The Early Christian Attitude To War/acceptance

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The Early Christian Attitude To War by Cecil John Cadoux Forms of the Early Christian Acceptance of War

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PART III FORMS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ACCEPTANCE OF WAR

HITHERTO we have concentrated our attention on the various ways in which the Christian abhorrence and disapproval of war expressed itself. We have now to study the reverse side of the picture the various con ditions and connections in which war was thought of by Christian people without that association of reproach which so frequently attached to it. The contents of this reverse side of the picture are very heterogeneous, ranging from the use of military metaphors and similes up to the actual service of Christians in the legions. It will be our task to examine each phase of this side of the subject candidly and carefully, and to attempt an estimate of the precise value of each in its relation to that strong antipathy towards war, the various mani festations of which we have just been reviewing. We begin with

THE CHRISTIAN USE OF MILITARY TERMS AND PHRASES TO ILLUSTRATE THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. It was apparently Paul who introduced this custom of drawing from the military world metaphors and similes illustrative of different aspects of Christian, particularly apostolic, life. He urged the Thessalonians to put on

12 i

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the breastplate of faith and love, and to take the hope of salvation as a helmet. 1 He supported his right to subsist at the expense of the Church by asking : " Who ever engages in military service at his own expense ? " 2 He spoke of his spiritual and disciplinary powers in the Church in the language of one holding a military command and suppressing a mutiny.3 He spoke of his weapons of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, i.e. for attack and defence.4 He called Epaphro- ditos and Arkhippos his fellow-soldiers and others his fellow-captives.s In a detailed enumeration of the items that make up the offensive and defensive equip ment of a soldier, he elaborated the parallel between human warfare and the Christian's struggle against evil angelic powers. 6 Further use of military metaphors is made in the Pastoral Epistles. There the author bids Timotheos join him in bearing hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. " No one going on military service gets entangled in the affairs of (civil) life, (for his aim is) to please him who enrolled him." 7 It is important to notice that Paul, as if aware of the liability of such language to misconstruction, twice went out of

1 i Thess v. 8. 2 I Cor ix. 7 ; cf 2 Cor xi. 8. 3 2 Cor x. 3-6. 4 2 Cor vi. 7 ; cf, for other military expressions, Rom vi. 13, 23, xiii. 12. s Phil ii. 25, Philemon 2, 23, Rom xvi. 7, Col iv. 10.

6 Eph vi. 1 2- 1 8.

7 2 Tim ii. 3f ; cf I Tim i. 18. It is to be observed that the language of i Tim vi. 12, 2 Tim iv. 7, from which we get the familiar phrases about 'fighting the good fight,' is drawn, not from the battle-field, but from the race-course (cf i Cor ix. 25, Heb xii. i). Harnack discusses these NT military metaphors in great detail (MC 12-18). He finds their origin " in the pictures of the Old Testament prophets" (12), having apparently in mind such passages as Isa xi. 4 f, xlix. 2, lix. 17, Hosea vi. 5. He observes that while every Christian has to fight, it is not usually the ordinary Christian who is described as a soldier, but only the apostle and missionary. He points out that the analogy became more than a mere analogy, wheti it was used to prove that the missionary should be supported by the Church, and should not engage in the business of civil life.

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his way to remind his readers that in using it he was not referring to earthly warfare. " Though we walk in the flesh, we do not serve as soldiers according to the flesh ; for the weapons of our military service are not those of the flesh, but powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds, demolishing theories and every rampart thrown up against the knowledge of God, and taking prisoner every project (to bring it) into obedience to Christ," and so on. 1 Again, " Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the (angelic) rulers, against the (angelic) authorities, against the world-potentates of this darkness, against the spiritual (forces) of wickedness in the heavenly (regions). Wherefore take up the armour of God," and so on. 2

The Gospel of Luke preserves for us the one explicitly military parable of Jesus, that of the two kings preparing for war.3 Clemens of Rome says to the Corinthians : " Let us render service then, brothers, as strenuously as we can, under His faultless orders. Let us consider those who serve our governors as soldiers, in what an orderly, obedient, and submissive way they carry out their instructions. For all are not prefects or chiliarchs or centurions or captains of fifty, and so on ; but each one in his own rank carries out what is ordered by the Emperor and the governors. The great cannot exist without the lower, nor the lower without the great. There is a union among all, and that is why they are (so) useful " (icai tv TOVTOIQ ypijai^A Ignatius writes : " Please Him whom ye serve as soldiers, and from whom ye receive wages. Let no

1 2 Cor x. 3-5. 2 Eph vi. I2f.

3 Lk xiv. 31-33 : see above, p. 38, and cf Mt xi. 12 f (= Lk xvi. 16), xxii. 7. 4 I Clem xxxrii. 1-4.

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one of you be found (to be) a deserter. Let your bap tism abide as (your) weapons, faith as a helmet, love as a spear, patience as armour. Let your works be your deposits, in order that ye may receive the recompense due to you." * It will be seen that, while Ignatius does not do more than use military metaphors, Clemens goes a good deal further. In two respects his allusion to military life is a novelty. Firstly, he draws from his illustration the lesson of subordination of Christians to Church-leaders ; and secondly, he unquestionably feels a real admiration for the Roman army as such. We shall have occasion to refer later to this second point. Justinus uses the military analogy in rather a strik ing way. " It would be a ridiculous thing," he says to the Emperors, " that the soldiers engaged and ertrolled by you should respect their agreement with you in preference to their own life and parents and country and all their friends, though ye can offer them nothing incorruptible, and that we, loving incorruptibility, should not endure all things for the sake of receiving what we long for from Him who is able to give (it)." 2 In the apocryphal ' Martyrdom of Paul/ both the author him self and the characters he introduces speak of Chris tians as soldiers in the service of God 3 : similar lan guage is put into Peter's mouth in his apocryphal ' Martyrdom.' 4 In the Gnostic * Excerpts from Theo- dotos,' it is said : " (We) must be armed with the Lord's weapons, keeping the body and the soul unwounded."5 Eirenaios refers, chiefly in Scriptural language, to the achievements of Christ under the figure of military

1 Ig P vi. 2 : cf S i. 2. We may remember that Ignatius was, at the time of writing, in the charge of a squad of ten soldiers. a Just i Ap. xxxix. 5. 3 M Paul 2-4, 6 (i. 108-116; Pick 44-48).

• M Petr 7 = Act Petr 36 (i. 90 ; Pick 116). s Excerp Thcod%$.

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exploits. 1 Clemens of Alexandria has a large number of military expressions and comparisons designating various features in the Christian life. 2 The pugnacious Tertullianus, despite his aversion to military service in actual life, was especially fond of using language of this sort. 3 It was adopted in fact far more readily and extensively in the Western than in the Eastern Church. The use of the one Latin word ' sacramentum ' for the soldier's oath and for certain important Christian ob servances facilitated the introduction of the military conception of Christianity. While nothing was further from Tertullianus' real meaning than that Christians should actually take arms on behalf of their religion, yet the thought of Christians as soldiers was sufficiently vivid and real to him to enable him to play with the idea of an actual revolt. 4

Origenes found the idea of the Christian life as a spiritual warfare of great value in that it furnished a key to much in the Old Testament that would have been repugnant to him, had he felt obliged to accept it in its literal meaning. Military metaphors appear in his best-known works, but are naturally most fully worked out in his Homilies on the books of Numbers, Joshua, and Judges. In the Homilies on Joshua, he

1 Eiren IV xx. n (ii. 223) (quotation of Ap xix. 11-17), xxxiii. n (ii.265) (quotation of Ps xlv. 4f), frag 21 (ii. 490) (the armed angel that met Balaam was the Word) : cf 1$ ii. 3 (i. 255) (world to be referred to God as victory to the king who planned it).

2 Clem Protr x. 93, 100 fin, no, xi. 116, Paed I vii. 54, viii. 65, Strom I xi. 51, xxiv. 159 ff, II xx. no, 120, IV iv. 14, 16, viii. 60, xiii. 91, xxii. 141, VI xii. 103, xiv. 112, VII iii. 21, xi. 66, xiii. 83, xvi. i oof, Quis Dives 25, 34 f.

3 Tert Mart I, 3, Apol 50 init, Nat ii. 5 (i. 592 f), Sped 24 fin, Cut ii. 5, Paen 6, Orat 19, Jud 7, Praescr 12, 41, Cast 12 init, Marc v. 5 (ii. 480), Fug 10 f, Res 3, Scorp 4 fin, Pudic 22 tin,/ejun 10, 17.

4 Tert Apol 37 (i. 463) (see above, p. 107). Harnack treats the whole subject with great thoroughness in MC 32-40.

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says : " If those carnal wars did not carry a figure of spiritual wars, the books of Jewish history would, I believe, never have been handed down by the apostles (as) fit to be read in the churches by the disciples of Christ, who came to teach peace." 1

Other writings of the first half of the third century containing military phrases and illustrations are Hippo- lutos' treatise against Noetos, 2 the apocryphal ' Acts of Thomas,' 3 the Pseudo-Cyprianic 'De Pascha Computus/4 and the * Octavius ' of Minucius Felix, which has a fine rhetorical comparison of the steadfast martyr to a victorious soldier. 5

From the middle of the third century onwards the frequency with which military language is used to describe phases of Christian life and experience becomes very noticeable, particularly in Latin writers. Christians are spoken of as Christ's soldiers ; Christ is the imperator ; the Church is his camp ; baptism is the sacramentum ; heretics and schismatics are rebels and deserters, and so on. A multitude of military phrases occur in the portrayal of Christian trials and achieve ments, particularly in connection with persecution. A detailed analysis of the passages would tell us very little in regard to our main enquiry : some of them are simply edifying rhetoric ; in some the parallel is carried

1 Orig Horn in Jos xv init (Migne PG xii. 897). Cf also Orig Princ III ii. 5 (milites Christi), IV 14 (see below, p. 175), 24, Orat xiii. 3 f , xxiv. 4, Cels vii. 21 f. Harnack collects the passages from Origenes' exegetical works in MC 26-31, 99-104. Westcott says of the Homilies on Joshua : " The parallel between the leader of the Old Church and the Leader of the New is drawn with great ingenuity and care. The spiritual interpretation of the conquest of Canaan, as an image of the Christian life, never flags " (DCB iv. !O7b).

2 Hipp. Noet 15 (quotation of Ap xix. 11-13).

3 Acts of Thomas 39, 126 (iii. 157, 234 ; Pick 260 f, 328).

4 Ps-Cypr Pasch 10. s Minuc xxxvii. 1-3.

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out in great detail ; in others it consists of a bare illus trative analogy. 1 We observe that the military metaphor commended itself most strongly to Cyprianus and those who corresponded with him, 2 Commodianus,3 and the authors of the martyr-acts,4 that it was on the whole more popular with the Latin or Western 5 than with the Eastern 6 writers ; and that fondness for it was greatly stimulated by persecution.7 The way in which the word ' paganus/ which originally meant civilian as dis tinct from soldier a sense which it kept till after 300 A.D., came eventually to mean non- Christian, indicates how strongly the idea of the Christian as the soldier par excellence permeated the mind of Latin Christianity. 8

Most of the passages in which military metaphors and similes are used are obviously quite non-committal as to the writer's attitude to earthly warfare, though there are certainly some in which the analogy is put in

1 Cf Harnack MC 40-43.

- Cypr Test ii. 16, iii. 117, Donat 15 init, Laud 10, 19, 26, Ep 10 (8) I,

5. 37 (15) i> 28 (24) i, 31 (25) 5, 30 (30) 2, 6, 38 (32) i, 39 (33) 2f, 4 6 (43), 54 (So) i, 55 (SO 4, 17, i9 56 (52) 2, 57 (53) 1-5, 59 (54) 17, 58 (55) 1-4,

6, 8f, 11, 60 (56) 2, 61 (57) 2f, 65 (63) i, 73 (72) 10, 22, 74 (73) 8 f, 77 (77) 2, 78 (78) i, 80 (81) 2, Laps 2 (see above p. 151 113), 36, Dom Orat 15, Mort 2, 4, 9, 12, 15, Bon Pat 12, Zel Liv 2 f, Fortpizl I f, 4, treatise 13.

3 Commod Instr i. 34, ii. 9-13, 20, 22, Carm 77 : cf Scullard, 259.

4 Passio Mariani et Jacobi i. 3, iii. 4, viii. 4, x. 3 (Gebhardt 134 ff) ; Acta Fructtiosi 3 (Ruinart 266) ; Passio Montani et Lucii iv. 6, xiv. 5 (Gebhardt 147 ff) ; Acts of Codratius (Conybeare 195, 202, 206); Passio Quirini 2 init (Ruinart 522) ; Acta Marcelli I f , 4 (Ruinart 343 f) ; Passio Typasii 2 (Anal Bo Hand ix. 1 1 8).

s Pont Vit Cypr 8, 10 ; Ps-Cypr Rebapt 16 fin, Jtid\, 7 ; Arnob ii. 5, 8 ; Lact hist I iii. 19, III xxiii. 2, V xix. 25, xxii. 17, VI iv. 15-19, xx. 16, VII xix. 5 f, Mort Pers xvi. 4-11.

