Are we asking the wrong question

I simply want to clarify that the debate between pacifism and just war theory focuses on the question of permission to make war. that diverts attention from the equally important question of practices that prevent war. These are two different questions. Most authors of the new paradigm of just peacemaking are just war theorists, and some are pacifists. They disagree on the permissibility of just war, but they agree that practices of just peacemaking need to be made articulate and to be enacted. Just peacemaking theory does not answer the question of the permissibility of war. Its question is a different one, and we think an equally important one. I believe Jesus teaches more about the transforming initiatives of just peacemaking practices than about the impermissibility of war.—Glenn Stassen