Читать книгу On Temporal and Spiritual Authority - Robert Bellarmine - Страница 29

The conditions of a just war are usually four according to those who discuss these matters: legitimate authority, a just cause, a good intention, and an appropriate way of proceeding. But each one must be discussed by itself.

The first condition is legitimate authority, as St. Augustine says in Contra Faustum, book 22, chapter 75: “The natural order of mortals, that is suited to peace, requires that the authority and deliberation to undertake a war reside in the prince, while the soldiers owe it to peace and common safety to execute military orders.” And reason proves the same, for if private citizens or anyone who has a superior are wronged by somebody, they can appeal to their superior and ask him for justice. But if princes are wronged by other princes, they do not have a common tribunal where they can complain, and therefore it is lawful for them to respond to public wrongs with war.

Moreover, this authority of declaring war resides, according to common opinion, in all princes and peoples who have no superior in temporal matters, which means all kings, the Republic of Venice, and similar entities, and also certain dukes and counts who are not subject to anybody in temporal matters, for those who are subject to others are not themselves heads of commonwealths but rather limbs. Note, however, that this authority is not required for a defensive war, only for an offensive one, for self-defense is lawful for anybody, not only for a prince, but also for a private citizen, while declaring war and invading the enemy are the prerogative of the supreme head.

The second condition is just cause, since a war cannot be declared without a cause, nor can it be declared simply for some crime, but only to ward off a wrong. Thus St. Augustine in question 10 in his Quaestiones in Iesum Nave says: “Just wars are usually defined as those that take revenge for a wrong done, for instance if the people or city against which war is waged neglected to give satisfaction for their people’s unjust action or neglected to return what was wrongly taken away.” The reason is that a prince is only a judge of his own subjects, and therefore he cannot punish all the crimes committed by others, but only those crimes that are detrimental to his subjects; for even if he is not an ordinary judge of other people, he is nevertheless the defender of his own, and by reason of this necessity he behaves in a certain sense as the judge of those who wronged his people, so that he can punish them with the sword.

Indeed, it must be observed that the cause for war must not be trivial or dubious, but important and certain, lest such war bring more harm than the hoped-for advantage. If in fact it is dubious, we must distinguish between prince and soldiers. The prince without a doubt commits a sin, for war is an act of punitive justice, and it is unjust to punish anybody for a reason not yet proved. Soldiers, however, do not commit a sin unless it is clear that the war is certainly unlawful, for subjects must obey their superior and must not discuss his commands; rather they must presume that their prince has a just cause, unless they clearly know the contrary. Likewise, when the guilt of a private citizen is dubious, the judge who condemns him sins, while the executioner who kills the condemned man does not, for the executioner is not bound to discuss the sentence of the judge, as Pope Boniface teaches in Liber sextus, “De regulis juris,” rule 25: “Whoever does something by order of the judge appears not to behave wrongly, since he must necessarily obey,”¹⁵² and blessed Augustine, Contra Faustum, book 22, chapter 75, says: “Thus it happens that a just man, if perhaps he is in the army of a sacrilegious king, could rightfully fight at his command preserving the order of civic peace, both when he is certain that what he is commanded to do is not against God’s precept and also when he is not certain that this is the case, for maybe the iniquity of the command makes the king guilty, but the duty to obey proves the soldier innocent.”

Note, however, that this indulgence must be applied only to those soldiers who are obligated to serve their prince when he wages war, such soldiers being his subjects and also those who, even in time of peace, receive a regular salary from the prince, but not those soldiers who come from somewhere else when a war has to be fought. In fact, those who are not obliged to serve in the army cannot enter a war with a safe conscience, unless they know that the war is just. Those, however, who do not think about this, and are ready to enter a war whether it is just or not, simply to get paid, find themselves in a state of damnation.

The third condition is good intention. Since the aim of war is peace and public tranquillity, it is not lawful to undertake a war for any other end. Hence those kings and soldiers who undertake a war either to harm somebody, or to enlarge the empire, or to show their prowess in war, or for a reason other than the common good, sin gravely, even if the authority is legitimate and the cause is just. So in the epistle to Boniface (no. 207 or 205 [189]), blessed Augustine says: “The will should want peace, only necessity should bring war, so that God may free us from the necessity and preserve us in peace. For peace is not sought in order that war might be undertaken, but a war is undertaken so that peace might be acquired. Therefore you should be peaceful even when fighting, so that by winning the war you may bring those whom you conquer into the unity of peace”; and in Contra Faustum, book 22, chapter 74: “Lust for harming, cruelty in seeking revenge, an unpacified and implacable spirit, brutality in rebelling, lust for power, and similar things are rightly condemned in war.”

But there are two things to be noted. First, since war is a means to peace, but a very serious and dangerous one, a war must not be undertaken immediately when there is cause; peace must first be sought in other less dangerous ways, such as a peaceful request to enemies for the satisfaction that they owe: Deuteronomy 20: “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it,”¹⁵³ and blessed Augustine, epistle 207 [189] to Boniface: “The will must want peace, only necessity should bring war.”