6 Dion Alex De Natura (Feltoe 142), and in Eus HE VI xli. 16 ; Didask II vi. lof ; Clem Epjas 4 ; Clem Horn ix. 21, Recog iv. 33, vii. 24 ; Eus PE 150, i6b, i65b, 663b.

7 Cf Harnack ME i. 414-418.

8 See Harnack's interesting note in MK i. 416-418, MC 122.

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such a way as to suggest that the writer accepts the Tightness of war. Thus Cyprianus says : " It is a good soldier's (business) to defend the camp of his com mander against rebels and enemies : it is the business of a proud general to keep the standards entrusted to him," and he goes on to plead accordingly for the re- baptism of heretics. 1 Or again : " If it is a glorious thing for earthly soldiers to return in triumph to their country after conquering the enemy, how much more excellent and great is the glory of returning in triumph to Paradise after conquering the devil ! " 2 Lactantius reinforces a strong appeal to the reader to enter upon the toilsome spiritual warfare against the devil by draw ing an elaborate parallel between the demands of that conflict and the wisdom of enduring, for the sake of peace and security in the future, the bother of having to prepare to defend oneself and one's home against an earthly foe.3 But despite appearances, passages like these cannot be taken as more than mere illustrations. For the purpose of pointing an argument or decorating a lesson, a writer will sometimes use rhetorical analogies which seem likely to carry weight, but which do not represent his own considered opinions on that from which the analogy is drawn. We know, for instance, that Lactantius, despite these glowing words on the obvious need of self-defence, as a matter of fact totally disapproved of all bloodshed, including capital punish ment and military service : and it seems practically certain that Cyprianus did the same.4

At the same time, the frequent and unrestricted use 'of military metaphors was not without its dangers.

. ' Cypr Ep 73 (72) 10. 2 Cypr Fort 13.

3 Lact hist VI iv. 15 i'i. See above pp. 147 f, 159 f.

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Harnack remarks : " When the forms of military life are taken over into the higher religions, the military element appears at first to be thereby converted into its exact opposite, or to be changed into a mere symbol. But the form too has a logic of its own and its own

• necessitates consequentiae.' At first imperceptibly,

but soon more and more clearly, the military element, which was received as a symbol, introduces also the thing itself, and the 'spiritual weapons of knighthood ' become the worldly (weapons). But even where it does not get as far as that, there enters in a warlike disposition which threatens the rule of meekness and peace." 1 And again later, of the Latin Christianity of the third century : " A tone that was on the one hand fanatical and on the other hand bombastic entered into the literature of edification in the West. The Christian threatened to become a * miles gloriosus.' Even though it might all through be a question of spiritual warfare, (yet) an earthly delight in battle and strife, in plunder and vic tory in the ordinary sense, could (quite easily) develop itself in this fashion. Military speech was not by any means justified by the actual circumstances, apart from the intermittent persecutions : it (just) became the fashion. The martyr-acts that were written in the great persecution under Diocletian and his colleagues, and still more those that were written later, are often enough lacking in the peace and prudence which was prescribed to the Christians in their classic documents except the Apocalypse. But who can criticize the attitude of people who were handed over to the executioner and went to meet a dreadful death? Their biographers only are open to criticism." 2 We may say therefore, with

1 Harnack MC 8. 2 Op cit 42 f.

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regard to this first department of Christian thought in which war stood for something good, that while it lent itself to abuse and misconstruction, particularly in the case of the cruder minds and harsher spirits in the Church, it dealt strictly speaking only with warfare in its purely spiritual sense, and comprised nothing that was necessarily at variance with the most rigid absten tion from the use of arms.

THE WARS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND OF HEBREW HISTORY. The broad fact that meets us here is the ease with which the early 1 Christian was able, whenever necessary, to keep his own ethic and that of the Old Testament in different compartments of his mind, without being seriously disturbed by and even without noticing the discrepancies between them. The Scriptures were for him divinely inspired ; the history they recorded had been divinely controlled ; whatever was narrated and approved by the Biblical authors was regarded as sacred, and as such not a proper subject for human criticism it was accepted with child like and unquestioning reverence. The reader had no trained historical sense with which to discern develop ment in man's knowledge of God's Will : hence he lacked, not only the inclination, but als'o the means, of properly relating the ethic of his own faith to that of a long distant foretime. The soundness of his own moral intuitions saved him from presuming to follow indiscriminately the example of those great ones of old, of whom he read and spoke with such genuine reverence and admiration. No greater mistake could be made than to suppose that the early Christian would have permitted himself or his fellow-Christians to do

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whatever he could peruse without censure or even with approval in the pages of Scripture. An instance will suffice to make this point clear. Concubinage and prostitution were practices which early Christian senti ment strongly condemned as sinful. Whatever might be the frailty of his flesh, no early Christian ever seriously thought of advocating or even defending such practices in his own day least of all from the pages of Scripture. Yet we find Paul referring to the concubinage of Abraham without a hint that it was sinful, 1 and James and the author of Hebrews alluding to Rahab the harlot, not only without censure, but even in terms of high praise. 2 Similarly with the subject of war. For the early Christian the warlike habits of * the great of old ' and his own peaceful principles formed two separate realms, both of which he recognized without attempting or feeling any need to attempt to har monize them. He could recall with complacency, and even with a devout admiration, the wars of the ancient Israelites, totally unconscious of any problem presented to him by their horrors, and without in any way committing himself to a belief in the propriety of similar action on his part. Thus it was that Stephen and Paul both recalled with a glow of patriotic enthusiasm how God had subdued and destroyed the Canaanites before their ancestors under Joshua,3 and the author of Hebrews spoke proudly of Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, reminded his readers how "by faith the walls of Jericho fell down, ... by faith Rahab the harlot was not destroyed with the disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace," and mentioned in his catalogue of the heroes

1 Gal iv. 22 ff. 2 Jas ii. 25 ; Heb xi. 31. 3 Ac vii. 45, xiii. 19.

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of faith "Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, who by means of faith subdued kingdoms, . . . escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, routed armies of foreigners." x Clemens of Rome tells in detail the story of Rahab and the spies, making the scarlet thread she bound in the window a type of the Lord's redeeming blood. 2 'Barnabas' finds a type of the cross in the hands of Moses extended above the battle between Israel and Amalek, and a type of Jesus himself in Joshua, whom Moses ordered to record God's determination to destroy Amalek.3 Justinus quotes to Truphon the words of Moses : " The Lord thy God, who goeth before thy face, He shall destroy the nations," and says : " Ye, who derive your origin from Shem, came, according to the judgment of God, upon the land of Canaan, and took possession of it " 4 : he reminds him how the angel of the Lord slew 185,000 Assyrians before Jerusalem in Hezekiah's time.5 Like the other writers just mentioned, he sees types of Christ, the cross, etc., in military incidents, objects, and persons that appear in the Old Testament, in Joshua, in Moses' outstretched arms, and the stone he sat on, in Rahab's scarlet thread, and in the horns with which Joseph would push the nations (Deut. xxxiii. I/). 6 While the juxtaposition of the discrepant standards of Scripture and of the Christian life created no difficulty

1 Heb vii. I, xi. 30-34. It is quite a mistake to use this passage, as Professor B. -Baker does (ICIV 6, 18), in support of his view that "war is sanctioned ... by the teaching and practice of Christ and of His immediate disciples," if by that is meant that war is something in which the follower of Jesus was permitted to take part.

2 i Clem xii. 3 Barn xii. 2, 9.

• Just Dial 126 (772), 139 (796). s op cit 83 (672).

6 0/V9of(692f), in (152), 113(736*), 115(741, 744), 131(781)-

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for the childlike mind of the first generations of Christ ians, yet it was obviously bound sooner or later to attract attention. As soon as the Church began to develop her thinking powers and to face the tangled and perplexing problems of practical life, the antinomy had to be reckoned with. That the sanction of war in the Old Testament had some influence on Christian practice by the time of Tertullianus, we know ; though we cannot say how soon that influence began to make itself felt. In the realm of theology, however, the difficulty came to a head in the heresy and schism of Markion, about the middle of the second century. Markion's theory was that all divinely ordained wars, judgments, penalties, and so on, were to be referred, not to the Supreme Being, the good God who was the Father of Jesus, but to an inferior Deity, the just God of the Jews. This dualism the orthodox Christians rejected and resisted with horror, and indeed it was as easy to find disproof of it, as support for it, in Scripture. Neither Markion nor his opponents had the modern key, viz. the theory of the progressive revelation of the Divine character to men ; and the orthodox, in meeting his arguments, were driven to seek for warlike features in the God of the New Testament, and thereby gravely imperilled one of the most essential features of the Christian gospel. 1

1 Harnack' says (MC 26) : " Marcion's grasp of the Christian idea of God was without doubt essentially accurate. But the thought of a develop ment of the Jewish conception of God into the Christian was as remote from him as from his opponents ; so that he had to break. with the historical antecedents of Christianity, and his Catholic opponents had to adulterate the Christian idea of God with what was out-of-date. Both fell into error, for there was no other way out. It will however always remain a credit to the Marcionite Church, which long maintained itself, that it preferred to reject the Old Testament, than to tarnish the picture of the Father of Jesus Christ by the intermixture of traces of a warlike God."

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Forty or fifty years later, the situation had developed. We find indeed, as before, many allusions to the ancient Hebrew wars without any question being raised as to their incompatibility with Christian usage. Joshua continues to be represented as a type of Jesus, and the massacres he is said to have perpetrated are com placently referred to. Moses is praised as a great general, his outstretched arms are taken as a sign of the cross, the Maccabees' decision to fight on the Sabbath is quoted, and so on. 1 But the importance and urgency of the question raised by Markion were more than ever realized, for his church was still strong and flourishing. Lengthy exposures of his errors were penned by Eirenaios, Tertullianus. and Hippolutos. More significant for our immediate purpose for these replies to Markion deal only incidentally with the question of wars is the fact revealed by Tertullianus, that the Old Testament was now being used by certain Christians in order to justify themselves for bearing arms. The plea does not seem to have been always very intelligently framed, for we are told that these Christians appealed not only to the wars of Joshua and the Israelites, but also to Moses' rod, -Aaron's buckle, and John the Baptist's leather girdle ! 2 How utterly and seriously misleading this reverence for the Old Testament could be for simpleminded Christians particularly of the less scrupulous and puritanical sort we gather from a treatise belonging to about the

T The reader who cares to study these allusions in detail will find them in Eiren III xvi. 4, xvii. 3, IV xxiv. \,Jrags 18 f, 44 (ii. 86, 93, 232, 488 f, 509), Demonstr 20 (11), 27 (16), 29 (17) ; Clem Strom I xxiv. 158-164,

II xviii. 82, 88 ; Tert Jud 4, 9 f (ii. 606, 622 f, 627 f), Marc iii. 16 (ii. 343), 18 (ii. 347), iv. 36 (ii. 451), Monog 6 fin, fejun 7, 10 ; Hipp Dan I viii. 3,

III xxiv. 8, IV xliv. 2 Tert Idol 19 (i. 690) : see above, p. 109.

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middle of the third century, and probably written by Novatianus, in which certain Christians are referred to who justified themselves for attendance at the public shows in the amphitheatre on the ground that David had danced before the ark and Elijah had been the charioteer of Israel. 1 But even among the more intelligent and sincere Christians, who lived in the times when participation in warfare had become a Christian problem, the fact that the Old Testament wars were traditionally justified had some effect in pre venting a t unanimous decision against such participation. 2 One way out of the difficulty was to regard the Old Testament wars as parables, allegories, and types, descriptive of the spiritual life. Many Christians, we are told, regarded these difficult narratives as types, though they were not quite clear as to what they were types of.3 It needs a special insight, Origenes con tends, to enable one to interpret these passages aright : " strangely enough, by means of the history of wars and of conquerors and of (the) conquered, certain mysteries are made clear to those that are able to test them." 4 What large use Origenes himself made of this method of interpretation we have already seen. We may note that, great as was his confidence in it, his historical sense prevented him from applying it completely ; and not having the one clue to the problem, he had even tually to leave the discrepancy between the two dis pensations unresolved. Thus, when Celsus pointed out the contradiction between the Old Testament promises of wealth and dominion and precepts for the conduct of

1 Novat Sped 2 : ubi, inquiunt, scripta sunt ista, ubi prohibita? alioquin et auriga est Israel Helias et ante arcam Dauid ipse saltauit.

