Killing and the Wrongness of Torture

Abstract

How can just warriors prohibit torture absolutely while still allowing that killing can be just? The best arguments for torture’s wrongness and impermissibility seem to suggest that killing, too, is always wrong. If torture is wrong because it attacks imago Dei , why isn’t killing wrong too, for killing seems at least as much an attack as torture? This question, which seems to force a choice between pacifism or countenancing “just torture” alongside just war killing, has scarcely been asked in Christian ethics. Nigel Biggar and Darrel Cole are among the only Christian ethicists even to consider this question. They leverage these issues to argue for torture’s permissibility. Against such views, this essay shows why torture but not killing is always wrong, what so distinguishes torture from just war killing that it but not killing should be categorically prohibited. I elucidate three features that distinguish torture from just war killing and establish torture as always wrong: its intention and proximate end, its violating as opposed to destructive character, and its context of domination. I conclude by showing how these features are illustrated and exemplified by practices documented in the 2014 US Senate report on torture.