Roman A. Montero: The Early Christians and the Military /Ρομάν A. Μοντέρο: Οι Πρώτοι Χριστιανοί και η Στράτευση

In modern times it may not even seem like an issue if a Christian can or cannot serve in the military, clearly Christians today and for many centuries do, so what would the issue be? On the other hand, anyone who has honestly read the gospels must recognize that the issue of violence is at the very least problematic in Jesus’s teachings. One would simply have to point to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38–47) or the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:27–31), or his teaching on the one taking the sword dying by the sword (Matthew 26:52), to recognize that Jesus tended to reject violence.

There is of course Augustine’s Just War theory, which was expanded by Thomas Aquinas. Much of this Just war theorizing is based on Romans 13. However, as John Howard Yodar has masterfully pointed out in his The Politics of Jesus, Paul assumes that the governing authorities are completely distinct from the audience of Romans 13; whereas what is found in Romans 12:9–21, right before Romans 13, actually lays out the ethical norms for a Christian. Romans 13 is not normative, it describes the reality, and discourages rebellions, whereas Romans 12 is normative. So Romans 13 cannot be used as a justification for a Christian doing violence in the military. Even so, as David Bentley Hart pointed out in commonweal,[1] the word μάχαιρα is a term that could be used to refer to a civil guard, police officer or something like that as opposed to ξίφος, which refers to a sword used to execute people.

How about the early Church though, there is evidence that people who were soldiers became Christians very early on, although it’s not clear what happened after they became Christians, but evidence for Christians serving in the military comes at the end of the second century, and that evidence is very meager. However, the early Christian literature on the matter is almost unanimous, for example, Justin Martyr says:

“For from Jerusalem there went out into the world, men, twelve in number, and these illiterate, of no ability in speaking: but by the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God; and we who formerly used to murder one another do not only now refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also, that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willingly die confessing Christ.”[2]

Tertullian, echoing the same sentiment says:

“But now inquiry is made about this point, whether a believer may turn himself unto military service, and whether the military may be admitted unto the faith, even the rank and file, or each inferior grade, to whom there is no necessity for taking part in sacrifices or capital punishments. There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters–God and Caesar.
. . .
But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action.”[3]

In another writing Tertullian says:

“Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?
. . .
Of course, if faith comes later, and finds any preoccupied with military service, their case is different, as in the instance of those whom John used to receive for baptism, and of those most faithful centurions, I mean the centurion whom Christ approves, and the centurion whom Peter instructs; yet, at the same time, when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many; or all sorts of quibbling will have to be resorted to in order to avoid offending God, and that is not allowed even outside of military service; or, last of all, for God the fate must be endured which a citizen-faith has been no less ready to accept.
. . .
Indeed, if, putting my strength to the question, I banish from us the military life.”[4]

These sentiments are echoed in other early Christian writers such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria … they are, basically, unanimous: Christians do not serve in the military, they don’t go to war, and they don’t kill under any circumstances—no exceptions. Caesar does what Caesar does, but for the early Christians, that had no bearing on Christian ethics. The interpretation of Jesus disarming Peter is clear for Tertullian: Christians are not to take up the sword. Other writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Athenagoras also tie Christian pacifism directly to Jesus’s teachings. The aversion to military service was so strong for many Christians that we have accounts of many Christians preferring the death penalty to military service; such as Maximillian in 295 C.E.; or Marcellus 3 years later, who actually was a centurion but quit, on pains of death, his service due to his Christian convictions.

The record is clear; Christians for the first few centuries of their history were opposed to military service, war, and violence, no matter who sanctioned it.

This should not be surprising, there is no reason why we shouldn’t assume the early Christians took Jesus’s commands to “turn the other cheek” or “love your enemies” or “happy are the peacemakers” literally. For the first couple of centuries the Christians had no power over the state, nor did they seek it; they had no allegiance to the state, in fact, they shunned it. Given this, it is absolutely clear and logical why the early Christians were more or less pacifists. What changed? Well one thing is simply power, Augustine in Contra Faustum Manichaeum 22 writes:

“For there is no power but of God, Romans 13:1 who either orders or permits. Since, therefore, a righteous man, serving it may be under an ungodly king, may do the duty belonging to his position in the State in fighting by the order of his sovereign — for in some cases it is plainly the will of God that he should fight, and in others, where this is not so plain, it may be an unrighteous command on the part of the king, while the soldier is innocent, because his position makes obedience a duty, — how much more must the man be blameless who carries on war on the authority of God, of whom every one who serves Him knows that He can never require what is wrong?”[5]