But you will ask, if the enemy at first does not want to give satisfaction, but soon, with the war already begun, asks for peace and offers to give satisfaction, will the other be bound to desist from war? Cajetan at the entry “war” says that he is not bound to end the war when it has already begun, but he would be obliged to accept satisfaction before beginning the war. But (with the proviso of a better judgment) it seems that we must say that he who has a just cause is never bound in justice to accept satisfaction either before the beginning of the war or after, but in both cases he is bound to do so out of charity. The reason for the former is that a prince who has a just cause for war functions as judge of the other prince, who wronged him, but a judge is not bound in justice to pardon a guilty man who is condemned to death even if he offers satisfaction; nevertheless he could pardon him out of mercy, if he is the supreme judge. For example, a king is not bound to spare the life of a thief even if he gives back what he stole, but the king can out of mercy.

The reason for the latter is that war is a very grave punishment, by which not only he who sinned is punished, but many innocent people are also involved accidentally. Christian charity seems, therefore, always to demand that the war should end when he who did the wrong offers due satisfaction, unless perhaps something else is accidentally involved, for instance, if the enemy against whom one fights is such that it benefits the common good that he is subject to another or that he is completely destroyed. Such enemies were the Amorites, whom God ordered to be eliminated completely (Deuteronomy 20).

Second, it is to be noted that this third condition differs from the first two, because if those are absent, the war is unjust, but if this one is missing, the war is evil, but not properly speaking unjust. Whoever wages war without authority or just cause sins not only against charity, but also against justice, and he is not so much a soldier as a robber; but whoever has authority and just cause, and nevertheless fights for love of revenge or to enlarge the empire or for any other evil end, does not act against justice, but only against charity, and he is not a robber, but an evil soldier.

From this it is deduced that when only the third condition is lacking, soldiers and kings are not obliged to make any restitution but only to do penance, while when the first or the second condition is lacking, all are obliged to make restitution for damage caused, unless they are excused by an invincible ignorance. For just as a crass and guilty ignorance does not excuse from sin, so it does not excuse from restitution, as we explain in the last chapter, regarding injuries and damage inflicted. But whoever suffers from an invincible ignorance is not obliged to make restitution for as long as he suffers from such ignorance. But when he realizes that the war was unjust, he is obliged to make restitution not for the damage inflicted at the time of the war, but for anything he has gotten out of the war that was not his. If he has no possessions but has become richer by selling things, he is obliged to give back as much as he gained, for something that does not belong to him cannot be kept even if it has been acquired in ignorance and without sin; it must be given back to the owner, if he is known, or to the poor.

The fourth condition is the appropriate way of proceeding, which consists chiefly in this, that no innocent should be harmed, which John the Baptist explained in Luke 3: “Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.”¹⁵⁴ With these words John prohibits the injuries that soldiers usually inflict upon innocent people either by force or by treachery, either against their person or against their property. When he says, “Do violence to no man,” he prohibits the injury that people inflict with brutal violence, as when they kill the peasants if they do not readily obey. When he says, “neither accuse any falsely,” he prohibits the injury that is inflicted with treachery and calumny, as when they say that somebody is a traitor or an enemy, even if they know the contrary to be true, and with this accusation either rob him or kill him or bring him to the commander or the prefects. Indeed, when he adds, “and be content with your wages,” he prohibits the injury inflicted on somebody not to their person, but to their goods, as when they rage and pillage wherever they can, or demand and extort things from those who owe them nothing.

However, it must be observed that there are three kinds of people on whom soldiers cannot inflict any damage, according to the rule of John the Baptist. The first is composed of all those who do not belong to the commonwealth of the enemies, and from this rule soldiers who inflict some damage on citizens or friendly peasants with whom they are quartered or whose land they are passing cannot be excused. And neither are they excused if they say that they have not received their pay, for this does not entitle them to the goods of private citizens. The citizen or peasant should not pay the price if the king or commander sins by not paying stipends to the soldiers, unless, for just cause, the inhabitants of a certain place are condemned to this form of punishment, that is, of providing for the soldiers, but that happens rarely. The second kind of people are those who, even if they belong to the commonwealth of the enemies in some capacity, nevertheless are exempted by the chapter “Innovamus, de tregua et pace,” where it says: “We decree that priests, monks, those who live in convents, pilgrims, merchants, peasants who come or go or work in the fields, and the beasts by which they plow or bring the seeds to the field, should enjoy a fitting security.”¹⁵⁵ Here “merchants” does not seem to mean those who live in the city of the enemies and are part of that city, but only those who are there in transit or who are going to market, but are not part of the city.

The third kind is composed of the people not suited for war, such as children, elderly people, and women, for such people, even if they can be captured and robbed since they are part of the city, nevertheless cannot rightfully be killed, unless they are killed by chance and by accident. Thus when a soldier shoots into a battalion of enemies and by chance kills a child or a woman or even a priest, he does not sin, but when he kills them intentionally and has the means, if he wishes, to avoid killing them, then he sins. In fact, natural reason teaches this, and God also commands the Hebrews in Deuteronomy 20 to spare children and women, and Theodosius was gravely reproached by Ambrose because when he wanted to punish the Thessalonians, he ordered all those who were in his way to be killed without discrimination, as Theodoretus reports in his Historia, book 5, chapters 17 and 18. The fact that Moses also sometimes ordered women and minors to be killed, as appears in Deuteronomy 2 and 3 and other places, does not mean that the same is lawful for our soldiers, as Moses clearly knew from God’s revelation that God wanted it, and to God no man can say, What doest thou?¹⁵⁶