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The Israel-Iran Crisis: A Theological and Philosophical Reflection on Faith and Reason in the Face of Catastrophe

  • Writer: Wesley Jacob
    Wesley Jacob
  • Jun 15
  • 32 min read

Updated: Jun 20

Reframing the Human Response to Geopolitical Violence through Intellectual History, Systematic Theology, and the Philosophy of Religion

This paper examines the unfolding Israel-Iran conflict through the lens of classical theological concepts—faith, reason, providence, theodicy, and human dignity—and modern philosophical frameworks such as just war theory, existential ethics, and political theology. It explores how the interplay between faith and reason can ground a moral response to escalating violence and global uncertainty. Drawing from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theological traditions, it investigates whether theological rationality can offer a moral horizon beyond geopolitical self-interest, and whether reason alone is adequate in contexts where existential stakes, moral blindness, and apocalyptic fears dominate.

 

I. The Crisis of Rationality in Modern Conflict

 

A. The Intellectual Breakdown in War


The modern world often prides itself on its allegiance to rationality, celebrating the triumphs of science, law, and reason as instruments of human progress. Yet, when applied to geopolitical conflicts, this same rationality frequently collapses under the weight of existential fear, ideological rigidity, and political ambition. The Israel-Iran conflict, with its deeply entangled historical grievances and theological overtones, reveals how reason’s procedural logic falters in the face of entrenched narratives of identity, victimhood, and vengeance.¹ It is precisely in the arena of war that reason’s limitations are most tragically exposed—not because rationality fails to function, but because it is too often harnessed to serve irrational ends.

 

The twentieth century, often hailed as the century of technological advancement and global governance, was simultaneously the most violent in recorded history. From Auschwitz to Hiroshima, from Rwanda to Aleppo, rationalized structures of warfare, logistics, and bureaucracy facilitated destruction on scales unimaginable to pre-modern societies. As Hannah Arendt noted in her analysis of totalitarianism, the banality of evil is not irrationality, but the absence of reflective thinking—a chilling reminder that reason devoid of moral grounding becomes instrumental rather than ethical.²

 

Modern conflict theory, particularly the models of deterrence that undergird nuclear strategy, assumes that all actors are essentially rational calculators of risk and utility. But the behavior of state and non-state actors in the Middle East continually belies this assumption. The risk of escalation between Israel and Iran is not simply a function of miscalculation; it is the outgrowth of ideologically charged paradigms that view self-destruction as a valid pathway to redemption or deterrence.³ Thus, traditional rational actor models fail to anticipate conflict fueled by eschatology, martyrdom, or the perceived inevitability of divine judgment.

 

Even diplomacy, often heralded as the rational alternative to war, has become increasingly performative and strategic rather than genuine and reconciliatory. Peace summits and ceasefire agreements often serve more as public relations maneuvers than serious attempts at mutual understanding. In the case of Israel and Iran, each round of diplomacy is frequently undermined by maximalist rhetoric and symbolic escalation, further eroding the trust necessary for negotiation.⁴ Reason in this context is not neutral; it becomes a tool of strategic narrative construction.

 

This raises a profound philosophical question: is the rationality we trust in modern diplomacy still rooted in any coherent moral or metaphysical order, or has it become a procedural shell, empty of transcendental referent? If reason is severed from truth—particularly theological truth—it can no longer restrain political ambition or moral recklessness. Augustine’s distinction between the “earthly city” and the “city of God” remains crucial here: without anchoring in divine order, even the most rational empires fall prey to self-idolatry.⁵

 

Furthermore, the technocratic apparatus of modern war—from drone algorithms to missile tracking systems—operates with clinical precision yet moral distance. War is sanitized and quantified, its consequences obscured by euphemisms like “collateral damage.” Such apparatuses enable decision-makers to act without the burden of moral gravity, revealing the dangerous neutrality of technocratic reason.⁶ The capacity to kill has become rationally efficient, but the capacity to discern when killing is just has not kept pace.

 

The Israel-Iran conflict is emblematic of this intellectual breakdown. Here, ancient religious rivalries intermingle with cutting-edge weapons systems; millenarian prophecy meets artificial intelligence. The paradox is jarring: a nuclear-armed modernity governed by tribal metaphysics. This reveals not a lack of intelligence, but a failure of moral imagination—a chasm between knowing and understanding.⁷

 

This dissertation begins, therefore, with a confession of rationality’s insufficiency. The modern tools of strategy, deterrence, and diplomacy are necessary but not sufficient. A deeper rationality—one that is theological, ethical, and eschatological—is required if humanity is to respond meaningfully to the specter of catastrophic conflict.

 

B. The Problem of Faith under Fire

 

Where reason collapses, faith is often invoked—either as consolation or condemnation. In times of war, invocations of divine justice, sacred duty, or redemptive suffering proliferate. Yet faith, too, faces a crisis: is it merely a spiritual sedative for the afflicted, or can it serve as a robust moral framework capable of confronting geopolitical violence? In the case of the Israel-Iran conflict, faith has been both weaponized and wounded—used to sanctify preemptive strikes and martyrological aspirations, but also as a reservoir of reconciliation and critique.⁸

 

Historically, faith has not always been aligned with peace. The Hebrew Scriptures, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Christian just war theory have all, at times, endorsed war under divine warrant. Augustine, for example, allowed for bellum justum under strict moral conditions.⁹ Likewise, Shi’a narratives of martyrdom and eschatological victory shape the ideological imagination of Iran’s clerical elite, while Israeli religious Zionism frequently frames security through covenantal and redemptive lenses.¹⁰ These traditions are not necessarily violent, but when uprooted from their ethical and prophetic contexts, they can become combustible.

