Lesson video

Hello and welcome to another religious education lesson with me, Mr. Green.

Today we are going to be looking at the just war theory within Christianity.

In order to do that, you need to make sure you've got four things with you.

They are a pen, a different colour pen, some paper, and of course your theology brains.

So if you need to go and get any of those things, please pause the video now and join me once you've got them.

So today we are learning about the just war theory, and you can see what we're going to do.

Going to start off by explaining why Aquinas created the just war theory before then looking at it as just war theory, memorising the conditions of the just war theory and evaluating the just war theory, thinking about what was good about it and what problems it might have.

So firstly, let's look at why Aquinas thought it was necessary to create a theory to determine when a war was just.

Before I do that, it's worthwhile just reminding ourselves what we mean by justice.

Justice is the act of making things right and fair.

Making things right and fair.

So essentially the just war theory is seeking to determine when it is right and fair to use force in a conflict.

Now Aquinas thought there were too many wars and a casualty or a consequence of war is human life is lost.

So if there's too many wars, that also means that there's too much innocent life lost.

So these wars were causing an unjustifiable and huge human cost in terms of life lost.

So he wanted to create a set of rules to determine two things.

Firstly, work out when it was justifiable to go to war and secondly, guide behaviour in war to minimise the damage caused.

So essentially we have Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas here creating a theory aimed at minimising conflict.

And we can see there's two things there, can't we, firstly, a respect for human life, trying to minimise the amount of human life that is lost whilst also trying to balance that against a belief that actually sometimes in order to get peace, in order to get justice, it might become necessary to use force and his rules, his six rules that he has tries to work out the balance between those two things.

Protecting human life, and when it might be possible, might be necessary to use force in order to establish peace and justice.

So now we've looked at the basics of Thomas Aquinas' just war theory.

I just want you to answer these four questions.

Who created the Christian just war theory? Why did he create the just war theory? What are the two areas of focus in his rules and how can ideas about the sanctity of life be used to support the theory? So pause video now, please, and have a go at those questions and join me for feedback once you've done that.

Excellent, good work.

So let's see how we got on.

So the first question, hopefully you were able to remember that it was Saint Thomas Aquinas who created the just war theory.

The second one, his reason for creating it.

He thought there were too many wars that were unjustifiable.

For example, ones motivated by greed or retaliation, and this meant lots of people were losing their lives in these unjustifiable wars.

If you need to check your answer to the first two, do that now for me, please, by pausing the video and using your different colour pen to check or amend or correct your work.

So the third one, his just war theory focuses on stating when it's acceptable to go to war and what kind of behaviour is acceptable within war.

And the fourth question was a tricky question about sanctity of life.

Hopefully you're able to remember that sanctity of life states all life is sacred as it's a gift from God and therefore life needs protecting and preserving.

Only God can give and take life.

And some Christians may use this theory to support the just war theory, as it aims to limit the amount of wars fought in order to save lives, it will still allow for when there's a clear need to protect life, but also useful to draw out here that clearly within sanctity of life, we've got on the third line there, only God can give and take life.

So other Christians might actually use the sanctity of life theory to say, actually, no look, only God can take life.

Conflict involves taking life.

Therefore, no conflict whatsoever is acceptable.

So you can apply the same idea of sanctity of life to support it, we're protecting lives, but also to oppose it in terms of conflict takes lives and that's not allowed.

So again, if you need to check your work, please pause the video now to correct or amend or add to your work, using your answers you can see on your screens now.

So we are going to now go through Saint Thomas Aquinas' just war theory.

There are six conditions and all six conditions need to be met simultaneously in order for a war to be considered just.

I want to flag that to you because when we go through the rules we'll think about a good thing and a bad thing about each rule.

And just because each rule might itself have a individual problem doesn't necessarily mean the theory itself is flawed, because all six conditions need to be met at the same time in order for a war to meet the criteria from Saint Thomas Aquinas.

So the first condition is there must be a just cause.

And when you look at the explanation on your screen, there, you can see it says just cause is one which corrects a situation which is seriously unjust.

And let's think what that might be.

It could be about self-defense, couldn't it, you could be under attack and needing to defend yourself.

It might be defence of others, or it might perhaps be correcting some oppression that's happening somewhere in the world.

