ABSTRACT
When nations enter war, they risk the well-being of their citizens along with that of other members of the human community. Moreover, war endangers the conditions of human and nonhuman life insofar as it poses risks to cultural resources; economic, political, and domestic arrangements; and the natural environment. Over the past decade, a lively scholarly debate has focused on the language and logic of just-war criteria in general and Thomas Aquinas's influential contribution to those criteria in particular. That debate turns on the extent to which recent moral theories and categories are appropriate for interpreting and applying traditional just-war ideas. Pacifists and just-war theorists differ about the strength they assign to this duty. For pacifists, it is indefeasible, thereby producing an absolute ban on killing in war. Theologically, the debate concerns whether religious convictions inform traditional and modern Christian thinking about killing and war.
