spirituality.
But, as the Muslim ambassador was astutely aware, those same Christian authorities undercut the retributive premise of a just war. Augustine’s Letters to Nectorius, repeatedly stated that the Christian will not return evil for evil.
It is inaccurate to think of Cyril as formulating a theory of “just” cause in the retributive Ciceronian sense. Although canonist will continue to use the phrase “just war,” Cyril’s unmistakable allusion was to Jeremiah’s exhortation to care for widows and orphans and those in need. What he in fact expounded was a theory of “charitable cause” which would come to underwrite medieval codes of chivalry and which would ultimately metamorphose into a canon for holy war.
According to him, what made it lawful for an individual to engage in violence is:
1. that it is done for the sake of others and not even for defence of self; and,
Thus, if an individual is justified in coming to the defence of others against attacks within the city walls it should be equally just to defend those same persons when the attack emanates from outside the walls. This was perfectly logical, which is why the first part of Cyril’s analogy was framed in the context of a defensive war, most probably from the ramparts of some city.2. that the originating force of the act is a higher authority, whose beneficent intent is transferred to the agent.
But the analogy breaks down when “one of us” is replaced by “all of us”. Who does “all of us” (i.e. society or the nation) come to the defence of? Another "all of them" i.e., country? Obviously not. The “all of us” comes to the defence of “all of us” which is simply self defence. However, it was said at the outset that the individual should not seek to defend himself, but rather should turn the other cheek. If the analogy were fully drawn, the conclusion should be that the State should not defend itself either.
The same defect appears if the analogy is examined in terms of intentionality.
What of our companions in Muslim custody outside the city? Surely the individual is not at fault if he follows an order to unselfishly protect his fellow citizens abroad? Surely not. But what of the emperor -- that “one” who represents society as a whole? An emperor or king is only “lawful authority” within his realms. Whose higher Authority does he dutifully obey when he ventures forth into alien lands? The answer would not be long in coming.
Stated in modern terms, the analogy confused subjective intentionality with objective political policy. It did so because a political rule was being extrapolated from earlier ecclesiastics whose principle focus had been on rules for individual conduct and spirituality.
But, as the Muslim ambassador was astutely aware, those same Christian authorities undercut the retributive premise of a just war. Augustine’s Letters to Nectorius, repeatedly stated that the Christian will not return evil for evil.
"We have no desire to nurse our anger by taking revenge over events that are past; rather we try to act mercifully with an eye to the future. There are ways of punishing evil men that are not only gentle but even for their benefit and well being....” (Letter 91 to Nectorius)and,
Punishment “should always be done without hating the person, without returning to him evil for evil.” (Letter 104, supra.)To skirt around these rather explicit rejections of retributive justice, Cyril, supplanted the missing premise with an alernative rule for individual conduct which could then be projected to cover the State.
It is inaccurate to think of Cyril as formulating a theory of “just” cause in the retributive Ciceronian sense. Although canonist will continue to use the phrase “just war,” Cyril’s unmistakable allusion was to Jeremiah’s exhortation to care for widows and orphans and those in need. What he in fact expounded was a theory of “charitable cause” which would come to underwrite medieval codes of chivalry and which would ultimately metamorphose into a canon for holy war.
May I with Right and Conscience make this Claim?
Henry V
Let us return to the more West on the eve of that "revolution which will ever be
remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth."
Whatever Ambrose or Augustine may or may not have propounded, the issue was soon moot. In 476, the Empire in the West collapsed and the issue of just war was eclipsed by the more feudal issue of just and chivalrous conduct. Now the world spoke German or some concoction thereof. Violence was taken for granted and conduct was governed by codes of courage and loyalty.
The Germans were no less superstitious than the Romans. Having right on one’s side was as important as hardened steel and what else is loyalty except doing good to one’s friends and harm to his enemies? Polemarchus was unheard of but he was not unknown.
The low middle ages illustrated the shortcomings of the Ciceronian formula. The instances are legion of kings, counts and ordinary knights consulting and being assured by their priests as to the justness of their cause before riding off to trample down harvests and mutilate their foes.
