This is John Batchel, continuing my conversation with the author and classicist professor Catherine

Conibert from Brynman College, her new book, Augustine the African, about the life of the saint, St. Augustine.

And in this passage, the creation of the just war theory 2,000 years ago, well, 1,700 years ago,

correspondence between a Roman commander Boniface and Augustine,

with the whole of North Africa under imminent threat and eventually ravaged by the vandals

coming from the Iberian Peninsula.

However, the just war theory is Augustine's entirely in the context

is critical to understand when is it okay to fight a war.

Augustine answers the question.

Here's Catherine Coney Bear, much more of this.

This is the second hour of a two-hour conversation.

More tonight.

Exactly.

The Just Four theory is developed in epistolary conversation with Boniface initially.

Boniface is the commander of the Roman forces in North Africa.

And North Africa is under threat in various ways,

both groups from the South that are pushing up from the edge of the Sahara,

and then subsequently the so-called vandals who come down through Spain and into North Africa,

Boniface is instrumental in defending North Africa, ultimately unsuccessfully, against these invasions. And at one point,

Boniface gets tired of the military life and writes to Augustine and expresses his desire to become a monk.

And Augustine argues that Bonifas cannot do that because North Africa needs him as an effective military officer to remain in charge of the defensive forces.

And in that letter is the kernel of just war theory, the moment that it's justified to wage war

...