War is a horror – can there really be any place for it in a civilized society?
This episode is sponsored by Zondervan’s new book Person of Interest: Why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible by J. Warner Wallace.
Meet our guests
Nigel Biggar is an Anglican priest and theologian. Since 2007, he is the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, & Public Life, at the University of Oxford. His research interests includes ethics of empire, nationality, rights, war, assisted suicide & euthanasia, forgiveness & reconciliation; the role of religion in the public life of liberal societies; the bearing of theology on moral life.
Andrew Hastie is an Australian Federal Member for Canning and Assistant Minister for Defence (as of 2021). He formerly served as an officer in the Australian Defence Force, leading Aussie diggers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Darwin and the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) in Perth.
Links
Download the transcript for this episode, here.
- “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people,” is a quote from Howard Zinn’s 2011 book On War.
- We quote statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
- The Effect of War on Economic Growth, report from Cato Institute.
- Listen to Winston Churchill’s full speech, We Will Never Surrender, from 1940.
- Read Nigel Biggar’s book, In Defence of War.
- Find out more about Augustine’s City of God.
- You can read more of the letters between Augustine and his Christian military officers,Marcellinus and Boniface, here.
- Australian war casualty statistics are from the Australian War Memorial.
- Read Romans 13 for yourself.
- Mike Bird was one of our ‘phone a friend’ guests for this episode. He wrote The Story of God commentary for the Book of Romans for Zondervan and is a lecturer at Ridley College.
- Henry Chadwick is the great Augustine biographer. He wrote the Oxford Very Short Introduction to Augustine which you can find here.
- Read the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporting on the alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
- You can find the full Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry report (commonly known as the Brereton Report), here.
- More on Thomas Aquinas and Just War.
- We did a big, two-part episode on the Crusades in Season 4 – called ‘God’s War I and II‘.
- Learn more about General William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union General who said, “War is hell”.
- Jarrod McKenna was another of our lovely ‘phone a friend’ guests for this episode. He is an advocate for non-violence direct action.
- Christianity Today profiled a series of ‘Christian soldiers’ back in 2015 for a series called Ponder Christian Soldiers.
- We featured a clip from The West Wing, Season 1 Episode 3: A Proportional Response.
- Find out more about Carl von Clauswitz and his 1832 tome, On War.
- Here’s the Australian Defence Force Philosophical Doctrine we quote from towards the end of the episode.
- Here’s the plot of Shakespeare’s Henry V.
- Watch The Hollow Crown: Henry V.
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