Far more than even the Romans, the Germans were sticklers for justice so that war now became as much a lawyer’s game as a knight’s. Slaughter was preceded by the Battle of Scribblers who drew up precise and lengthy statements of grievances, remonstrances and demands for satisfaction which were met in turn by counter claims and further demands. Nor should anyone think that these patents were primitive affairs. The medieval mind was extremely acute, active and inventive. These remonstrances verged on being theological or legal treatises. One need only call to mind Lord Canterbury’s parody in Henry V
The Church’s position was little different than under Ambrose, save only that localization of temporal power in the person of a chieftain, count or duke cast the issue into a less public and more private hue. It also meant that, in any given instance, an ecclesiastical ruling was little more than bought and paid for. As a restraint, the just war formula was all but meaningless. The rule was succinctly summarized by one anonymous Anglo-Norman lawyer,
"Homicide is licit in three ways: when God secretly inspires one person to kill another; or when a judge having power of the sword slays someone or when on command of a prince, a soldier slays an enemy.” (Durham Cathedral Library, MS. C.III. 1, fol. 213.) (FN-4 / The Blockhead Is Us )
The foreseeable result was that Europe was torn asunder by just and inspired war. However, before falling to a facile and condescending cynicism, it is worth taking a step back to ask whether all the scribbling was “just rhetoric” or whether some other process was at work.
God watching His Children's Just Wars
The medieval period is one of baffling contrasts. Stunning acts of cruelty and chivalry co-existed side by side. Dualism went from a being political theory to being a fact of life. To make matters worse, the invaders were now invaded by Normans to the North, Magyars in the East and Muslim in the South and very typically there was no clear distinction between domestic disorder and external hostilities.
It was the very lawlessness of conditions that gave rise to a fastidious and refined legalism, as men struggled to impose Word over the chaos. Legal prohibitions and rules of “due process” not only reflected the existence of barbaric behaviour but often incorporated it. Law might not improve man’s nature but it could at least regularize violence and temper the effects war. This regularizing of war -- what is called ius in bello -- will ultimately become the medieval contribution to the concept of just war and the cornerstone of present day international humanitarian law.
The tempering of conflict began in the Tenth Century when the Gallican Church organized a peace movement to persuade nobles to renounce private war and violence. In 989 a council at Charroux proclaimed Pax Dei which prohibited men from robbing pilgrims, plundering churches, or from usurping the flocks,tools and produce of peasants.
A quarter century later, in 1023, Robert the Pious of France and German emperor Heinrich II proposed a universal peace pact for their kingdoms and eventually for all Christendom. Starting in 1027 the Truce of God was proclaimed by church authorities in Aquitane.
A quarter century later, in 1023, Robert the Pious of France and German emperor Heinrich II proposed a universal peace pact for their kingdoms and eventually for all Christendom. Starting in 1027 the Truce of God was proclaimed by church authorities in Aquitane.
Seeking to regulate warfare, military actions were confined to between sunrise Monday and Wednesday sunset. It was specified that soldiers could only be compensated by a regular salary (not plunder) and that anyone exercising violence on noncombatants in war was to be excommunicated. Certain types of arms were outlawed as being too cruel or even too effective. A century or so later, these rules were given “universal” application by the Third Lateran Council (1179).
God’s Truce / God’s War.
Contemporaneously with the Truce Movement canonists began in earnest to elaborate a theory of Just War. It was now that jurists rummaged through ancient authorities looking for guidance from what they presupposed was a wiser more enlightened time.
What these medieval lawyers cobbled together was a legal methodology -- a “law of war” -- that went far beyond anything Augustine, Ambrose or Cyril may be supposed to have expounded. Like churches built with rummaged chunks of old temples, the canonists built a new legal city with scraps of dicta .
Chief of these canonists was the above mentioned Gratian who, writing in the wake of the First Crusade, compiled a series of “decrees” synthesizing rules of engagement from pagan and ecclesiastical sources. Under this monk’s archivilist ardour, Cicero’s general formula of a just a war was amplified into a laundry list of just causes, drawn from the full heap of recriminations a thousand years could provide
Theoretically speaking, all the specifications cobbled up by the medieval jurists were simply unfoldings from what was implicit in Cicero’s three-part definition. To this extent, one was left with a verbose rendition of “an eye for an eye” in defence of the tooth.
