On the other hand there are many Christians who believe war is acceptable if it is justified and follows the certain rules. Like St Thomas Aquinas for example. He came up with the just war criteria. These were. The war must be proportionate. It must be a last resort. No innocent civilians can be killed. It must be controlled by a sovereign or authority of state. There must be a just cause. There must be a good chance of winning and finally peace must be restored afterwards. Another time when Christians showed that they thought violence was ok was the crusades. This was when Christians marched through Jerusalem and basically killed everyone. This was classed as a holy war. In numbers 31: 1 it says ‘the Lord says to Moses “punish the Midianites for what they did to the people of Israel” ‘this shows that some people thought holy war was acceptable.
In conclusion I think that there are many different Christian opinions around because Christianity has been around for over 2000 years so it is bound to have changed. You can tell it has changed because of the stories in the bible. For example in the Old Testament it talks about burning the shoes and clothes of the people who go to war and then later in the Old Testament God tells people to go to war. Also in the New Testament it says about violence being unacceptable and then it goes on to tell us how Jesus smashed up the temple when he was mad. These all happened at different times so it shows that attitudes must have changed.
In my opinion I feel that the bible is very contradictive. I also feel that war is acceptable under certain circumstances and if you follow the just war criteria.
For a Christian, nuclear war can never be justified.
Nuclear war is a violation of every human right and will demonstrate that nobody in their right mind can justify a nuclear war.
Many Christians believe that nuclear war is not acceptable under any circumstances. One person who believes this is St Thomas Aquinas, he came up with the natural moral law. This means that anything that will effect education, procreation or persecution is completely unacceptable. This is because the world has a purpose and so do we. We need to live and we need to reproduce, so therefore, anything that affects this is unacceptable. St Thomas Aquinas also came up with the just war criteria. These were, the war must be proportionate, it must be a last resort, no innocent civilians must be killed, it must be controlled by and authority or sovereign of state, there must be a just cause, there must be a good chance of winning, and finally, peace must be restored afterwards. Anyone who reads this would say that St Thomas Aquinas would be against nuclear war because nuclear is not proportionate and innocent civilians will get killed. But the just war criteria are over 700 years old so they were created for a different kind of war, the kind of war that I fought with swords. Not nuclear weapons. So I feel that if he thought sword wars were unacceptable then he must think that nuclear war is. The just-war tradition clearly prohibits the firing of nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, because doing so would violate the conditions of proportionality and of protection of non-combatants from attack. The dilemma presented to "just warriors" by deterrence is the distinction between use and possession of weapons of mass destruction. The possession of such weapons can only be justified by their political usefulness, and the only political use which withstands scrutiny from the perspective of the just-war tradition is the prevention of nuclear war through deterrence, through arms control, and through nuclear non-proliferation. Another person who believed nuclear war is not acceptable was Emanuel Kant. He had a theory. He said that there were two things. A mean and an end. For example, the computer I am using to write this coursework is the mean, then the finished coursework is the end. Emanuel said you can’t use people as a means to an end. In other words you can’t kill someone to achieve something or solve a problem. So therefore if you use a nuclear weapon you will be killing people to solve a problem, which is not acceptable.
On the other hand, someone who disagrees with Emanuel Kant was a British philosopher called John Stuart Mill. He had a theory called utilitarianism. He believed that nuclear war was acceptable under certain circumstances. This was a subjectional theory (unlike the objectional theory of St Thomas Aquinas). He believed in ‘the greatest good, for the greatest number.’ This meant that if, for example, killing one person would help deter 3 people then it would be acceptable. So he would think capital punishment was acceptable. This also means that he thought Hiroshima was acceptable because 140,000 people were killed instantly and children are still being born deformed, but it stopped world war three, which would probably have killed millions of people. He would also believe that some wars would be acceptable. Like in world war two when the allied planes caret bombed Dresden. It may have wiped out a whole city but it stopped them from killing a lot of our men.
In conclusion I think, for a Christian, nuclear war can never be justified because it breaks the just war criteria. It is not proportionate and it will kill innocent people. If there were no nuclear bombs I feel the world would be a much better place. There would be no threats of the world ending or nuclear war. In order to prevent nuclear war, a variety of strategies and tactics needs to be pursued. Trouble spots around the world which could flare into U.S./Soviet confrontation need to be isolated from that confrontation and resolved diplomatically. The spread of nuclear weapons needs to be checked. The nuclear relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union needs to be managed and directed through arms control agreements. And the political pressures for building nuclear weapons need to be examined and lessened if possible.