All of those things may be considered as a just cause.

Now a really good thing about this condition is that in limiting the causes that we'd consider to be just, you limit the amount of wars and subsequently in limiting the amount of wars, you also by extension limit the human cost of those wars.

So this condition could be said to be a really good condition for that reason, but there's also perhaps a problem with this condition, the problem being different people or states and by states, I mean, countries or nations, that have different ideas of justice.

For example, what I think might be just might be different to what you think is just, and the same could be said between countries, what United Kingdom thinks is just might be different to what America thinks is just or what Russia thinks is just, or what Korea thinks is just, or what Australia thinks is just.

Another problem with this is also thinking about self-defense being a just cause for war, we might think, but at what point does it become just to defend yourself? Is it when you're under attack or is it when there's a threat of attack? And if it's a threat of attack, how serious does the threat have to be in order to establish, yes, this is now a just point to use force.

So condition number one, there must be a just cause.

Condition number two, a conflict must be started by the correct authority and the correct authenticity should be the government or rightful leaders of the country.

So for example, at the moment, Boris Johnson is prime minister in the United Kingdom.

So he would be the correct authority to start a conflict in the United Kingdom.

In America, it's Donald Trump.

So he would be the correct authority over there.

So again, we might say there are good things about this condition.

One good thing about this condition is lock in limiting the number of people who can declare a war.

Again, you limit the numbers of wars, and if you're limiting the number of wars, you're reducing the fatalities within those wars.

But we might also point to a problem that sometimes it isn't clear who that is.

Sometimes the correct authority may also be considered evil, particularly in civil war.

Sometimes it can be really difficult to establish who the leader with the correct authority in that state is.

You might have different groups.

You might have a group that used to lead the country and you might have an opposition group that now claims rightful leadership.

How would a foreign state determine which of those leaders is the correct authority? And also, we might not always consider a leader of a country to be a really good leader.

We might consider them to be an evil leader.

And if a country's got an evil leader, they would still actually be considered perhaps to be the correct authority to start a war.

So just because you're the correct authority doesn't necessarily mean that the war is going to be just.

Condition number three, the intention must be right.

By intention we're talking about, well, what is it that's the driving factor behind this war? And our explanation here, those going to war must aim at the just cause.

You can't use a just cause for getting some other aim, it has to be to promote good.

So we mentioned a moment ago, didn't we, that a just cause might be something like defending yourself and you might be defending yourself against a country that's threatening you with weapons of mass destruction, for example.

And you might say, look, we've got a just cause we're going to war with this country because they're threatening us with weapons of mass destruction.

And we want to remove those weapons of mass destruction, but that might be a bit of a cover for other things you want to do.

It might be perhaps how we really want to change the leader of that country.

Or we want to gain that territory and have control of it ourselves.

Or maybe we want to gain control of their natural resources like oil, and have the financial gains of that.

That wouldn't be allowed even though there was perhaps a just cause.

You have to make sure your intentions throughout the conflict remains on that just cause and doesn't get diverted towards other things, which wouldn't be just.

Now a good thing about this, again, is that we're limiting them out of wars, aren't we, because only those wars which have a right intention are just, and if we limit the amount of wars in that way, again, we're saving lives, but a problem might be it's really difficult, isn't it, to tell what a person's or state's true intentions are.

It might be that there was a just cause, but how can we be certain that the reason for the conflict is that cause and nothing else? Condition number four, has to be the last resort.

So all other ways of solving the dispute must have been attempted before you decide to go to war.

And that means things like peace talks.

It means things like maybe trade embargoes.

It means things like collecting an international effort to put some diplomatic pressure on that country.

Only after you've gone through all that process, in order to try and resolve it peacefully, would it then be just to use force.

We might say a really good thing about this condition, it encourages people to find peaceful methods to settle a dispute before you use force, and if everyone tries the peaceful methods first, we can be hopeful that at least some disputes are solved peacefully.

And if some of the disputes are solved peacefully by using those peaceful means beforehand, again, we're cutting down on the numbers of conflicts, which means we're saving human lives, but we might also point to a problem with this condition.

The problem could be looking going through that peaceful process, which could be long and drawn out.