But, Cyril’s rationale of charitable violence in defence of others was a poisonous seed which now sprouted. If it was permissible, nay laudable, to defend one’s neighbour and fellow citizens was there any reason not to defend innocents abroad?
Medieval canonist couldn’t see why not. To the list just causes which had previously included national self-defense and defence of innocents at home, Gratian added defence of innocents abroad, particularly the at-risk and long suffering innocents in the Holy Land.
As authority, Gratian cited a letter from Pope Alexander II which approved of war against the Infidel in territories which had been Roman.” (Decretum at C.23 q.8 c.11. [!])
Alexander’s reasoning was a stunning example of quibbling medieval dualism. Why the territorial limitation? It all flowed from duality:
Just as there was an imperfect sun which revolved around the earth in an elliptical orbit and the “ideal” sun which rotated in a circle; just as there was sinful man now, who would later put on the incorruptible; just as the king had two bodies, the “perfect” one of which could do no wrong; just as there had been the imperial city of rome, and the eternal city of god; so too, the imperial city itself was split into the Roman Empire that actually was now and the “ideal” Roman Empire which was the one whose ambit extended to all lands which had once been subject to Roman rule; and so too was not the infidel abroad today akin to the barbarians of yore who were rightly resisted by emperors past? Therefor, in repelling [sic] the Infidel from “true” Roman territories the Crusades were merely fighting a “Roman War” -- that is, that war of defence against barbarian invaders which Ambrose and Augustine had at least tacitly approved.Moreover, since God is Justice itself, it followed that a truly just war was willed by God; and if God willed it, it was just. To the medieval mind, the very circularity was a manifestation of perfection.
And so it was that Pope Urban II exhorted the assembled crowd of restless knights
No question about just cause here.
"As you have all heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania...
“From the confines of Jerusalem ... a horrible tale has gone forth... [A] race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God,... has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire... They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they ... spread upon the altars.. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows..... Of the abominable rape of the women, why to speak of it is worse than to be silent!
"Your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. "
Nor doubt about right intentions either."But how can the ignorant teach others? How can the licentious make others modest? And how can the impure make others pure? So first correct yourselves, in order that, free from blame , you may be able to correct those who are subject to you.”
So moved was the assembled throng, that they cried out in unison, "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"
No doubt about anything at all here. It was all a very Roman War (FN-5 / Realtime Sociology in the Middle Ages)“With eyes uplifted to heaven, Urban gave thanks to God and, with his hand commanding silence, said:
“Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, Deus lo vult!”
As if to complete the dismal denouement, just war which had was once viewed as forgivable because it was unavoidable now became the toxin for earning forgiveness and salvation.
Dulce et suaviter pro patria mori, Cicero had declaimed in a moment of patriotic fervor, forgetting the great rule of universal reason embedded in all breasts from which no Senate could release us. Six centuries later, the Emperor Justinian cast the sentiment into a Christian mold: Because they died for the republic... they live in perpetual glory. (Inst. Justinian. I.23)
Not surprisingly, the Council of Clarement (1079) which now declared the First Crusade, also authorized a commutation of penance which Urban II decreed for the “remission of sins”.
“We ought to endure much suffering for the name of Christ - misery, poverty, nakedness, persecution, want, illness, hunger, thirst, and other ills of this kind, ...”because,
"All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested."If it was sweet and easy to die for the Imperial City. how much sweeter and lasting to die for the City of God. It all went to show how easily a Just War could become a Jihad.
When things didn’t quite go as hoped, it was deduced that the fault lay in an insufficiency of pure intention. And so a Crusade of Children set forth - innocents to succour the innocent. It was all quite logical and totally disastrous.
Learning little, a century later, St. Thomas Aquinas pronounced the then definitive distillation of Church doctrine:
"In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior. [Whereas] it is the function of rulers to defend the common weal against external enemies [and to] rescue the poor, and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner;
"Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault.
"Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. ... [Because] "True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good."
