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Books

In Defence of War by Nigel Biggar

David McKay looks at arguments about when war might be justified.

What are we to make of In Defence of War (2013) by Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford? The title itself is provocative: to the pacifist there is nothing significant to be said in defence of war and the pages should be blank. Some might suspect the book of being an apology for neoconservative attempts to impose ‘democracy’ (i.e. free market capitalism) on unwilling nations at the point of a big gun. Others may hope for a rehabilitation of some of the ‘great men’ of history, whose reputations have been trashed in the name of political correctness.

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