It be that there's a terrible injustice happening and that terrible injustice is continuing to happen all the while.

And you know, really, this evil dictator, for example, is never going to listen to the peaceful means, maybe sometimes, and injustice is that severe or a leader is that brutal or that evil that you know that peaceful methods aren't going to work, so you feel compelled to jump straight into force to correct an injustice as swiftly as possible before it has an opportunity to get even worse.

Condition number five, there must be a good chance of success.

What do we mean by this? You have to stand a reasonable chance of being successful in the conflict and it'd be utterly reckless to initiate a war if you're likely to be defeated.

Remember, wars cost lives.

And if you're a really small or perhaps unpowerful nation declaring or raging war on a big nation, you can see a problem there, can't you? You're basically sending your own citizens, your own soldiers to almost certain death.

That'd be a really reckless decision to make as a leader.

And we might suggest that this is good because it limits pointless loss of life in war, because it makes sure that only the wars that people feel they have a reasonable chance of success are fought, but a problem with that is maybe it allows the more powerful nations to be more exploitative.

If you know, you're a really strong, well equipped nation in terms of military power, and you know one of the conditions is it has to be a good chance at success and no one has got a good chance of success against you, perhaps that gives you the ability to be a little bit manipulative or exploitative because of your military power.

And condition number six, which is the final condition, force used must be proportionate.

So using the correct and suitable amount of force.

Excessive force should never be used.

And this is aimed at minimising civilian casualties and also minimising the fatalities that are lost on the battlefield.

For example, if it's possible to win the war with just a small amount of life lost in some very targeted missile attacks, that has to be the way you do it.

It might equally be possible to win the war by dropping huge weapons of mass destruction everywhere.

But if it's possible to do it with much less force, then you have to do it with much less force, using the minimum amount of force, so the damage caused by the war is as restricted as possible.

So a really good thing about this condition, limiting the damage that takes place as a consequence of war.

We know the damage of war is catastrophic.

Lives are lost, areas are decimated; the natural world too is also really badly impacted by conflict.

So if we can limit the amount of damage caused, that has to be a good thing, but a problem may be sometimes disproportionate actions could end a war faster.

For example, if you have a nuclear weapon or weapons of mass destruction, you might feel confident, yes, this weapon might cause an awful lot of life to be lost, but I'm fairly certain it's going to bring about immediate surrender, which means the war would be ended sooner rather than later.

So we're now going to do some work on memorising the steps of the just war theory.

And we're going to do that by removing either the condition or the explanations on your screen.

So you can see at the moment the conditions, you've got all six there in bold, just cause, correct authority, right intention, last resort, chance of success and proportional.

Those are six conditions of the just warfare, and beneath each one, just a reminder the of the explanation.

So by just cause I mean correcting an injustice, defending yourself or others.

By correct authority, it has to be started by the government or rightful leader.

By right intention, the aim of the war has to stay on the just cause, it can't move to anything else.

Last resort or other ways of solving that dispute must have been tried.

Chance of success, you have to have a reasonable chance of success, and proportional, use of a suitable amount of force, never using excessive force.

One of these boxes is going to be removed in a moment and you'll need to try and remember which one it is.

So let's see if we can do that, which one's gone now, how do we define just cause.

Think to yourself.

Excellent.

By just cause I mean correcting an injustice, which is defending yourself or others perhaps.

Which one's gone now, what do we mean by right intention? Think to yourself.

Excellent, well done.

The aim has to stay on the just cause.

It can't move to anything else.

Which one has gone now? Excellent, and by chance of success, we mean you have to have a reasonable chance of success, don't we? Next one.

Correct authority, what does that mean? Well done, started by the government or the rightful leader of that state.

Next one.

What do we mean by last resort? Fantastic.

All other ways of solving the dispute must've been tried before you use force.

Next one, now what's gone? What does proportional mean? Well done only using a suitable amount of force.

Never using excessive force.

Next one.

What do you mean by just cause again? Can you remember? Brilliant.

Correcting an injustice.

Might be defending yourself or might be defending others.

Now what's wrong? What do we mean by last resort again? Fantastic.

All other ways of solving the dispute must have been tried first.

Correct authority, what did that mean? Well done, started by the government or rightful leader.