Aquinas then quoted a letter of Augustine as evidence that Christians are permitted to wage war.
"Augustine says [that] : "If the Christian Religion forbade war altogether, ... the Gospel would have counselled [us] to give up soldiering altogether. On the contrary, it states: 'Do violence to no man . . . and be content with your pay' [Lk. 3:14]. If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did not forbid soldiering."To which it might well be answered that if the Gospel truly counselled war it would not have said “Do no violence.”
Aquinas’ formula was little more than Cicero en theologie. But analogy is to law what weeds are to grass. If war was allowed against the infidel abroad, why not against the heretic at home? In this way, the idea of Holy War returned and set the stage for the disastrous Reformation Wars. Crusades abroad inevitably become, by analogy, crusades at home.
Because of Aquinas’ preeminence in other more metaphysical matters, he tends to get cited as a major authority of the doctrine of just war, when in fact his contribution was essentially a synopsis. As even this brief survey has shown, the real work was done be legions of lesser luminaries.
Among those "lesser" luminaries was the Spanish Jesuit jurist, Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546 ) who, two centuries later, unsuccessfully attempted to put some limits on Aquinas’ open ended formulation of just cause. The occasion of Vitoria’s attempt was the argument, advanced by some of his countrymen, that defending Indians from themselves, justified the conquest of the Americas.
After summarizing the now established just war formula, Vitoria turned to the all-important laundry list of rightful excuses, specifying that none of the following could constitute cause for a just war:
1. differences in religion;
2. imperial expansion;
3. personal glory or convenience.
“The sole and only just cause for waging war is when harm has been inflicted.” (Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, Cambridge University Press 1991, 303, 304.)
Having almost restated the early Christian idea of an excusable war in strict self-defence, Vitoria then added the fatal charitable coda, stating that war was also permitted
“to save innocent people from massacre, human sacrifice, cannibalism, or other violations of natural morality.”
To make matters worse,
"If it is evident that subjects are suffering injustice from their king, it is lawful for foreign princes to make war on that king. And, in general, when subjects have right on their side in fighting against their king, other princes may justly fight for the people. This is because the people is innocent and princes (i.e., rulers of the states) have by natural law the right and power to defend the world against injustice" (Commentary on the Summa Theologia of St. Thomas 40.1.6.)
It may be hard to believe that Vitoria was part of a cadre of Spanish humanists who were actually seeking to restrain Spanish conquests in the Americas. Their arguments that the Indians were sentient beings who had rights under natural and human law were at least partially successful in mitigating the terms and conditions of conquest. But as a formula for gauging just war, Vitoria’s limitation of “just causes” ended up simply adding to the laundry list of belligerent excuses.
Nevertheless, like Cicero before him, the value of Vitoria’s contribution emerges once the formula -- on its linguistic face inadequate -- is mise en scene. Read attentively, Vitoria’s commentaries represented a breath taking sea change in human consciousness.
Nevertheless, like Cicero before him, the value of Vitoria’s contribution emerges once the formula -- on its linguistic face inadequate -- is mise en scene. Read attentively, Vitoria’s commentaries represented a breath taking sea change in human consciousness.
For a thousand years the Middle Ages had lived under the shadow of Rome. In 1079 it was still plausible to think of the Crusades as a war to reclaim national territory. No longer. By the time Vitoria reached 20 years of age, the world had become, in truth, a world. By the time Vitoria died, the world’s first global economy had been established with a glittering band of silk and gold stretching from the Philippines to Acapulco and Peru through Seville to Naples and on to Constantinople and the Levant. Worse than absurd, talking about “Roman War” in defence of a ghostly empire was an irrelevancy. No. There was gold in them hills overrun with alien savages!
As Cicero had championed a pan-Mediterranean humanism so now Vitoria championed a truly universal brotherhood of all men, subject to “an eternal and unchangeable law ... valid for all nations and all times.” The young jesuit lifted his pen against the spectre of expansionist imperial wars looming on the horizon.
If we bear in mind the virulent cultural jingoism of our own day, Vitoria’s humanism is all the more extraordinary. For the people Spain had come into contact with worshipped strange and frightful gods to whom they did offer up gory human sacrifice.
What was a Christian to do? If these others were our natural brothers, did we not owe them duties of succour as well? Vitoria was caught in a bind: if he answered in the negative, he denied the very principle of common humanity he wished to establish. (FN / The Same Gods?)
Once again, the issue concerned our response to evil and once again the Church made an equivocal and compromising choice. It was left to another Spaniard to devastatingly ridicule the result.
The Dark Side of Jeremiah
As the 15th and 16th centuries wore on, Spain continued to fight the Infidel in the East and Heathens in the West. In this ambience, it was hardly surprising that printers should seize the profitable opportunity of a new medium to churn out scintillating adventure tales of distressed damsels and knights errant . It was said (and we can believe it) that people walked about with their eyes glued to these new porta-books, the Kindles of their day. The tales of Amadis of Gaul was the world’s first “all-time bestseller”.
Like our own “Wild West,” the heydays of chivalry were past but enough survived in attitudes and practice to render them recognizable and hence popular. By his own account, those very attitudes had lead Miguel Cervantes to seek temporal and eternal recompense fighting the Infidel in Algiers, where he lost a hand and was kept as a slave enduring a thousand privations and dangers. Returning impoverished from seven years captivity, he bore with him the treasure of a hitherto lost work by the Arab historian Cid Hamete Benengeli, chronicling the heroic deeds of the greatest knight errant of all.
There were those who doubted whether the world stood in need of knight errantry. And so, as Thomas Aquinas had once extolled the superior virtues of theology, Don Quixote now rose to the occasion and offered to prove to his dinner hosts that the science of arms was superior to laws and letters.
“I speak of human letters, the end of which is to establish justice, give to every man that which is his due, and see and take care that good laws are observed.”
( Indeed! Had not Ambrose himself extolled that very pursuit of justice which “helps the infirm at home, and defends one's neighbor's from robbers”? )
Don Quixote began by observing that while academics certainly hadt to endure poverty and long nights of studious effort, these hardships did not surpass those of the man of arms who, in addition to enduring cold and hunger, must also face death, the greatest privation of all. Not only must the soldier steel himself with the discipline of his art, he must also discipline himself with privations and penances, such as finding hard rocks to sleep on to insure that his motives are pure.
( For sure! Who could fail to recall that Urban II himself had counselled precisely such soldierly penances? )
Could any doubt Don Quixote's truth and wisdom? Had not St. Augustine himself written,Don Quixote summarized his contentions:
Men of letters say that without them arms cannot maintain themselves, for war, too, has its laws and is governed by them and laws belong to the domain of letters and men of letters. To this men of arms make answer that without them laws cannot be maintained, for by arms states are defended, kingdoms preserved, cities protected, roads made safe, seas cleared of pirates;
...and clinched his proof.
“While the goal of rendering every man his due is undoubtedly noble, lofty, and deserving of high praise it cannot excel the purpose of arms, which have for their end and object, peace.
"This peace is the true end of war; and war is only another name for arms. This, then, being admitted, that the end of war is peace, it follows that it has the advantage over the end of letters,”
“It is therefore with the desire for peace that wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war.” (City of God, chapter 12)Cervantes reports that “ It excited fresh pity in those who had heard him to see a man of apparently sound sense, and with rational views on every subject he discussed, so hopelessly wanting in all, when his wretched chivalry was in question; for he was seized by a truly dark passion.”
-oOo-
But the errant knight is an equivocal figure. Despite his undisputed madness, does not half the world admire him? It was Dostoyevsky who gushed that on the Latter Day when Man is called upon to justify himself, it would be sufficient to hand God a copy of Don Quixote.
At bottom, men like Gratian or Aquinas --in so far as he expounds on war -- were merely lawyers quibbling a case. As Socrates understood, the alleged justness of any cause is always arguable and never knowable. Once it is assumed that war can be justified we are cast adrift on a sea of wrath and lust.
The same cannot be said of Ambrose, Aquinas or Vitoria. Augustine and Ambrose still remembered that even if war is in some sense unavoidable either out of weakness or from a concept of duty, doing harm to your enemy is never productive of good. Their reluctant allowance and limited endorsement of a resort to force was equivocal; and, if they waffled, it was because they were alive to the fact that the concept of charitable violence in defence of innocents had been explicitly rejected in Gesthemene when Jesus stayed Peter’s sword.
