Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez on Religious Authority and Cause for Justified War

The Centrality of Religious War in the Christian Just War Tradition

Bibliographic Data

ID14760428
AuthorsMelvin B Endy (corresponding author), Melvin Endy
Year2018
Volume46
Issue2
Pages289-331
Publication date2018-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Religious Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0384-9694 • E-ISSN: 1467-9795
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jore.12219
OpenAlexW2805510944
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited25

Contrary to the received understanding that Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez ruled out religious war by grounding just cause in natural law, they supported a robust view of papal authority for war when necessary for the defense of the church against heretics, schismatics, and pagans as well as for the spread of Christianity and Christendom throughout the world. They believed that religious wars were in accord with natural law as a means to its fulfillment in Christianity, as a justification for the defense of the church as the one true faith, and as a moral obligation to provide all of humanity with the opportunity to receive Christian truth and grace. The neo‐Thomists' vigorous support for religious war was in the mainstream of the Christian just war tradition from the time of the wars against pagans in the early middle ages through their own time. This finding and the continuation into the modern era of sanctified patriotism stemming from the mixing of church and state especially during war that began in early Middle Ages, along with the historic roots of the recently prominent presumption against war, argue for a more complex understanding of the normative Christian just war tradition than that found among supporters of the classic interpretation of that tradition

Christianity · Faith · Just war theory · Natural law · Patriotism · Political science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Theology · Augustinian Studies and Theology · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification

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