2 Cf Harnack MC 1 1 f. 3 Qrig Princ IV i. 9 fin. 4 Orig Princ IV 14.

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war, on the one hand, and the teaching of Jesus on the other, Origenes argued that the former are to be taken in a spiritual sense, as the Jews themselves eventually took them, the literal sense being in many cases obviously impossible. The promises of the Law were never literally fulfilled ; the Jews therefore would not have remained so zealous for the Law, had they understood it as Celsus does literally. At the same time, Origenes recognizes that the Law had a literal, as well as a spiritual, meaning, that the Jews understood the laws permitting them to punish offenders and to fight against their enemies literally and not spiritually, and that they were allowed to do so, as otherwise they would have perished as a nation. Yet he also argues that the promise that the Jews should slay their enemies cannot be taken literally, and points out that the destruction of Jerusalem proved that God did not wish the Jewish State to stand any longer. 1 It is easy enough to see the unresolved contradiction in Origenes' position indeed, one can hardly believe that he himself could have been quite satisfied with it : but further advance was impossible without the more modern ideas of the part played by man's subjective conditions in the deter mination of human duty and the consequent necessity of a progressive, i.e. a changing, revelation of the divine Will. A further point along this very line was reached by a Christian writer (the author of the ' Dialogus de Recta Fidei ') of the early years of the fourth century, in connection with the closely allied problem of the contradiction between the Mosaic Law of Retaliation and the Sermon on the Mount. That problem, how ever, is still more closely connected with the question

1 Orig C/Zs iii. 7, vii. 18-26.

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of the justifiability of judicial penalties than with the question of war, and will accordingly have to be con sidered later. 1 We may, however, notice here the full approval which this author gives to the spoliation of the Egyptians by the Israelites and to Moses' punishment of the rebels : " It does not therefore seem at all undeserved that those, who had waged war unjustly, should be despoiled like enemies by the laws of war. . . . It was just that those who had revolted should be slain like enemies and conspirators. . . . We have shown concerning those, who wage war unjustly, that the proper result is that they should receive what is (usually) given (ea quae . . . referuntur) by the law of war ; whence we have taught that Christ also ordered (his) enemies to be thrust into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 2

Apart from this author and Origenes and those who touch on the problem of the Lex Talionis, no other writer makes any contribution to the settlement of the difficulty of Old Testament wars.3 This difficulty how ever did not bulk so large but that authors of even the latest part of our period could refer to those wars in the same happy and unconscious way as their pre decessors. Minucius Felix speaks of the military successes of the Jews, as long as they worshipped God : " (though) unarmed, they pursued armed men as they fled, (and) overwhelmed (them) by the command of God and with the help of the elements." 4 In Cypri-

1 See below, pp. 218 ff. 2 Adamant i. 10, 12, 13.

3 Tertullianus (Virg i) has some words about the development o* righteousness from its rudiments in the natural fear of God, through infancy in the Law and the Prophets, youth in the Gospel, and maturity in the work of the Paraclete, but he does not work the theory out.

4 Minuc xxxiii. 3.

13

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anus we once more find mention of Moses making the sign of the cross x and other allusions to Old Testament wars, 2 as well as commendations of Cornelius, the centurion-convert of the New Testaments Lastly, Joshua appears as a type of Jesus in the ' Divine Institutes' of Lactantius.4

vSumming up, we may say that all orthodox Christians agreed in regarding the wars waged by the ancient Hebrews as having been waged with the Divine sanction, if not always at the Divine bidding; that few of them were concerned, and none fully suc ceeded, in harmonizing the divergent views of the Old and New Testaments in regard to the use of violence, but that, inasmuch as the approval accorded to ancient Hebrew wars was whether the Christian fully recog nized the fact or not relative to the ancient Hebrew mind, i.e. relative to subjective human conditions which were very different from those of the Christians themselves, the instinct which withheld the latter from copying the military precedents of Scripture was per fectly sound, and could have been logically justified if the requisite philosophical apparatus had been available ; that the use normally made of these stories of ancient times was simply that of edifying types or allegories of Christ and the Christian life ; that the use of them in order to justify Christians in bearing arms was in many cases the product of an extremely crude habit of mind ; that it satisfied both sides of the question even less than did the view of the rigid abstentionist (in that it could give no account of its departure from

1 Cypr Test ii. 21, Fort 8.

2 Cypr Bon Pat 10, Zel Liv 5 : cf also Ps-Cypr Jud 6 ; Victorinus in -Routh iii. 458.

3 Cypr Ep 72 (71) I, Dont Orat 32. 4 Lact Inst IV xvii. 12 f.

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the teaching of Jesus), and that it involved the subtle fallacy of supposing that what God permits or enjoins for men in one stage of development, He equally permits or enjoins for men in quite a different stage.

APOCALYPTIC WARS. But Scripture spoke of other wars than those of past history. The Jews looked forward to an approaching cataclysm, a great inter vention of God in human affairs, involving a general resurrection and judgment, the reward of the righteous, the punishment of sinners, and the establishment of a divine kingdom under the regency of the Messiah. It seems to have been generally expected that the occurrence of terrific wars, involving the overthrow and slaughter of the enemies of the Chosen People and their Messiah, would form a part of this series of events, though there was no unanimity as to the details of the programme. The Christian Church practically took over the Jewish apocalyptic beliefs en masse : hence we find war entering into their hopes and expectations of the future. Mark includes in the apocalyptic discourse of Jesus the following passage : " When ye hear (of) wars and rumours of wars, be not amazed : (this) must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there shall be earthquakes in divers places ; there shall be famines. These things (are the) beginning of (the Messianic) birth-pangs." Matthew and Luke report the same or similar words. 1 Luke represents Jesus in the Parable of the Pounds as describing the king on his return summoning into his presence for execution those who

1 Mk xiii. 7-f ||s. According to * The Vision of Isaiah,' the war con tinues incessantly from the Creation to the Parousia (see above, pp. 49 f).

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did not wish him to reign over them. 1 Paul says that the Lord Jesus will destroy the Lawless One (i.e. Antichrist) with the breath of his mouth, and bring him to nought by the manifestation of his coming. 2 This theme of Messianic warfare appears in a multitude of different shapes in the Apocalypse. The openings of the first, second, and fourth seals usher in disastrous wars.s Christ is represented as a conqueror,4 having a sharp two-edged sword issuing from his mouth 5 : he threatens to make war with it upon the Nikolaitans, 6 and to slay Jezebel's children.? A tremendous conflict is about to come, in which he will conquer the Beast and the kings of the earth with terrific slaughter. 8 After his millennial reign, there will be further wars against Gog and Magog.9 The Book of Elkesai, written apparently during the reign of Trajan us, prophesied that, when three more years of that reign had elapsed, war would break out among the ungodly angels of the north, and a convulsion of all ungodly kingdoms would ensue. 10 Justinus quotes several passages from the Old Testament, speaking of a warlike triumph on the part of God or of the Messianic King. 11 In the apo cryphal 'Acts of Paul,' the apostle tells Nero that Christ " is going one day to make war upon the world

I Lk xix. 27, cf II. 2 2 Th ii. 8.

3 Ap vi. 1-8. 4 Ap iii. 21, v. 5 : cf John xvi. 33.

s Ap i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 15. 6 Ap ii. 16. 7 Ap ii. 23.

B Ap xiv. 14-20, xvi. 13 f, 16, xix. 11-21. 9 Ap xx. 7-10.

10 Brandt in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ', v. 26313.

II Isa Ixiii. 1-6 (the one in dyed garments from Bosrah) is quoted by Justinus in Dial 26 (532), Dan vii. n (destruction of the Beast) and 26 (overthrow of the Horn) in Dial 31 (540 f), Ps xlv. 5 (arrows in the heart of the king's enemies) in Dial 38 (557), Ps ex. I ("until I make thine enemies thy footstool," etc.) and 5 (kings crushed in the day of God's wrath) in Dial 32 (545). From Dial 32 (544) we gather that Justinus regarded the putting of Christ's enemies under his feet as a process going on from the time of the Ascension.

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with fire." * In the Gnostic * Excerpts from Theodotos,' we read of a great battle going on between the rebel

• powers ' and the angels, the former fighting against,

the latter like soldiers for, the Christians : God rescues the Christians from the revolt and the battle and gives them peace. 2 The Montanist prophetess Maximilla foretold wars and anarchy.3 Tertullianus, in his Apology, assures the pagans that the events going on around them " wars, bringing external and internal convulsions, the collision of kingdoms with kingdoms, famines, and pestilences, and local mas sacres " had all been foretold in Scripture 4 ; and in his reply to Markion he quotes Jesus' announcement ot eschatological wars, etc., as demonstrating his con nection with the severe and terrible Creator, inasmuch as he says that they must come to pass, and does not concern himself to frustrate them, as he would have done had they not been his own decrees.s Hippolutos quotes the passage in Daniel where Michael is said to have been sent to make war on the prince of Persia 6 ; he speaks in some detail of the warlike character and doings of Antichrist,7 and refers generally to the wars that are to be the prelude of the Last Things. 8 The Didaskalia quotes for the guidance of the Christian bishop the passage in Ezekiel, where the watchman is bidden warn the people when God is bringing a sword upon the earth, and adds: "So the sword is the judgment, the trumpet is the gospel, the watchman is the bishop appointed over the Church." 9

1 M PaulT> (i. iioff; Pick 45). 2 Excerp Thfod'j2.

3 Eus HE V xvi. 1 8 f. < Tert Apol 20 (ii. 389 f), s Tert Marc iv. 39 (ii. 455 f, 458 f).

6 Hipp Dan IV xl. 3 (Dan x. 13, 20 f). 7 Hipp Dan IV xlix. i, 4,

Hipp Dan IV xvii. 8f. Didask II vi. 6-Ji,

182 The Early' Christian Attitude to War

Cyprianus told his people that the wars and other calamities, which had been foretold as due to occur in the Last Times, were then actually occurring, showing that the Kingdom of God was nigh. 1 Victorinus of Petavium, in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, said : " Now the white horse and (the One) sitting on it shows our Lord coming with a heavenly army to reign ; and at his coming all the nations will be gathered together and will fall by the sword. But the other (nations), that were more noble, will be kept for the service of the saints, and they themselves also will have to be slain at the last time when the reign of the saints is over, before the judgment, when the Devil has been again sent away. Concerning all these things the prophets uttered predictions in like manner." 2 Lactantius refers to the wars and troubles of the Last Times, particularly those of the time of Antichrist^ and quotes in connection with them a passage from the Hermetic writings, which says that God, "having recalled the wandering and purged away the wicked ness, partly (by) flooding (it) with much water, partly (by) burning (it) up with sharpest fire, sometimes cast ing (it) out by wars and pestilences, led his own world (back) to (its) ancient (state) and restored it." 4

The vague idea of a victorious war to be waged by the Messiah against the wicked was thus taken over from Jewish apocalyptic and seems to have be come a fairly regular element in Christian belief. With the Jews, who had a land and a Holy City of their

1 Cypr Mart 2.

2 Victorinus in Haussleiter, Theologisches Literaturblatt, April, 1895, col. 195.

3 Lact Inst VII xv. xof, xvi. 1-5, 12-14, xv ii- 6ff, xix.

4 JL,act Inst VII xviii. 4.

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own, and whose Messianism was consequently of a materialistic and political kind, such a belief might at any time take practical form in the proclamation of a holy war against the enemies of God's Chosen People. When however it was transplanted to Christian soil, the risk of an attempt to anticipate by force of arms the Messiah's final triumph virtually disappeared. It was not until the time of Constantinus that the success of Christianity appeared to be bound up with a military victory and not till long after that that a ' holy war ' was proclaimed in Christendom. The Christian took no part as an earthly warrior in fighting for Messiah's victories. Those victories were expected to be won with armies of angels, or better still were interpreted in a spiritual sense. Tertullianus went out of his way several times to explain that the military character ascribed to Christ in Scripture was to be understood spiritually and figuratively, not literally : war, literally understood, he said, would produce deceit, and harsh ness, and injustice, results the very reverse of what was foretold as the work of Christ. 1 The expectation, therefore, of the quasi-military triumph of Christ, like the respectful view taken of the Old Testament wars, was not likely to encourage the Christian to take arms on behalf of his faith, except perhaps in the case of crude intellects that had barely grasped the essentials of Christianity, and here and there in the earliest times when the Church had hardly emancipated herself from the sway of the apocalyptic and Jewish political spirit. " One must not forget the psychological fact that the

1 Tert Marc iii. 13 init (ii. 337 f) (a ridiculous picture of the infant Immanuel acting as warrior), 14 (ii. 340) (see above, p. 51), iv. 20 (ii. 406 f), v. 18 (ii. 516 f), Res 20 (ii. 821).

