I remember vividly seeing footage on the news of the space shuttle Challenger launching on January 28, 1986. Seventy-four seconds after takeoff it exploded, killing all seven crew members. The immediate cause of the explosion was a technical fault. But it was not just a mechanical failure that led to the deaths of everyone on board. The cause was also a failure of character. The Challenger space shuttle disaster was investigated by a presidential commission and subsequently the subject of extensive research and analysis.

On August 26, 1572, Peter Ramus was stabbed to death in his study, his body thrown out the window, mutilated, and then cast into the Seine. He was one of thousands killed over a period of a few days in Paris and then over several weeks as the violence spread beyond the city. This bloodletting came to be known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The reason for the massacre was ostensibly a conflict between Catholics and Protestants. But it also had to do with court intrigue, mob violence, the settling of scores, and a sporadic civil war that had begun a decade earlier.

To be a moral person is always a struggle. Converting one’s temptations into virtue and foolishness into wisdom is a part of the struggle, as is transforming places and peoples accursed by abuse and injustice into a realm of blessing. But we cannot do either alone. Nor should we. The gift of coming together with others in a shared struggle to live well is that, in doing so, we discover who we are already in Christ and forge more loving and just forms of common life that anticipate and witness to the world as it will be in Christ.

Chapter 10 focuses on the somewhat controversial doctrine of humanitarian intervention. It assesses the issue of whether the doctrine can be reconciled with the UN Charter, before examining state practice in connection with the doctrine, including taking a look at Cold War and post-Cold War practice in assessing the position of the doctrine during the UN era. Given that the forcible entry by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Kosovo crisis in 1999 proved something of a landmark in terms of events that have shaped the path of the modern doctrine, the status of the doctrine in the immediate aftermath of this intervention is given particular attention, as well as the impact that the war in Ukraine has had and whether there is an obligation to intervene in the context of genocides. The chapter then looks at the Syrian civil war and the relevance of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention to that particularly tragic conflict, which continues at the time of writing. A conception of the doctrine that has come to dominate contemporary debates is that of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’. Given its relatively recent rise to prominence, its impact upon the doctrine of humanitarian intervention is assessed.

Chapter 2’s purpose is to provide some focused discussion on the meaning of the ‘force’ prohibited in Article 2(4) and customary international law. In seeking to expose the uncertainties regarding this particular term, various factors or common elements of ‘force’ are distilled. After looking at the prohibition of force in the context of the principle of non-intervention, the chapter moves on to look at the type of force that the prohibition is concerned with and, concluding that it is ‘armed force’, then moves on to attempt to distil the key elements of such force, including whether it is the means used or the effects created which is of importance, and whether force can be used indirectly. The chapter then addresses the ‘gravity’ or severity aspects of a use of force, in particular by distinguishing it from an armed attack or act of aggression, but also by examining whether there is a level of force – or de minimis threshold – below which an action falls out of the remit of the prohibition. Finally, and having distilled the key practical components of a prohibited use of force, the chapter focuses upon the mens rea component.

The Hippocratic Oath dates back to the fifth century bce and forms a key part of thinking about medical ethics even today. In it we see various behavioral rules such as promising not to administer poison, not to take sexual advantage of a patient, and not to violate confidentiality. Set within the context of an oath or covenant, such rules were there to ensure medicine was practiced ethically. In the contemporary context, some people have a knee-jerk reaction against any kind of rules.

Part I focused on ethics as a mode of description. I argued that ethical descriptions should situate us within and help us respond morally to the world in which we find ourselves. Inherent in ethical description is a determination of the gap between the world as it is and a vision of the world as it should be if we are to live well. Part I set out how we become rightly orientated and able to pursue a vision of a flourishing life through a combination of listening to creation, Scripture, strangers, cries for liberation, and our ancestors. However, while moral description is a first step in ethical deliberation, ethics does not live by description alone.

