Legitimizing and De-escaleting Wars and Armed Conflicts in Theological, Church-Historical and Legal Perspectives
International academic conference Legitimizing and De-escaleting Wars and Armed Conflicts in Theological, Church-Historical and Legal Perspectives.
As part of the APVV-23-0509 grant: A Paradigmatic Shift in the Understanding of War and Armed Conflicts from Theological-Historical and Legal Perspective (2024-2028), the FRCTH CU and FLAW CU are organizing an international scientific conference
Legitimizing and De-escaleting Wars and Armed Conflicts in Theological, Church-Historical and Legal Perspectives
Annotation
Wars result in serious upheavals and losses on individual, family, and community levels, especially in the cases of genocides, aggressive and total wars, hasty military interventions, and localized armed conflicts. A more comprehensive and deeper understanding of the processes of legitimizing wars reveals their horrific nature and inadmissibility. As a result of the rise of very destructive military technologies and full-scale wars, there has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a rethinking of just war theory. While the current magisterium still admits the possibility of a legitimate defense of war, our contemporary moment prompts all to envision how military activism might give way to military realism, leading to the de-escalation of armed conflict for which the thesis of pax optima rerum (Silius Italicus, Punica 11,595) rings true once again.
This upcoming international conference is an integral part of the interdisciplinary project APVV-23-0509 A Paradigmatic Shift in the Understanding of War and Armed Conflicts from Theological-Historical and Legal Perspectives (2024-2028). The conference aims to explore and discuss not only the shifts in the perception of the concept of just war, but also the forms of legitimizing or de-escalating past or present wars, and the ius ad bellum, ius in bello in biblical, patristic, philosophical-theological, church-historical, and legal sources, and judicial processes as well. The understanding of the authorization of wars, attempts at their justification, as well as the exceedingly problematic technological level of contemporary wars, calls for an ethico-legal examination of armed conflicts and also their urgent de-escalation toward a stable and just peace.
Focus topics
- Moral limits and the ethics of violence
- Moral oversight of proportionality and consequences
- Manipulative justification of violence
- The role of the Church in mediating peace and reconciliation
- Abuse of religion to justify conflict
- Repentance, truth, and justice as prerequisites for reconciliation
- War as an extreme last resort
- The ethics of sanctions and nonviolent pressure in international relations
- The Knigdom of God as an alternative to the military logic of power
- A pastoral and pedagogical response to the culture of hatred and violence
Invitation to Participate
Please upload the title, abstract, and keywords of your conference paper to the google form no later than September 30, 2025.
The presentation (20 minutes in length) may be delivered in one of the following languages: EN, DE, FR, IT, CZ, SK
Papers presented at the conference will be published in English in a collective monograph issued by a foreign publisher.
Academic Moderators of the Conference
- prof. ThDr. Pavol Farkaš, PhD.
- doc. Mgr. Liudmyla Golovko, PhD.
- prof. Dr. phil. Emília Hrabovec
- doc. ThDr. Ing. Jozef Jančovič, PhD.
- JUDr. Lukáš Mareček, PhD.
- doc. ThDr. Ing. Vladimír Thurzo, PhD.
Conference poster in PDF format (SK)
Conference poster in PDF format (EN)