184 The Early Christian Attitude to War

world of imagination and the world of actual life are separate, and that under (certain) conditions a very quiet and very peaceable man can at times give himself up to extravagant imaginations, without their actually influencing his own inner attitude. History proves that the military Jesus Christus redivivus of apocalyptic never in the (course of the) first three centuries turned the Christians into warlike revolutionaries." x Never theless, this belief in a warrior-Christ who would conquer his enemies, played a certain part in prevent ing a unanimous and uncompromising rejection of warfare as a permissible element in Christian life. 2

THE JEWISH WAR OF 67-71 A.D. was itself the fulfilment of certain apocalyptic prophecies which Jesus was believed to have uttered, and as such it got sepa rated off from the general body of Messianic wars (which were regarded in the main as yet to come) and invited the formation of a special judgment concern ing itself. The Gospel of Mark, as we have seen, represented Jesus as announcing the devastation of Judaea, the siege and capture of Jerusalem, and the destruction, of the Temple, in connection with the "wars and rumours of wars," the rising of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom, which formed part of the " birth-pangs " that were to usher in the coming of the Son of Man. 3 The unanimous verdict of Christians who wrote after 70 A.D. was that the disastrous war culminating in the fall of Jerusalem that year in which, it will be remembered, the Christians had refused to take a part 4 was a divinely ordained

1 Harnack MC 10 : he discusses the whole question very fully (8-12 : cf 43 f). 2 Harnack MC I r f (see below, pp. 193 f).

3 Mk xiii (see above, pp. 35, 179). 4 See above, pp. 98 f.

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punishment inflicted on the Jewish nation for its sin in rejecting and crucifying Christ. Luke and Matthew, in their versions of the apocalyptic discourses and other sayings of Jesus, represent the matter pretty clearly in this light. 1 ' Barnabas ' says that the Temple of the Jews was destroyed because they went to war with their enemies. 2 A Christian interpolation in the Sibulline Oracles represents the destruction of the Temple as a punishment for the murders and ungodliness of which the Jews were guilty.3 The Gospel of Peter pictures the Jews, immediately after the burial of Jesus, as " knowing what evil they had done to themselves " and lamenting and saying : " Woe (to us) for our sins : for the judgment and the end of Jerusalem has drawn nigh." 4 Justinus tells Truphon the Jew: " If ye were defeated in war and cast out, ye suffered these things justly, as all the Scriptures testify.s . . . And that the sons of Japheth came upon you by the judgment of God and took away from you your land and possessed it, is apparent." 6 The Christians of Celsus' time said " that the Jews having punished Jesus . . . drew upon them selves wrath from God." 7 Theophilos mentions God's threat to the Israelites that they should be delivered into subjection to all the kingdoms of the earth, if they did not repent, and adds : " And that this has already happened to them is manifest." 8 Tertullianus tells the Romans that Judaea would never have been beneath their sway, "but for their culminating sin against

1 Mt xxiv. i f, 6-8, 15-22 (cf x. 14 f, xi. 20-24, xiii. 40-42, xxi. 41-46, xxiii. 34-39) ; Lk xvii. 31-37, xix. 41-44, xxi. 5 f, 9-11, 20-24.

Barn xvi. 4. 3 Sibulline. Oracles iv. 115-118, 125-127.

4 Robinson and James, p. 22.

5 Just Dial no (732) : the prophecies are quoted in I Ap xlvii.

6 Just Dial 139 (796). 7 Qrig Cels iv. 22. 8 Theoph iii. 11.

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Christ " x ; and in the course of his argument against the Markionites, he bids them " recollect that end of theirs? which they (i.e. the Jews) were predicted as about to bring (on themselves) after (the time of) Christ, for the impiety wherewith they both despised and slew him . . . (many prophecies quoted). Likewise also the con ditional threat of the sword : ' If ye refuse and hear me not, the sword shall devour you,' has proved that it was Christ, for not hearing whom they have perished," and more to the same effect. 2 Hippolutos has several allu sions to the matter : for instance, in his Commentary on Daniel he says : " The Lord having come to them and not being acknowledged by them, they were scattered throughout the whole world, having been cast out of their own land ; and having been defeated by their enemies, they were thrust out of the city of Jeru salem, having become a source of hostile rejoicing to all the nations." 3 The main burden of the surviving fragment of Hippolutos' ' Demonstration against the Jews ' is the awful sufferings they had drawn on them selves ffom God in return for their treatment of Christ.4 Minucius Felix makes Octavius say to his pagan inter locutor about the Jews: " For their own wickedness they deserved this (mis)fortune, and nothing happened (to them) but what was previously foretold for them if they should continue in (their) contumacy. So thou wilt understand that they forsook before they were for saken, and that they were not, as thou impiously sayest,

1 Tert Apol 26 fin (ii. 432).

2 Tert Marc iii. 23 (ii. 353 f), cifud 13.

3 Hipp Dan IV Iviii. 3. In De Antichristo 30, he quotes Isaiah's prophecies about the desolation of Jerusalem as being now fulfilled, and mentions the martyrdom of Isaiah and the crucifixion of Christ in con- ne.ction with them.

4 ANCL ixb. 41, 43-45 : cf KrUger 331 f.

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captured with their God, but were given up by God as deserters from (His) discipline." x In the Pseudo- Cyprianic ' De Pascha Computus ' it is said that the Temple at Jerusalem, " with the state itself, was again in the time of Vespasianus destroyed (exterminatum) by our Lord himself on account of the unbelief of the Jews." 2 Origenes says repeatedly in the course of his reply to Celsus and elsewhere that the calamities which had overtaken the Jewish nation were a punishment for their sins in general and for their treatment of Christ in particular. I select three passages for translation. " One of the (things) which prove that Jesus was some thing divine and sacred is the fact that (calamities of) such greatness and such quality have on his account befallen the Jews now for a long time. And we say boldly that they (the Jews) will not be restored. For they committed a crime the most unhallowed of all, (in) plotting against the Saviour of the race of men in the city where they offered to God the appointed sym bols of great mysteries. It was needful, therefore, that that city, where Jesus suffered these things, should be altogether destroyed, and that the race of Jews should be overthrown, and that God's invitation to happiness should be transferred to others," etc. 3 "If the Jews, then, after treating Jesus in the way they dared, were destroyed with (all their) youth, and had their city burned, they did not suffer this as the result of any other wrath than that which they had stored up for themselves, God's judgment against them having been passed by God's appointment, (and) being named wrath according to a certain ancestral custom of (the)

1 Minuc xxxiii. 4. 2 Ps-Cypr Pasch 15.

3 Orig Cds iv. 22.

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Hebrews." 1 " The city, in which the people of the Jews asked that Jesus should be crucified, saying : ' Crucify, crucify him ' for they preferred that the robber who had been cast into prison for sedition and murder should be released, but that Jesus, who had been handed over through envy, should be crucified after no long time was attacked, and was besieged for a long time in such a sort that it was overthrown from the foundations and laid waste, God judging those who inhabited that place unworthy of civic life (rije Kotvorc/oae wije). And though it seems a strange thing to say (tW 7ra|oa&owe JtVw) (when God) handed them over to the(ir) enemies, (He was) sparing them, for He saw (K.OL 6/owv) that they were incurable so far as (any) change for the better was concerned and that they were daily increasing in the(ir) outpour of evil. And this happened because by their design the blood of Jesus was shed upon their land, which was (conse quently) no longer able to bear those who had dared (to commit) such a crime against Jesus." 2 It is inter esting to notice that Origenes says elsewhere that we must guard against interpreting scriptural references to the wrath of God and His punishment of offenders in a literal or materialistic way : we must seek, he says, for the spiritual meaning, that our feelings and thoughts about Him may be worthy.s He explains on another occasion that God's wrath is not a human passion, but a stern disciplinary measure, and though He may make use of the wicked in His administration of the world, the wicked are no less censurable for that.4 The

1 Orig Cels iv. 73.

2 Orig Cels viii. 42. Cf also op cit i. 47, ii. 8, 13 fin, 34, 78, iv. 32, v. 43, vii. 26, viii. 47, 69, Orat xxxi. 7.

3 Orig Princ II iv. 4. * Orig Cels iv. 70 (see below, pp. 215 f), 72.

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martyr Pionios at Smyrna (250 A.D.) speaks of "the whole Judaean land . . . testifying up to the present day the wrath of God which came upon it on account of the sins which its inhabitants committed, killing (and) expelling foreigners (and) acting violently." I The Pseudo-Cyprianic treatise, * Quod Idola Dii non sint/ speaks in a general way of the calamities that had overtaken the Jews on account of their sins and in particular their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus. 2 Another Pseudo-Cyprianic work, ' Adversus Judaeos,' says : " Christ, being repudiated by the people, sent (them) the tyrant they wished for, who overthrew their cities and condemned their population to captivity and took plunder and reduced their country to the desola tion of Sodom," depicts the exile, misery, and beggary of Israel, and adds : "This is the punishment in Israel ('s case) and the situation in Jerusalem. "3 The Didas- kalia says : " Our Lord and Saviour, when he came, . . . taught the things that save, and destroyed the things that are of no advantage, and abolished the things that do not save, not only (by) teaching (the truth) himself, but also (by) working through the Romans4; and he put down the Temple, causing the altar to cease (to be), and destroying the sacrifices and destroying all the bonds which had been enjoined in the ceremonial law." 5 Lactantius mentions that it had been foretold " that after a short time God would send a king, who should conquer the Jews and level their cities with the ground and besiege them (till they were) consumed with hunger and thirst; that then they

1 M Pionii iv. 18 (Gebhardt 99).

2 Ps-Cypr Quod Idola 10, cf 12 f. 3 Ps-Cypr/w^6-8.

4 per Romanes operans ; a variant reading gives inspirans for operans (cf Harnack C ii. 496 n 2). 5 Didask VI xix. I.

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should feed on the bodies of their own (people) and consume one another ; lastly that they should come (as) captives into the enemies' hands arid should see their wives bitterly maltreated in their very sight, (their) maidens violated and prostituted, their sons torn in pieces, their little ones dashed (to the ground), every thing finally laid waste with fire and sword, the captives banished for ever from their lands because they had exulted over the most loving and most approved Son of God." After quoting this prophecy, Lactantius adds : "And so, after their death" (i.e. Peter's and Paul's), " when Nero had slain them, Vespasianus destroyed the name and nation of the Jews, and did everything that they had foretold would happen." I Eusebios says that the Hebrew Prophets foretold " the unbelief and contradiction which the race of Jews would display towards him (Christ) and the things done by them to him and the calamities which immediately and not long after came upon them for this I mean the last siege of their royal metropolis and the entire destruc tion of the(ir) kingdom and their dispersion throughout all the nations and their enslavement to the(ir) enemies and foes," etc. 2 Finally, we read in the * Dialogus de Recta Fidei': "At last, after Christ stretched his hands over Jerusalem, that people, who did not believe him, was overthrown together with the temple itself and the city ; and anyone who by chance survived was exiled from his country and led away as a captive." 3

1 Lact Inst IV xxi : the prophecy was contained in the so-called ' Preaching of Peter and Paul,' which may be as early as the first decade or .so of the second century (see Krliger 61 f).

2 Eus PE 8d, 9a. 3 Adamant i. n.

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WAR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF DIVINE JUSTICE. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., while from the point of view of the Gospels at least it partook of the nature of an apocalyptic event, was perhaps even more accurately regarded as an instance of the divine use of war as a chastisement or punishment for human sin. 1 Besides the allusions, just quoted, to the special exem plification of this principle in the case of Jerusalem, we come across several allusions to the general theory. Clemens of Rome speaks of God as the champion and defender (ywlpfj-a^o^ KOI vTrejoaamarTje) of those who serve Him, and quotes the Isaianic threat : " If ye are unwilling and will not hear me, the sword shall devour you." ~ Theophilos quotes with tacit approval a Sibulline oracle, in which God is said to raise up against the wicked wrath and war and pestilence and other woes.s Eirenaios, referring apparently to the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, says that the posterity of cursed Ham was mown down by God,4 and, referring to the parable of the King's marriage-feast, says of God : " He requites most fairly according to (their) desert(s those who are) ungrateful and do not realize His kindness : He repays with entire justice : and accord ingly it says : * Sending His armies, He destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.' Now it says ' His armies,' because all men are God's." 5 Tertullianus assumes the idea of war being a chastisement sent by the Creator as a doctrine common to himself and the

1 Dr. Forsyth makes great use of this argument, in his Christian Ethic of War (10, 30 f, 40, 87 f, 138, etc.).

2 I Clem xlv. 7, viii. 4. 3 Theoph ii. 36. 4 Eiren Demonstr 20 (n). 5 Eiren IV xxxvi. 6 (ii. 282 f) Eirenaios goes on to quote Rom xiii.

ib-6, about the magistrate's sword, an aspect of the case which we shall deal with later. Cf Eiren/; ^44 (ii. 509) (Balaam deservedly slain).

