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On Feb. 28, the United States, in coordination with Israel, launched a bombing campaign against Iran, kicking off a series of debates about the justification for war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asserted that, in this conflict against a Muslim-majority nation, God was on the American side and that everyone in the nation should be praying for victory in battle “every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Others in the administration offered similar comments, including President Donald Trump, who promised on April 7 that “a whole civilization [would] die tonight” if Iran failed to meet U.S. demands. Pope Leo XIV, soon after spoke out against violence, though he did not name the president or the war itself.
“Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs,” the Catholic pontiff said. This resulted in a widely reported debate among pundits, leaders and others about whether the war was just or appropriate. Lost in the conversation, though, was the actual meaning of the phrase “just war.”
“’Just war was never about making war acceptable,” said Ryan Cumming, director of Theological Ethics at the ELCA’s churchwide office. “It’s about making war harder to justify.”
The Christian concept of a just war is often claimed to originate with fourth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo, whose writings on the topic focused on the fate of the Roman Empire while it collapsed amid large-scale internal and external conflicts. Augustine wasn’t talking war in absolute terms. There was no such thing as necessary or immoral in the argument, but rather on how to bring about an effective end to a conflict. For Augustine, war could only ever be a tragic exception, permitted to confront a grave injustice, such as protecting the innocent and marginalized. Even then, the objective was not to destroy an enemy but to restore peace.
“Augustine is often misread,” Cumming said. “People think he’s laying the groundwork to justify violence. But what he’s really doing is trying to restrain it.”
A key aspect of Augustine’s argument stated that if a nation enters into war, it must do so in love, particularly love of neighbor and even concern for the opposing nation. He compared war to a parent disciplining a child, not out of cruelty but in sorrow.
“He believed war should be entered mournfully,” Cumming said. “Not triumphantly. If you’re celebrating, you’ve already lost the moral thread.”
Long after Augustine’s death, the concept of just war continued to be discussed, when 16th century theologians Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez invoked the concept of just war to lament the Spanish (and other European) destruction of Indigenous nations in the Americas. Suárez wrote that the moral authority to wage war does not belong to leaders but derives from the people. and that the decision must honor the dignity of every human being.
“Suárez and Vitoria were responding to real atrocities,” Cumming said. “They insisted that rulers don’t get to declare war simply because they can.”
This argument shifted the idea that a leader declaring a need for war made it just, and instead encouraged, even forced, the public to interrogate their leaders about the justification for conflict.
Early Lutherans did not deviate from the tradition of just war but instead embraced it. Article XVI of the Augsburg Confession affirms that civil authority can be a legitimate calling; however, it distinguishes between Christ’s spiritual reign and the authority of the state. As Cumming noted, what the confession does not do is spell out how wars are judged just. That silence mattered, he said.
“For a long time, ‘just war’ functioned as background moral consensus,” Cumming said. “It wasn’t examined deeply. It was assumed.”
That assumption fractured in the 20th century amid two world wars, the use of chemical weapons in the first and atomic weapons in the second, and the reasoning behind both conflicts as well as the Holocaust. Christians were now forced to think about whether the frameworks that defined what makes a just war. The discussion about if a war should start transformed to include how it should be waged, how to treat civilians caught in the crossfire, and if a military response is proportionate to the original attack.
Adding to the conversation were the ideas of “military actions” that fell outside the standard definition of war, humanitarian interventions such as the NATO bombing during the Kosovo War in 1999, and, now, “preventative wars.” Such concerns are shifting the debate far beyond what Augustine, Suárez and Vitoria envisioned.
“The danger is when ‘just war’ stops functioning as moral restraint and starts functioning as moral cover,” Cumming said. “If it’s used too easily, it loses its integrity.”
ELCA theologians have increasingly emphasized that “just war” theory is primarily a theory of peacemaking rather than violence. Writing in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics, ethicists argue that political power exists to serve peace. Any moral analysis must extend beyond battlefield decisions to the social, political and economic dynamics that led to war in the first place.
Others have called for revising the vocabulary behind “just war” theory altogether. In the JLE essay “A New Language for Just War,” Wollom A. Jensen argues that traditional moral frameworks for war are often too narrow to address modern warfare or the spiritual wounds it leaves behind. He urges the church to speak honestly not only about justification but about trauma, moral injury and the repercussions of violence.
For Cumming, the most faithful role of “just war” theory is not to provide certainty but to cultivate humility.
“’Just war’ reminds us that not every threat can be eliminated,” he said, “and that believing we can eliminate all threats is often what leads us into unjust wars.”
