Throne, Altar, Liberty

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Friday, April 24, 2026

Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Just War

On 28 February, American Neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser posted to his blog a short piece with the title “The U.S. war on Iran is manifestly unjust”.  In this piece he demonstrated that the war on Iran does not meet the criteria to be considered just according to classical Catholic just war theory, focusing on the requirements that there be a just cause and showing that the reasons put forth by the White House for the actions against Iran do not make for a genuine casus belli.  He also briefly talked about the war’s not meeting the requirement that it be conducted under lawful authority because by the terms of American constitutional law the authority to wage war belongs to Congress and not the president.

Roman Patriarch Leo XIV is clearly of the same opinion as Feser on this matter.  Some others of the Roman communion who hold to just war theory are less certain.  Among these is R. R. (“Rusty”) Reno, editor of First Things. His argument that it is “unwise to issue confident moral judgments about Operation Epic Fury” was posted on 3 March, three days after Feser’s.  Feser has just contributed a piece to First Things entitled “Does Just War Doctrine Require Moral Certainty?”  In response to those like Reno who disagreed with him, he argues for an affirmative answer to the question asked in his title.  “What has long been the standard teaching in the Catholic just war tradition”, he writes, “is that the probability of a war’s being just is not good enough. The case for the justice of a proposed war must be morally certain. Otherwise, it is morally wrong to initiate the conflict.”  Note his use of the illustration of a hunter shooting into the bush.  Unless the hunter is certain there is no person hiding in or behind the bush that he might hit, to shoot is a reckless and morally wrong act.  The same illustration has been used for decades to answer the argument  that we don’t know when a fetus becomes a person made by those who think women should have the right to murder their unborn offspring.

I agree with Feser (and Leo XIV) on this matter.  I wish to point out, however, that he has been arguing mostly the one aspect of the just war question, that of jus ad bellum or when is it just to go to war.  There is also the aspect of jus in bello or what is the right manner in which to conduct war.  These aspects are not independent of each other.  If a war cannot be fought in a manner that is jus in bello then it can never be jus ad bellum.

This is often avoided in contemporary discussions of just war because of the uncomfortable question it raises of whether Modern developments in the technology of war have made a jus ad bellum war a practical impossibility.

The rules of just war theory or doctrine were hammered out at a time when wars were fought very differently from how they are fought today.  A king who went to war with another kingdom would be expected either to lead the troops into battle himself or delegate the task to his sons, brothers, or other close relatives.  Democratically elected politicians, by contrast, do not fight in the wars for which they vote and are notorious for protecting their own children from conscription.   How did Black Sabbath put it again?  “Politicians hide themselves away/They only started the war/Why should they go out to fight?/They leave that role to the poor.” (1)

Furthermore, when St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, et al., were drawing out the principles of just war from Scripture, moral philosophy/theology and reason, those who did the actual fighting and killing in war, generally had to see the people they were killing in order to do so.  This meant, of course, that they were also putting their own lives in jeopardy by going to war.  This was most obviously the case with combat involving swords and other weapons that could not kill beyond the range of the slightly extended arm-length they provided, but even with longer-distance weapons such as bows and arrows, catapults, and cannons you had to see what you were aiming at with your own eyes.

This was the way war was fought for most of human history.  Now think of the contrast with today.  Airplanes were first used in combat in World War I.  With World War II, the use of these machines to drop high explosive bombs that could kill large numbers of unseen non-combatants became normative.  By the end of that war, the Americans had developed the first nuclear weapon, the atomic bomb, which they dropped on two Japanese cities killing about 120, 000 people instantly with the death toll growing to about twice that amount by the end of the year due to radiation poisoning and other such injuries.  Mercifully, their use did not become normative, especially since the development of this monstrous technology after the war has exponentially increased its destructive power to the point where it could eliminate humanity and all other life on earth.  In 1957, the Soviet Union conducted the first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and two years later both the Americans and the Soviets had operational ICBM systems in place. By the 1970s, advanced guidance systems that used computers and lasers to direct bombs to their targets were in common use (this evolved out of technology that in a very early stage of development both the Americans and the Nazis had during World War II).  Today, cities can be reduced to rubble and thousands of non-combatants instantly killed, totally unseen by the person who does the destroying and killing with the push of a button, half a world away.