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Markionites, and presses in opposition to them the saying that Christ had come to send a sword x : he refers to a number of incidents in early Hebrew history in which those who had offended against God were punished with slaughter, and concludes : " And thus, throughout almost all the annals of the judges and of the kings who succeeded them, the strength of the surrounding nations being preserved, He meted out wrath to Israel by war and captivity and a foreign yoke, as often as they turned aside from Him, especially to idolatry." 2 Origenes says that Jesus " had no need of the use of whips and bonds and torture against men in the fashion of the former dispensation." 3 Cyprianus, in answer to the pagan complaint that the frequency of wars, famines, plagues, droughts, etc., was due to the Christians, urges that " those (calamities) happen, not because your gods are not worshipped by us, but because God is not worshipped by you. "4 When, early in the fourth century, the persecuting colleagues and successors of Diocletianus were overthrown in war by Licinius and Constantinus, the Christians regarded the defeat of the former as a divine chastisement for the sufferings they had inflicted on the Church.5

It perhaps hardly needs to be pointed out that a belief in the use of war for the divine chastisement of the Jews and of others who have been guilty of great offences, whatever theological problems it may raise, certainly does not involve the believer in the view that

1 Tert Marc i. 24 (ii. 275) (nee fulminibus tantum, autbellis, etpestibus, aliisque plagis Creatoris, sed et scorpiis ejus objectus speaking of the Markionite's flesh), iv. 29 (ii. 435).

2 Tert Scorp 3 (ii. 129). 3 Qrig Cels iv. 9. Cypr Demctr 2, 5.

s Lact Inst I i. 15, VII xxvi. 13 f, Mort Pers Hi. 3 ; Eus HE IX xi. 9, XL 1,7, etc., Vit Const i. 3, etc.

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it is right or permissible for him to take a part in inflicting such penalties. While Christians agreed that the fall of Jerusalem and its accompanying calamities were a divine chastisement, no one thought of inferring from that that the Roman army was blameless or virtuous in the bloodthirsty and savage cruelty it dis played in the siege. And in regard to the more general view of war as a divine chastisement, if it could be inferred from the fact of its being so that a Christian might lawfully help to inflict it, it would follow that he might also under certain conditions help to cause and spread a plague or to inflict persecution on his fellow- Christians for both plagues and persecutions were regarded as divine chastisements just as war was. The obvious absurdity of this conclusion ought to be enough to convince us that the Christian idea of war being used by God to punish sin certainly does not mean that the Christian may take part in it with an easy conscience : on the contrary, the analogy of pestilence, famine, persecution, etc., which are often coupled with war, strongly suggests that participation in it could not possibly be a Christian duty. And there can be no doubt that the vast majority of early Christians acted in conformity with that view, whether or not they theorized philosophically about it. At the same time, just as to-day a superficial view prompts some people to leap at conclusions in this matter which their premises do not justify, so probably in those days there were some who allowed their conduct and thought to be unduly swayed by the fact that there were sundry departments of their minds in which war could be thought of without reproach. " A total rejection of war could not follow for this reason, that God himself,

14

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according to the view of the earliest Christians, brings about and conducts wars. He has done it in earlier times through Joshua and David ; He has done it in the present through the overthrow of the Jewish people and the destruction of Jerusalem ; and He will do it in the future through the returning Christ. How therefore can one reject wars in every sense and universally, when God Himself provokes and leads them ? Apparently there exist necessary and righteous wars ! and such a war will be the war at the end of the day. If that is certain even supposing it was forbidden to the Christian to go on service the attitude towards war could no longer be an unbroken one. . . . Thus, apocalyptic," and, we may add, the Old Testament, and the Christian philosophy of history generally, each " contributed in its (own) measure to the (result) that the Christians did not shut themselves off altogether against war." *

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE. All the connec tions, hitherto studied, in which war received some sort of recognition from the early Christians, lay within ideal realms of thought remote from the con crete and practical duties of the times in which they lived. The Christian warfare was a purely spiritual struggle ; the wars of the Old Testament belonged to a far-distant past ; the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 soon receded into the background ; the apocalyptic wars lay in the indefinite, even though possibly the near, future, and would be waged, so far as the Messiah's side was concerned, with armies of angels, not of men ; even the idea of war being a divine chas-

' Harnack^/Ciif.

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tisement was simply a general abstraction and a pious conviction. But there was yet another connection in which the early Christians gave a quasi-recognition to war, a connection which was more nearly concerned than any of the foregoing with the practical affairs of their own day, I mean the functions of the State in the maintenance of order and the suppression of crime. Though the seventy of persecution (among other causes) led some to take up a position of uncompro mising hostility towards the Roman Empire as a Satanic Beast-power, 1 the Church as a whole adopted the view that the State was a useful and necessary institution, ordained by God for the security of life and property, the preservation of peace, and the pre vention and punishment of the grosser forms of human sin. 2 The general adoption of this view was largely owing to the immense authority of the Apostle Paul In writing to the Christians at Rome, Paul had occasion to warn them against an anarchical unwillingness to submit to the government and to pay their taxes. His specific reference to taxation suggests that he was enlarging on the Gospel precept : " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." He drove his point home by insisting on the divine origin of civil government. " There is no authority," he said, " except (that given) by God ; and those that exist have been constituted by God . . . the rulers are not a terror to

1 This attitude appears mainly in the Apocalypse and in Hippolutos' Commentary on Daniel. Cf also P. Scill 112 : ego imperium huius seculi non cognosce.

12 An inscription is preserved in which the (pagan) tenants of certain of the imperial estates in Africa express their appreciation of their landlord, the Emperor Hadrianus : they speak of " the sleepless vigilance with which he watches over the welfare of mankind " (H. Stuart Jones, The Roman Empire (' Story of the Nations ' Series), p. 189).

196 The Early Christian Attitude to War

good work, but to evil. Dost thou wish not to be afraid of the magistracy (t^ouo-mv) ? do what is good, and thou shalt have praise from it : for he is to thee the servant of God for good. But if thou doest evil, be afraid, for he bears not the sword for nothing ; for he is God's servant, for the infliction of (His) wrath as a punishment (eic&Koc eic opyrjv) upon him who does evil. . . . They are God's officers, subsisting for this very (purpose)." x The view of Peter is substantially similar, though he calls the state a human, not a divine, insti tution. " Be submissive to every human institution (KTT) for the Lord's sake, whether to the Emperor as supreme, or to governors as (men) sent by him for (the) punishment of evil-doers and (the) praise of those who do well. . . . Honour the Emperor." 2 The author of the Pastoral Epistles enjoins prayer " for Emperors and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life with all piety and gravity." 3

The history of the Pauline theory of civil government as an arrangement instituted by God is one of fas cinating interest, but a full study of it would take us far astray from our immediate enquiry. It is worth while, however, to note the fact that it appears, in a more or less definite form, in most of the representa tive writers of our period, viz. Clemens of Rome, the Fourth Gospel,4 Polukarpos, Athenagoras, the apocry phal Acts of John, Theophilos, the Acts of Apollonius, Eirenaios, Tertullianus, Hippolutos,5 Minucius Felix,

1 Rom xiii. ib, 3f, 6b. 2 I Pet ii. 13 f, 17.

3 i Tim ii. if." 4 John xix. n.

5 Mostly with reference to Nebuchadnezzar, but also generally. The idea is not so incompatible with Hippolutos' view of the Empire as a Satanic Beast-power, as appears at first sight. Weinel (24) has pointed out that Satan could be thought of as the servant of God.

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Origenes, Dionusios of Alexandria, the Didaskalia, the Clementine Recognitions, Lactantius, and Eusebios. 1 It is absent from Cyprianus and Arnobius. 2

Such a view carried with it a recognition of the rightfulness of judicial penalties ; and Christian writers, despite the non-resistance principles of their faith, are on the whole very frank in the way they express this recognition. Paul, as we have seen, connects the punitive functions of government with the Divine wrath against sin. The magistrate is " God's servant, for the infliction of (His) wrath as a punishment on him who does evil." Peter enjoins respectful submission to the Emperor's governors " as (men) sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers." The Christian belief in the future punish ment of the wicked in eternal fire undoubtedly did something to facilitate this justification of judicial penalties. Thus Justinus, in reply to the criticisms levelled at the doctrine of eternal punishment, says that, if eternal punishment is unjust, then " lawgivers unjustly punish those who transgress the(ir) good ordinances. But since those (lawgivers) are not unjust, and neither is their Father, who teaches them by the Word to do the same (as Himself),3 those who agree with them are not unjust." 4 Athenagoras speaks

1 In regard to Constantinus.

2 In Arnobius (i. 2) and the Pseudo-Cyprianic Quod Idola Dii non sinf (4f), we find a theory of the establishment of empires by chance or lot (cf Tert Pall i (ii. 1031) (At cum saecularium sortium variavit urna, et Romanis Deus maluit, . . .) ; Lact Inst VII xv. 13; Scullard 96 f). For a modern opinion on the Divine appointment of the State, see Horace Bushnell, Nattire and the Supernatural, p. 12.

3 Or possibly, " who teaches (men) by the Word to do the same as they (i.e. the^ lawgivers) (do) " (ra aura aiiroiQ [Otto : awr] Trparreiv did rov Aoyov GiCaoKwv).

• Just zApi-x.. if. He goes on to say that the Logos had shown that

some human laws were bad and some good.

198 The Early Christian Attitude to War

about a man being put to death justly. 1 Theophilos calls the Emperor " a man appointed by God ... for the purpose of judging justly : for he has in a way been entrusted by God with a stewardship. . . . (My) son," he says, quoting Proverbs, " honour God and (the) Emperor, and be not disobedient to either of them ; for they will speedily punish their enemies." 2 Eirenaios says that the devil, in claiming to have the control of the kingdoms of the world, was a liar and was claiming what did not belong to him. He reaffirms the doctrine of the divine appointment of rulers,3 and continues : " Since man, (by) departing from God, grew so savage as to reckon even a kinsman his enemy, and to engage without fear in every (sort of) disturbance and murder and avarice, God imposed upon him the fear of man for they did not know the fear of God so that, being subjected to the power of men and restrained by their law, they might attain to some (measure) of justice and exercise mutual forbearance, in dread of the sword openly held forth, as the Apostle says : ' For not with out cause does he bear the sword : for he is God's servant, an avenger for wrath to him who does evil.' And for this reason, too, the magistrates themselves, wearing the laws as a garment of justice, shall not be questioned or punished for what they do justly and lawfully. But whatever they do for the overthrow of justice, unfairly and impiously and illegally and in a tyrannical fashion, in these things they shall perish, the just judgment of God coming upon all equally and failing in nothing. For the benefit of the gentiles,

1 Athenag Legal 35 (969) : see below, p. 214.

2 Theoph i. II : cf Prov xxiv. 21 f.

3 Eiren V xxiv. I (ii. 388 f).

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therefore, was earthly rule established by God but not by the devil, who is never quiet, nay, who does not wish even the (heathen) nations to live in tran quillity in order that, fearing the rule of men, men might not consume one another like fishes, but by the establishment of laws they might smite down the mani fold wrongdoing of the gentiles. And accordingly, those who exact tribute from us are 'God's servants/

• serving for this very purpose.' J ' The powers that are

have been ordained by God ' : it is clear that the devil lies when he says: 'They have been handed over to me, and to whomsoever I will, I give them.' For by the order of Him, by whose order men are born, are kings also appointed, fitted for those who are ruled over by them at that time. For some of them are given for the correction and benefit of (their) subjects and the preservation of justice, but some for fear and punish ment and rebuke, and some for deception and disgrace and pride, according as they (the subjects) deserve, the just judgment of God, as we have already said, coming upon all equally." 2

Tertullianus, in protesting against Christians being tortured in order to make them deny their faith, says to the Roman rulers : " This (imperial) government whose servants ye are is the rule of a citizen, not of a tyrant. For with tyrants, torture is applied also as a penalty : with you it is confined solely to (extorting) evidence. Keep (to) your own law in (using) it (only) until confession (is obtained) ; and if it is anticipated by confession, there will be no occasion for it. There is need of sentence (being passed) ; the wrongdoer has to be marked off for the (penalty which is his) due, not

1 Eiren V xxiv. 2 (ii. 389). - Eircn V xxiv. 3 (ii. 389 f).

200 The Early Christian Attitude to War

to be released. No one is agitating for his acquittal ; it is not lawful to desire that, and so no one is compelled to deny (his crime)." x In attacking the gladiatorial fights, he makes the concession : "It is a good thing when evil-doers are punished. Who but an evil-doer will deny this ? " 2 He refers elsewhere to " the justice of the world, which even the Apostle testifies is not armed with the sword in vain, which in being severe (saeviendo) on man's behalf is a religious (justice)." 3 He quotes the words of Paul in Rom xiii, and says that the Apostle "bids thee be subject to the magis trates (potestatibus) ... in consideration of their being as it were assistants of justice, as it were servants of the divine judgment, which here also judges of wrongdoers in advance." 4 The Pseudo-Melitonian apologist tells Caracalla : " It is a shameful thing that a king, however badly he may conduct himself, should judge and con demn those who do amiss " s implying apparently that he would be perfectly right in doing so, if he lived uprightly.