And a little later:

“we have seen Christian emperors, who have put all their confidence in Christ, gaining splendid victories over ungodly enemies, whose hope was in the rites of idolatry and devil-worship. There are public and undeniable proofs of the fact, that on one side the prognostications of devils were found to be fallacious, and on the other, the predictions of saints were a means of support; and we have now writings in which those facts are recorded.”[6]

In the first quote, we see the argument from Romans 13, which completely ignores Romans 12. The second quote is I think ultimately the issue, at this point in time, there were Christian Emperors, they fought wars—so unless we are going to proclaim them sinful in their waging of wars and call for them to either dismantle the empire or give up their power, we have to accept that these wars were ordained by God. Another issue for Augustine is his extreme anti-Pelagianism and his spiritualizing of Christian ethics, for example earlier in Contra Faustum Manichaeum he writes:

“The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like; and it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men undertake wars, when they find themselves in such a position as regards the conduct of human affairs, that right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act in this way.”[7]

According to Augustine, Jesus’s ethics are not about action, they are about internal disposition. It is clearly the case that Jesus did care about internal disposition, however it is not the case that he didn’t care about action or that he thought internal disposition could be separated from action. Augustine here, and in much of his ethics, is simply overturning what the standard interpretation of Christian ethics had been, and what the teachings of Jesus clearly were, to make Christianity safe for the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, pre-Augustine the standards were clear, Jesus expected his followers to shun violence, Paul opposed violence, and the early Fathers opposed violence; including violence done through the military.

Notes:
[1] Christians & the Death Penalty
[2] Justin Martyr, Apology, 39.
[3] Tertullian, On Idolatry, 19.
[4] Tertullian, De Corona, 11.
[5] Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum 22.75
[6] Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum 22.76
[7] Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum 22.74


* Roman A. Montero, The Early Christians and the Military,
Dandelion Salad, May 23, 2018.

Peter Meinhold on early Christians' view of joining the army /Ο Πέτερ Μάινχολτ περί της πρωτοχριστιανικής άποψης για την κατάταξη στον στρατό

“Es ist deshalb verständlich, daß man auch auf dem Boden
der Alten Kirche zahlreiche Aussagen findet,
die eindeutig die Unvereinbarkeit des Christ- und Soldatseins feststellen.”

“...it was considered irreconcilability being a Christian and a soldier.”

«...θεωρούνταν ασυμβίβαστο το να είναι κάποιος χριστιανός και στρατιώτης».

* Peter Meinhold,
Römer 13: Obrigkeit, Wilderstand, Revolution, Krieg,
Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1960,
p./σ. 127.

Should Christians join the army? /Πρέπει οι χριστιανοί να στρατεύονται;

Greek Orthodox Christian Chaplain
of the II Infantry Division in the Balkan Wars
and WWI, Fr. Eleutherios Nuphrákes

Greek Orthodox Christian Chaplains
during the Balkan Wars

Greek Orthodox Christian Chaplain
during the Balkan Wars

Greek Orthodox Christian Chaplain
in Albania during WWII

Christianity

The controversy over whether Christianity sanctions violence has hounded the church from its very beginning. Some have argued that Christians were expected to follow Jesus' example of selfless love (agape), and "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5: 44). Those who took the other side have referred to the incident in which Jesus drove the money changers from the Temple, and to his enigmatic statement: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword" (Matt. 10:34; cf. also Luke 12:51-2). The early Church Fathers, including Tertullian and Origcn, asserted that Christians were constrained from taking human life, a principle that prevented Christians from serving in the Roman army.

When Christianity was vaulted into the status of state religion by Constantine in the fourth century CE, it began to reject pacifism and accept the doctrine of just war, an idea first stated by Cicero and later developed by Ambrose and Augustine. The abuse of the concept in justifying military adventures and violent persecutions of heretical and minority groups led Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, to reaffirm that war is always sinful, even if it is occasionally waged for a just cause. Remarkably, the just war theory still stands today as the centerpiece of Christian understanding about the moral use of violence (see, e.g., Ramsay 1968; Potter 1969). Some Christian theologians have adapted the theory of just war to liberation theology, arguing that the church can embrace a "just revolution" (Brown 1987; Gutierrez 1988).

