-
Website
http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/ -
Original page
http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2008/12/11/early-christian-voices-on-war-and-peace/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
i wonder, what do people make of the "turn your pruning hooks into spears" passage that some say negates the other passage oft quoted here?
and, seeing the great wealth of wisdom expressed in all these quotes, would you say Christians who are pro-military are ignoring church history? if so, whose fault is this?
Yes, the Orthodox Peace Fellowship has a very long list on peaceful saints (http://incommunion.org/articles/introduction/qu...). Most of the qoutations above are taken from there, so special thanks to our Orthodox brothers and sisters.
The pacifism of the early church is often forgotten or hidden. When warrior Christians speak of if a certain war is "just" or not, they do not go to the Scriptures for finding answers but to the "just war" theory founded by Augustine in the fourth century. I've often read: "For 1600 years, the church has been teaching the theory of just war." 1600? I thought the church existed before then! But thanks to the work of Don Murphy and the Pentecostal, Catholic and Orthodox Peace Fellowships, I now know that they say so because it is a fact that none of the church fathers tought that Christians should go to war before Augustine. On the contrary, they taught fundamentalistic pacifism, as you see above.
This is very interesting. The just war theory is not based on the Bible. If you'll base your war and peace theory on the Bible, you get either the pacifism that Jesus taught or, if you ignore the Sermon on the Mount, Romans 12, 2 Corinthians 10:3, Matthew 26:52, Ephesians 6 and every other passage that abolish war in the New Testament and all the prophetic peace voices in Isaiah 2 and 9 and Zechariah 9 etc., you'll get a war theory when every war is just, even those without Augustine's criterias. The Old Testament wars don't have rules forbidding killing civilians or treating imprisoned with respect. They were extermination wars.
The Old Testament is sometimes a bit tricky for Christians Pacifists, therefore, speaking of saints, it is a bit interesting to see how the church fathers interpreted the OT wars in their writings. I myself wrote a text about the OT wars, I think I'll publish it here in a comment.
I really think you're being too hard on the Old Testament. My favorite wars are: Gideon with the trumpets, jars, and torches, David and Goliath, Elisha who asked God to blind the enemies eyes, and Ester and the day of Purim.
I don't see the whole of the Bible advocating either extreme. I believe we should turn the other cheek, but I don't think we should be a carpet to be walked on. Neither do I think every war is just. I believe most are not.
The early church fathers lived in an environment where war was used for the expansion of the Roman Empire. Or the Jewish advocates of war were looking for political independence. The Roman Empire gave the Jews freedom to worship and freedom from military duty. There was no moral reason why Jews or Christians of that time needed to go to war.
The time of St Augustine was different. The result of defeat in war was the extermination of those practicing their Christian faith.
Over the millennia the human understanding of God has developed. I don't see why our theology about war would be any different.
I recommend it because I am skeptical that early Christian nonviolence was based upon relative convenience compared to the times of St. Augustine. Furthermore, the Church in the days of Augustine was in no real threat of being wiped out whatsoever.
There were many moral reasons why Jews should go to war. In the time of Jesus, everybody thought that Messiah would give Israel independence. People hated the Romans (that's why tax collectors aren't so poular) and the violent revolutionary Jewish nationalist group Zealots made riots against the Romans. One riot in year 70 lead to the destruction of the temple, another year 135 lead to the destruction of all Israel. ALthough it is doccumented in Eusebius church history that the Christians didn't parcipated in that war. They didn't care for Israel's independence, they had another Kingdom now.
Your theory of why the church fathers wrote what they wrote aint so good. As you see above, they weren't pacifists because there were no wars to fight in, because then they would write "we shall not fight because there's nothing to fight in", not "we shall not fight because war is wrong" as they do write. Besides, these people were violently attacked. They didn't preace pacifism although they didn't have to practice it. Many of the fathers above became martyrs. Persecutions followed the church. And the thing is that persecutions is as violently as war. They were tortured, humilated and murdered. And yet they loved their enemies and didn't strike back. It was exactly as in a war, although in war two (or more) groups fight each other, here one group fought while the other (the Christians) didn't fight back.
You wrote that you believe that we should turn the other cheek, but not be a carpet to be walked on. The main reason for Christians not to accept pacifism is a great misunderstanding: that pacifism is passivism. That turning the other cheek means to do nothing. That's so wrong. (See for example Walter Wink's article on the subject: http://www.pcpf.org/index.php?option=com_conten... ) Being passive is as sinful as being violent. We should, we must go to war zones like Kongo and Darfur and help the people there, but not by spreading death but by spreading life, spreading the Gospel of Jesus. What they need isn't more war but peace. But isn't war necissary to bring peace sometimes? No. There are two types of peace: the negative peace when people cannot fight, although they want to, because a foreign military or a strong police force is hindering them and the positive peace when people do not fight because they do not want to. It is the second peace that we must search.
