St Augustine’s reservations about ‘just war’

By Luigi Franco Pizzolato

In theological debate and magisterial statements, the concept of ‘just war’ is increasingly being called into question in support of the idea that war is intrinsically illicit. Yet the concept continues to resurface, and the authority of St Augustine (354–430) is often invoked in its defence. In the conventional account of the history of war, Augustine frequently appears as the first Christian theorist of ‘just war’, if not its actual ‘inventor’. But Augustine, as we know, was always a restless (inquietus) soul, attentive to the developing challenges posed by history, and his thinking evolved over time. Scholars understand that his positions must be read both in context, with due attention to their historical setting, and as part of a broader vision that places them in perspective. Instead, they are often embalmed or taken out of context, or even attributed to the later Augustinian tradition. In the case at hand, anyone with the patience — and good fortune — to read Augustine himself will find signs that his acute understanding of history did not overlook the fundamental ambiguity, or even the outright inadmissibility, of ‘just war’.

Observations in The City of God

From his masterpiece of historical theology, The City of God, at least two significant reservations about just war deserve to be highlighted. One is historical in nature, the other philosophical.

In the first, Augustine observes that throughout the history of the world, in a humanity marked by sin, just war is a condition that, strictly speaking, does not exist, because in the real world even a just war is both an effect and a cause of sin and serves, at best, to disguise it. For more than a thousand years, the Roman state expanded its dominion precisely by invoking the principle of ‘just war’. Taking as a pretext acts of injustice — real or alleged — that arose in different parts of the world, Rome intervened militarily, ostensibly to redress them but in reality to expand its empire and impose its own order: ‘The injustice of those against whom just wars have been waged has contributed to the increase in the power of those who waged them […] Injustice played a major part in increasing their power and created the unjust, so that there would be people against whom just wars could be waged and power increased’ (The City of God, IV, 15).

War gives rise to war

This leads to another observation, one which demonstrates the futility and danger of such a war: a state ‘will never be able to exercise lasting dominion over those whom it has succeeded in subjugating through military victories’ (The City of God, XV, 5). War never produces genuine peace, but only an unstable peace that sows the seeds of further war. As Simone Weil would later observe in her Notebooks, justice is always ‘a fugitive from the victors’ field’, because peace achieved through arms always exceeds the bounds of justice and inevitably sows the seeds of resentment and revenge. Just war, then, proves historically to be a fiction and cannot even claim to be a means of securing peace.

The weapons of dialogue

The second passage comes from a later period and is philosophical in nature. In a long and convoluted sentence, reflecting the apparent absurdity from which truth emerges, Augustine argues that ‘the wise man’ is reluctant to wage ‘just’ wars because, precisely because they are just, he feels obliged to fight them; yet in doing so, he violates his own role as a wise man. To remain true to his nature, he should not find any necessity for war, not even in the face of injustice (The City of God, XIX, 7).

Whereas in the first observation Augustine, as a historian, highlights the will to power historically inherent in just war — which serves instead to advance the imperialism of the stronger party — in the second, as a wise man, he identifies the contradiction inherent in the very concept of just war.

We might say that, in the phrase ‘just war’, the negativity of the noun (‘war’) overwhelms the positivity of the adjective (‘just’) to the point where the expression ‘just war’ explodes from within and is reduced to an impossible oxymoron. Justice itself would require war to be forbidden; choosing a violent solution contradicts virtue and deprives logos — reasoned discourse — of its primacy, which belongs properly to the wise and the virtuous. In a conflict, the task of wisdom is to seek a rational understanding of the reasons and claims of all those involved, pursued through the peaceful weapons of dialogue and persuasion.

Political wisdom: achieving peace through peace

It seems to me that, from an Augustinian perspective, just war represents the latent presence, under a false guise, of that sin which, in the dark and evocative words of Genesis (Genesis 4:7), lies crouching at the door of violent Cain.

It is for each reader to judge how deeply Augustine’s observations may penetrate the very logic of our own thinking. They accord with another, more luminous and more emphatic statement by Augustine, again from his later period and therefore, one might say, representing a concluding position: ‘It is more glorious to kill war with words than men with the sword, and to acquire and obtain peace through peace, not through war’ (Letters, 229, 2).

This is a hymn to the true mission of political wisdom. It challenges the idea that peace can ever be the fruit of war and calls instead for a dialogical and persuasive search for solutions to conflicts, before they degenerate into war; it also channels the pursuit of worldly glory, so characteristic of the politician, towards peace.

Let us hope that this may yield a less harsh and rigid, more complex and comprehensive, less conventional, understanding of Augustine — remembering that in Hippo his cathedra stood in the Basilica of Peace.

Advertisement

Luigi Franco Pizzolato is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Christian Literature at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan