Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

54 BRIAN V. JOHNSTONE
the nature of God, the way of return to God through acts which
are intended to be manifestations of the divinity in action,
moved by charity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and of salvation
through Jesus Christ. Such persons may be presumed to be
unlikely to engage in the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents
in the course of pursuing earthly, military purposes.
Furthermore, the theological-eschatological context would prevent
any cause of war from being considered as absolute, and
thus affect the judgment as to which means are proportionate to
that cause. If one loves God, even the deepest love for community
and nation must be recognized as finite and of a different
order of value. The same love, in its human expression, must
include both friends and enemies, so that even the use of force
against the latter must be contained within an effective will to
bring them peace. Thus, love or charity would limit the use of
force, even when this becomes necessary as the last resort in
defense of self and others.
A detailed examination of the important subsequent development
of the tradition, the detailed exposition of the doctrine
and the further development of its specific criteria by Vitoria 53
and Suarez 54 would be beyond the limits of one article. Some
remarks on particular points must be sufficient. Suarez (d.
1617) made explicit the link between self-defense and defense of
the state, (a link not found in St.Thomas). Charity in his
account, still has a fundamental place, indeed, he places his
analysis of the morality of war in the tract on charity, as did St.
Thomas. 55 Timothy M. Renick has argued that, for Suarez, the
requirements of charity, require a limit on the losses of innocents,
to what is “absolutely unavoidable.” 56 Thus the applica-
53
HEINZ-GERHARD JUSTENHOVEN, Franciscus de Vitoria zu Krieg und
Frieden (Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1991).
54
RAINER SPECHT, “Francisco Suárez über den Kreig,” in Suche nach
Frieden: Politische Ethik in der Frühen Neuzeit I., Norbert Brieskorn and
Markus Riedenauer eds. (Stuttgart Berlin Cologne: Kohlhammer, 2000) 191-
222.
55
FRANCISCO SUAREZ, S.J. Omnia Opera, t.12, (Paris: Vivès, 1858) tr. III De
Charitate, Disputatio XIII, Sect. I, disp. XIII, p. 737.
56
TIMOTHY M. RENICK, “Charity Lost: The Secularization of the Principle
of Double Effect in the Just-War Tradition,” The Thomist 58 (1994) 452.