God will help us spread the Gospel to all human beings, because He send us out with that mission and He will help us complete it, no matter what. We shall love our enemies. We are to through the power of the Spirit bring life to everyone. And life doesn’t harmonize with death. It is hard to bring a gospel of love to someone that you’re shooting at.
But what if shooting is the only alternative? Well, there is always another alternative. God wants us to spread the Gospel; therefore, He will help us to do that. If He can heal the sick, He can stop people from killing each other without shedding blood. Instead of killing evildoers, we can in the name of Jesus drive out the evil spirits inside them. Instead of stopping terror and oppressing in foreign countries with bombs and tanks, we can stop it by bringing love and grace to those countries. There are always alternatives to war, and those are available because we have a God whom nothing is impossible for (Matt. 19:26). We are not going to be passive and refuse to solve international problems at all. But we can with the help of God’s grace solve them in a better way than to kill people. When Jesus says “Do not resist an evil person” (Matt. 5:39) He doesn’t mean that we shall not resist evil at all, for the Greek word used here for resist (antistenai) means resist violently, not resist generally. Rather we shall resist evil, but not by using evil ourselves. We shall overcome it with good. We shall defeat violence but not by using it.
War is namely a horrible thing, and few people enjoy it (although there are some folks who do). But many believe it is a necessary evil. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it wasn’t necessary, if we didn’t have to use violence to feel safe and to free the oppressed? Well, the Bible says that we don’t have to fear anything, because God has saved us from evil – even from death. And Jesus insures us that he will help us spread the Gospel to everyone and overcome evil with good. Christian organizations like Christian Peacemaker Teams (www.cpt.org/) don’t ignore the needs of our world but go out to war zones to spread peace instead of war and love instead of hatred. Their slogan is “Getting in the way” and they say “What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?” They don’t just try to stop war, they embody the alternative to it.
I agree with you that war is a horrible thing. I agree that being a pacifist is different than being passive. Christian Peacemakers are some of my heroes. Maybe if there were more Peacemakers there'd be be less need for soldiers. I certainly hope so. I also agree that we have a God who can do the impossible. Especially if we are praying, trusting, and obeying him.
I know there were plenty of people who felt righteous in fighting the Romans. But, I don't know how that translates to having a moral reason. Your explanation above didn't clarify for me what the supposed moral reasons were.
Also, I draw a distinction between personal persecution and societal extinction. I will agree that in the first few centuries there was lots of personal persecution, even societal prejudice and discrimination. I will agree that many of those suffered martyrdom. But it was not on the scale of later centuries, like when the Muslims came in and put every one to death that didn't convert to Islam.
I agree that God doesn't endorse war. But he doesn't endorse divorce either. Yet he makes allowances for the frailty of the human condition. Some people would like to interpret God's grace and an endorsement. I do not. But I do think we should have the same grace as God.
I don't think you know so much about the early persecutions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Chr... is a resource. The persecutions of the second, third and fourth century were extermination persecutions. Everyone who didn't sacrifice to the emperor got executed, no exeptions. Likewise, Diocletian wanted all the Christians dead. I can't see any difference between this and if an army of muslims attacks the Christians.
The answer to both persecutions and foreign armies doing evil is God's love and forgiveness. See what the saints writes above again. As mentioned, many lived under persecutions (Cyprian, Origen to mention a few). But they say that we shall turn the other cheek and conqour tha wolves by being sheep, yhat God will care for us and that a true peace maker is the one that abolish war and put in what is contrary to it (that is, peace). There is an alternative to war thanks to God, and choosing that alternative is doing the most loving act to our enemies that we can do.
And on the contrary to the mission to the Old Testament Jews, Paul says that we shall not take revenge, for the avengement is the Lord’s. We shall not judge (Matt. 7:1). When the Law came, the children of Israel tried to follow it, and they punished the ones that didn’t. And the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Israel brought God’s wrath upon the nations, and waged war against them. The OT wars weren’t just wars in our meaning; they were extermination wars, where everyone were put to death (Joshua 10:29-42). And in the end of the historical books, even Israel itself is punished by war. No one is sinless.
But while the law came through Moses, the grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). He did not come to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17). Jesus came to free us from the curse of the Law, to free us from the death penalty which is upon us all (because we will all die, won’t we?). He who was sinless took the punishment of sin, the death penalty, upon Himself. And after He had defeated death He said to us to go out and to bring the news of this freedom from death to everyone. We are free from the Law, and we shall not judge, therefore we don’t have to circumcise, sacrifice animals nor wage war. We shall love our enemies. We are to through the power of the Spirit bring life to everyone. And life doesn’t harmonize with death. It is hard to bring a gospel of love to someone that you’re shooting at.
I think I'll write to you in english so that the others can understand.
My friend desperatly want that book. He read about ut in "Jesus for President" and is so in love with the church fathers. Thank you for telling this, I'll check out that site.
This is the site where information on their books is available: http://www.plough.com/ebooks.html. As you can see, all are available for free as e-books too.
I'm going to repost it.