In his Commentary on Romans, Origenes says, a propos of the question whether a persecuting government is included in the phrase 'There is no power except from God,' that persecution is a culpable misuse of a power which, like all powers, e.g. those of sight, hearing, etc., is given by God for a good purpose, in this case " for the punishment of evil men, and the praise of good men." 6 Discussing the question of the sense in which the earthly judge is God's servant, he observes that the Apostolic Decree in Acts xv. 23 f,

1 Tert Apol 2 (i. 276 f). 2 Tert Spect 19 (i. 651).

3 Tert Anim 33 (ii. 706). 4 Tert Scorp 14 (ii. 150).

. s Ps-Mel iQ(ANTL xxiib. 121).

• Orig Cotnm in Rom t ix. 26 (Migne PG xiv. I226f).

The Early Christian Acceptance of War 201

28 f, does not forbid murder, adultery, theft, sodomy, and so forth : it might seem therefore that these are permitted. "But behold the ordinance of the Holy Spirit ! Since indeed other crimes are punished by secular laws, and it seemed superfluous that those which are sufficiently embraced by human law should now be forbidden by a divine law, He decrees those alone concerning which the human law had said nothing and which seem to pertain to religion. Whence it appears that the earthly judge fulfils a very large part of the law of God. For all the crimes which God wishes to be punished, He wished to be punished not by the leaders and rulers of the churches, but by the earthly judge ; and Paul, knowing this, rightly names him God's servant and an avenger against him who does what is evil. . . . We have shown that the Holy Spirit has given a place in many things to human law." x Later, in his reply to Celsus, Origenes quotes Romans xiii. I, 2a against Celsus' contention that kings were appointed by demons : he touches on the problem presented by the existence of evil kings, but passes it by, referring the reader to the Commentary on Romans. 2 He also says that the proceedings taken by bees against drones offer no fair comparison " with the judgments and punishments inflicted on the idle and evil in the cities." 3 He broaches the question whether evil demons may not have been appointed by the Logos " like the executioners in the cities and those who are appointed for gloomy but needful public duties." 4

1 Orig Comm in Rom t ix. 28 (Migne PG xiv. 1227 f).

2 Orig Cels viii. 65. 3 Orig Gets iv. 82.

4 Orig. Cels vii. 70.

202 The Early Christian Attitude to War

Many of the complaints made about the maladminis tration of justice, in persecution and otherwise, voice the Christian recognition of the need and value of good administration. Achatius said to the Prefect : " The public law punishes the fornicator, the adulterer, the thief, the corruptor of males, the evil-doer, and the mur derer. If I am guilty of these, I condemn myself before (thou utterest) thy voice: but if I am led to punishment because I worship Him who is the true God, I am con demned by the will, not of the law, but of the judge." x Cyprianus complained, that, not only are the innocent often condemned in the law-courts, but the guilty do not even perish with them. 2 " A crime is committed by a wrongdoer, and no innocent man is found who will avenge it. There is no fear of accuser |or judge : bad men secure impunity, while modest (men) are silent, accomplices are afraid, (and) those who are to judge (the case) are open to bribes." 3 According to the Clementines, man has received wisdom to enable him to administer justice.4 " Who is there among men," asks Clemens, " who does not covet his neighbour's goods ? And yet he is restrained and acts with more self-control through fear of the punishment which is prescribed by the laws." 5 Methodios says that adulterers ought to be tortured and punished. 6 Ar- nobius says that as the images of the gods do not deter men from crime, "recourse is had to the sanc tions of laws, that from them there might be a most certain fear and a fixed and settled condemnation." 7 Lactantius re-echoes the sentiment of Cicero, who

1 Acta Disput Achat iii. 2 (Gebhardt 117)

• Cypr Donat 10. 3 Cypr Demetr n. 4 Clem Horn iii. 36.

s Clem Recog ix. 15. 6 Method Symp ii. 5.

7 Arnob vi. 26 : cf iv. 34, vii. 39 ff, appx (punishment of a slave).

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" prefers to the teachers of philosophy the statesmen, who control public affairs, . . . who preserve the safety and liberty of citizens either by good laws or sound advice or weighty judgments (grauibus iudiciis)." * " Not from our number," he says, " but from theirs " (i.e. the pagan persecutors) " always arise those . . . who, if they sit (as) judges, are corrupted by a bribe, and either destroy the innocent or discharge the guilty without punishment." 2 He speaks of a man being condemned to death on account of his deserts.3 He tells Constantinus that it is his task "to correct mis deeds" and to remove the evil men themselves from the State. 4 He comes much closer to the theory of the subject in his treatise * On the Anger of God ' : " They are deceived by no small error," he says, " who defame censure, whether human or divine, with the name of bitterness and wickedness, thinking that he who visits wrongdoers with punishment ought to be called a wrongdoer. But if so, we have wrongful laws, which ordain punishments for sinners, and wrongful judges, who visit those convicted of crime with ' capital ' punishments But if the law is just, which repays to the wrongdoer what he deserves, and (if) the judge is called upright and good, when he punishes evil deeds for he who punishes evil men guards the safety of the good therefore God, when He opposes evil men, is not a wrongdoer ; but he is a wrongdoer, who either wrongs an innocent man, or spares a wrongdoer so that

1 Lact Inst III xvi. 2. 2 Lact Inst V ix. 15, 17.

3 Lact Inst VI xx. 10 (see p. 159).

4 Lact/.tf Vllxxvi. 12 : cfli. 13: taeterrimum aliorum facinus expiasti. s Capital ' punishment, in ancient times, did not necessarily mean the

death-penalty, though it might do so. It meant the complete loss of one's status as a citizen, either by death, or exile, or enslavement.

204 The Early Christian Attitude to War

he may wrong many. 1 . . . The public laws condemn those who are manifestly guilty ; but there are many whose sins are hidden, many who restrain the accuser either by prayers or by a bribe, many who elude judg ment by favour or influence. 2 . . . Unless fear guards this earthly kingdom and empire, it is dissolved. Take away anger from a king, (and) not only will no one obey him, but he will even be cast down from his high rank." 3 Eusebios accounts for the moral blindness with which primitive man glorified vices, by pointing out that " at that time laws were not yet being administered among men, nor did punishment threaten offenders." 4 He speaks of the hierophants and others, who confessed their impostures under torture in the Roman court at Antioch and were put to death by Licinius with torture, as "paying the just penalty of their pernicious deception." 5 The doctrine of Fate, he urges, " would upset the laws, which are made for men's advantage. For what must one enjoin or forbid to those who are held down by another constraint ? Nor will one be obliged to punish offenders who have done no wrong against the same cause, nor to assign honours to those who act excellently though each of these has furnished a cause for the repression of injustice and for the encouragement of well-doing (respectively)." 6

If the view that the government was an institution ordained by God implied the rightfulness, in some sense, of judicial penalties, it also implied the rightfulness, in some sense, of war. The fact that the police and the military were not distinguished, that the characteristic

1 Lact Ira Dei xvii. 6 f . 2 Lact Ira Dei xx. 7.

3 Lact Ira Dei xxiii. 10 : cf xvii. 16, xviii. i f. 4 Eus PE 73cd. -5 Eus PE I35cd, cf HE IX xi. 5 f. 6 Eus PE 2446.

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work of each was done with the * sword,' made it easy for ideas concerning the one to be transferred in the minds of Christians to the other. The eulogistic terms in which Clemens of Rome spoke of the imperial armies and the discipline that made tliem so useful * are prob ably to be connected with his clear and repeated state ments that the Emperors had been given their authority by God. 2 Eirenaios mentions * the military arts ' among human activities generally recognized as useful,3 and says that God " requites most fairly according to (their) desert(s those who are) ungrateful and do not realize His kindness : He repays with entire justice : and accordingly it says : * Sending His armies, He destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.' Now it says ' His armies,' because all men are God's . . . and for this reason the Apostle Paul . . . says :

• There is no power except from God ' " then follows

a full quotation of Rom xiii. ib-6, about the divinely ordained function of the magistrate in repressing evil. 4 Clemens of Alexandria deals at some length with generalship as being, like legislation and the adminis tration of justice, one of the usual departments of the royal office, and in particular with the military genius of Moses, from whom, he says, Miltiades and Thrasu- boulos borrowed their tactics.s Some of his military illustrations are more than mere illustrations, e.g. " (It is) not only the athletic warriors, (who) wage the contest of freedom in wars, but those who have been anointed by the Word (wage it) at banquets and in

1 I Clem xxxvii. 1-4 (tcai kv rewrote; xp^ffftg) : see p. 163.

2 i Clem Ixi. I, 2. Guignebert (191 n 4), Harnack (MC 18 f, 52 f), and Weinel (26) have interesting remarks on Clemens' view of the Roman army.

3 Eiren II xxxii. 2 (i. 373). 4 Eiren IV xxxvi. 6 (ii. 282 f). 5 Clem Strom I xxiv. 158-163, xxvi. 168. t

206 The Early Christian Altitude to War

bed and in the courts, being ashamed to become cap tives of pleasure." r Tertullianus speaks scornfully of the unwarlike habits of Puthagoras, " who avoided the battles that were then going on in Greece." 2 In trying to prove that the body as well as the soul can be morally guilty, he draws a contrast between the way in which " a sword drunk with acts of brigandage " would be shunned as guilty, and the way in which " a sword (which is) honourably bloodstained in war, and is a worthier slayer of men " (than the brigand's weapon) would receive praise and consecration. 3

Julius Africanus dedicated to the Emperor Alexander Severus an encyclopaedia of all the natural sciences, and gave it the title of Kcoroi (' Embroidered Girdles ') : he included in it a section on military science, in which he treated frankly of the different means of destroying the enemy, and even included instructions for poisoning food, wine, wells, and air.4 But Africanus is merely

1 Clem Strom VI xiv. 112 : cf also Paed III iii. 24 f, Strom I xxiii. 157, IV iv. 14, 16.

2 TertAnim 31 (ii. 701) : Ecce . . . Pythagoram vero tarn residem et imbellem, ut praelia tune Graeciae vitans, Italiae maluerit quietem.

3 Tertfies 16 (ii. 815) : . . . gladius bene de bello cruentus et melior homicida laudem suam consecratione pensabit. Passing reference will suffice to the allusions in Tert Nat ii. 17 (i. 608) to the part played by war in the rise and fall of States under the control of Providence, in Pall I (ii. 1031) to the exemplification of this in the wars between Rome and Carthago, in Pall 2 (ii. 1036) to the repulse of the barbarians as a sign of God's favour to the Emperors, and in Anim 30 (ii. 700) to the useful purpose -served by wars, pestilences, etc., as remedies for overpopulation.

4 The section on military tactics is to be found in Veterum Mathe- maticorum . . . Opera, Paris, 1693, pp. 227-303. A summary and partial translation of it into French was published at Berlin in 1774 by Charles Guischard, a Prussian infantry colonel, in a work entitled M&noircs critiques et historiques sur plusieurs points d? antiquite"s militaires. He censures Julius Africanus for his barbarity as well as for his superstition : " The Christian religion in its birth did not always cure men of their errors in point of morals," he says, " nor of this leaning which they then had to superstition. . . . Julius Africanus therefore could be orthodox, could compose commentaries on the Bible, and at the same time a book of magic charms, and could teach the art of poisoning wells " (p. 400).

