Abstract

The article claims that in the current situation there is no need for the Evangelical Church in Germany to create a new ethics of peace. Christian ethics of peace neither tends to bellicism nor to pacifism. Learned by the history of church, the EKD also rejects the traditional concepts of the holy or the just war. War can never be holy, not even just, but in certain situations warfare may be unavoidable or necessary. Cases of self-defense or the so-called humanitarian interventions are examples for the latter. As the war in Kosovo shows, the modern Christi an ethics of a just peace needs clear and distinct criteria in order to decide whether in a certain situation a humanitarian intervention is necessary or not.