Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

56 BRIAN V. JOHNSTONE
ing within the tradition of their community, and these particular
questions must be addressed in reference to that tradition. Thus,
accepting (or rejecting) the doctrine must be understood as one
element in a moral life, within a community which has committed
itself to an historical purpose, of preventing war, checking
violence, and fostering peace for all. Because it is this kind of
life, it requires certain virtues and the elaboration of specific
norms, for example those norms governing the decision to go to
war and the conduct of war. Conversely, because those who
inhabit the tradition live by certain virtues, they will seek to
develop such norms, and engage in a continual process of
review, to assure themselves that the norms express what the
virtues require. General moral terms are the product of this constant
interaction, engaging the intellect and the will. Sometimes,
within the tradition, the intensity of the concern to protect people
threatened with harms has led some exponents of the tradition
to reinforce certain prohibitions with language originally
proper to timeless, ontological essences. 60 I would suggest that
they are not so much essences as the fruit of a long history of
experience, and of a refinement of virtue, together with moral
insight, which are carried forward from generation to generation
through the testimony of those committed to the tradition.
We relearn what murder means, by reading the narratives of the
tradition. The stories evoke something of the revulsion which
the past members of the tradition felt for this crime, and with
that also something of the intensity of their concern for life.
Thus, the present members of the tradition, accepting their testimony,
absorb a similar motivation. Norms express in propositional
form the historical requirements of that concern for life.
In the Christian tradition, for example, the prohibition to kill the
innocent in war, or more specifically non-combatants, is such a
norm. If such norms are detached from their tradition and presented
in isolation, as if they were they were simply items in a
general, “secular” ethic, they are deprived both of their sub-
60 An example is Augustine’s notion of order, see Budzik, Doctor Pacis,
386.