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an individual curiosity in this matter, and represents no one but himself. Only the fact that he was nominally a Christian entitles him to be mentioned here. How little the ethical side of Christianity had touched him is clear from the fact that his KEOTOI included a section on aphrodisiac secrets, which was full of obscenities. 1

We have already had occasion to allude by way of anticipation to Origenes' relative justification of war 2 ; and it remains for us in this place to put together the relevant passages. Referring to the timely unification of all kingdoms in the Empire of Augustus, he says : "The existence of many kingdoms would have been an obstacle to the extension of Jesus' teaching to the whole world, ... on account of people everywhere being compelled (Sia ro avayKa&vQai) to serve as soldiers and to make war for the(ir) Countries : and this (was what) happened before the time of Augustus and still earlier, when there was need (ore 76 x< a/a ? v ) that there should be war, for instance, between Peloponnesians and Athenians, and similarly between others." 3 He concedes to Celsus that " the so-called wars of the bees perhaps constitute a lesson for the conduct of just and orderly wars among men, if there should ever be need (for them). "4 He mentions in a tone of protest that Celsus tries to " depreciate as far as he can not only our (the) Christians' but all men's, cities and constitutions and sovereignties and govern ments and wars for fatherlands." 5 He speaks of the

1 On Africanus, cf DCB i. 5;a, Harnack MC 73 n 3 ; Bardenhewer Patrologie, 163. 2 See above, p. 137.

3 Orig Cels ii. 30. I pass over the casual allusion in i. 59 to stars portending revolutions, wars, or other events.

4 Orig Cels iv. 82 (a Trore <5eoi).

5 Orig Cels iv. 83. It hardly perhaps needs to be said that Origenes does not here imply the existence of Christian patriotic wars, as a less

208 The Early Christian Attitude to War

Emperor's soldiers as "those who render military service righteously." T

Cyprianus reckons it among the calamities of the time that the numbers and efficiency of the soldiers are decreasing. 2 The Clementine Recognitions speak of the obedience of armies as an instance of the beneficial effect of fear.s Methodios says that kings, rulers, generals, and various other classes of people, are useful to themselves and the community, if they are temperate.4 Lactantius says that God made man naked and unarmed, because he could be armed by his talent and clothed by his reason 5 : he censures Epikouros for his policy of being all things to all men, by virtue of which he forbade the timid man to serve as a soldier 6 : he criticizes Maximinus Daza as ignorant of military affairs,? while he eulogizes Constantinus for having endeared himself to his soldiers by his personal attractions and character and his "diligence in military matters." 8 He describes with satisfaction and gratitude to God the victories of

rigidly literal translation in better English would more strongly suggest. Such an idea is indeed impossible in view of what he says elsewhere, not to mention the obvious facts of the situation. The phrase is nothing more than a loosely worded enumeration of the standing institutions of Church and State.

1 Orig Cels viii. 73. His references in 69 f to the Romans praying to the one God and so being able to conquer their enemies more effectively (see above, p. 132) must not be pressed. He is dealing with an imaginary situation and omits for the moment to make allowance for that introduction of the Christian ethic which his hypothesis strictly required. In 70 he immediately corrects the omission: " . . . or (rather) they will not fight at all," etc.

• Cypr Demetr 3 (decrescit ac deficit in aruis agricola, in mari nauta,

miles in castris), 17 (ruinis rerum, iacturis opum, dispendio militum, demi- nutione castrorum). 3 Clem Recog'vx.. 15. 4 Method Symp viii. 16.

s Lact Opif Dei\\. 6: cilnstVll iv. 14. 6 Lact Inst III xvii. 3.

7 Lact Mort Pers xix. 6. The loss of military discipline is mentioned in Inst VII xvii. 9 as one of the disasters of the time of Antichrist.

fc Lact Mort Pers xviii. 10.

The Early Christian Acceptance of War 209

Constantinus and Licinius over Maxentius and Daza respectively, 1 mentions how Licinius prescribed a form of prayer for his soldiers to use before the battle, 2 tells us how Constantinus, in obedience to a dream, had the sacred monogram inscribed on his soldiers' shields,3 and warmly congratulates him on his triumph.4 Eusebios writes in a very similar strain. He criticizes Daza for rendering his soldiers wanton, rapacious, and effeminate,s and says that his death was not like " the brave endur ance of a glorious end, such as often befalls generals who act bravely in war on behalf of virtue and friends." 6 The closing chapters of his Church History and the whole of his later Life of Constantinus abound in grate ful and even fulsome eulogies of the sovereign who had overthrown the persecutors by force of arms and thereby secured peace for the Church.

It was quite in keeping with the foregoing view of the imperial armies that the Christians, who habitually prayed for the Emperor and his subordinates, not only as enemies and persecutors/ but also (and usually) as the guardians of law and order, 8 should pray also for the efficiency and success of his soldiers who helped him keep out the barbarian invader and administer justice throughout the Empire.9 While prayer for

1 Lact Mart Pers xliv-xlviii.

2 Lact Mart Pers xlvi : cf Harnask MC 89 f.

3 Lact Mort Pers xliv. 5 f . 4 Lact Inst I i. 13-16, VII xxvi. 11-17. s Eus HE VIII xiv. 1 1. Cf Harnack ME ii. 55 n 2 (" Eusebius's feel ings thus are those of a loyal citizen of the empire "), MC 73.

6 Eus HE IX x. 14. 7 e.g. Pol xii. 3. 8 i Tim ii. i f.

9 Harnack ME ii. 53 n. "... The emperor, even from the apocalyptic standpoint, had a certain divine right of existence as a bulwark against anarchy and the barbarian hordes ; for the " pax terrena " was a rela tive good, even from the strictest Christian standpoint. . . . Now the emperor needed soldiers to maintain this "pax terrena." They wece part and parcel of the V sword ' which (Rom xiii. 4) is recognized as a divine attribute of authority, and which no church-father ever dared to deny, in so many words, to the emperor." Similarly MC 123.

15

210 The Early Christian Attitude to War

rulers in general appears at a very early point in Christian literature, prayers specifically for the army are not mentioned, as far as I have been able to discover, before the time of Tertullianus. This writer however refers to it as a standing Christian usage. " (We are) all (of us) always praying for all emperors, that their life may be prolonged, (their) rule secure, (their) household (kept) in safety, (their) armies strong, the senate faithful, the people upright, the world quiet, and whatever (else his) wishes are (as) man and (as) Caesar." * Origenes says that it is the special province of Christians, who do not themselves fight, to " strive by prayers to God on behalf of those who render military service righteously and on behalf of him who is reigning righteously, in order that all things opposed and hostile to those that act righteously may be put down." 2 Achatius said to the judge in the Decian persecution : " Our prayer for him (the Emperor) is persistent and constant, that he may spend a long time in this life and rule the peoples with just power and pass the time of his reign in peace, then for the safety of the soldiers and the stability of the world." 3 " We always ask," says Cyprianus, " and pour (out our) prayers for the repulse of enemies, for the obtaining of rain, and for the removal or moderation of troubles ; and we beg constantly and urgently for your (the pagans') peace and safety, propitiating and appeasing God night and day." 4 " Why have our meetings deserved to be cruelly broken up," asks Arnobius, "seeing that in them the Supreme God is prayed to,

1 Tert Apol 30 (i. 443)-

2 Orig Cels viii. 73 : for the context, see pp. 1 34 f.

3 Acta Disput Achat i. 3 : deinde pro salute militum et pro statu undi et orbis (Gebhardt 115). 4 Cypr Demetr 20.

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peace and pardon are asked for all magistrates, armies, kings, friends, enemies ? " x

In estimating the meaning and value of the foregoing teaching in regard to the State, some allowance must be made for the immense authority of Paul's words, for the fact that they were written before the outbreak of imperial persecution in 64 A.D. and in order to counter act a strong tendency towards rebellious and aggressive anarchy in the Christian Church, particularly at Rome, 2 for immaturity of reflection in some of the writers we have quoted, and also for the natural habit, in contro verting an opponent, of speaking ad hominem in a way that one would not speak if simply delivering a personal view. But all this takes us only a short way towards accounting for the language used. We are brought here to the very heart of the Christian problem of the State. Nothing could be more clear and explicit than the declarations as to the origin and purpose of civil government. It is an institution ordained by God for the purpose of restraining, by means of coercion and penalty, the grosser forms of human sin. If this view was a fixed datum in Christian political theory, the rule that a Christian must never inflict an injury on his neighbour, however wicked that neighbour may be, was also a fixed datum in Christian ethical theory : and the problem consists in reconciling these two apparently conflicting data. One thing is clear that the fact of being appointed by God for a certain work or permitted by God to do it, did not, in the Christian view, guarantee the righteousness of

1 Arnob iv. 36.

2 Carlyle, Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, vol. i. 91-97.

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the agent or of his doings. The Apocalypse says that 1 it was given ' to the Beast to have authority over all peoples and to make war upon the saints, that is to say, he was in some sense allowed or authorized by God to do it, for the achievement of some good end, such as the chastisement or discipline of the Church. 1 But this did not mean that the Beast was righteous or that his persecution of the saints was not blameworthy. Eirenaios makes it fairly clear that he could as easily think of wicked rulers being appointed by God as he could of good ones. 2 God uses the wickedness of some as a chastisement for others. But even this does not get to the bottom of the matter, for it refers only to the crimes of rulers, not to the just legal penalties they inflict. The key to the problem is simply this, that the just ruler who as the servant of God enforces the laws, punishes wrongdoers, and wages war against the unrighteous aggressor, is, in the thought of Paul and the early Fathers, always a pagan ruler, and therefore, though eligible for conversion, is yet, qua pagan, not to be expected to obey the distinctively Christian laws of conduct or to exercise the distinctively Christian restraint upon wrongdoing. Not all the servants of God are necessarily Christians. God has a use for those in the sub-christian stage of moral development, as well as for those who enjoy the full light of the Gospel. Paul evidently had a genuine respect for the nobler elements in the gentile mind,3

1 Ap xiii. 2, 4, 5, 7, 14, 15 : see Moffatt's note on 7 in Expositor's Greek Test. (" The beast's world-wide authority goes back to the dragon's commission (2) but ultimately to the divine permission (so in 5). There is a providence higher even than the beast ").

2 Eiren IV xxxvi. 6 (ii. 282 f) (quoted on p. 205), V xxiv. 3 (ii. 389) (quoted above p. 199). a Rom ii. 14 f; cf i. 19 f.

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including that sense of responsibility for the peace and well-being of society, that love of law and order, that appreciation of the elements of justice, which with whatever admixture of baser motives and whatever crudity of unloving restrictive method formed the fundamental principles of the Roman Empire. In other words, the Christian justification of coercive govern ment and of war, though real and sincere, was only a relative justification : it was relative to the non-chris- tian condition of the agents concerned. It therefore furnished no model for Christian conduct and no justi fication for any departure on the part of the Christian from the gentler ethics characteristic of the religion of Jesus. That the matter in its various bearings was always fully understood in this light by Christian authors, I do not argue. Indeed, from the slowness of the modern mind to grasp the relativity of all moral acts to the subjective conditions of the agent concerned, one can easily understand how it was that this view of the divine appointment of rulers was by the end of our period widely understood to carry with it the Christian's right to participate in the violence and bloodshed of the State. But I do maintain that this doctrine in its strict and proper meaning is perfectly consistent with the practice and advocacy of the completest absten tion on the part of the Christian from such participation, and that the explanation of it which I have offered furnishes the key to a good many paradoxes in Christian literature. It explains, for instance, how Paul himself can forbid Christians to avenge themselves, telling them to stand aside and leave room for the wrath of God, to whom vengeance belongs, and to conquer evil with good by feeding the hungry enemy,

214 The Early Christian Attitude to War

and so forth, and then a few verses lower speak of the pagan magistrate as the servant of God for the infliction of His wrath as a punishment on the wrongdoer. 1 It explains how Hermas can speak of the persecuting command of the Emperor to the Christians : " Either keep my laws or go out of my country," as a just command. 2 It explains how Athenagoras can say that Christians cannot endure to see a man killed, even iustly, and a fortiori cannot kill him.3 It explains how Origenes can maintain that it is never right for a Christian to kill a man, and defend the Christian refusal to serve in the legions, and yet speak of the legionaries as " rendering military service righteously," can refer to the "just and orderly wars of men " as being sometimes necessary, can speak with approval of Judith's act in murdering Holofernes,4 and can even argue for the right of the Christians to contravene the laws of the State on the analogy that it is right to conspire against and assassinate a tyrants

1 Rom xii. 17-xiii. 6: cf. especially the words of xii. 19 (p) iavrovg sKdncovvTeg, dya7n/ro/, aXAa Sore. TOTTOV ry 6 p y y' ygypaTrrai yap 'E/ioi ivlei)0rtg, tytii dj>ra7ro&6orw, Xsyei Kvpioc) with those of xiii. 4 (Qeov yap didicovoQ tcrnv, t icd IK o e i 6 p y ?) v ry ro KO.KOV Trpaaaovri) .

8 Ilerm S I 4: Xeytt. yap trot d IK a ia> o Kvpiog r/c X&pctQ ravTtjz' "H rolf vofioiQ fiov XP&> n sK^wpei e/c TIJQ xwpaf /tov.

