19
peace also, until this mortal state, for which this kind of peace is essential, passes
away.”
64
Likewise, Aquinas views preserving the health of the commonwealth as
essential “to prevent the slaughter of many and innumerable other ills both temporal and
spiritual.”
65
The community is a “special kind of good,” which must be defended;
consequently war may sometimes be just but sedition cannot be.
66
This attitude persists in
modern just war thinking. Michael Walzer, for example, asserts that “when states are
attacked, it is their members who are challenged, not only in their lives, but also in the
sum of things they value most, including the political association they have made.”
67
Ultimately, if people were “not morally entitled to choose their form of government and
shape the policies that shape their lives, external coercion would not be a crime.”
68
Augustine also clearly associates peace with order. In his view, peace arises out of
right relationships and good order. Thus,
“peace between mortal man and God is an ordered obedience, in faith, in
subjection to an everlasting law; peace between men is an ordered agreement of
mind with mind; the peace of a home is the ordered agreement among those who
live together about giving and obeying orders; the peace of the Heavenly City is
as perfectly ordered and perfectly harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of
God…; the peace of the whole universe is the tranquility of order – and order is
the arrangement of things equal and unequal in a pattern which assigns to each its
proper position.”
69
Augustine’s concern for order is evident in his argument that war is a tool of
punishment. He writes that “God’s providence constantly uses war to correct and chasten
the corrupt morals of mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous
64
St. Augustine. p. 877. (Book XIX, chapter 17)
65
St. Thomas Aquinas. p. 247. (Summa theologiae IIaIIae40: On war, article 4)
66
St. Thomas Aquinas. p. 248. (Summa theologiae IIaIIae42: On war, article 1) The exception, of course, is
sedition against tyrannical regimes, unless “the tyrant’s rule is disrupted so inordinately that the community
subject to it suffers greater detriment from the ensuing disorder than it did from the tyrannical government
itself.” (IIaIIae42: article 2) Again, note that order vs. disorder is the dominant concern.
67
Michael Walzer. Just and Unjust Wars. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000. p. 53.
68
Walzer. p. 53-54.
69
St. Augustine. p. 870. (Book XIX: chapter 13)
Convention