An American Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, showed the relevance of the just war theory to contemporary social struggles by relating it to the Christian requirement to fulfill social justice. When violence is employed for the sake of justice, Niebuhr explained, it must be used as swiftly and skillfully "as a surgeon's knife" (Niebuhr 1932:134). In a famous essay answering the question, "why the Christian Church is not pacifist", Niebuhr—who had himself been a pacifist earlier in his career—built his case on Augustine's understanding of original sin. Because of the sinful nature of humanity, Niebuhr argued, righteous force was sometimes necessary to extirpate injustice and subdue evil within a sinful world (Niebuhr 1940).


«Οι πρώτοι εκκλησιαστικοί πατέρες, περιλαμβανομένου του Τερτυλλιανού και του Ωριγένη, δήλωναν ότι απαγορευόταν στους Χριστιανούς να αφαιρέσουν ανθρώπινη ζωή, μια αρχή που τους εμπόδιζε να συμμετέχουν στο ρωμαϊκό στρατό».

* The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion,
Peter Bernard Clarke (ed.),
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2008,
p./σ. 899.

*   *

Early & modern Christian positions on the question of war / Στάσεις απέναντι στο ζήτημα του πολέμου των πρώτων και των σύγχρονων χριστιανών

What caused the mission of Greek Orthodox Church to Korea? /
Ποια ήταν η αιτία της ιεραποστολής στην Κορέα
από την Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία της Ελλάδος;

"Archimandrite Hariton Symeonides of the Greek Orthodox Church -
Holy Water Blessing with Greek Soldiers during the Korean War.
Archimandrite Hariton was the first Greek Chaplain to come in contact with the Korean Orthodox
whom were scattered throughout Korea due to the War. He worked to gather the flock in 1951." * * 

'Orthodox priests sprinkled holy water on nuclear warheads and blessed military factories,
navy vessels and army aeroplanes while mugging for cameras.' *

"NONVIOLENCE. Virtually every religious tradition contains some sort of injunction against taking human life. The biblical instruction “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex. 20:13, Dt. 5:17), considered normative for both Jewish and Christian traditions, is echoed in the New Testament (Mt. 5:21) and also in the Quran: “Slay not the life that God has made sacred” (6:152). In the Buddhist tradition, the first of the Five Precepts mandated as part of the Eightfold Path of righteous living is the requirement not to kill. A Jain text claims that “if someone kills living things . . . his sin increases” (Sutrakratanga 1.1), a sentiment that is also found in Hinduism: “The killing of living beings is not conducive to heaven” (Manusmrti 5.48).

[...]

EARLY CHRISTIANITY. Martyrdom was an important feature of early Christianity as well, partly because it seemed an imitation of the sacrifice of Jesus, but there has been disagreement among Christians from that time to the present over whether Jesus’ example of selfless love (agape) was meant to be followed to similar extremes by other members of the Christian community. Those who thought so expected that the peaceable kingdom of God that is often depicted in the Gospels would be realized in this world, and they took literally Jesus’ advocacy of a nonviolent approach to conflict: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:44).

The early church fathers, including Tertullian and Origen, affirmed that Christians were constrained from taking human life, a principle that prevented them from participating in the Roman army. The fact that soldiers in the army were required to swear allegiance to the emperor’s god was also a deterrent, since it would have forced Christians into what they regarded as idolatry.

The adoption of Christianity as the state religion by Constantine in the fourth century CE brought about a major reversal in Christian attitudes toward pacifism and led to the formulation of the doctrine of just war. This idea, based on a concept stated by Cicero and developed by Ambrose and Augustine, has had a significant influence on Christian social thought. The abuse of the concept in justifying military adventures and violent persecutions of heretical and minority groups led Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, to reaffirm that war is always sinful, even if it is occasionally waged for a just cause.

PACIFIST CHRISTIAN MOVEMENTS. The late medieval period witnessed the rise of a series of movements dedicated to pacifism and the ethic of love that Jesus had advocated in his Sermon on the Mount. One of the first of such groups was the Waldensian community based in France and North Italy; this was founded by Pierre Valdès, who in 1170 had committed himself to a life of poverty and simplicity, and who refused to bear arms. Although Valdès was excommunicated from the church, he is said to have influenced the young Francis of Assisi, whose religious order later adopted many of Valdès’s principles. Similar pacifist teachings were advocated by John Wyclif and his Lollard followers in fourteenthcentury England, and in the same century the Hussite and Taborite movements in Czechoslovakia rejected all forms of violence, as did their successors, the Moravians.

