Can nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare be justified under the just war theory in Christian theology?
Can nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare be justified under the just war theory in Christian theology?
Colton Cruz
Nicholas Diaz
sure
Parker King
Yes, those are just forms of weaponry. The moral component is entirely on application.
Blake James
Yes, but it depends. Giant nation killing nukes (like the Tsar Bomba) I can't see being justified unless the all people were as depraved as the Canaanites. Modern society is pretty bad, but not as bad as Sodom & Gamorrah was. The civilian body count would be too great in modern society. Now, tactical nukes (ie smaller nukes akin to pic related) where the blast radius is much smaller is more justifiable as it can be used to wipe out military bases and thus minimize civilian casualties.
The same would go for chemical weapons, but I can't see tactical chlorine bombs being a thing. But im no military theorist or a theologian, so what do I know.
Dominic Anderson
No.
John Walker
No. Also america destroyed the two most christian cities in Japan, good work.
Angel Brown
It was either nuking them or invading them. The latter would have resulted in much more bloodshed seeing as how the Japanese were planning on using women and children as soldiers
Michael Stewart
it wasn't an accident
Camden Sanchez
We dropped leaflets over the cities telling all civilians to evacuate, in English and in Japanese.
Josiah Hughes
Fighting is fighting. There’s no such thing as “fighting fair”.
Logan Morris
Wrong, this justifies total war theory which is un-holy and un-Christian.
Gabriel Scott
The genocide of the peoples of Canaan were, by your own definition, total war. They were completely justified.
Ayden Thomas
God specifically and directly ordered that. Do you think God spoke to Truman and ordered him to nuke the Japanese?
Brody Martin
That was due to the context. Imagine genocideing an entire country today in the name of your just war and see what God would say about that.
Unless you have the divine word of God on your side then no that would be very wrong.
God is the author of life so he could have just made a disease kill them all, but instead he used his Israelites to do so.
Robert Baker
I’m just pointing out an inconsistency in your statement. Some total wars were justified by God’s command.
Gavin Richardson
Ok. but outside that context literally every other war even in the name of Christ cannot employ such tactics. We were discussing more modern examples.
Lucas Bell
Fewer people died during the entire March to the Sea than half a day of battle at Gettysburg or Antietam. So while Total War is absolutely destructive, it can also be carried out in a manner that reduces casualties. Keeping this in mind and considering nuclear weapons, Total War is more justifiable than a nuclear attack.
Christopher Thompson
There is a big difference between soldiers dying in battle and families dying of starvation that was intentionally set so that would would experience it. Ending a war faster does not justify this behavior.
As for use of nuclear weapons I feel like those are simply an extension of total war. Since it carries the same idea. However, you *can* use nuclear weapons in such a way that *avoids* civilian casualty. If this were the case, such an implication of the weapons would actually be *more* moral than total war since total war is specifically targeted to civilians.
Oliver Richardson
Well think about the way the Southern economy was structured at the time of the war, it was almost entirely agrarian and much of the non-foodstuff military supplies was made by cottage industries. They simply didn't have industry on the scale of the North (hence why smuggled arms were so valuable), so in order to target the military and its supplies it was necessary to target the civilians who provided materiel.
However, such a strategy in the late 20th century and now in our own would be absolutely immoral based on your reasoning for sure, and so given the way our economy is your point about tactical use of nuclear arms may hold water. But to apply that reasoning to past wars is incorrect in my opinion.
William Cooper
Why did it have to be Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Sounds fishy to me. richmondunlimited.wordpress.com
No it wasn't. winnie the pooh the american empire.
Caleb Brown
No, it's one thing to meet on an open field and slowly march toward each other in a defensive formation alongside pikemen and another thing is destroying civilian buildings so you can profit from their reconstruction.
Josiah Ramirez
If you talk about WW2,it was 10000x unjustified.