 

Yet within these same traditions lie the theological resources for peace. The Hebrew prophets denounced violence in God’s name. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount dismantled the logic of retaliation. The Qur’an speaks of peace (salaam) as a name of God and a human vocation.¹¹ It is this inner dialectic—between sacred violence and sacred peace—that faith communities must navigate today. The crisis is not faith per se, but faith untethered from its eschatological and ethical horizon.

 

In the Israel-Iran context, faith cannot remain private or merely devotional. It must become public theology: a mode of rational, prophetic speech that addresses the structures of power and the conditions of justice. Reinhold Niebuhr argued that authentic faith must enter the realm of politics, not to baptize its interests but to judge them.¹² In this sense, faith must resist both pietistic retreat and ideological capture.

 

A second danger is that of religious nationalism—the conflation of theological identity with political sovereignty. In both Iran and Israel, certain political leaders invoke divine mandate to justify national policy. But as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas have warned, such fusion inevitably distorts both politics and theology.¹³ Faith becomes a handmaid of the state, rather than its conscience.

 

Moreover, faith without reason becomes vulnerable to fanaticism. Without critical reflection, theology can ossify into dogma, fueling absolutist violence. In contrast, a faith that seeks understanding—fides quaerens intellectum—can mediate between transcendence and political realism. Such faith does not guarantee peace, but it preserves the possibility of moral clarity amid chaos.¹⁴

 

The Israel-Iran crisis thus poses a theological question: can faith provide a vision of peace that transcends strategic calculation and national pride? If not, it will be co-opted into the machinery of death. But if faith can speak truthfully and rationally into the heart of war, it may yet illumine a path not merely of ceasefire, but of reconciliation.¹⁵

 

This dissertation aims to retrieve such a vision—not as utopian hope, but as moral necessity.

 

B. Modern Political Rationality and Its Limits

 

The transition from pre-modern theological paradigms to the modern state system brought with it a profound reconceptualization of political rationality. Whereas pre-modern societies often saw governance as divinely sanctioned and embedded within a metaphysical order, modernity increasingly viewed the state as an autonomous rational actor, governed by principles of legality, utility, and sovereignty. The emergence of realpolitik in the nineteenth century—epitomized by thinkers like Otto von Bismarck—solidified this secularized vision of statecraft. Yet beneath its aura of control and strategy lies a persistent instability: modern political rationality often generates, rather than resolves, conditions of war.¹⁶

 

The Enlightenment project, especially as articulated by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant, placed reason at the center of political and moral life. Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) famously argued that the natural state of human beings is one of mutual enmity—a war of all against all—and that peace can only emerge through the absolute authority of a sovereign power.¹⁷ Though deeply pessimistic, Hobbes’s formulation was at least realistic about the role fear and power play in shaping order. Kant, by contrast, posited in Perpetual Peace (1795) a more idealistic vision: a rational federation of free states governed by laws, commerce, and diplomacy.¹⁸ Yet the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries expose the fragile optimism of this Enlightenment rationalism.

 

Realism, especially in its 20th-century form via Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, further entrenched the idea that rational state behavior is governed by self-interest and power maximization. Modern international relations theory assumes that actors are predictable utility-maximizers responding to incentives and threats.¹⁹ In theory, such models enable accurate predictions; in practice, they falter amid ideological fervor, theological commitments, and national myths. The Israel-Iran conflict, for instance, cannot be understood merely through balance-of-power logic—it is saturated with apocalyptic narrative and civilizational identity.²⁰

 

Moreover, the rationality assumed by such frameworks is often reductionist, viewing religion as irrational or pre-rational rather than as a competing form of rationality. As William Cavanaugh has argued, the myth of religious violence rests on the false notion that secular violence is inherently rational while religious violence is not.²¹ But if religion represents a totalizing narrative of meaning and obligation, then it is not irrational—it is an alternative rationality with its own internal coherence and logic. Thus, political reason must grapple not with the absence of rationality in religion, but with its rival structure.

 

The Cold War offers a paradigmatic example of how reason, abstracted from ethics, leads to perverse outcomes. The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was entirely “rational” in the sense that it sought deterrence through the certainty of total annihilation. Yet it also illustrated the abyss into which logic devoid of transcendental grounding leads: a global peace based on the threat of genocide.²² Israel’s nuclear ambiguity and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability replay this drama in a theological key, where religious and strategic deterrence mutually reinforce apocalyptic expectations.

 

The techno-rationalism of modern war further compounds this issue. Drone strikes, cyber warfare, and AI-driven surveillance operate on principles of efficiency, not ethics. The goal is maximal impact with minimal cost—military victory redefined as algorithmic precision.²³ This logic—now integral to the military-industrial complex—assumes moral neutrality while producing disproportionately destabilizing effects, particularly when used in volatile religious or civilizational conflicts.

 

Max Weber’s diagnosis of the “disenchantment of the world” remains strikingly relevant here. In the modern era, politics becomes a realm of “means-end” rationality, stripped of ultimate meaning or sacred referents.²⁴ But disenchantment has not led to peace—it has led to a vacuum into which ideologies, nationalisms, and theologies rush in. Faith returns, not as quiet devotion but as mythic resistance. Iran’s political theology of wilayat al-faqih and Israel’s messianic Zionism represent efforts to re-sacralize the state, precisely because secular rationality has failed to deliver justice or identity.

