ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book contributes to that cacophonous, conflictual, yet also enlightening and perhaps occasionally elevating conversation. It aims to articulate an understanding of the Just War Tradition (JWT) that achieves two central aims. The first is to provide a conceptual and propositional resource those citizens, soldiers, and statesmen can employ as an aid to moral formation. The second is to provide an understanding of the morality of war that is open to religious contributions both to the justification and limitation of military violence. The book explores the normative relations between God and war and between religion and military violence, and, the relevance of religious considerations to the justification of war. The conception of the JWT that the author develops in the ensuing pages depends throughout on a conception of justice that Wolterstorff has articulated.