This, which, by the way, is what “progress” looks like, a fact which when it sinks in should be sufficient to make a reactionary out of any sane person, was not merely a series of changes to the tools of war.  It changed the very nature of war and in such a way as to raise the question of whether war fought in this manner and with these tools can ever be just.

It is a difficult question to answer, not least because however these changes have affected the nature and justice of war, they have not affected in the slightest its necessity.   If a hostile power attacks and invades your country this creates the necessity of your going to war defensively to stop them (blithering rubbish to the contrary from Mennonites, Quakers, and Gandhi be hanged).  To say that something is necessary, however, is not to say that it is just, since necessity and justice are two very different things. If we set the difference between necessity and justice aside and take the position that all defensive wars are just, note that this would obviously not justify the actions of the United States and Israel.

In popular American culture the demands of classical just war theory have largely been by-passed by a very different way of thinking about martial ethics.  In this way of thinking, it does not matter so much that a war have a valid casus belli, that it be a means of last resort, that the good that it accomplishes or at least tries to accomplish outweighs the death and destruction it causes and that non-combatants not be made into targets.  What matters is that “we” (the ones going to war) are the “good guys” and that “they” (the ones we are going to war with) are the “bad guys.”

This way of looking at things is so puerile if not infantile that it would scarcely be worth addressing if it were not so widespread in the United States (and other countries of the civilization formerly known as Christendom that have had the misfortune of being inundated with American pop culture) and so clearly the predominant way of thinking among those who started this war and its chief apologists.  This is, of course, the way superhero comic books and Hollywood movies tend to portray things and it can hardly be a coincidence that these started to become the staples of American pop culture that they are today around the same time as the rapid advancement of American military technology.  Hollywood and DC (2) cannot be blamed for creating this thinking, however much they may have helped popularize it, because it had been part of the American mindset long before World War II.

Indeed, I maintain that it can be traced back to the Calvinism that was the root of Yankee culture.  Now in this instance I am not using the word “Yankee” in the sense it normally has in my country or, for that matter, anywhere else outside of the United States, i.e., as a synonym for “American.”  I am using it rather to refer to the culture of the American northeast which developed out of the colonies settled by Puritans.  In the American Internecine War (1861-1865) this culture went to war with its chief rival, the more traditional and agrarian culture of the American states south of the Mason-Dixon Line which had developed out of colonies that were not so Puritan in nature.  It thoroughly defeated its rival and has dominated American culture on the national level ever since. (3)  By this point in time Yankee culture had become secularized, but it was still at heart a secular Calvinism.

While this most often comes up in the context of tracing American capitalism back to the Protestant (more specifically Calvinist) work ethic (4) or of Southern traditionalist conservatives pointing out the deleterious effects of the North’s victory on American society as a whole (5), I believe that it can be shown to also be the source of the “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset of American culture. 

The doctrine that most sets Calvinism apart from other Christians, including other Protestants, is its doctrine of double predestination and election.   This might seem to be an unlikely source of dividing people into “good guys” and “bad guys” since it is closely related in Calvinist theology to what seems at first glance to be the strongest possible affirmation of the orthodox Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, i.e., that all of Adam’s descendants are tainted with the sin that infected human nature in the Fall and are therefore utterly dependent upon the grace and mercy of God.  In Calvinist theology, especially as formulated against Arminianism (a dissenting subcategory of Calvinism that stresses free will) this is stated as Total Depravity.  From the body of humanity so totally depraved by Original Sin, the doctrine of double predestination states, God in eternity past selected some upon whom to pour His mercy and grace and to bring to final salvation and chose others upon whom to pour His wrath and to punish eternally basing the selection entirely upon His Own pleasure rather than upon anything within the “elect” and the “reprobate” that might distinguish them from each other.