Chapter 9 will examine the elements of a ‘valid’ consent to the use of force. The chapter sets out the ways in which those with authority to consent to intervention might be identified. While this has traditionally been reserved for governments of states, clarity in this respect is often lacking meaning that issues such as effective control, recognition and the principle of self-determination all have relevance in providing a complete picture of this issue. The chapter then examines the issue of consent to intervention, specifically within the context of a civil war, and examines the various issues to which this gives rise, including that of whether a right of counter-intervention exists should a prior intervention have occurred. The chapter then addresses the form that consent might take while, finally, it takes a look at the express and implied limits of the consent to intervention.

One theme that it is hoped emerges from this book is that the law governing the use of force is not purely epiphenomenal. It is possible to suggest that as states on the whole refrain from resorting to the use of armed force the law clearly has a restraining influence upon their actions. However, such assumptions must give way to the reality that the law actually has a far more subtle influence over the actions of states. There can be no escaping the fact that states, and some more often than others, resort to force in their international affairs. Yet, at the same time, states, in general, often engage with the law in justifying their actions, as well as in responding to the actions of other states, and in attempting to shape the contours of the law through interpretation and practice. While there are occasions when states use force without offering a legal justification for doing so, as was the case with the US strikes against Syria in April 2017, it is more often the case that states engage in justificatory discourse of a legal nature which is indicative that they consider the law to be at least of some relevance, even if violations of its strictures are not supported by clear and reliable enforcement mechanisms. It arguably follows, then, that if they feel compelled to offer at least a justification, they feel similarly compelled to adjust their actions to make them at least plausible within the substantive rules and procedures that exist. Furthermore, the law in this area, if nothing else – as is arguably the case with much of international law – provides a language and framework through which discursive intercourse between states and other actors can occur.

The problem with cheap talk communication is that it is free to lie in an effort to obtain a better outcome. What if signals were costly instead? This chapter investigates that question from the perspective of military mobilizations. We see that such mobilizations can credibly communicate a state’s resolve because less resolved types pay differential costs to mobilize. Unfortunately, this means that mobilizations are not as useful for revealing private information about the costs of war or a state’s martial effectiveness.

This chapter explains why international researchers prioritize war as a topic of research and summarizes the prevailing theoretical methods used to study conflict. It further narrows the topics that the remainder of the book explores.

The purpose of Chapter 7 is to examine the various forms of preventative self-defence, that is whether the right of self-defence can be invoked before an armed attack has been launched, or at least before the physical manifestations of one have begun to occur. Given that there have been no attempts at formal reform of Article 51, the question arises as to how, if at all, might preventative self-defence be reconciled with this key requirement of an armed attack. This chapter therefore examines the three main forms of preventative self-defence: interceptive, anticipatory and pre-emptive. All three have been of central interest in the light of contemporary threats and challenges. In this respect, while there has been a greater acceptance of the possibility to invoke self-defence in the face of the threat of an ‘imminent’ attack, there has been, as explored in this chapter, disagreement as to exactly whether this is restricted to being interpreted in its ordinary temporal meaning or whether it is today necessary to take it into other contextual factors.

This appendix explains the fundamental principles behind mechanism design, why it works, and how we can use the revelation principle to describe what must be true for equilibria within certain classes of games.

Does Scripture have anything to say about whether genetically modified crops are moral? Can the Bible provide an answer to whether it is legitimate to possess nuclear weapons in order to deter an enemy? Underlying these specific questions are two broader ones: How can Scripture help address contemporary issues? And can it provide answers to moral questions that go beyond what Scripture teaches?

In this age, there is no human life without labor. We need someone, somewhere to work so that life can be provisioned and sustained. Work is a central way, as human animals, we metabolize creation. To understand this requires analyzing the purposes of human work, the conditions of good work, and how work is situated within broader economies, both human and divine.1 This chapter addresses each of these in turn. In doing so, it analyzes whether work is an intrinsic and good feature of creaturely life that can be eschatologically transformed or a symptom of fallen life that will cease in the new creation.