Review #3 - In Defence of War
Nigel Biggar defends and develops a theory of just war
Despite this being a book of essays, there is a clear thread of argument that flows through the entire book, so I will post the table of contents here to hopefully help make the flow clear.
Introduction – Against the virus of wishful thinking
1. Against Christian Pacifism
2. Love in war.
3. The principle of double effect: Can it survive combat?
4. Proportionality: Lessons from the Somme and the First World War
5. Against legal positivism and liberal individualism
6. On not always giving the Devil benefit of law: Legality, morality and Kosovo
7. Constructing judgement: The case of Iraq
.... and finally a conclusion.
Each chapter is a stand-alone essay but Biggar plans to first dispose of objections to just war theory before finally exercising it in argument later in the book. Biggar is an intellectual heavy hitter able to convincingly argue for positions that on first glance look highly improbable. By the time we reach the third chapter he defends a concept of “double effect” - that a soldier may kill but his intention may nevertheless not merely be to kill enemies in hatred but to defend his country or not let down his fellow soldiers, for example. The concepts are defensible but it requires incredible finesse in reasoning and fending off objections to uphold positions that will have a lot of natural sceptics these days.
We are certainly provided with bracing food for thought in this book. The introduction warning against “wishful thinking” is to the point. Any doctrine or way of engaging with the world that doesn't reckon with the fact that refusing to fight might simply lead to slaughter and has (arguably) resulted in slaughter at points definitely gives one pause. Such are the “evils of peace” according to Biggar. His first chapter engages in refuting three major Christian pacifist voices – Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder and Richard Hays. Without going into a detailed overview of his critique (Biggar obviously finds them all lacking), Biggar is least impressed with Hauerwas' reasoning, more impressed with Yoder and most impressed with Hays and therefore he puts most effort into refuting Hays' positions. He provides arguments against their biblical arguments (e.g. Showing that soldiers were not explicitly required to abandon their profession upon conversion to Christianity). Romans 13 comes into the discussion too, as Biggar embraces it as a support of his position, a realist assessment of what is required in government and perhaps no contradiction in that mantle of governmental responsibility being borne on Christian shoulders. He also insists on distinguishing between types of violence, some of which are illegitimate and some are not, in his view. Most pacifist readings of the Bible see all violence as ultimately corrupting, whether as a police officer subduing a criminal or the criminal committing violence upon a victim.
Beyond the chapter refuting Christian pacifists, Biblical exegesis plays little role. Partly this is because Biggar is mostly interacting with arguments outside Christian faith or theology. It is nonetheless concerning that Biblical thinking plays so little a role here. The just war theory Biggar outlines is not so much opposed to pacifism as engaging in a completely separate activity. He interestingly wades into three conflicts in the later chapters of his book to put his just war reasoning. World War I (the Somme), the 1999 attack on Kosovo, and the biggest section on assessing whether or not the Iraq War passed the just war criterion. One wonders to what degree such reasoning is actually relevant to those who were responsible for the conflict. Does just war thinking just end up providing post hoc justification for fighting by those who can. His arguments on Iraq in particular may be out of date, as this book was published prior to the rise of ISIS/ISIL in the region. It would seem that his arguments for Iraq would have worked just as well for toppling Mugabe in Zimbabwe, for instance.
My Mennonitism will inevitably come through here. I read this book to get a good taste of how someone who finds war necessary can argue for and justify war. And it's important to note that just war theory doesn't exist to simply justify war over against pacifism but also to distinguish a just war from a holy war or a war of aggression etc. Its purpose is to keep war within acceptable bounds and to create rules for war, so that war (presumably a necessary evil in some cases) might stay within acceptable moral bounds. Does just war thinking succeed in this regard? Of that I'm not so sure (no surprise, I admit.)
One question this book raised in my mind which is not dealt with is how indeed we bring wars to an end. In the introduction Biggar admits he doesn't have much interest in reasoning through the ways of peace. It seems through two thousand years of Christianity and Christendom that wars have not been eliminated. Of course some very nasty wars have been fueled by different interpretations of Christianity on either or both sides. Why has Christianity not eliminated war? In particular thinking of a war such as World War I, pretty much an intra-Christendom conflict. Biggar doesn't get into the absurdity of Christian parties engaging in bloody warfare against one another and one has to wonder why not? Perhaps the parties were not Christian enough. If so, just war reasoning didn't help solve the problem.
Biggar displays a formidable intelligence and argumentative capabilities above my pay grade. My objection can perhaps be summarized in noting his presumptions seem not to involve much of a role for Christians refuse conflicts and cause them to cease, but that wars must ever continue, even when everyone involved claims the banner of Christianity.