How this idea became secularized into the American “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset may already be apparent.  To make it clearer I will briefly show how the Calvinist doctrine differs from Christian orthodoxy.  Original Sin is sound, orthodox doctrine, taken directly from the fifth chapter of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans.  Pelagianism (that Adam’s sin isn’t inherited and that people can be righteous before God without His grace) and Semi-Pelagianism (that God’s grace is required for salvation, but that man can make the first step towards God) are both heresies, condemned as such by the universal Church.  This means that all people are sinners (Rom. 3:23).  The division of mankind into the righteous (those cleansed of sin and made righteous before God by His grace given to man in Jesus Christ) and the wicked (those who finally and incurably reject the grace of God) is not something that took place in eternity past but something that will take place on the Last Day.   Until then, God does indeed have those He has “chosen”, who have received His grace, but unlike in the Calvinist concept of the “elect” in orthodox theology being chosen by God does not mean selected to be an elite few who are given God’s grace to enjoy among themselves but being selected to receive His grace that they may assist in bringing it to others.   Think of God’s words to Abra(ha)m the very first time He spoke to him.  “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (Gen. 12:2-3)  Far too many people read these verses as if the emphasis was on the words that I did not highlight with italics.  For Abraham, being chosen by God did not mean that he was the exclusive recipient of God’s favour and blessing but that he was a vessel through which it was to flow to everyone else. (6)

By contrast, the Calvinist view of election is that those chosen by God are chosen to be the sole and exclusive recipients of His saving grace and mercy.  In its strictest form, defined by the canons of the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) rather than the Institutes of John Calvin himself, Calvinism teaches that God gave Jesus Christ only to His elect and that Jesus died only for the elect, a doctrine that most Christians rightly regard as blasphemous and heretical.  In Calvinism, the numbers of the elect and reprobate have been fixed from eternity past.  One is either “elect” or “reprobate”, this can never change, and it is in no way based on anything one does.  This is the doctrine of John Winthrop and his followers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who envisioned what would become America as a Puritan “city on a hill” even as the spirit of the Modern Age, the spirit of thinking Satan’s thoughts after him, had already infested his fellow Puritans in England who not long thereafter would, in complete violation of the Scriptural injunctions of SS Peter and Paul, wage what would ultimately be a regicidal war against King Charles I and lay the foundation for the twin evil doctrines of the Modern Age, liberalism (of which Americanism is a variety) and progressivism or leftism (of which Communism is a variety). It is the clear ancestor of the American idea that in war there are “good guys” and “bad guys”, their “goodness” and “badness” being who they are and not so much what they do, a notion that conveniently allows traditional Christian doctrine as to when it is right to go to war and how war can be rightly conducted to be bypassed.

That, of course, is the danger of this “good guys” versus “bad guys” approach to war.  The old rules of just war doctrine were carefully thought out to limit when wars can be fought and how they can be fought so as to limit the destruction and death wrought by war.  “Good guys” versus “bad guys”, however, is not such a limiting doctrine.  To the contrary, its tendency is to give carte blanche to the “good guys” when it comes to defeating the “bad guys.”  Look at how that has played out in American history.  In the American Internecine War, the North invaded the South and waged total war against those who from their own stated perspective they regarded as still their brethren and fellow countrymen.  Total war is always unjust by the standards of traditional Christian just war doctrine.  In World War II, FDR unilaterally – he did not inform Sir Winston Churchill of it in advance, and Churchill who had a lot more sense than Roosevelt recognized it to be a bad move although he was forced to go along with FDR’s press release – declared that the Allies would accept nothing less than “unconditional surrender”, a stupid declaration that could only ever have had the result of prolonging the war and increasing rather than limiting its destructiveness.  At the end of that war Truman unconscionably ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though, contrary to the lies that are told today to justify this action, he knew that Japan was already willing to negotiate a surrender to General MacArthur.  The current head of the United States in an ill-thought out social media rant against Leo XIV said, among other things, “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”  Would it not be more sensible to say that the only country that has ever committed the atrocity of using nuclear weapons in war is the country that should not be trusted with having them?

The “good guy” versus “bad guy” mentality leads those who hold it to regard earthly wars as microcosmic versions of a cosmic level struggle between good and evil.  Christians are forbidden to think this way (Eph. 6:12).  There may be a surface level resemblance between this idea of a cosmic struggle between good and evil and the Christian teaching that an angel started a rebellion against God in the spiritual realm, which was brought to earth when Adam and Eve were tempted and fell, but the resemblance does not go much deeper than this.  It is much closer to Eastern dualistic concepts which, when they made their way into the Church in the early centuries through false teachers like Mani, were rejected as heresy.  Christianity – sound, orthodox, Christianity that is – does not teach that good and evil are two opposing forces, the struggle between which basically defines the universe and life within it.  Christianity teaches that there is One God, Who is Good, that other than God, everything that exists has been created by God Who created it good and pronounced it good, that the evil that became present in Creation when Satan and then man used the good gift that is their free will to rebel against God is present not as some force or power or thing that is equal and opposite to goodness, but only in the same way that a hole is present in a wall.

