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<\/a>Presented by CMU\u2019s Biblical and Theological Studies Department, the lecture will explore a particular way of looking at war\u2014specifically, the war on terror.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat I hope people go away with is additional intellectual resources for thinking about what the government ought to do in the circumstances we presently find ourselves in,\u201d Widdicombe says. \u201cI\u2019m not suggesting that I have the answers, but what I\u2019m suggesting is that we need to be thoughtful about the kinds of questions we\u2019re asking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Widdicombe says that just war theory has received a lot of attention in recent times, but the results have been mixed. It is no longer a tradition of thought designed to outline how force is to be used in the restraint of evil.<\/p>\n
Instead, under the pressure of a variety of factors including humanitarian interventionism, theories that democracies do not fight wars against each other, Western exceptionalism, and supposed states of emergency, the tradition has lost its profound Augustinian political scepticism and moral realism.<\/p>\n
Widdicombe\u2019s lecture will ask whether the restraint of force wasn\u2019t always a better, foundational idea than the pursuit of justice in the just war tradition\u2014a tradition that once thought of war as tragically endemic and sometimes justified, but never simply unambiguously just.<\/p>\n
\u201cBehind all this is my assumption that Christians, whether pacifist or not, have a stake in governments getting this right rather than getting this wrong,\u201d Widdicombe says.<\/p>\n
Dr. Karl Koop, Professor of History and Theology, and Coordinator of CMU\u2019s Biblical and Theological Studies Program, invited Widdicombe to present the lecture after hearing him speak about just war theory this past summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristian pacifists sometimes place Christians, who are not pacifist, into a just war theory box and then assume that their position may not be sound, nor well thought through, nor theologically tenable,\u201d Koop says. \u201cDr. Widdicombe\u2019s position is of a different sort. He is seeking to be a faithful Christian and recognizes the complexities of conflict. While not holding a pacifist position, he is not enamoured with just war reasoning either, at least not the way in which it is applied in the contemporary context.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koop adds that he is looking forward to hearing what Widdicombe has to say at CMU, a university that lists \u201cEducating for Peace and Justice\u201d as one of its four core commitments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may differ with Dr. Widdicombe\u2019s point of view, but he is the kind of conversation partner that we need beside us as we together think through what it means to be faithful in a year of war and conflict\u2014and 100 years after the big war that was supposed to end all wars,\u201d Koop says.<\/p>\n