Now, back to Scripture. Professor Work cites Gal. 5:22-3, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” He says, “While I have heard many Christians defend Christian violence, I do not remember hearing anyone explain how the specific spiritual gifts distributed in the Church are being properly used when Christians take up the sword of civil authority.”

I note with interest that justice is not named among the fruits of the spirit. But then, neither is hope, nor mercy, so that particular “argument from silence”–like most such arguments–doesn’t really go anywhere.

I do think Prof. Work is wrong that just-war theology has not relied on the categories Paul names. I’m not going to rehash the claims of Augustine, Aquinas and the rest, since Prof. Work has read ’em and you should read them directly rather than getting cheap knockoff versions from me. But if memory serves, the Catholic just war tradition (and like I said, I know virtually nothing about other traditions on this question) sees war (/policing) as an obligation of charity and (I think) a means toward peacemaking. (This is why “possibility of victory” is one of the criteria for a just war.) The charity is directed primarily toward the victims of unjust aggressors, but I think a case can also be made that justice serves the aggressing soldiers themselves as well. If I were in an unjustly aggressive army, it would be to my benefit, I think, that I be stopped before I can do as much harm as I might want to do. That’s a pretty speculative claim and I need to think more about it, but it’s equivalent to the claim that if I had done some particularly awful thing I would feel that I deserved punishment, even capital punishment. (There might still be all kinds of reasons not to mete out that punishment in particular situations.) Just as I don’t think Prof. Work would argue that forgiveness toward thieves, murderers, or rapists means we can’t lock ’em up, so forgiveness and mercy toward hostile powers might mean, for example, always making some kind of declaration of hostilities (rather than a sneak attack; the purpose here is to allow people to reconcile themselves with God before death if they choose to do so), offering repeated opportunities for change rather than attacking at the first unjust act, and seeking to minimize harm to the population and restore a more just order. But my main point here is simply that the just-war tradition can and does discuss the fruits of the spirit–it disagrees on what those fruits entail, and it is reluctant to separate a discourse of love from a discourse of justice.