Classical just war doctrine, carefully formulated by the Church’s best doctors and theologians from Scriptural principles and moral philosophy to limit the destructive potential of war is really the only option for orthodox Christians.  A pacifism that tells you not merely to turn the cheek to the ἐχθροί (personal enemies) you are commanded to love but to allow the πολέμῐοι (military enemies) of your country to conquer, enslave or kill your family, neighbours and countrymen without fighting back is utterly vile and not to be regarded as a valid option.  The recipe for escalating rather than limiting endless numbers of wars that is the “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset must also be rejected as repugnant.  This leaves us with classical just war doctrine, of which the United States’ current war against Iran fails all the tests. 

Unless the United States can figure out a way to fight a war without using technology that enables them to kill people they can’t see in large numbers from a safe distance far away and to dismiss the civilian casualties as “collateral damage” it is doubtful that any war she fights can ever be considered just again.

 (1)   Ozzy Osbourne, Terence Michael Butler, William T. Ward, F. Frank Iommi, “War Pigs”, 1970.

(2)   Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were introduced in 1938, 1939, and 1941 respectively.  Although Timely introduced Captain America in 1940, it was not until 1961 when the company rebranded as Marvel and Editor-in-chief Stan Lee working with Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four, soon to be followed by Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and X-Men that it became the big player in the superhero comics market.

(3)   See Clyde N. Wilson, The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma, (Columbia SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2016). 

(4)   Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated from 1905 German edition by Talcott Parsons (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1930).

(5)   Note 3, vide supra, and also The Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (New York & London: Harper and Bros, 1930) which is still in print from Louisiana State University Press and pretty much any book by M. E. Bradford.

(6)  The Calvinist view of election is not the only one that could stand correction from this passage.  Unlike previous American military escapades in the Middle East, the current war against Iran has little international support.  The United States’ most conspicuous ally in this war is Israel.  Much of the internal support for the war in the United States has come from Christians, mostly evangelical Protestants, who have a particular version of the “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset in which Israel is always the “good guy” in a Middle East conflict regardless of the circumstances and her neighbour is always the “bad guy”.

This is because the present day state of Israel shares the same name as the people of God in the Old Testament and these evangelicals believe that the Genesis 12 passage – the parts not highlighted in the quotation in the text of this essay – require that Christians give unconditional support to the present day state. 

This is an absurd conclusion.  It starts from an interpretation of Genesis 12 that like the Calvinist, regards God’s choosing or electing as being for the sake of the chosen or elect rather than for everyone.  In this case it is the interpretation that this passage, subsequent passages like it, and basically the whole of Old Testament history was all about creating an ethnic group which would enjoy God’s special favour.  The New Testament does not allow for this interpretation.  Galatians 3:16 clearly states that the Seed to Whom the promises to Abraham pertain is Christ.  Since everyone who believes in Christ is united to Christ and therefore in Christ the promises are available to everyone through faith in Jesus Christ.  They are only available through such faith, not through biological descent from Abraham. 

This is the clear teaching of the passage which, ironically, those who argue otherwise, claim as their principal proof text.  This passage, which interestingly follows the two chapters which Calvinists like to twist to support their view of election, is Romans 11.  In this chapter Israel, the people of God, is likened to an olive true.  Biological descendants of ancient Israel are described as “natural branches” of the tree. “Natural branches” who do not believe in Jesus Christ are cut out of the tree for their unbelief. Gentiles (from the Latin word for “nation” this is used to mean non-Jews) who believe in Jesus Christ are “wild branches” which are grafted in by faith.  The cut off “natural branches” can be grafted back in again if they believe.  Therefore, those who are in the olive tree that is the true Israel of both Testaments are believing (in Jesus Christ) Jews and believing Gentiles.  Believing Jews and Gentiles, however, make up the Catholic (universal) Church.  Clearly, therefore, this passage cannot support the claim that the Israel of God is a biological nation distinct from the Church which is the fundamental claim of the rubbish theology that underlies the “Christian Zionist” position. 