The Protestant Reformation provided a new stimulus for groups that rejected the church’s compromise with what it often regarded as the political necessity of military force. In the first decades of the sixteenth century, the Anabaptists broke away from Ulrich Zwingli’s branch of the Swiss Reformation over the issues of voluntary baptism and absolute pacifism—teachings the Anabaptists affirmed and that, later in the same century, were adopted by Menno Simons and his Mennonite followers in Holland. In a tragic and ironic twist of fate, many of these pacifists were persecuted by fellow Protestants as heretics, and were burned at the stake.

Perhaps the best-known Protestant pacifist movement is the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, which was established by George Fox in England in 1649. The nonviolent ethic of this radical Puritan movement was based on the notion that a spark of the divine exists in every person, making every life sacred. With this in mind, the Quaker colonialist William Penn refused to bear arms in his conflict with the American Indians, with whom he eventually negotiated a peace settlement.

Many pacifist Christian movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, owe a substantial debt to Christian predecessors such as those mentioned above. Others have been influenced by Western humanist and Asian pacifist thought, especially, in the twentieth century, by the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi, in turn, was influenced by Christian pacifists, including the Russian novelist and visionary Lev Tolstoi and the American Christian social activists Kirby Page, Clarence Marsh Case, and A. J. Muste. The largest Christian pacifist organization of modern times, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was founded in England in 1914; and a number of statements urging nonviolence have been issued from the Vatican and from the World Council of Churches in response to the two world wars of this century. In the United States during the mid-twentieth century, Christian pacifist ideas played a significant role in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent movement for racial justice, the movement against the American involvement in the Vietnam War, and in movements against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Some Christian “nuclear pacifists,” however, restrict their advocacy of nonviolence to nuclear arms, whose massively destructive power, they feel, vitiates the traditional Christian defense of weaponry in a “just war.”"



«Οι πρώτοι εκκλησιαστικοί πατέρες, περιλαμβανομένου του Τερτυλλιανού και του Ωριγένη, δήλωναν ότι απαγορευόταν στους Χριστιανούς να αφαιρέσουν ανθρώπινη ζωή, μια αρχή που τους εμπόδιζε να συμμετέχουν στο ρωμαϊκό στρατό».


* The Encyclopedia of Religion
[Εγκυκλοπαίδεια της Θρησκείας],
2nd ed., Macmillan Reference/Thomson Gale 2005,
vol./τόμ. 10, p./σ. 6647, 6648.

Christians & the military service in Testamentum Domini (5th cent.) /Οι χριστιανοί & η στρατιωτική υπηρεσία στη Διαθήκη του Κυρίου (5ος αι.)

(recto) The priest: Blessed is He that hath come in the Name of the Lord;
Blessed the Name of His praise. And let all the people say: So be it, so be it.

(verso) Let the priests first receive thus:
the bishop, presbyters, deacons, widows, readers, subdeacons;
then those that have gifts, those newly baptized, babes.
And the people thus: the old men, virgins and the rest.

Simon Corcoran & Benet Salway
(JTS 2011/62.1:118-135):
“A newly identified Greek fragment
of the Testamentum Domini”.
[English/Αγγλικά, PDF]

If any one be a soldier or in authority, let him be taught not to oppress or to kill or to rob, or to be angry or to rage and afflict any one. But let those rations suffice him which are given to him. But if they wish to be baptized in the Lord, let them cease from military service or from the [post of] authority, and if not let them not be received.

Let a catechumen or a believer of the people, if he desire to be a soldier, either cease from his intention, or if not let him be rejected. For he hath despised God by his thought, and leaving the things of the Spirit, he hath perfected himself in the flesh, and hath treated the faith with contempt.


Αν κάποιος είναι στρατιώτης ή είναι αξιωματούχος, ας μαθαίνει να μην καταπιέζει ή να μην σκοτώνει ή να μην ληστεύει, ή να μην είναι θυμωμένος ή να μην οργίζεται και να μην βλάπτει κανέναν. Αλλά ας αρκείται στα μερίδια που του δίνουν. Αλλά αν θέλουν να βαφτιστούν εν Κυρίω, ας σταματήσουν τη στρατιωτική υπηρεσία ή ας σταματήσουν από την [θέση] εξουσίας, και αν δεν το κάνουν αυτό ας μη γίνονται δεκτοί.

Ο κατηχούμενος ή ο λαϊκός, αν επιθυμεί να είναι στρατιώτης, είτε να πάψει να έχει αυτή την πρόθεση, είτε αν δεν το κάνει αυτό να απορρίπτεται. Διότι καταφρόνησε τον Θεό με τη σκέψη του, και εγκαταλείποντας τα πράγματα του Πνεύματος, τελειοποιήθηκε ως προς τη σάρκα, και μεταχειρίσθηκε την πίστη με περιφρόνηση.

* Testamentum Domini / Διαθήκη του Κυρίου 2:2.

Early Christians, politics & the army /Οι πρώτοι χριστιανοί, η πολιτική & ο στρατός

The good shepherd /
Ο καλός ποιμένας

Against a backdrop of Roman just war theory—in which force was understood to be a legitimate right of the state, and an Old Testament tradition of divinely sanctioned, sometimes genocidal war, early Christians strove to make sense of Jesus' strange instruction that hatred should be repaid with love. Jesus counsels Peter to sheathe his sword in the garden of Gethsemane; instructs his followers to offer up the left cheek if the right one is struck; and promises that those who live by the sword will perish at its edge. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and St. Paul's Letter to the Romans seem to counsel disengagement from the political realm, perhaps because the coercive roles of soldier, jailer, lawyer, tax collector, and judge are inconsistent with the radical demands of emulating a God who responds to sin with love and who allows the sun to shine equally on the heads of the wicked and the good. It is nothing special, Jesus preaches, to repay hatred and force in kind.

Following Jesus' teachings literally, early Christians endeavored to create separate, self-sufficient communities in which all were brothers and sisters in faith and where the only direct form of coercion was social isolation. Participation in the soldiering life required behaviors apparently in direct contradiction to Jesus‘ preaching, involved loyalty oaths to the Roman emperor and obeisance to Roman gods, and exposed Christians to the general moral depravity associated with the legions. Subsequent Christian attitudes toward the state‘s use of force would be oriented around the understandings reached about the separation from conventional society and pacifism counseled in various ways in the New Testament. Whether the separation is a matter of the flesh or the spirit depends on whether it is thought Christ meant to lead the kingdom of God on earth, or to herald its future realization in heaven or in a world radically transformed by grace.

Such debates took on an increased importance with the official Christianizing of the empire in 313 C.E. This event forced Church leaders to confront a new set of political responsibilities the early Christian communes could afford to refuse. Beyond the inheritance of all the coercive organs of the state -and the associated bureaucracies, cultures, and professional classes- there was a developing theological conviction that the social stasis St. Paul recommended was no longer justified by the imminence of Christ‘s return, and that in fact, the current Christian era would last indefinitely (Johnson, 1991, p. 9). If the world of force could easily be seen as other when it was the agent of the early Church‘s persecution, even by the late second century, the perseverance of the Church made its thinkers grapple with the fact that the Church prospered in part because of its support by and integration with that world. After all, the Pax Romana provided a stable material foundation for the exercise and spread of Christianity.

* Michael Skerker,
"Jesus and Mars: The Christian Just War Theory"
[«Ιησούς και Άρης: Η χριστιανική θεωρία του Δίκαιου Πολέμου»],
Barnes Symposium 2005, University of South Carolina.

Ο «δίκαιος πόλεμος» στη χριστιανική παράδοση /"Just war" in the Christian tradition

* Ιωάννα Λεκέα,
Ιστορική και φιλοσοφική προσέγγιση της σύγχρονης έννοιας του δικαίου πολέμου

[A historical and philosophical approach of the contemporary concept of the just war theory],
Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών (ΕΚΠΑ), Τμήμα Μεθοδολογίας, Ιστορίας και Θεωρίας της Επιστήμης, 2004,

σ. 29-31.
[Ελληνικά/Greek, HTML]

