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Just War and the Peaceable Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

John P. Burgess
John P. Burgess*
Affiliation:
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
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Extract

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.

Type
Review Essay*
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 107 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 241 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Nigel Biggar, In Defence of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

References

2 Biggar borrows this phrase from Burn, Michael, Turned towards the Sun: An Autobiography (Wilby, Norwich, U.K.: Michael Russell, 2003) 70Google Scholar; as cited in Biggar, In Defence of War, 9 n. 14.

1 Rodin, David, War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Biggar, In Defence of War, 254.

3 Ibid., 306.

4 Ibid., 316–17.

5 For Biggar's use of this phrase, see, e.g., ibid., 325, 328. This theme runs throughout Augustine's writings; see, e.g., Augustine, Civ. 14.7–9, 15.22.

6 Augustine, Civ. 19.7 [emphasis added]. The translation is taken from Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans (trans. Bettenson, Henry; Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1972) 861–62Google Scholar.

7 Gray, J. Glenn, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (2nd ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1970) 225–26Google Scholar.