Those who cling to this theology, which, not coincidentally, is primarily to be found in the United States, will no doubt scream “Replacement Theology” at having this obvious truth pointed out, much like how Calvinists scream “Arminian” at anyone who does not accept their claim that God doesn’t love everyone and that Jesus died only for the elect, but this is akin to liberals screaming “racist” at anyone who disagrees with them.  “Replacement theology” would say either that the “wild branches” were grafted in to replace the “natural branches” or that a “wild olive tree” was substituted for the “natural olive tree” but neither of these is the case (that the “wild branches” are not “replacements” of the “natural branches” is evident from the fact that the “natural branches” can be grafted back in).  This is rather “Continuation theology”, that Israel, the olive tree, continues into the Church.   The only “replacement” is the “replacement” of the Old Covenant with the New, a “replacement” that is actually a “fulfillment” of the promises of the Old Covenant, and the replacement of the spiritual leadership of Israel under the New Covenant (the Apostles and their successor bishops leading a ministry of presbyters supported by deacons) from that of the Old Covenant (the Aaronic priesthood, supported by the Levites and led by the chief or high priest) which is what was prophesied by Jesus in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. 

Note that “replacement” of this sort took place in Judaism as well.  A parallel error to the one I have been debunking in this note is the error of thinking that what is called Judaism today is the religion of the Old Testament.  This is not the case.  Judaism shares a common history with Christianity before the coming of Christ, but with the coming of Christ the prophecies of the Messiah were fulfilled and the New Covenant established.  The Gospel was to be preached to the Jews first but many of these did not believe and held on to the religion of the Old Testament.  This was eventually taken away from them when the forces of Titus of Rome sacked Jerusalem in AD 70.  The principal elements of the Old Testament religion were the aforementioned Aaronic priesthood, the sacrifices that this priesthood was commanded to offer daily and on special occasions, at first in the Tabernacle, then in the Temple which replaced the Tabernacle and which had to be in a specific place in Jerusalem, and the feasts which by the Mosaic Law had to be celebrated in Jerusalem.   The destruction of the Temple made all that impossible.  The rabbis, originally lay teachers and leaders in late Second Temple Judaism, became the clergy of the new Judaism that arose after the destruction of the Temple.  Synagogue worship, which had developed after the Babylonian Captivity, probably around the time of Ezra himself, elements of which were incorporated into Christianity (the Ministry of the Word portion of the service prior to the Ministry of the Sacrament is largely an adaptation of synagogue worship), took over the central place in the worship of Judaism from Temple worship.  The feasts remained, but obviously they could no longer be kept in strict accordance to the Mosaic Law.  This new Judaism is not, as some Christians mistakenly think, an older parent religion to Christianity, but a younger religion by about forty years.  It too has other Scriptures by which the Scriptures which Jews and Christians have in common are interpreted.  These, consisting of the Mishnah (the codification of what the Second Temple Pharisees called the oral law) and rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah called the Gemara, comprise the Talmud, which was compiled between the third and sixth centuries AD (both in Palestine and Babylon with the Babylonian version which was completed later becoming the authoritative version).  

None of this excuses us from our duty to leave peacefully, so far as it depends on us, with all people and to “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32).  It shows the folly in thinking that we are under an obligation to God to support the present state that calls herself Israel in all of her conflicts without taking any consideration of who, if anyone, is in the right in the conflict.  Note that thinking we have to oppose the present state of Israel in all of her conflicts is just as much folly and the kind of folly that is usually attached to the “woke” anti-white bigotry in the kind of academic leftism that Americans think is a form of Marxism created by the infiltration of American higher learning by European Communists but which is actually Americanism taken to its totalitarian extreme.  These conflicts should be evaluated by the standards with which we would judge the conflicts of any other states.  Certainly it is not helpful for Christians to be repeating the inane Scripture-twisting rhetoric of the state of Israel’s leaders that treats the nation that is currently located in the heart of what was King Cyrus’ empire as if it were Amalek. — Gerry T. Neal

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