Ένοπλη & άοπλη στράτευση κληρικών στο Βυζάντιο

* Μάρθα Γρηγορίου-Ιωαννίδου,
"Πληροφορίες αγιολογικών κειμένων γύρω από στρατιωτικά ζητήματα",
Πρακτικά του Α' Διεθνούς Συμποσίου: Η καθημερινή ζωή στο Βυζάντιο. Τομές και συνέχειες στην ελληνιστική και ρωμαϊκή παράδοση,
Αθήνα 1989,
pp./σσ. 531-545.
[Ελληνικά/Greek, PDF]

Jean-Michel Hornus on conscientious objection - antimilitarism & early Christianity /Ο Jean-Michel Hornus περί αντίρρησης συνείδησης - αντιμιλιταρισμού & πρώιμου χριστιανισμού

No one really disputes that some Christians, especially in the first centuries, refused to bear arms, and that there were theologians who approved of and encouraged their refusal. But in a conscious or unconsious desire to prevent these facts from undermining the very foundations of traditional Christian moral theology concerning service to the state, numerous authors have retreated behind a fourfold defense system:

1. Only a tiny minority of the early Christians adopted the position of "conscientious objection," while the great majority adopted exactly the opposite stance.

2. The position of "conscientious objection" was a late development which emerged only at the beginning of the third century, i.e., at a time at which doctrines more Platonic than Christian had begun to obscure and contaminate the teachings of the gospel.

3. Early Christian "conscientious objection" was never more than a theoretical position held by a coterie of bloodless intellectuals. Neither in its concrete life nor in its official pronouncements did the Church accept this theory, which as a result remained the eccentricity of a few theological cranks.

4. There was only one reason why the Christians of this period refused military service: they rejected the idolatry which was intimately bound up with the life of the army. Never did they have the slightest objection to killing other men; but they stoutly refused to put themselves in a situation in which they would have to pay to the Roman emperor homage which they owed to God alone.

In this book I shall attempt to refute these four assertions and to demonstrate that:

1. If there is relatively little surviving evidence of the Christians of the early centuries refusing military service, there is far less evidence of their accepting it-except at a later periods. Therefore it is faulty logic to argue: "Since there is so little evidence of early Christians refusing military service, these refusals can only represent the position of a minority among the Christians." On the contrary, sounder logic would suggest the opposite: "Since there is at least some evidence of Christians refusing military service and practically none of their accepting it, the majority of the believers must have been in favor of refusal." This conclusion gains even more weight if we bear in mind that silence on this matter is explicable not only by the scarcity of our documents but also by the fact that, for social and political reasons, the Christians were rarely confronted by the problem of military service.

2. To allege that Christian antimilitarism must have been a late development because prior to the third century there is hardly any evidence of it is almost to lie through omission. For to do so is to ignore the fact that during the first two centuries of the Christian era there was scarcely any patristic literature. When such literature began to appear, however, it is evident that it from the outset dealt with the theme of nonviolence-and it excluded the theme of military patriotism. The great treatises by writers such as Tertullian and Lactantius merely amplified systematically the propositions which their predecessors had already clearly enunciated.

3. It is true that the actual behavior of the believers often contradicted the attitude affirmed by Christian thinkers. But this, alas, is hardly a unique phenomenon. Repeatedly throughout church history the same tension recurs-between the absolute demands of Christian preaching and the compromises due to Christians' weakness and lack of faith. These compromises are the mark of sin in the Church. But it would be disastrous to conclude that, because certain of the faithful have been unfaithful to the teaching which they have received, infidelity should become the norm of Christian conduct. If antimilitarism had only been the position of a few eminent ethicists, and if others had considered this position to be exaggerated, why did these others not discuss this position and attack it? But in actual fact the Church did everything in its power to protect itself against the temptations of compromise in this area. The disciplinary measures which it decreed showed clearly enough that, although it welcomed the repentant sinner, it nevertheless condemned the weakness which had led him to defy Christian teaching by accepting a military uniform.

4. It is obvious that the early Christians stubbornly rejected idolatry. Since the writing of the Book of Daniel (if not before then), believers have recognized that this has been the underlying reality which has compelled them to offer resistance to the state. Thus, from the apostles facing the Sanhedrin to the German Confessional Church confronting Hitler, the terms of the struggle have remained exactly the same as those which the prophet had discerned. But does the idolatry involved in military service consist only of outward ceremonies, which today have become largely outmoded? Does it not rather pervade the entire system because it is based on a false scale of values? In the place of God, the nation and the military authorities receive adoration and obedience, and like Moloch they demand the human sacrifice which God forbids. I must also emphasize that the Christians of the early centuries were motivated by another consideration which was at least as important to them as was their rejection of idolatry-their respect for life. Emphasis upon the former, true though it is, becomes a distortion of historical truth when it forgets the latter and conceals its existence.