Such pacifism is very hard for us to accept and perhaps given the feebleness of our reason we ought not always accept it. After all, Christ drove the money changers from the temple and what mother bear will not ferociously defend her cub? (FN-6 /Animal Justice)
Given these perplexities, the modern Church has attempted to fashion a doctrine that justifies war under the strict conditions when it appears to be unavoidably necessary.
“The use of force to obtain justice is morally licit in itself” and “is the right, and the duty, of those who have responsibilities for others, such as civil leaders and police forces.”
The resort to force “must be done with a good intention, ... to correct vice, to restore justice or to restrain evil,
The use of force “must be appropriate in the circumstances. An act which may otherwise be good and well motivated can be sinful by reason of imprudent judgment and execution.”
The Just War doctrine establishes certain conditions for the legitimate exercise of force, all of which must be met:
1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
3. there must be serious prospects of success;
4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition .
Nor is everything licit in war. Actions which are forbidden, and which constitute morally unlawful orders that may not be followed, include
• attacks on or mistreatment of non combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners
• genocide, whether of a people, nation or ethnic minorities
• indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants.
Lastly, it is not enough to wage war to achieve justice without treating the underlying causes. As Vitoria had stated, princes “should strive above all to avoid all provocations and causes of war” and “once the war has been fought and victory won, he must use his victory with moderation and Christian humility.”
When current Church doctrine on so-called "Just War" is carefully read in its historical and philosophical context it can be seen to enunciate a very limited and conditioned allowance for a resort to violence.
After two thousand years, the Church ended up much where Cicero began. In the pagan world, the terms “just” or “right reason” implied balance, right ordering and moderation in all respects. When Cicero wrote that a just war had to be fought with right reason, it was implicit that war would not be entered into hastily or frivolously, that means would be proportionate and moderate and that it would not be undertaken for base and ignoble motives.
And yet, whereas the glosses of the middle ages were simply inferences from what was implicit in the original formula, the current formulation which imposes the precondition of seeking all other means to avoid a grave and lasting harm adds a requirement not implicit in Cicero and which draws a line between declamation and necessity.
The Church’s genuine contribution to the argument was more the proffering of a radical pacifist alternative, expounded by Socrates and died for by Jesus. Where the Church stumbled was in making a limited allowance for the use of force in strict defence of others. It was not that the exception was so inherently wrong, but it was a stumble that turned into a free fall.
Just Cause versus Forgivable Crime
What this inadequate and brief survey of a complex subject may perhaps serve to illustrate is that the doctrine of Just War:
1. stands at the juncture of a fundamental moral choice between suffering or doing harm;
2. that no war is ever truly “just” but at best is only excusable because -- given our limited capacity to endure or countenance evil -- it appears to be unavoidably necessary;
3. that unless rigorously and narrowly construed, this limited exception almost immediately unfurls into an obnoxious rhetorical tissue masking a lust for blood, power and riches, so that
4. ultimately the concept of a just war ends up being a deceit.
For all the hortatory, jurisprudential blather and theological conceits, at bottom, the theory of a just war is simply an extension of retributive justice; and the theory rises no higher than its source.
The idea of just war suffers from two principle conceptual problems. The first problem, explained by Socrates, inheres in ascertaining what “justice” calls for in any given case. The second problem, illusrated by St. Cyril, lies in drawing an analogy between individual and state action.
In and of itself the idea of “justice” is a conjoining gloss on underlying naked conduct. It seeks to impose a kind of “sense” or “order” on acts which are in themselves otherwise random. The concept interposes itself at a mid point in a spectrum of conduct which can be graphed as follows:
1. vengeance/despoliation ---- harm to enemies whether they deserve it or not
2. an eye for eye---------------- doing good to friends & harm to enemies supposing they deserve it
3. forgiveness/charity---------- good to enemies and friends,whether they deserve it or not
Doing good or suffering evil have nothing to do with “justice”. The idea of “justice” is interjected in order to rationalize and find a cause for chosing between doing good or harm.