Oh, now we've got the missing condition.

So which condition is missing here? Well done, it's just cause.

Which condition is missing here? Talking about aims, aims has to stay on the just cause, nothing else.

Did you get it? Well done, right intention.

Next one.

Now which one's missing? Well done, chance of success.

Now which one's gone? Started by the government or rightful leader.

What was the name of that condition? Correct authority, good work.

Next one.

All the ways of solving the dispute must have been tried.

What's the name for that condition? Well done, last resort.

Next one.

Only using a suitable amount of force, do not use excessive force.

What was the word we're using for that? Proportional, well done.

Next one, which one's gone this time? Brilliant, correct authority, good work.

Next one.

Fantastic, right intention.

Next one.

Last resort, well done.

Next one.

Chance of success, good work.

Keep going.

Correct authority.

Chance of success, good work.

Now a whole condition's gone, both the name and the explanation.

Can you remember which one is missing? Good, I gave you slightly longer there.

Correct authority and started by the government or rightful leader.

Now what condition is gone? Well done, it's last resort, isn't it? And by last resort, I mean all other ways of solving the dispute must have been tried first.

Now which one's gone? Chance of success, well done.

There has to be a reasonable chance of success.

Another one's just gone missing.

Which one is that? Just cause isn't it? Remember just cause.

There has to be a good reason, perhaps something like self-defense.

Now which one's gone? Right intention.

That aim has to stay on the just cause.

You can't use just because as a cloak to go and do something else, which isn't just like change a lead or get control of land.

Now which one's gone? Proportional, only using a suitable amount of force.

Never using excessive force.

Now which one's gone? Correct authority.

It has to be started by the government or the rightful leader of our state.

Now which one's gone? Just cause again, correcting an injustice, defending yourself or others.

Now which one's gone? It's correct authority again, isn't it? Started by the government or rightful leader.

Another one, which one's gone this time? Last resort, isn't it? All other ways of solving the dispute must've been tried.

Excellent work.

Hopefully that has enabled you to remember the six conditions of the just war theory.

So I'd now like you to do a short summary task.

First job, copy that table out.

And then I would like you to complete the first two columns.

So the condition column and the explanation column.

See if you can do that from memory.

If you can't do it from memory precisely, you can see there's a few trigger words in the bottom right hand side of your screen there, which you can of course use.

So pause the video now, please.

And have a go at that and then join me for some feedback on your fantastic theology work in just a moment.

Excellent effort, well done.

So let's see how you managed to get on.

So the six conditions you can see, just cause, correct authority, right intention, last resort, chance of success, and proportionate.

Then our explanations.

By just cause you mean correcting an injustice, defending yourself or others.

Correct authority.

You mean it needs to be started by the government or the rightful leader of that state.

By right intention we mean the aim has to stay on the just cause; it can't be anything else.

Remember that means you might have a just cause to defend yourself.

That doesn't mean you can use that as an excuse to go and bring about a change in the leader or get control of that land or get control of an oil reserve or something like that.

Last resort, all other ways of solving the dispute must've been tried.

Remember that means things like peace talks, trade embargoes, trade sanctions, things that might damage a company in another way to get them to change their behaviour.

Building diplomatic international pressure against that country would also be an example of a peaceful means.

Only after you've tried all those things and they fail would it then be acceptable to use force.

Chance of success, a reasonable chance of success has to be believed to be there.

If not, it's very reckless to send citizens in your country to war knowing that ultimately you're not going to win and very likely, probably a good number of those people will die in that conflict.

And the final one, proportionate use of suitable amount of force, do not use excessive force.

So whilst of course you could win the war perhaps by dropping a weapon of mass destruction.

If you can win that with much less force and therefore cause much less damage to human life, damage to the natural world, damage to the infrastructure of these places that have cost an awful lot of money and provide economic livelihood to all of its citizens, then you've got to do that.

It's not acceptable just to use a huge weapon when it's not required.

So next thing we're going to do is try and fill out the final two columns of our table.

The final two columns of our table offer a good thing and a problem with each condition.

You can see on the board here are 12 boxes, and 12 boxes for six conditions.

That means there are, there is so that is a strength of each condition on the screen and a problem, a weakness of each condition on the screen.