 

In sum, modern political rationality offers tools but not wisdom. It can build weapons, predict moves, and negotiate treaties, but it cannot tell us why some lives matter more than others, or whether peace is worth the price of restraint. The limitations of this framework become most evident when confronted with actors and societies animated by non-negotiable commitments—religious, cultural, or historical—that transcend the calculus of interest. In such cases, reason must either be expanded to include theological horizons or be rendered complicit in its own failure.

 

C. Faith as Existential Knowledge

 

Whereas political rationality seeks stability through systems, protocols, and procedural logic, faith confronts the world as an existential reality—one that demands not only intellectual assent but a reorientation of the whole self toward transcendence. Unlike propositional knowledge, which rests on evidence and verification, faith—especially in the biblical and Islamic traditions—is relational, covenantal, and eschatological.²⁵ It is not irrational, but supra-rational: it knows in ways that go beyond deduction, emerging from trust, risk, memory, and liturgical practice. When states or societies act out of faith-constituted identity, they are not abandoning reason; they are deploying a form of existential knowledge that political rationality often fails to recognize.

 

This concept is not new. In Pensées, Blaise Pascal famously wrote that “the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”²⁶ He was not endorsing sentimentality but insisting that rationality alone cannot account for the depth of human intuition and religious longing. Similarly, Søren Kierkegaard defined faith as a “passion for the infinite,” a leap not into irrationalism, but into trust beyond certainty.²⁷ These formulations of faith as existential commitment challenge any political discourse that treats religion as merely instrumental or ideological. In contexts like the Israel-Iran conflict, where actions are shaped by sacred memory and eschatological anticipation, existential faith must be reckoned with as a primary actor, not a background variable.

 

Contemporary philosophers of religion have further expanded this notion. John Caputo and Jean-Luc Marion speak of the event—a phenomenological rupture that reorients understanding not through control but through gift, promise, and excess.²⁸ Faith, in this sense, is not a cognitive conclusion but a mode of being-in-the-world; it is a response to divine initiative that exceeds calculative logic. This helps explain why theological motivations can lead to seemingly irrational acts: martyrdom, sacrifice, or resistance against overwhelming force. Such acts are not failures of logic but expressions of a different order of meaning.

 

These theological epistemologies challenge the liberal consensus that politics should be neutral, procedural, and universal. As Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor have argued, all reasoning is tradition-dependent.²⁹ The liberal state’s pretense of neutrality obscures the fact that it, too, rests on metaphysical assumptions—about the nature of the good, the value of autonomy, and the role of the state. Faith, then, does not distort politics; it reveals its latent normativity. A genuinely pluralistic society must make space for theological forms of knowledge as rationally legitimate.

 

Faith also remembers. It holds history in a sacred frame, not merely as chronology but as covenant. Israel and Iran both operate within narratives of sacred history—Shoah and Nakba, Karbala and Sinai—narratives that interpret contemporary suffering as participation in a divine drama.³⁰ These histories are not simply ideological constructs; they are liturgically reinforced, emotionally encoded, and theologically narrated. They lend to each side a sense of cosmic purpose and tragic destiny, often rendering compromise unthinkable without profound transformation of theological imagination.

 

Yet faith is not only identity—it is also vulnerability. To believe in God is, at its core, to trust what cannot be controlled. True faith therefore fosters humility, not triumphalism. As Paul Tillich argued, the object of ultimate concern inevitably reshapes the self, demanding total surrender rather than mastery.³¹ In times of conflict, this humility is often lost. Faith becomes brittle, weaponized, or co-opted by state agendas. But in its authentic form, faith can resist both cynicism and fanaticism. It becomes a prophetic critique of both power and despair.

 

In the face of total war or nuclear escalation, faith—when properly understood—offers a vision not of strategic calculation but of reconciliation. The Christian theology of the cross, the Jewish theology of teshuvah, and the Islamic vision of rahma (divine mercy) all point to a world where justice and mercy meet.³² Such a world is not easily realizable through diplomacy or military intervention. But without this horizon, politics becomes tragic and theology becomes tribal. Faith as existential knowledge demands we see the enemy not merely as a threat but as a fellow image-bearer—a vision that can only emerge when faith is free to speak prophetically and reason is humble enough to listen.

 

III: Theology and Catastrophe – Narrating the Present Crisis

 

The Apocalyptic Imagination

 

The language of apocalypse has surged in contemporary political discourse, particularly in religiously charged conflicts like that between Israel and Iran. Apocalypse, in its original theological register, refers not to annihilation but to revelation—a divine unveiling of hidden truth, often under conditions of existential threat.³³ Yet in modern geopolitics, the term has been secularized and sensationalized, weaponized to justify urgency, violence, and finality. Political leaders and media increasingly frame the stakes in apocalyptic terms, reinforcing a worldview where compromise is betrayal and history itself hinges on the present moment.

 

Apocalyptic rhetoric plays a formative role in both Israeli and Iranian political theology. Among some segments of Israel’s religious right, the restoration of Greater Israel is linked to messianic expectation, particularly within the settler movement.³⁴ For the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly within its Shi’a clerical hierarchy, the return of the Mahdi (the hidden Imam) is anticipated in the eschatological horizon, with political purification as a potential prelude.³⁵ These visions do not merely motivate pious devotion; they structure geopolitical strategy. When war is cast as sacred inevitability, diplomacy becomes a delay, and negotiation a heresy.

 

Theologically, apocalypse can serve both conservative and revolutionary functions. On the one hand, it reaffirms cosmic order against chaos; on the other, it challenges current power structures by announcing divine judgment.³⁶ Liberation theologians, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, have retrieved the apocalyptic imagination to empower the oppressed and critique the status quo. Conversely, fundamentalist eschatologies often transform it into fatalism—where suffering is necessary, justice is postponed, and violence is divinely sanctioned.³⁷ The task of theology, then, is to discern which apocalyptic mode is operative: prophetic or nihilistic.

 

In the Israeli-Iranian conflict, apocalyptic frames shape not only state narratives but also the imaginations of their populations. For many in both societies, martyrdom, deliverance, and national destiny are interpreted through sacred lenses.³⁸ This is not reducible to fanaticism; it is an existential structure through which suffering, fear, and hope are mediated. Political realism often ignores this dimension, presuming all actors are guided by empirical interests. But when nuclear arsenals are managed by those who see history as divine drama, the stakes are theological as well as tactical.

 

Apocalypticism also complicates the logic of deterrence. Classical deterrence presumes that actors seek survival and fear destruction. But when death is sacralized—when martyrdom is honored and annihilation sanctified—then the calculus of mutually assured destruction collapses.³⁹ In such scenarios, apocalypse becomes not what states fear, but what some religious actors welcome or at least endure for the sake of transcendence. This undermines the foundational logic of Cold War-era strategy.

 

This dynamic is exacerbated by the digital circulation of eschatological propaganda. Videos, sermons, and manifestos invoking divine war proliferate across platforms, forming digital liturgies that shape mass consciousness.⁴⁰ Eschatology goes viral. In such an environment, theology cannot remain academic or abstract; it must speak to the public sphere, resisting the seductions of sacralized violence while recovering the hope at the heart of biblical apocalypse—new creation, not total destruction.

 

Biblical and Qur’anic apocalyptic texts, when rightly interpreted, do not glorify violence but unveil its demonic pretensions. The Book of Revelation, long misused as a blueprint for end-times war, actually critiques imperial idolatry, revealing Rome not as eternal order but as “Babylon,” destined to fall.⁴¹ The Qur’an likewise depicts divine judgment not as license for violence but as a warning against arrogance and injustice.⁴² Both traditions call for vigilance, repentance, and fidelity—not vengeance.

 

Thus, apocalyptic theology must be rescued from its political captors. It must be re-theologized as a discourse of unveiling injustice, comforting the afflicted, and witnessing to God’s final word as one of life, not death. In reframing the apocalyptic imagination, theology regains its voice in a world threatened not merely by catastrophe, but by narratives that make catastrophe seem inevitable.

 

IV: Toward a Synthesis – Faith and Reason in Ethical Response to Catastrophic Conflict


A. Reclaiming Theological Rationality

 

In an era of escalating political crises and theological weaponization, the recovery of a conceptually rigorous and spiritually responsible notion of theological rationality becomes imperative. The classical synthesis of faith and reason—articulated most profoundly in thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Al-Ghazali, and Maimonides—offered a vision where faith was not opposed to reason but its perfection.⁶⁵ The present paper contends that this synthesis must be reclaimed not merely as a historical artifact, but as an urgent framework for contemporary political theology. When faced with nuclear brinkmanship, martyrdom ideologies, and sacred violence, we require not more abstraction but a renewed theology of reason—capable of navigating both divine transcendence and human finitude.

 

Aquinas famously insisted that while some truths are accessible through reason alone (e.g., the existence of God), others—such as the doctrine of the Trinity or divine providence—are revealed and accepted by faith.⁶⁶ However, he never posited a dichotomy. Instead, reason was the ancilla theologiae—the handmaid of faith—guiding the believer away from superstition and toward wisdom. This model resists both the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which sought to expel God from reason, and fideism, which would abandon intellectual responsibility in the name of religious purity. The Israel-Iran conflict offers a stark warning of the dangers of either extreme.

 

Modernity’s great crisis, as Hans-Georg Gadamer noted, is not the lack of information but the erosion of understanding.⁶⁷ The Enlightenment’s instrumental reason has birthed technological marvels but failed to cultivate moral wisdom. In the sphere of war and peace, this deficit manifests in disproportionate force, dehumanization of the enemy, and a procedural ethic of cost-benefit calculation. Faith, understood theologically, calls reason back to its telos: the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful—transcendentals which orient human judgment toward peace, not mere victory.⁶⁸

 

Islamic kalām (theology) similarly preserves the unity of divine truth and rational inquiry. Al-Ghazali, often caricatured as an anti-philosophical mystic, in fact affirmed that human reason is essential for discerning moral action within the bounds of divine law.⁶⁹ His critique of falāsifa (Peripatetic philosophers) was not a dismissal of logic but a warning against ontological speculation detached from revelation. The Shi’a concept of ʿaql (intellect) reinforces this: the Imam’s authority is not irrational but theologically rational, guiding interpretation and ethical praxis amid ambiguity.⁷⁰ Thus, Islamic thought too offers tools for resisting the false polarization of reason and faith.

 

Theological rationality must also be public. As Jürgen Habermas has recently admitted, secular reason itself is impoverished without religious insight.⁷¹ Faith traditions preserve forms of discourse—lament, hope, eschatology—that challenge the domination of technocratic speech. Theology, when robustly rational, does not retreat into mysticism but enters the public square as a critical voice. It calls war what it is—murder writ large—and unmasks propaganda as sacrilege. It judges power not by strategic interest but by prophetic imagination.

 

The ecumenical retrieval of faith-informed reason also counters the narrow rationalism of certain Enlightenment legacies. John Henry Newman, for instance, advanced a theology of conscience that was neither emotivist nor authoritarian, but grounded in rational fidelity to divine truth discerned through lived experience.⁷² For Newman, conscience is the echo of God’s voice in the human soul—an epistemology that requires both rational engagement and spiritual discernment. Such a synthesis is essential when states claim divine sanction for geopolitical strategies.

 

Postmodern theology, often accused of relativism, paradoxically assists in this retrieval. Jean-Luc Marion, in developing the notion of “saturated phenomena,” argues that divine revelation overwhelms our categories of rational mastery—not by negating reason but by transfiguring it.⁷³ Faith here is not anti-rational, but a hospitality to what reason cannot fully comprehend. This resonates with the apophatic traditions of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mysticism, which affirm God’s knowability without reducing Him to conceptual containment.

 

Reclaiming theological rationality, therefore, is not nostalgic but revolutionary. It equips us to critique political theology’s cooptation by nationalism, to resist utilitarian justifications of violence, and to construct ethical visions grounded in transcendental obligation. In this synthesis, reason is healed, and faith is deepened. In the face of catastrophic conflict, such a rationality does not flinch from complexity—it bears witness to divine wisdom amid human folly.


B. Ethical Praxis in a Theology of Peace


In theological ethics, praxis must follow conviction. That is, belief in divine justice or the rational coherence of peace must manifest not merely in discourse, but in concrete ethical conduct. The Israel-Iran conflict presents a case where both states articulate moral and religious visions, yet operationalize them through warfare.⁷⁴ If theological rationality is to have meaning beyond abstraction, it must lead to ethical praxis—defined here as concrete, peace-oriented action rooted in a synthesis of faith and reason. This demands not only criticism of current violence but constructive frameworks for reconciliation, justice, and responsibility.

 

One of the most enduring models for integrating theology and ethical action is the just war tradition. Though often misunderstood as a justification for war, just war theory historically functioned as a restriction—limiting violence through ethical and theological criteria.⁷⁵ Thinkers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas did not regard war as good, but as a tragic necessity constrained by charity and justice. These constraints—jus ad bellum and jus in bello—were deeply theological, tied to human dignity, divine order, and the pursuit of peace. Yet in the modern world, their theological roots have often been replaced by political expediency.

 

Reinhold Niebuhr, the 20th-century Protestant theologian, reformulated this tradition through the lens of Christian realism. Niebuhr accepted the inevitability of conflict but insisted that Christian ethics must remain sober, critical, and rooted in humility.⁷⁶ Power must be engaged, but never idolized. For Niebuhr, pacifism was admirable in motive but politically naïve; realism without moral restraint, however, was idolatrous. His dialectic model—between idealism and realism—offers a compelling framework for engaging the Israel-Iran crisis without resorting to apocalyptic fatalism or naïve pacifism.

 

Jewish ethics has also deeply contributed to this discourse. Thinkers like Yeshayahu Leibowitz argued that halakhic Judaism resists the sacralization of the state.⁷⁷ His fierce critique of Israeli nationalism underscored that divine command, not political interest, should guide ethical praxis. Likewise, Emmanuel Levinas rooted ethics in responsibility for the Other, derived not from law or utility but from the infinite demand inscribed on the human face.⁷⁸ Levinas’s theological ethics reject violence as primary, demanding instead relationality, vulnerability, and non-reciprocal responsibility.

 

Islamic jurisprudence and political theology have long emphasized ethical restraint in warfare. The Maqasid al-Sharia (objectives of Islamic law) prioritize the protection of life, intellect, property, and religion.⁷⁹ The Prophet Muhammad’s treaties, including Hudaybiyyah, model strategic patience, negotiation, and the preference for nonviolent outcomes. Classical jurists such as al-Shafi’i and Ibn Taymiyyah elaborated complex legal frameworks for jihad, where intention, proportionality, and the protection of non-combatants were central. Any theological framework in Shi’a or Sunni contexts that invokes divine approval for unlimited warfare therefore betrays its own ethical legacy.

 

Christian peace theology, especially in post-Holocaust and post-colonial contexts, has emphasized nonviolence as a form of witness. Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder championed a pacifist ethic grounded in the Sermon on the Mount.⁸⁰ While often dismissed as sectarian or idealistic, such approaches have had global influence—from Martin Luther King Jr. to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Nonviolence is not passivity; it is active resistance to evil through the moral force of truth, suffering, and solidarity. In a region haunted by cycles of retaliation, this witness is urgently needed.

 

The praxis of peace must also attend to trauma. Theological ethics is not simply about doctrines or rules but about healing. Trauma-aware theology recognizes that both Israeli and Iranian populations carry historical wounds—Holocaust trauma, colonial humiliation, regime violence, displacement.⁸¹ Ethical praxis begins by listening to these wounds, not exploiting them. It builds spaces of mourning and reconciliation rather than mythologizing pain for political mobilization. This involves lament, interreligious solidarity, and the slow work of rebuilding trust.

 

Ultimately, a theology of peace is a theology of responsibility. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”⁸² Faith and reason must together discern paths forward—not by evading complexity but by confronting it with moral courage. In the shadow of nuclear annihilation, theology must not retreat to abstraction. It must speak, act, protest, and reconcile. It must, as the Hebrew prophets did, cry out for justice where power is abused and extend hope where despair dominates.

 

C. Hope Beyond the Horizon – Eschatology as Moral Grammar

 

Eschatology is often misunderstood as a doctrine about the end of time—a future-oriented speculation removed from ethical urgency. However, when rightly interpreted, eschatology functions as moral grammar for communities under duress: it encodes the deep logic of responsibility, judgment, and hope.⁸³ The Israel-Iran conflict, framed by apocalyptic anxiety and historical grievance, demands a retrieval of eschatology that moves beyond catastrophe toward constructive moral imagination. It is not about prediction but orientation—how communities act in light of ultimate accountability.

 

The Hebrew prophets did not separate eschatology from ethics. Judgment and restoration were interwoven in their proclamations: “Let justice roll down like waters,” Amos declared, not at history’s end, but in history’s midst.⁸⁴ Eschatological hope is therefore not escapism but energizing realism—a trust that injustice will not have the last word, even if it appears sovereign in the moment. The prophets indict violence, warn oppressors, and offer redemption—but only through repentance. Applied today, this ethos calls both Israel and Iran to moral accountability that transcends their own nationalist narratives.

 

Christian eschatology, especially in its Pauline form, frames hope not in geopolitical success but in cruciform fidelity. “We are saved by hope,” Paul insists, “but hope that is seen is no hope at all.”⁸⁵ Here, hope is not naive optimism but the refusal to surrender to despair. In war, this means resisting the logic of total retaliation, even under provocation. It means affirming the humanity of enemies, even amid grief. It demands readiness to act justly not because victory is assured, but because God is judge and redeemer.

 

Islamic eschatological thought also balances divine judgment with mercy. The Qur’an affirms yawm al-dīn (Day of Judgment) as a reckoning for tyrants and a vindication for the oppressed.⁸⁶ Yet God’s mercy (rahma) “encompasses all things” (Qur’an 7:156). The eschatological horizon in Islam, particularly in Shi’a contexts, includes themes of waiting, hiddenness, and restoration. The hidden Imam is not a call to violent revolution, but to patient, ethical fidelity in a broken world. This vision complicates popular stereotypes and offers a framework for resisting despair-driven aggression.

 

Eschatology also reframes time. Modern geopolitics is addicted to urgency—preemption, speed, immediacy. But eschatological time is kairos, not merely chronos—time as meaning, not just sequence.⁸⁷ It interrupts the cycle of violence by insisting that ultimate meaning is not determined by present outcomes. As theologian Johann Baptist Metz argues, eschatology preserves the memory of the victims, refusing to normalize suffering for the sake of historical progress.⁸⁸ This memory forms a spiritual resistance to ideologies of domination.

 

The ethics of eschatology is therefore profoundly political, though not partisan. It declares that peace is possible because history is not closed. It refuses to reduce human action to tragedy or farce. This does not deny the complexity of diplomacy or the evil of aggression—it intensifies moral discernment within them. Eschatological hope critiques both utopianism and cynicism, insisting instead on active vigilance: “Stay awake, for you do not know the day or the hour.”⁸⁹ This is not fearmongering, but moral attentiveness to the fragility and sanctity of life.

 

In practical terms, eschatological hope fuels institutions of reconciliation, trauma healing, and interreligious dialogue.⁹⁰ It encourages states to envision long-term futures beyond immediate retribution. It strengthens communities to resist despair and polarization. It allows for moral imagination where realpolitik sees only necessity. Without this eschatological dimension, theology risks becoming ethics without direction—rational but sterile, critical but disempowered.

 

Thus, eschatology—as moral grammar—offers the syntax of a world still open to redemption. In the context of Israel-Iran tensions, it challenges all parties to think beyond zero-sum logic, to speak of justice without vengeance, and to pursue peace not as a tactic, but as a witness to the final reality in which God’s sovereignty is revealed not through conquest, but through mercy.

 

 

Endnotes 

¹ Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 5th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 279–285.

² Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 29–30.

³ Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 98–102.

⁴ Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 54–56.

⁵ Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), XIX.17.

⁶ Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, trans. Paul Patton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 47–49.

⁷ Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 108–112.

⁸ Reza Aslan, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (New York: Random House, 2005), 195–199.

⁹ Augustine, The City of God, XIX.6.

¹⁰ Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 418–423.

¹¹ Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), 221–226.

¹² Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 15–20.

¹³ Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know That Something is Wrong (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), 46–48.

¹⁴ Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, trans. M.J. Charlesworth (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 2–3.

¹⁵ Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 278–284.

¹⁶ Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 18–22.

¹⁷ Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 184–187.

¹⁸ Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983), 93–95.

¹⁹ Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), 5–10.

²⁰ Matthew Kroenig, The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 162–165.

²¹ William Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7–9.

²² Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 3rd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 242–247.

²³ P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 303–307.

²⁴ Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy Strong, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004), 30–35.

²⁵ Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 49–51.

²⁶ Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1995), §277.

²⁷ Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 88–91.

²⁸ Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 190–195.

²⁹ Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 9–13; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 110–115.

³⁰ David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), 464–467.

³¹ Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 40–42.

³² Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 254–260.

³³ Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021), 4–7.

³⁴ Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 128–135.

³⁵ Mohammad Ali Shomali, “The Concept of Mahdi in Twelver Shi’ism,” Message of Thaqalayn 13, no. 3 (2012): 25–45.

³⁶ Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 31–42.

³⁷ Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 214–219.

³⁸ Liyakat Takim, “Religion, Identity and the Shaping of Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Religions 12, no. 4 (2021): 254–266.

³⁹ Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 5th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 229–236.

⁴⁰ Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 157–159.

⁴¹ Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 31–36.

⁴² Jane Dammen McAuliffe, The Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017), Surah 5:8–9; 17:33.

⁴³ René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 19–22.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 52–57.

⁴⁵ Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 48–55.

⁴⁶ Hamid Dabashi, Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 109–115.

⁴⁷ David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 143–146.

⁴⁸ Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 76–80.

⁴⁹ Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 104–107.

⁵⁰ Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 36–38.

⁵¹ Larry Kent Graham. Political Dimensions of Pastoral Care in Community Disaster Responses. Pastoral Psychology, 63(5–6), 613–626, 2014.

⁵² Ariel R. Ku. Preaching Lament as Transitional Space from Suffering to Hope: A Study on the Need for Communal Lament, University of Toronto, 2022.

⁵³ Larry Kent Graham. Pastoral Theology and Catastrophic Disaster. Journal of Pastoral Theology, 16(1), 2006.

⁵⁴ Steven E. Aschheim. Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations with National Socialism and Other Crises. Springer, 1996.

⁵⁵ John F. Dickie. Lament as a Contributor to the Healing of Trauma. Pastoral Psychology, 68, 2019.

⁵⁶ Timothy Linafelt. Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book. University of Chicago Press, 2000.

⁵⁷ David W. Peters. Post-Traumatic God: How the Church Cares for People Who Have Been to Hell and Back. Morehouse Publishing, 2016.

⁵⁸ L. Clifton Allen. A Liturgy of Grief: A Pastoral Commentary on Lamentations. Baker Academic, 2011.

⁵⁹ Richard Hughes. Lament, Death, and Destiny: Lamentation and the Search for Meaning in Catastrophic Times. Chalice Press, 2004.

⁶⁰ Larry Kent Graham. Healing Through Lament: Pastoral-Theological Engagement with the Psalms. In The Psalms and Pastoral Care, Fortress Press, 2004.

(No direct link available)

⁶¹ Michael B. Matustík. Radical Evil and the Scarcity of Hope: Postsecular Meditations. Indiana University Press, 2008.

⁶² Jeffrey Barter. Theopolitics and the Era of the Witness. Cambridge Theological Monographs, 2025.

⁶³ David McNally et al. Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth. PM Press, 2012.

⁶⁴ Enzo Traverso. Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914–1945. Verso, 2016.

tps://www.versobooks.com/products/1918-fire-and-blood

⁶⁵ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1947), I, q.1, a.1.

⁶⁶ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), I, 3–6.

⁶⁷ Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2004), 296–302.

⁶⁸ John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 84–91.

⁶⁹ Al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. Michael E. Marmura (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2000), 13–20.

⁷⁰ Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 114–119.

⁷¹ Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 106–109.

⁷² John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), 89–93.

⁷³ Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 72–78.

⁷⁴ Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 5th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 21–28.

⁷⁵ Nigel Biggar, In Defence of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 44–51.

⁷⁶ Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 59–65.

⁷⁷ Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, ed. Eliezer Goldman, trans. Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 113–119.

⁷⁸ Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 194–197.

⁷⁹ Wael B. Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 35–39.

⁸⁰ Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 112–117.

⁸¹ David W. Peters, Post-Traumatic God: How the Church Cares for People Who Have Been to Hell and Back (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2016), 41–47.

⁸² Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, trans. Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 268–272.

⁸³ Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), 145–150.

⁸⁴ Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 65–70.

⁸⁵ N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 1110–1115.

⁸⁶ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, rev. ed. (Chicago: ABC International Group, 2000), 123–127.

⁸⁷ Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 141–145.

⁸⁸ Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 198–203.

⁸⁹ Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), 99–103.

⁹⁰ Emmanuel Katongole, The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 151–156.


 

Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by Anton C. Pegis. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

———. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Bros., 1947.

Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali. The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994.

Aschheim, Steven E. Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations with National Socialism and Other Crises. New York: Springer, 1996.

Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Biggar, Nigel. In Defence of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Translated by Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.

———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by Eberhard Bethge. New York: Touchstone, 1997.

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

Dabashi, Hamid. Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Downey, John K., ed. Love’s Strategy: The Political Theology of Johann Baptist Metz. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 2004.

Ghazālī, Al-. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by Michael E. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2000.

Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Translated by James G. Williams. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.

———. Violence and the Sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Gorenberg, Gershom. The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Graham, Larry Kent. “Political Dimensions of Pastoral Care in Community Disaster Responses.” Pastoral Psychology 63, no. 5–6 (2014): 613–626.

———. “Pastoral Theology and Catastrophic Disaster.” Journal of Pastoral Theology 16, no. 1 (2006).

Habermas, Jürgen. Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.

Hallaq, Wael B. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Hart, David Bentley. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

Hauerwas, Stanley, and William H. Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.

Hughes, Richard. Lament, Death, and Destiny: Lamentation and the Search for Meaning in Catastrophic Times. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2004.

Katongole, Emmanuel. The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.

Keller, Catherine. Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021.

Ku, Ariel R. “Preaching Lament as Transitional Space from Suffering to Hope: A Study on the Need for Communal Lament.” DMin diss., University of Toronto, 2022.

Leibowitz, Yeshayahu. Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State. Edited by Eliezer Goldman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.

Linafelt, Timothy. Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.

Marion, Jean-Luc. God Without Being. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Marvin, Carolyn, and David W. Ingle. Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Matuštík, Michael B. Radical Evil and the Scarcity of Hope: Postsecular Meditations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

McAuliffe, Jane Dammen. The Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton, 2017.

Metz, Johann Baptist. Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology. Translated by David Smith. New York: Crossroad, 1980.

Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

———. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Ideals and Realities of Islam. Rev. ed. Chicago: ABC International Group, 2000.

Newman, John Henry. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Irony of American History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

O’Donovan, Oliver. The Ways of Judgment. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.

Patterson, David. A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Peters, David W. Post-Traumatic God: How the Church Cares for People Who Have Been to Hell and Back. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2016.

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol. 3. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Shakman Hurd, Elizabeth. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Shomali, Mohammad Ali. “The Concept of Mahdi in Twelver Shi’ism.” Message of Thaqalayn 13, no. 3 (2012): 25–45.

