Confessional Just War Thinking and International Politics

From its very first pages, In Defence of War is a confessional argument for what Biggar calls the “Christian just war tradition.” Biggar describes himself as an Augustinian realist; his ideas on the just use of force are rooted in Christian language and commitments all the way down. In fact, to my knowledge, In Defence is the most robust confessional argument for the just war tradition since those of Paul Ramsey and Reinhold Niebuhr. This alone makes the book a significant contribution to the field of just war thinking. It also raises some important questions.

For example: Insofar as this is a book that wishes to step into the realm of policy and international affairs I wonder why Biggar chose to use specifically confessional language to make his claims. Other notable moralists of just war thinking—Michael Walzer, James Turner Johnson, John Kelsay—while certainly granting just war tradition its Christian roots, reference a tradition of just war thinking that has separated itself from that heritage and that has placed its commitments in terms of nonconfessional moral language as well as positive international law. And even confessional thinkers who have found a broad public following (such as Ramsey and Niebuhr) were much more tentative regarding the role of the moralist than Biggar appears to be. Arguing against the idea that the moralists ought to refrain from the “prudential exercise of statecraft,” Biggar writes that, while the moralist must rely on others for “trustworthy information about the historical, political, military, and technical facts, and for estimates of probability in risk,” the moralist is in the best position to offer “precise, albeit conditional” moral judgments insofar as they have been trained in the theory and practical methods of ethics. To put it bluntly, I wonder why Biggar has chosen to use an intentionally Christian form of just war thinking in a book intended to advise policy makers in a pluralistic society. While it seems clear that one of the reasons for this choice has to do with the need to address internal Christian debates regarding a presumption of pacifism, this ultimately interferes with the book’s more fundamental aims.

In what follows, I shall illustrate the problem of relating confessional language to policy making by way of discussing (1) Biggar’s depiction of just war as punishment done through love and (2) his argument that the moral law can trump international law in certain situations. For the first issue, I pose questions on how it is that Biggar imagines Christian ideas about love to guide moral and ethical decision making on the part of secular governments, or governments that do not officially adhere in any way to Christian thinking on the subject. For the second issue, I pose questions on how it is that an insistence on the superiority of the moral law—described in terms of Christian natural law—can serve as a guide to practical decision making in the hard cases of war.

Biggar on Love and the Christian Just War

Biggar is particularly concerned with reconciling the idea of war as coercive punishment with the Christian injunction of love and forgiveness. In fact, his argument is a direct rejoinder to the Christian pacifist position that war—understood as coercive punishment—is in direct opposition to the very nature of Christian love and forgiveness, as well as to the moral and ethical posture toward others that Christianity requires.

Here, two points are important to highlight. First, Biggar argues that while forgiveness is an act that begins with compassion, it also requires absolution—described as the “moment when . . . the victim addresses the perpetrator and says, ‘I forgive you. The trust that was broken is now restored’” (2013, 66). Therefore, forgiveness as absolution must not be granted without serious consideration of the perpetrator’s repentance and future intentions. To forgive someone who is not remorseful or penitent is foolish and dangerous. It robs respect for those who suffered at the hands of the wrongdoer and, moreover, Biggar writes, “it robs him of the salutary stimulus to reflect, to learn, and to grow. . . . Even worse, it degrades him by...