I hope, then, to prove that, from the very beginning and throughout the first three centuries of the primitive Church, its teaching-not just the fancy of a few individuals-was constantly and rigorously opposed to Christian participation in military service. I hope also to prove that this opposition was not based on a particular situation-the cult of the emperor-but on a fundamental decision: to reject violence and to respect life. Finally I shall attempt to explain how and why this position, which was so firm and clear in its principle, was abandoned during the fourth century. If my conclusions are sound, they inevitably pose two further questions. First, is it not likely that the understanding of the gospel of the Christians of the first three centuries was far closer to the authentic gospel than the understandings which have been prevalent since then? And second, did the theologians of the Constantinian era really get what they wanted from the bargain which they struck with the state, thereby justifying in their own eyes a new attitude of Christians toward the army? If not, is it not high time that we review their decision in the light of history, which demonstrates that they had been duped into a disadvantageous exchange from which nothing was gained, and in which the loss was fidelity to the gospel?

* Jean-Michel Hornus,

It Is Not Lawful For Me To Fight: Early Christian Attitudes Toward War, Violence, and the State
[Δεν είναι Νόμιμο για Εμένα να Μάχομαι: Πρωτοχριστιανικές Στάσεις απέναντι στον Πόλεμο, τη Βία και το Κράτος] (Revised Edition),

Alan Kreider & Oliver Coburn (transl. of Evangile et labarum [1960] * *),
Herald Press Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1980 /
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2009,

Introduction.

Η απόρριψη του Στρατού από τη μειονότητα των πρώτων Χριστιανών / The rejection of the Military by a minority of the early Christians

«Στα τέλη του 4ου αιώνα ορισμένοι Χριστιανοί, όπως ο Ιερώνυμος, ο Αυγουστίνος και ο Παυλίνος, επικρότησαν, σε επιστολές, τους συγχρόνους τους Ηλιόδωρο, Νεποτιανό, Βονιφάτιο, Κρισπιανό και Βικτρίκιο που αισθάνθηκαν ασυμβίβαστη την ιδιότητά τους ως Χριστιανοί με την ιδιότητα του στρατιώτη και εγκατέλειψαν τα αξιώματά τους. Ταυτόχρονα, όμως, δεν περίμεναν από όλους τους Χριστιανούς να τηρήσουν την ίδια στάση. Η γενναία και ακραία αυτή απόφαση αφορούσε μόνο τους Χριστιανούς που απέβλεπαν στην πλήρη απομάκρυνση από τα εγκόσμια και διεκδικούσαν την τελειότητα και μια «καλή θέση» στη Βασιλεία των Ουρανών.

Φαίνεται, όμως, πως η πλειονότητα δεν αντιμετώπιζε ούτε τον πόλεμο, ούτε τη στρατιωτική θητεία με καχυποψία και δεν απέφευγε να καταταγεί. Οι εθνικοί δεν είχαν θορυβηθεί και δεν είχαν λόγο να θορυβηθούν. Οι Χριστιανοί δεν αποτελούσαν απειλή ούτε στη θεωρία, ούτε στην πράξη. Αντίθετα, υποστήριζαν την πολιτική εξουσία και τους κρατικούς θεσμούς. Μόνο μια μικρή μερίδα Χριστιανών αντιδρούσε στην ιδέα της διεξαγωγής πολέμων από Χριστιανούς και της συμμετοχής Χριστιανών σ' αυτούς, είτε επειδή διέβλεπε κινδύνους από τις ειδωλολατρικές πρακτικές του Ρωμαϊκού Στρατού, είτε επειδή θεωρούσε ότι ένας Χριστιανός δεν επιτρέπεται να σκοτώνει, είτε, σπανιότερα, επειδή επιδίωκε μ' αυτόν τον τρόπο να αμφισβητήσει την πολιτική εξουσία».

* Δέσποινα Ιωσήφ,
«Οι Χριστιανοί στον ρωμαϊκό στρατό: Ένα ηθικό δίλημμα των πρωτοχριστιανικών κοινοτήτων»
περιοδικό Ιστορικά Θέματα, Τεύχ. 30, Ιούλιος 2004.