On what basis do we do good or harm? The traditional answer has been the lex talionis which is grounded in fundamental intuitions of balance and proportionality. At first blush there does not appear to be anything inherently illogical in rendering every man his due. But almost immediately, the concept suffers in its application.
If just violence is based on some sort of symmetrical, moral accounting, we are immediately ensnared by the paradox of the Oresteia -- must we kill our mother to avenge her killing of our father and thereby commit a horrendous crime which requires further repayment from us? While, retributive justice as a restraint on excess vengeance is good enough, as an affirmative injunction it is a trap. Whether cast in a play or set out in a dialogue, the Ancients recognized what Kant would call the fundamental “heteronomy” of doing the very thing we condemn doing.
Closure for the just man
If, on the other hand, violence is justified as some sort of defensive practicality, then “justice” has nothing to do with the inquiry but simply interlopes like a distracting harlequin. Speaking practically, we do not strike back in order to “repay” an injury but simply to prevent further injury to ourselves. How do we know that this response will work? If we engage in a sequence of punch for punches, the issue will be decided by he who tires first, which has little do with justice or practicality. The entire theory will have collapsed into trial by ordeal. If we “pre-emptively” strike back with greater force -- with two blows for one -- then we have gone beyond an eye for an eye, which is unjust, although it may be practical.
If such contradictions and cunundra exist in our own case, how much harder is it to know what is just or appropriate in the case of defending others? Cervantes repeatedly ridicules the idea of charitable violence by having Don Quixote ride off to the defence of someone who doesn’t need it, or who was the aggressor or on the stimulus of some other misbegotten misconception.
When it comes to the state, the situation is worse because the analogy between one and many does not truly exist. War is something more than a defensive punch warding off a continued attack. It is true that Tribe A can launch a surprise attack on Tribe B, requiring the latter to defend against the act of Tribe A’s village invasion. However, once we move beyond such primitive examples of collective action, we become involved in complex mobilizations ensuing upon a web of mutual grievances existing alongside a plethora of other options short of violence. If individual violence is excusable because it is unprovoked, unavoidable and necessary, these conditions almost never exist where state action is involved. The analogy breaks down because the state acts as one and through many at the same time.
To illustrate. “France” did not have a “right” to Alsace Lorraine any more or less than “Germany”. While we may draw a cartoon of a person called France, holding the province in her bosom, in actual fact Alsace Lorraine was owned by thousands of people some of whom were French others of whom were be Germans and still others who were French and German. Which one of these thousands did not have a right? Who among these had a just grievance for what?
In war time France or Germany mobilize “as one” but in peacetime neither country, as such, does anything. What is attributed to “France” or to “Germany” as an alleged cause for war is in fact titration from a myriad of individual business, social and cultural dealings in competition and cooperation each lobbying for official support and expression. This actuality is quite the opposite of the pleasant assumption that “lawful authority” does not act out of concuspiscience; but in all events, from such a myriad of interactions, truly ascertaining just cause is simply an impossible calculus.
It was the impossibility of ever unravelling this calculus that led Tolstoy’s War and Peace to extol the virtues of the General Mikhail Kutuzov who, against the frantic demands of his staff, persistently retreated before the advancing French and abandoned Moscow without a fight.
In the “Epilogue” to the novel, Tolstoy ridicules military “strategies” and studious expositions as to the causes of the war. None of these, he says, accomplish or explain a thing. A battle is made up of thousands of one-on-one encounters and reactions. In the multiple confusion of one on one, any singular impulsive act can turn the tide, one man’s enthusiasm or another’s sudden fear spreading like a caustic reaction. So too as to the causes of the war. What was called “Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia” was simply the coinciding and coalescing impulses of millions of Frenchmen which impelled them into Russia, just as the swelling tide of impulses impelled the Barbarians into the Empire
Was then the Emperor of All Russia to retreat the extra mile? Against all his younger, thoroughbred officers demanding strategies and actions, Kutuzov patiently retreated as the French marched in. When the swell of their collective impulses was spent, he followed forward as they fell back. The calculus was beyond knowing, but the one eyed general alone understood that resisting the course of history, whatever it might turn out to be, was futile.
Gen. Mikail KutuzovThe early Church, through and including Augustine was indisputably cognizant of nature and defects of “justice” which is why they refrained from expounding theories of just war. In the end, "what does justice require?" is an unanswerable question and they were not interested in theorizing upon an utterly false moral choice between just and unjust wars. (Does anyone advocate unjust war? ) The true choice was between pacifism and any resort to violence. Neither Ambrose nor Augustine were being merely poetic in saying that the only way to build a new, more perfect city was through accumulating acts of charity each one a new brick against the outer darkness. They were alive to the fact that repaying evil with good was itself a paradoxical form of injustice precisely because it did not render an eye for an eye but gave to the offender something other than what was his “just deserts”. Here too their answer played coy but they saw all too vividly that the civilization built and defended on “just violence” stood on a corrupt foundation and compounded evil day by day.
Still, the questions persisted. The early Fathers were not only preaching and theosophising; they were answering questions put to them by earnest and baffled individuals. Is it harm to restrain a thief? Is it “injury” to cauterize an injurious gangrene? Is it violence to protect one’s self? Confronted with such questions amidst a crumbling civilization, Augustine and other church elders sought to provide practical down-to earth moral guidance for their flocks. Too often, it seems to me, subsequent interpreters have failed to pay strict attention to what was asked in what context. Strictly speaking, words like de-fense and pro-tect refer to actions which block, ward off, deflect, stop some other action. They might not suffer the attack, but neither do they involve attacking back. It is a facile and murderous sophistry that plays fast and loose with such advice.
These early church fathers most certainly understood that it was the rare and fortuitous defense which ended up being entirely and strictly defensive, and to was this reality that focused their concerned on fashioning a standard for measuring excusable violence.
Asking when violence may be forgiven is a very different question from pronouncing on when is violence permitted. The difference in terminology is critical. In legal parlance a just or lawful or rightful act is one that is inherently good in itself. On the other hand, an “excusable” act is one that is recognized to be fundamentally wrong but which can be condoned in certain circumstances.I do not say that this is the only way to read Ambrose and Augustine; but I do say that it is one that minimizes the contradictions and mitigates the equivocation. They were not fudging for the sake of war, but for forgiveness of human fraility and error in difficult and dubious situations.
This reading comports with custom and usage. Up through the Crusades, both Church doctrine and popular opinion truly accepted that war and violence was inherently evil (notwithstanding its great popularity). Even when their cause was blessed as “just”, soldiers did pre-penitence before battle for the sins they were about to commit. At times they were barred from communion for a period after hostilities until they had purged the blood from their hands. Augustine wrote that soldiers were to be pitied because they ran the risk of dying in a state of sin, without opportunity for penance and restored grace.
If war is indelibly evil then it can in no case be "just". Never; and it is simply verbal nonsensese to say otherwise. Accepting that war is indelibly evil, the result is a doctrine of excusable necessity that provides a check list for moral self examination. In that light, the Church’s current doctrine is fairly rigorous.
But once “excuse” is massaged into “permission” the result is a doctrine of rationalized violence that amounts to little more than legal propaganda. The rationales sound fair and appear reasonable but every step of the way have been proved, in logic and experience, to be wanting. The theory of just war is, dear Polemarchus, the deceit some rich and mighty man uses to get others to do his dying for him.
© WCG - 2009
Part II - [ here ] discusses how President Obama has perverted and trashed even Cicero's Concept of Just War.
2 comments:
I came her via a comment you left on a piece at Truthout, though I can't find which one it was now. I put woodchipgazette into a search engine and found your blogs and I have to say that I am very, very impressed with your erudition, though I don't think your use of vulgar words enhances your argument, even though I understand why you use such words. It is too bad that your thoughts aren't more widely known - I think they rank right up there with Arthur Silber and Chris Floyd. Bravo!!!
Thanks, Jeff. Being compared to Chris Floyd is quite something. You are right about lapsing into vulgarity. I do and will try to tone that down. Feedback like yours encourages me to keep at it. Thanks and best wishes.
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