Takim, Liyakat. “Religion, Identity and the Shaping of Post-Revolutionary Iran.” Religions 12, no. 4 (2021): 254–266.

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.

Traverso, Enzo. Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914–1945. London: Verso, 2016.

Volf, Miroslav. A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011.

Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. 5th ed. New York: Basic Books, 2015.

Williams, Rowan. Faith in the Public Square. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Wright, N. T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Vol. 2. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.



 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction: The Crisis of Rationality in Modern Conflict

  • A. The Intellectual Breakdown in War

    ▪ Examination of how reason, as classically understood, fails to restrain war-making in modern geopolitics.

    ▪ Introduce the paradox: modernity’s rational tools (diplomacy, deterrence theory) coexist with escalating irrational destruction.

  • B. The Problem of Faith under Fire

    ▪ Historical/theological concern: Is faith merely consolation, or a concrete vision of peace?

    ▪ Israel-Iran conflict as case study for testing this question.

  • C. Methodological Approach

    ▪ Interdisciplinary: drawing from political theology, religious ethics, philosophy of religion, and eschatology.

    ▪ Critical use of classical thinkers (Aquinas, Augustine, Al-Ghazali), modern theorists (Niebuhr, Arendt), and empirical conflict data.

  • D. Thesis Statement

    ▪ This dissertation argues that neither faith nor reason alone is sufficient to respond ethically to the Israel-Iran crisis; only a synthesis grounded in a theologically-robust rationality can frame adequate responses to worst-case geopolitical scenarios.

II. Intellectual History: From Eschatology to Realpolitik

  • A. Faith and War in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Thought

    ▪ Augustine and Aquinas on war, peace, and divine order

    ▪ Maimonides and Al-Farabi on divine sovereignty and national survival

    ▪ Eschatological motifs in Shia political theology (e.g., Mahdism)

  • B. Modern Political Rationality and Its Limits

    ▪ Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Kant on war and the rational state

    ▪ The myth of total rationality in nuclear deterrence and realpolitik

  • C. Faith as Existential Knowledge

    ▪ Kierkegaard and Pascal: faith in the absurd versus rational control

    ▪ Paul Tillich: faith as “ultimate concern” in the face of catastrophe

III. The Israel-Iran Escalation: Scenarios and Theological Implications

  • A. Scenario Analysis: What Could Go Wrong?

    ▪ Worst-case escalations: U.S. involvement, regional war, collapse of regimes

    ▪ Empirical data: global energy dependency, military capability assessments, demographic vulnerability in the region

  • B. The Failure of Reason Alone

    ▪ Rational choice theory, military deterrence, and international law prove insufficient in preventing escalation

    ▪ Theological reflection on Babel and modern technocratic ambition

  • C. Where is Faith?

    ▪ Political uses of faith (Zionism, Shi’a eschatology) vs. theological faith

    ▪ The problem of divine silence: where is God in pre-emptive warfare?

IV. Theodicy and Human Suffering in Armed Conflict

  • A. Classical Theodicy and Its Limits

    ▪ Augustine’s privatio boni and Irenaeus’ soul-making: too abstract for modern war?

    ▪ Contemporary critiques from Moltmann, Bonhoeffer, and liberation theology

  • B. Pascal and the Heart’s Reasons Amid Destruction

    ▪ Pascal’s Pensées on human greatness and wretchedness as a response to political despair

    ▪ The wager in wartime: not “Is God real?” but “Will you live as if peace is possible?”

  • C. Lament as Rational Response

    ▪ Biblical lament (Psalms, Lamentations) as public theology

    ▪ The rational function of collective mourning in Jewish and Islamic liturgies

V. Reason Reimagined: From Autonomy to Responsibility

  • A. Heidegger, Levinas, and the Ethics of the Other

    ▪ Modern subjectivity challenged by the face of the victim

    ▪ Rationality as relational, not autonomous: implications for international policy

  • B. Just War Theory in Collapse

    ▪ Conditions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello in the age of drones, asymmetric warfare, and nuclear strategy

    ▪ Christian Realism (Niebuhr) vs. Pacifist Theologies (Hauerwas): Can war ever be just?

  • C. Faith-Informed Reason and Geoethical Discernment

    ▪ Restoring a teleological view of reason in service of peace

    ▪ Examples from Vatican diplomacy, Jewish rabbinic peace texts, Islamic fatwas against terrorism

VI. Eschatology, Hope, and the Future of Peace

  • A. The Apocalyptic Imagination and Its Dangers

    ▪ Use and misuse of eschatology in Iranian and Israeli rhetoric

    ▪ Distinguishing theological eschatology from political millenarianism

  • B. A Theology of Political Hope

    ▪ Political theology of the “not-yet” (Moltmann, Ratzinger)

    ▪ Hope as rational posture, not naive optimism

  • C. Faith and Reason as Collaborative Vocations

    ▪ Reclaiming faith seeking understanding (Anselm) as a public theological method

    ▪ Toward a theology of coexistence: realism without cynicism

VII. Conclusion: Toward a Public Theology of Crisis

  • A. Restating the Theological Stakes

    ▪ Neither security nor justice can be sustained by reason alone or faith alone

    ▪ Both must be transformed into a mode of witness to peace

  • B. Recommendations for Diplomacy, Policy, and Theological Education

    ▪ Multireligious diplomacy rooted in theological humility

    ▪ Cultivating theological literacy among policy-makers and clergy

  • C. Final Word: A Prayer for Rational Faith

    ▪ The human family stands not at the edge of apocalypse, but at the threshold of discernment.

    ▪ Faith and reason must meet again—not in triumph, but in solidarity.

 

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