Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we are returning to our old friend,

Augustine. A number of really crucial phrases originated with Augustine. We have the phrase ex-Neelow, meaning that

creation was out of nothing. It was Augustine who gave us that phrase and another

phrase that he gave us is not only important for the church, but actually one that's very important for political philosophy and for the state and one that gets talked about quite a bit in our own day.

The Latin expression is cosy bellum,

or we would say in English, just war,

or a just or a righteous or reasonable cause for war.

This grew out of existential circumstances for Augustine, if you will,

and 410, as the Visigoths were laying waste to Rome, the Romans were blaming the Christians.

And Augustine wrote an apologetic response to that, his book, The City of God.

And there are a number of things that are within that book.

Augustine is very helpful for us thinking about what it means to be a Christian in

challenging times and that book is very helpful for that. But he also in that book sketches out the

idea of a just war and what are the causes, what makes a war just. He had two components to his theory,

and that is that there is the just war,

as in reasons to go to war.

And then the second component is how one or a state or a military conducts

themselves in war, and how do they carry about a war in a just manner and fashion?

This was a very important question for Christians.

Many of the Christians up into Augustine's Day

were pacifists, and you had them holding up the 10 commandments

thou shalt not kill and based on that they they tended towards pacifism

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