From Justice to Beyond Justice: Retrieving Christianity’s Original Inspiration of Radical Inclusivity

Abstract

For so many centuries Christianity got wedded to imperial religiosity and became enmeshed in warfare, violence, oppression, sectarianism, and exclusion. Its secular involvement in battles and wars was legitimized by the centuries-old Just War Theory, an ethical theory which had been systematized by Augustine and Aquinas. This effectively and tragically compromised Jesus’ foundational vision of the New Reign of God with its radical character. In April 2017 a special Vatican conference co-hosted by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi came out with a statement rejecting the Catholic Church’s long-held traditional teaching on the just war theory. They reasoned that the theory has too often been used to justify violent conflicts and recommended that the global church must reconsider Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence. Making the daring step of rejecting the centuries-old just war theory warrants a compelling retrieval of Christianity’s original inspiration and counter-cultural paradigm of prophetic inclusivity that is grounded on compassion.