Just War for People Who Actually Know What It Means w/ Kevin Carnahan

About this episode

The episode discusses just war theory with Kevin Carnahan, tracing its historical development and contemporary implications.

So many clergy members and theology nerds messaged me after JD Vance told the Pope to dial back the theology talk that I had no choice — I called my friend Kevin Carnahan, co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics and author of an extremely technical book on just war theory that he will tell you not to read. Kevin teaches at Central Methodist University in Missouri and he showed up having apparently thought about all of this in serious depth while the rest of us were just screaming into the void. What followed was one of the best episodes we've done. We traced the actual history of just war theory from Aquinas through John XXIII's Pacem in Terris— which moved the Catholic Church so close to pacifism in practice that nearly no war could satisfy its criteria — through the moment nuclear weapons broke the entire framework, through drone warfare and AI targeting that's broken it further, and right up to a Trump administration that dismantled the actual government office dedicated to minimizing civilian harm and then had the audacity to invoke just war theory as a fig leaf. Kevin's read on the papal conflict: the Pope knows exactly what he's doing and is faithfully…

People in this episode

Hosts: Dr. Tripp Fuller, Rev. Bo Sanders

Guest: Kevin Carnahan

Topics covered

• just war theory
• Christian ethics
• theology
• war and peace
• Protestant ethics
• nuclear weapons
• drone warfare

Keywords

• just war theory
• Christian ethics
• Aquinas
• nuclear weapons
• drone warfare
• Protestant ethics
• peace churches
• crusaders

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Central Methodist University, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Catholic Church, Trump administration

Books & works: Pacem in Terris

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