The classic, theological tradition of just war reasoning (JWT) is not exhausted but needed more than ever in the shadow of global risks, when facing “hybrid” war, and when the difference between war and peace is said to be blurring. The tradition does not speak with one voice but debate within the tradition about the (un)acceptability of military action under conditions of uncertainty sheds light, in at least three ways, on ways of approaching the range of unorthodox tactics threated in conflict today:

1. 1. How to be fearful. Fear and anxiety in an age of risk are potential threats to reason. The JWT has resources with which to consider “how to fear” wisely.

2. 2. How to grapple with issues of classification, including what constitutes an attack equivalent to an “armed attack” under UN Charter Art 51. When, for instance, are cyber-attacks better dealt with under civilian, international commercial law, and when the laws of war?

3. 3. How to approach new challenges in a principled manner. Are different principles or criteria needed to govern action (e.g., the criterion of intensity) or do immediacy and necessity remain the most critically important principles in our moral arsenal?

John Henry Newman believed that all Christian doctrines must be accessible to all Christian believers, both the intellectually sophisticated and the uneducated. This implied that the intellectually simple must be able to apprehend and assent to mysteries, such as that of the Trinity. This paper discussion what Newman understood by the idea of mystery. Mystery for Newman was primarily a hermeneutical problem. Mystery was a result of the human incapacity and inability to grasp the fullness of truth. In Newman, the hermeutical problematic is one of limitations of language thus leading to submission of intellect to a sublime truth.

The concept of ‘just war’ has long been embedded in the structure of a world divided into sovereign nation-states. And groups like UKIP want to perpetuate this structure. But sovereign states are in melt down under the impact of globalisation. So just war needs to be rethought in order to reflect a truly catholic outlook, and the church needs to understand this.

This article provides a critique of reason for Anglican eucharistic theology. It examines the mutliformity of theological and philosophical assumptions underlying that theology and recognises the difficulty created in the discourse of the Anglican eucharistic tradition where hermeneutic idealism operates in an exclusive manner. Further, the article uses the insights of Habermas, arguing for a critique of reason for the tradition through a dialogue approach based on the intersubjectivity of communicative action where there is distinction between ‘lifeworld’ and ‘system paradigm’ and where there is subject-subject relationship.

The role of combat as a religious stimulant was widely observed and debated during both World Wars. Through a consideration of American opinion in World War II, especially in the light of British opinion a generation earlier, this paper illustrates that, however similar expressions of combatants’ faith may have been across time and space, their perceived value was very much dictated by their wider religious context, and particularly by the existing assumptions and priorities of religious observers and pundits. This meant that, in the American context of World War II, appraisals tended to be much more positive than in the British context of World War I, adding considerable substance and longevity to the claim that ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’.

This article, “reflects back and works forwards”, by thinking together the three “sorrowful mysteries” of the last one hundred years; three marked and irrevocable steps of escalation and complexity in the history of international conflict. Along with so many others in this centenary year, we commemorate: its causes, and the lessons to be learned. What are the continuities between the Great War, 1914–18, and the second “sorrowful mystery”, the advent of nuclear weapons? This brings us to the specific challenges that face us in the present: globalized violence in the name of religion, the reactive “war on terror” and the development of “smart” technology, remind us that our context too is unprecedented and uniquely dangerous. Explanatory avenues opened up include discussion of the moral and political implications of unmanned weapons, or drones. Here is an example of the crisis of sacrifice associated with René Girard, while Girard's own recasting of Clausewitz's notion of the “escalation to extremes”, and the humanism in Edward Schillebeeckx are also examined.

Research into liberation theologies has rarely had an interreligious perspective. To that end, I shall carry out a comparative study of Christian and Islamic versions of liberation theology and I shall highlight the similarities and differences in their approaches. It will be a thematic study that is structured around three key mentalities which are shared by the approaches of both religious traditions. Firstly, the need to reinterpret their own religions from the perspective of the poor; secondly the interrelated emphases on action, orthopraxy and the agency of the oppressed; and thirdly a rejection of excessive other-worldliness. I conclude from my analyses with the following hypotheses: firstly, due to the lack of an authority akin to the Catholic Church, Islamic liberation theology is comparatively more likely to create the potential for social upheaval and is more likely to lead to an attenuation of metaphysical religious feeling; secondly, all liberation theologies contain latently the potential for creating millenarian outbursts; the best example to offer from modern history of this latent feature becoming manifest is in the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979.