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Morality and National Power in International Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Theodore R. Weber
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Extract

There are two principal elements in Christian faith which underwrite and require the attention of Christian ethics to problems of foreign policy. First, the Christian is convinced that God is sovereign over all the world and therefore over all the areas of the common life—not the least of which is political society. On these terms no political engagement is ever a mere power struggle and no Christian in politics is ever merely or even primarily political man, for the engagement is understood through faith to be a locus of divine activity and the politically-involved Christian is above all a man seeking to make his action correspond faithfully to the action of God. Divine sovereignty imposes a qualification on political sovereignty and thereby requires the recognition of limits to the exercise of political power and to the exaltation of national existence. But it also strengthens legitimate political authority by means of the explicit declaration that the powers that be are ordained of God. Second, the vocation of the Christian in the world is to serve the neighbor in love.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , January 1964 , pp. 20 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1964

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References

* This paper was presented at two seminars on “Religion and United States Foreign Policy” conducted by the Council on Religion and International Affairs. The first was at Lawrence College, Appleton, Wisconsin, August 25, 1962; the second at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, December 3, 1962.

1 For a comparable judgment in the field of economic analysis, see Johnson, Harold, “Alternative Views of Big Business Goals and Purposes,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCXLIII (09, 1962), 1–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There it is argued that profit maximization is not the omnipotent controller of corporate activity.

2 For an account of these changes in the criteria of the justice of war see Sturzo, Luigi, The International Community and the Right of War, trans. Carter, Barbara B. (London, 1929), pp. 182–87Google Scholar.

3 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York, c. 1932)Google Scholar.