Nigel Biggar's Just War: Reflections on the jus ad vellum (original) (raw)

Nigel Biggar, In Defence of War - A Review Essay

Nigel Biggar’s book In Defence of War is the most substantial, forceful and provocative Christian defence of the idea of a just war to have appeared in many years.2 This article presents a summary of key arguments of the book (Part I) and briefly offers three critical observations these arguments evoke (Part II).

In Defence of Just War: Christian Tradition, Controversies, and Cases

De Ethica. A Journal of Philosophical, Theological and Applied Ethics, 2015

This article presents four controversial issues that are raised by the articulation of just war thinking in my book, In Defence of War (2013, 2014): the conception of just war as punitive, the penultimate nature of the authority of international law, the morality of national interest, and the elasticity of the requirement of proportionality. It then proceeds to illustrate the interpretation of some of the criteria of just war in terms of three topical cases: Britain’s belligerency against Germany in 1914, the Syrian rebellion against the Assad regime in 2011, and Israe’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza in 2013. It is often claimed that just war thinking has been rendered obsolete by novel phenomena such as nuclear weapons, wars ‘among the people’, war-by-remote-control, and cyber-aggression. The presentation of issues and cases in this article, notwithstanding its brevity, is sufficient to show that just war thinking continues to develop by wrestling with controversi...

Just War and the Peaceable Kingdom

Harvard Theological Review, 2014

Nations love to go to war, argue leftist pacifists in democratic Western societies. By this account, governments cannot resist the temptation to assert their selfish interests by violent means. Political leaders use the language of just war to hide their real intentions: imperialistic domination and economic profit. These pacifists charge that with the Iraq war, the disastrous consequences of such politics have become hideously clear again. Anyone committed to this line of thinking will find Nigel Biggar's spirited defense of classic Christian just war theory deeply troubling. Biggar not only argues that the Iraq war was just, but also defends the Allied strategy of attrition in World War I and NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999. Along the way, he refutes the most sophisticated theological and philosophical criticisms of just war theory. His insights forcefully challenge readers to reconsider their views on war and peace. Whether one finally agrees with Biggar or not, one will think more responsibly, which is indeed Biggar's ultimate goal. Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Oxford, opens his book by criticizing "the virus of wishful thinking." 2 He contends that a knee-jerk pacifism has become the dominant position of the German people, the British left, and many Western Christians. Although of different stripes, all these pacifists assume that war is always wrong and peace always possible. Citizens must demand peaceful resolution of every conflict, and political leaders must simply try harder.

How justifiable are Just-Wars? A Critical Review

African Social Science and Humanities Journal (ASSHJ), 2021

This paper is a critical review of the theory of just war. The paper attempts to explain what Just-War Theory is. An overview of the history of Just War Tradition is given. There are some cited assumptions and approaches of Just-War Theory. The paper also gives some strengths and weaknesses of Just-War. The paper also gives some strengths and weaknesses of Just-War. The paper concludes with the fact that Just War Theory provides balances that must be taken into consideration when there is any necessitated war that results from inevitable conflicts. Furthermore, the paper concludes that the strengths of the theory should be built on when there is such war.