Οι Πρώτοι Χριστιανοί & ο Στρατός /The early Christians & the Military

«The debate concerning the approach of the early Christians to the military can be advanced by paying attention to a genre of literature that scholars have largely ignored: the church orders. These documents—the Apostolic Tradition, Canons of Hippolytus, Testament of Our Lord, and Apostolic Constitutions—are illuminating in that they deal with ethics within comprehensive treatments of worship, catechesis and pastoral life. They also are useful in that they, as variations upon a common original, are means of monitoring change across the third and fourth centuries. This article uses the church orders to assess four elements of a "new consensus" (David Hunter) on Christians in the military. By and large it confirms these, but at times it alters emphases and adds nuances. It argues that: (1) the church orders viewed killing as the big problem for Christians in the legions, not idolatry; (2) the church orders confirm that the pre-Christendom church was divided on Christian participation in the legions; (3) the church orders provide evidence for both discontinuity and continuity on the issue across the centuries, although the deepest continuity, based on John the Baptist's "rule" of Luke 3.14, is between the pre-Constantinian laity and later theologians; (4) the church orders confirm a regional variation in attitude and practice. The church orders' authority in practice is never clear».

[«Η αντιλογία όσον αφορά την προσέγγιση των πρώτων χριστιανών για τον στρατό προωθείται δίνοντας προσοχή σε ένα γραμματειακό είδος το οποίοι έχουν αγνοήσει οι ειδικοί σε μεγάλο βαθμό: τα εκκλησιαστικά διατάγματα. Αυτά τα κείμενα—η Αποστολική Παράδοση, οι Κανόνες του Ιππόλυτου, η Διαθήκη του Κυρίου Μας, και οι Διαταγές των Αποστόλων—είναι διαφωτιστικά καθώς αφορούν την ηθική στα πλαίσια μιας εκτενούς αγωγής λατρείας, της κατήχησης και της ποιμαντικής ζωής. Είναι επίσης χρήσιμα καθώς αποτελούν, όντας παραλλαγές ενός κοινού πρωτότυπου, ένα μέσο για την εποπτεία των αλλαγών στη διάρκεια του τρίτου και του τέταρτου αιώνα. Αυτό το άρθρο χρησιμοποιεί τα εκκλησιαστικά διατάγματα για να αποτιμήσει τέσσερα στοιχεία της "νέας ομοφωνίας" (David Hunter) για τους Χριστιανούς στον στρατό. Ως επί το πλείστον τα επιβεβαιώνει, αλλά σε ορισμένες περιπτώσεις δίνει έμφαση αλλού και εισάγει μικροαλλαγές. Υποστηρίζει ότι: (1) τα εκκλησιαστικά διατάγματα θεωρούσαν ότι ο φόνος ήταν το μεγάλο πρόβλημα των χριστιανών στις λεγεώνες, όχι η ειδωλολατρία· (2) τα εκκλησιαστικά διατάγματα επιβεβαιώνουν ότι η προ του χριστιανικού κόσμου εκκλησία ήταν διαιρεμένη όσον αφορά τη συμμετοχή των χριστιανών στις λεγεώνες· (3) τα εκκλησιαστικά διατάγματα παρέχουν αποδείξεις τόσο για την μη συνέχιση όσο και για την συνέχιση του ζητήματατος στη διάρκεια των αιώνων, μολονότι η βαθύτερη συνέχιση, βάσει του "διατάγματος" του Ιωάννη του Βαπτιστή στο Λουκάς 3:14, είναι μεταξύ των προκωνσταντίνειων λαϊκών και των μεταγενέστερων θεολόγων· (4) τα εκκλησιαστικά διατάγματα επιβεβαιώνουν τοπικές παραλλαγές στον τρόπο και την πρακτική. Η ισχύς των εκκλησιαστικών διαταγμάτων δεν είναι ποτέ σαφής»].

* Alan Kreider,
«Military Service in the Church Orders»
[«Η Στρατιωτική Υπηρεσία στα Εκκλησιαστικά Διατάγματα»],
The Journal of Religious Ethics, Blackwell Publishing, Vol./Τομ. 31, No./Αρ. 3 (Winter/Χειμώνας, 2003), p./σ. 415.
[English/Αγγλικά PDF]