This essay does not attempt to summarise the chapters in this volume, still less to set out conclusions collectively reached. That would be presumptuous and indeed infeasible, since this exercise is not a negotiation to achieve agreed outcomes but a shared and wide-ranging effort in dialogue to deepen comprehension and tease out issues. What follows here is merely a limited personal miscellany, nowhere near exhaustive, of ideas stimulated or refined by preceding chapters.

The nature of the tradition

The occasional description of the just war tradition as a ‘doctrine’ is not ideal, given that – at least for the non-theologian – that word may carry overtones both of handing down from above, and of a fixed corpus of analysis or prescription. Just war thinking fits neither of those models. It is crucially indebted to great thinkers from the past, and the utterances of such figures as Thomas Aquinas are entitled to our profound respect and most careful attention – but not to uncritical reverence going beyond that. The tradition is moreover a living and evolving one, undergoing modification and enriched by addition as understanding broadens under the impact of changing circumstances, challenging debate and collective learning from varied new experience.

This view of the tradition – as being open, and based upon practical reason informed by humanity-wide values, not upon institutional or scripture-type authority – is the more necessary if Christians desire that the tradition should be more than just a system for their own moral guidance.