FAST FOOD AD 2025: Thirty-Sixth Helping

FAST FOOD AD 2025: Thirty-Sixth Helping

The Principle of Non-contradiction is universal and exists by God’s will and the human brain’s structure..  The Principle of Non-Contradiction presupposed universally in every intelligible content of the human mind, that is, it is presupposed by every human being in every cognitive act. It intrinsically and intuitively communicates to each person, “One cannot hold  as true two mutually exclusive beliefs at the same time.” Or, in the more erudite lingo of the academic class, “For any given proposition, the proposition and its negation cannot both be simultaneously true, that is, if something is true, then the opposite of it is false.” Logic the consequence of disregarding the Principle of Non-Contradiction is to unleash the Principle ex falso quodlibet (From the falsehood anything follows), also known as the Principle of Explosion, which states, “From a contradiction any proposition can be proven true“

The Catholic Church has been quite diligent in trying to avoid breaching the Principle of Non-Contradiction in its infallible dogmatic teachings, e.g., the Trinity and the Incarnation. It has been less than diligent, some would say it has been lax, when proclaiming how its moral teachings on violence and enmity logically follow from or mesh with the teaching of Jesus, God Incarnate, in the Gospels.The near universal Christian practice of daily killing, maiming, hating and lying in war, or learning to do so, has been morally justified by Institutional Church Bishops in the name of Jesus for 1700 years, despite the fact that Jesus Himself in word and in deed rejects those acts because they are not in conformity with God’s Will and Way.

However, once the institutional Church accepted in the Fourth Century Ambrose’s and Augustine’s justifications of Christian participation in a state’s war, thereby violating the Principle of Non-Contradiction, then the Principle of Explosion was in the saddle and the Principle of Explosion rode the institutional Church across the centuries into justifying, by a 1700 year long avalanche of ex falso quodlibet arguments, Christian participation in all wars on all sides in which Christians were involved.

Bishops, theologians, priests and laity have tried to pass-off ex falso quodlibet justifications for Christian participation in war since the Fourth Century, as if Catholic just war theories were examples of the development of doctrine, like the idea of the Trinity or of homoousios in the Nicene Creed that enter into Christianity two and three hundred years respectively after Jesus’ Resurrection.

However, since God in Christianity is logos (Logical WORD), Jn1:1-14, the development of doctrine cannot be rooted in contravening the Principle of Non-Contradiction. For example, “Love one another as I have love you,” is not logically consistent with, “Do not love one another as I have loved you,” Love your enemies, ” is not logically cocnsitent with “Kill your enemies,” “Turn the other cheek” is not logically cocnsistent with, “Do not turn the other cheek,” “If your enemy is hungry give him to eat, if he is thirsty give him to drink,” is not logically consistent with what William Clinton and Madeleine Abright did in the 1990s by their embargo of goods to Iraq that resulted in the murder of 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of 12,  nor is it consistent with what Israel and the U.S. are doing in Gaza today by a policy of genocide via imposed dehaydation and starvation.

A development of doctrine can never be based in such logical contradiction as stated immediately above between the doctrine being proposed and the teaching of Jesus the logos (WORD), in the Gospels.This would be the case in proposing a Christian just war theory as a development of doctrine, since there is no basis in the teaching of Jesus by word or deed or in the Gospels to justify killing enemies or anyone else in war or in any other situation. When in the Fourth Century individual Bishops of the institutional Church justified as morally permissible Christians killing in war that is, when some approved the seminal just war theories of  Ambrose and Augustine, the door was thrown open for manufacturing an indefinite number of Christian just war theory justifications via ex falso quodlibet reasoning.

The difference between use of the word and idea of Trinity in Christianity in the Third Century as a legitimate instanceof of the development of doctrine and the use and idea  of a Christian just war theory  is that the idea behind the doctrine of the Trinity was already present in the Gospels, e.g., in the words of Baptism in Jesus’ Great Commission to the Church (Mt 28:18-20) and in Jesus’ Baptism by John (Mt 3:13-17). So also is the case with the use of the word and idea of homoousios in regards the Incarnation see, John1:1-14. My point is that Christian Just WarTheory has no precursor in the Gospels, indeed the Gospels from beginning to end are a consistent logical rejection by Jesus of all the normal and abnormal means of war.

St. Vincent of Lerin(d.450) is a Father of the early Church, a monk and a writer. He wrestled for a long period of time with the issue of how to discern if a new word or understanding which some Christians were bringing to the Faith, is valid or invalid. In his Commonitory in AD 434 he penned the sentence that became the standard that the Church employs to this day regarding whether a new idea or verbiage is a development of doctrine or a misconstruing of the teaching of Jesus. The standard is that the proposed doctrine “must be the same doctrine, in the same sense and in the same meaning of what has been believed everywhere, always and by all,”  to be authentically a development of doctrine,

If this is the standard that must be honestly me to ascertain if a just war theory should exist in Christianity, it is impossible to fathom how any just war theory ever entered into Christianity, since the standard, “what has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” prohibits any just war theory from ever entering Christianity, since, as Ronald Sider, PhD  in his exhaustive scholarly book,THE EARLY CHURCH ON KILLING: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion and Capital Punishment, proves that “until the time of Constantine there is not a single Christian writer known to us who says that it is legitimate for Christians to kill or join the military.” “What has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” when Ambrose and Augustine propose their just war theories for Christian moral acceptance was Gospel Nonviolence or Gospel Pacifism. The proposed Christian just war theories were believed nowhere, never and by no one during the prior 300 years to Ambrose and Augustine!

So how did the just war theory snake its way into the Church? Apparently, it did not do it by adhering to Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels or by adhering to Tradition or by adhering to Church policy or by adhering to an Infallible Papal Decree or by adhering to an Infallible Decree of an Ecumenical Council of Bishops, and certainly not by adhering to the Principle of Non-Contradiction.

Is there really a just war theory in the Catholic Church?