Just_War_Theory

Just War Theory Just War For more than a thousand years Christian ethicists and theologians have used the language of just war theory to determine when it is morally acceptable for a Christian to go to war. The theory has been flexible enough to accommodate political, military, and social change, and still retain its relevance. There is no doubt in the minds of many that the issue of war and the Christian conscience has been a long-standing problem. When asked about war some would allude to the Just War Theory. Just war theorists trace the beginnings of the theory to Augustine’s idea of normative political order. His dualistic philosophy imagined two worlds, the civitas terrenae and the civitas dei, the City of Earth and the City of God. The former, flawed by human weakness and characterized by disorder and strife, is organized around cupiditas, or egoistic love. The latter, the ideal civitas dei, is achieved through the transformation of cupiditas into caritas, which is love directed toward God. The goal of history, according to Augustine, is the realization of this ideal state of being characterized by Christian love.1. This process of personal transformation toward caritas, begun in Augustine’s thinking war, just, success, sanctions, theory, jus, been, iraq, interventions, gulf, united, force, criteria, ad, states, even, case, both, bellum, after, reason, one, must, intervention, given, balkans, about, world, though, requirements, remain, questions, question, policy, peacekeepers, order