So please pause the video in a moment, read through these 12 boxes really carefully and then match them to their correct condition, whether it's a strength or weakness in order to complete your table.

So get your theology hats on, get thinking and complete this and then join for some feedback in just a moment.

Pause the video now, please.

Excellent.

Really good work.

So let's see if we managed to match it up correctly.

So for just cause you wanted the strength there, limiting the number of situations when countries can go to war, and if you limit the number of situations when countries go to war, by extension you limit the amount of conflicts and therefore the amount of damage done by those conflicts.

But a weakness is, it can be unclear when a country has a just cause.

We're talking about self-defense earlier weren't we? At what point does it become acceptable to use force to defend yourself? Is it when you're under attack or is it when there's a threat of attack? If it's when there's a threat of attack, at what point does that threat become credible enough in order to use force? Correct authority? A strength is it limits the number of people who can start a war.

But our problem is maybe it's not always clear who the correct authority is, and again that could be a big problem in countries where perhaps there's contested leadership or perhaps a civil war going on.

Right intention, again, it limits the number of purposes or aims a war can have; in doing that, you limit the number of wars and by extension limit the damage that's caused by war as well.

A weakness of it is though it can be difficult to tell what the person's intentions are.

They might be saying, look, we're defending ourselves, and they might be defending themselves, but they might also be seeking to do some other things that we mentioned earlier, changing the leader, for example.

So if you need to pause the video to check your work, amend it, add to it, please do that now.

And our final three.

So the last resort, a good thing about having that as a condition is it encourages countries to find peaceful solutions to war.

And if that works, even just some of the time, that's really good because a conflict has been avoided.

But a problem with it is seeking peaceful resolutions may result in people suffering for longer, because there are some times where perhaps you just know that peace isn't going to work here.

And if I have to go through all those peaceful efforts, first, this injustice is going to continue.

People are going to suffer for longer.

Chance of success ensures life is not lost fighting a war you cannot win.

That would be a really reckless thing for a country to do, wouldn't it? But the weakness of it is, is perhaps sometimes you might feel that it's necessary to stand up for justice, even if you cannot win.

So there might be a really powerful country, really oppressing you in all manner of ways and you just don't have a chance of success.

Does that mean you just have to sit there and take it? According to this law, perhaps which means you wouldn't be able to stand up for justice, even though you know that you should stand up for justice.

And our final one, proportionate.

If it's proportionate, you limit the amount of damage done and life lost during the war, and that has to be a good thing, doesn't it? But the problem might be excessive action may help bring a war to a close quickly.

And if that's the case, although that one action might cost lots of lives, it might actually save lives in the long run by shortening the length of the conflict and therefore the subsequent life lost.

So let's just consolidate what we've done so far today then.

So you can see on your screens is a table, which has seven statements in it.

Each of those statements is either true or false.

So read them and identify whether you think it's true or false.

If you think it's true, just write the word true down, followed by the statement.

If you think it's false, write the word false down followed by correction of the statement.

So please pause the video now and have a go at doing that for me.

And let's do some wonderful feedback too.

The first one was true.

So it just needs to be written down that just war theory seeks to limit the amount of wars fought.

The second one is also true.

So again, just needed writing down.

The just war theory seeks to prevent innocent life from being lost.

The third one is false, so it needs correcting.

And hopefully you stated there are six conditions to the just war theory.

The fourth one was false too, so that also needs correcting.

The conditions cover when it's acceptable to go to war and conduct within war.

The fifth one was false too, so that also needed correcting.

There are conditions which state acceptable conduct within war, for example, only using proportionate force, and the final two are true.

So they just needed to be written down.

So you have to meet all six conditions in order for war to be considered just, and if all nations followed the just war theory, there would be less war, because those rules are aimed at minimising the amount of conflict.

Excellent work today.

You've done really well.

Hopefully you feel like you've learned a lot about the just war theory, who created it, the intentions behind it, and what the rules are as well as the good things and the problems with those rules.

Please attempt the summary quiz to check you can recall all the key information.

If you wish to share your work with the Oak National Academy, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter using the tags or hashtags you can see on your screen there.

Thank you very much for joining me.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

And I look forward to seeing you again very soon.

Goodbye.