What can Christian teaching add to the debate about torture?

Theology Today

Volumn 63, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 330-343

  Waldron, Jeremy ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449192915     PISSN: 00405736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/004057360606300305     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. For the idea of "reflective equilibrium," see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 48-51
2. For some general discussion on the prospects of a purely secular theory of ethics and rights, see Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations of John Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 235-43
3. Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review Books, 2004)
4. See Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 131-63
5. and Charles Krauthammer, "The Truth about Torture: It's Time to Be Honest about Doing Terrible Things," Weekly Standard, December 5, 2005, 21
6. For an example of the use of 24 to elicit support for the torture of terrorist suspects by US interrogators, see Cal Thomas, "Restrictions Won't Win War on Terror for Us," South Florida Sun-Sentinel, May 4, 2005, 25A
7. See, e.g., David Luban, "Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb," Virginia Law Review 91 (2005): 1440
8. See the discussion in Jeremy Waldron, "Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House," Columbia Law Review 105 (2005): 1718
9. See Danner, Torture and Truth, 217-24 for the Abu Ghraib pictures
10. See the White House, Defense Department, and Justice Department memoranda reprinted in Danner, Torture and Truth, 78-216
11. and in Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
12. See also Waldron, "Torture and Positive Law," 1691-95 and 1703-9
13. See Oliver O'Donovan, The Ways of Judgment (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), for a fine discussion, in political theology, of the restoration of a moral framework as an indispensable aim and aspect of judgment
14. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 30n: "The question of whether these side constraints are absolute, or whether they may be violated in order to avoid catastrophic moral horror, and if the latter, what the resulting structure might look like, is one I hope largely to avoid."
15. See Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, 142-43
16. Ronald Dworkin essayed a secular translation of "the sacred" in his book Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 68-101
17. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [1689], ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 279
18. For a critique, see Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 145-47
19. See Erik Saar and Viveca Novak, Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo (New York: Penguin, 2005), 225-28
20. and Jeff Jacoby, "Saying Nothing Is Torture in Itself," Boston Globe, January 30, 2005, 3rd ed., K11
21. Danner, Torture and Truth, 227, reports that Ameen Sa'eed al Sheikh included the following in a sworn statement of January 16, 2004, concerning his experience at the hands of American guards at Abu Ghraib: "Then they handcuffed me and hung me to the bed. They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion. They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive. And I did what they ordered me."
22. The hymn's title in English is "Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended?" translated by Robert Bridges from the German of Johann Heermann (1585-1647). The full stanza, the second of the hymn, is as follows: "Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? /Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee. / 'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: / I crucified thee."