3 Athenag Legat 35 (969) Ovg yap laraaiv ovd' idf.lv K a v S i K a i <o j;

i7ro/itvovraf, rovrwv T'IQ av KareiTroi ?) dvdpofyoviav 77 dvQpn>7ro{3opiav ; . . . aXX' r)/te TrXqaiov eivai TO idetv TOV ^ovtv6fjif.vov TOV

diroKTeivai vofJiiZovTtg, cnrrjyopevaafjizv rat; rocawraf Qka.Q (i.e. -the gladia torial shows). 4 Orig Or at xiii. 2 f.

5 Orig Cels i. i. It is a complete mistake to assume, as is apparently done by Bestmann (ii. 295) and Bigelmair (no), that Origenes meant that a Christian might justifiably conspire against and assassinate a tyrant. In the ordinary ethical code of historical Greece, to slay a tyrant was an act of the most laudable heroism (Grote, History of Greece, iii. 26 f) ; and Origenes simply accepts, for the purpose of his argument, this backward moral sentiment as admitted by his opponent and as relatively valid, without thereby implying that the act would be justified in the case of one on whom the full light of Christianity has come. Origenes also assumed the rightness of exempting pagan priests from military service in

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While it may be confidently asserted that the relative justification accorded by Christians to the use of the sword by the pagan magistrate and soldier cannot logically be made to justify the use of it by themselves, we are still left with ultimate questions unsettled, viz. how to relate God's use of the pagan sword to the gentle love that He shows through Jesus, and how to harmonize the justice of it when regarded as a divine ordinance with the evil of it when looked at from the Christian point of view. These questions were never finally answered, but one or two things that were said in con nection with them are interesting as bringing out the Christian attitude still more clearly.

We have already seen that Origenes broached the question whether the evil demons may not have been appointed by the Logos "like the executioners and those in the cities who are appointed for gloomy but needful public duties." *' It is clear from this com parison that it is to the normal execution of justice not to the maladministration of it that Origenes attaches a quasi-demonic stigma. He expresses this view at greater length when replying to Celsus' con tention that the Christian's opinion of what is evil is not necessarily true, for he does not know what is of advantage to himself or his neighbour or the world. Origenes replies that this argument " suggests that the nature of evil (things) is not absolutely wicked, for that which is regarded as evil in individual cases may be admitted to be of advantage to the whole (community). But lest anyone, misconstruing what has been said,

order that they might offer sacrifices (see above, p. 135) : yet how absurd would it be to infer from this that he would have approved of Christians becoming pagan priests and offering sacrifices ! 1 Orig Cels vii. 70 : see p. 201,

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should find (in it) an incentive to violence, on the ground that his wickedness is an advantage to the whole (community) or may possibly be an advantage, it has to be said that, although God, without prejudice to the freewill of each of us, may use the wrongdoing of the .wicked for the administration of the whole (community), appointing them for the service of the whole (community), nevertheless such a man is blame- able, and, as blameable, has been appointed to a service (which is) abominable for an individual, but useful to the whole (community) ; just as in the cities one would say that a man who had committed certain crimes, and because of th(os)e crimes had been con demned to certain public works useful to the whole (community), was doing something useful to the whole city, but was himself engaged in an abominable task and (one) in which no one of moderate intelligence would wish to be engaged." * Origenes does not ex plicitly mention the secular power in this connection, but there can be little doubt that he had it at the back of his mind ; for on what other topic would his declared views have so obviously compelled him to admit that an act might be wrong for an individual but useful to the community as a whole? 2

In the Clementine Homilies a quasi-manichaean view of the world is set forth. " God appointed two king doms and established two ages. . . . Two kingdoms have been appointed, the one (the kingdom) of what

• Orig Cels iv. 70.

3 Yet Origenes was unable to do full justice to the relativity of morality (see Cels v. 28, where he insists overmuch on the absolute nature of what is right, and denies that differing customs and usages can be right for different nations) : hence his attitude to governmental coercion Tacks something to make it entirely sound.

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are called the heavens, and the other (the kingdom) of those who now reign upon earth. And two kings have been established, one of whom is chosen to reign by law over the present and temporary world, who has also been composed (so as) to rejoice over the destruc tion of (the) wicked ; but the other, being king of the age to come, loves the whole nature of man. 1 ... Of these two, the one acts violently to the other, God having bidden (him). But each man has power to obey whichever of them he wishes for the doing of good or evil. ... If anyone does evil, he becomes the servant of the present evil (king), who, having by a just judgment received the power against him on account of (his) sins, and wishing to use it before the coming age, rejoices (in) inflicting punishment in the present life, and by thus indulging his own passion accomplishes the Will of God. . . . But these two governors are the swift hands of God, eager to anticipate the accomplishment of His Will : that this is so has been said in the Law . . . ' I will kill, and I will make alive ; I will strike, and I will heal.' For truly He kills, and brings to life. He kills by means of the left hand, that is, by means of the Evil One, who has been composed (so as) to rejoice over the evil treatment of the impious. But He saves and benefits by means of the right hand. . . . These do not have their beings outside of God ; for there is no other source (of being besides God) ; nor are they cast forth from God like animals, for they were of the same mind with Him. . . . The wicked one, therefore, having served God blamelessly to the end of the present age, inasmuch as he is not of the one essence which is solely inclined to evil, can, by a change in his composition,

1 Clem Horn xx. 2,

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become good. For not even now does he do evil, though he is evil, having received power to do evil lawfully (yofiifitag Ka.Kov\iiv)" * This view, despite its crudity, is interesting as an apparent attempt to explain how it is that an act like the punishment of a criminal may be right and lawful when done by an imperfect creature of God, and might lead to good and useful consequences, and yet might have to be put right out side the pale of Christianity, and therefore be wrong if performed by Christian hands.

The problem of how to reconcile the Christian ethic with the Christian justification of the State was virtually the same as the problem of how to reconcile the former with the Christian reverence for the Mosaic Law as divinely inspired. Of the many things said on this question, by far the most important is a suggestion made by the unknown author of the ' Dialogus de Recta Fidei ' (a work of the early years of the fourth century). He shows us Adamantios, who is apparently meant to be Origenes, in discussion with a Markionite. The latter argues from the discrepancy between the Old and New Testaments that there must be more than one God. Adamantios points out traces of gentleness, love, etc., in the Old Testament, and of severity and vengeance in the New, and thus upsets his opponent without really solving the problem. At one point, however, he puts his finger for a moment on the real key to it. " I do not think it will seem absurd," he says, " if we use an illustration, in order that the sense of what we are saying may become clearer. Does not a woman, when she has borne a son, first nourish him with milk, and afterwards, when he has grown up, with more solid

1 Clem Horn xx. 3.

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foods? And I do not think the woman is on this account reckoned by anyone to act inconsistently, because she first gave her breasts to the baby with milk, (and) afterwards, when he had grown up, provided (him with) stronger foods. The Apostle Paul, too, knew how to promulgate laws to men according to their several progress, when he says : * I gave you milk to drink, not food, for ye were not yet able (to take it); but not even yet are ye able, for ye are still carnal.' In the same way, therefore, God also gave laws to men according to the progress of their minds. To Adam he gave a law in one way as to a little child, but in another way to Noah, in another way to Abraham, in another way to the people of Israel through Moses. Through the Gospel also, according to the further progress of the world, the law-giving is different. Why therefore does God seem inconsistent, seeing that, in the same way as (He might treat) a man from (his) birth on to old age, He has so treated the whole world, which began from its first childhood, then after that, growing and progressing, came to middle age, and thence has tened to the maturity and perfection of old age, (and treated) each age of it with apt and adequate laws? But lest ye should think that I affirm this without evidence, I (will) show that this is written, how one and the same God commands different things. God bids Abraham sacrifice his own son : afterwards by Moses, He forbids a man to be slain at all, but orders him who is caught in this act to be punished. Because therefore He orders at one time a son to be slain, but at another the slayer to be punished, do we say that there are two Gods contrary to one another ? " Here Eutropios', the pagan arbiter of the discussion, asks : " Does He Him-

220 The Early Christian Attitude to War

self order (a man) to be killed, and (yet) say : ' Thou shalt not kill ' ? " Adamantios replies : " Precisely. And not only is it found so in this, but also in many other things. For sometimes He orders sacrifices to be offered to Hinlself, and then again He forbids it. . . .-" * The passage is unique in early Christian literature for the place it gives to the differing sub jective conditions of men in the determination of the content of the moral law.

We cannot pursue further the question of the early Christian view of the State ; but enough has been said to show that there was nothing in the relative justifica tion which Christians accorded to the ordinary functions of government, including even its punitive and coercive activities, which logically involved them in departing from the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and per sonally participating in those activities. If a modern reader be disposed to reject this doctrine as one which selfishly leaves the dirty work of society to non- Christians, it is right to remind him, firstly, that, so far as the endurance of hardship and danger went, the early Christians were far worse off than the magistrates, executioners, and soldiers ; for not only had they to take their share as civilians in ordinary and special risks to which people are exposed alike in peace and war, but they had also to endure all the troubles and disabilities and persecutions which public odium heaped upon them ; and secondly, that they had their own method of repressing crime, more thorough and effective than the method of the State, and that

1 Adamant i. 9 : the discussion on the point occupies i. 9-16, 18 (cf ii. 15). For Tertullianus' view of the gradual development of righteousness, see above, p. 177, n 3.

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their power to remove occasions for the use of the sword increased directly in proportion to their numbers and their zeal.

None therefore of the various forms in which Christ^ ians may be said to have * accepted ' war necessarily committed them to participation in it. It cannot, how ever, be maintained that this fact was always adequately appreciated by them, or that their words and conduct were always consistent with the avowed ethics of their faith. We shall see in a later section how numbers of them came after a time to serve in the army ; but, short of this, there are several cases of real or apparent com promise on which a word may be said. Some of these lie so near the borderline between the permissible and the impermissible as to be patient of different interpreta tions. The sudden death of Ananias and Sappheira, for instance, when their deceit was exposed by Peter, was not the execution of a death-sentence, but the natural con sequence of a well-merited rebuke, and was doubtless looked upon as a divine visitation. 1 Paul on the whole has a firm grasp of the real principles of Christian con duct, but his Roman citizenship, his legal type of mind, and his preoccupation with other aspects of Christian truth, led him at times into expressions and actions which are not easily harmonized with his words at the end of Rom. xii. His demand for the recognition of his legal rights, his readiness to plead his cause in a court of law, and his appeal to Caesar, 2 are not to be numbered amongst these; for they concerned simply his own immunity from injustice, and did not involve the

1 Ac v. i-ii.

- Ac xvi. 35-39, xxii. 23-29, xxiv. 10 ff, xxv. 6-12.

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punishment of his accusers or enemies. But his sentence of blindness on Elymas the sorcerer, 1 which reminds us of the case of Ananias and Sappheira, his apparent silence on the unchristian character of the Philippian gaoler's calling, 2 which again recalls the similar silence of Peter in the case of the centurion Cornelius,3 his wish that the Judaizing errorists would castrate themselves,4 his consignment of the incestuous Corinthian to Satan for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit might be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus,s the one-sidedness of the terms in which his doctrine of the State is set forth, 6 and his communication to the military com mander of the plot against his life,7 are cases so near the border-line that much discussion would be needed to enable us to measure what degree of inconsistency, if any, was involved in each of them.

Many instances occur throughout our period of Christians pleading, protesting, appealing, etc., to pagan magistrates, and this has often been taken as showing that they were allowed by the Church to sue their enemies in pagan courts in order to get them punished. So Bigelmair : " In disputes between Christians and non-christians, the legal protection of the heathen courts, which was not denied to the Christians, had to be appealed to. ... Recourse to heathen courts was never contested." 8 Similarly Bestmann.9 But the cases quoted by Bigelmair prove nothing of the kind, for in all of them the Christians were the defendants, not the plaintiffs, and did not ask for the punishment of

1 Ac xiii. 9-1 1. 2 Ac xvi. 29-34.

3 Ac x, xi. 4 Gal v. 12.

s i Cor v. 1-5. 6 Rom xiii. 1-6.

7 Ac xxiii. 12-24. ' 8 Bigelmair 94 f. 9 Bestmann i. 403-405.

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their enemies. Justinus, indeed, sadly compromises the Christian position when, in his eagerness to disavow the wrongdoings of pseudo-Christians, he asks the Emperors to punish those who were Christians only in name, but who were not living in conformity with Christ's teachings. 1 Origenes has been criticized for his willingness to pray for the victory of the Emperor's soldiers, when he would not fight along with them. 2 But one who thinks it wrong to fight may well recognize that one of two warring parties is better than the other and may wish that, while neither is acting in a Christian way, one may prevail rather than the other : and if the wish is legitimate, so too may be the prayer for the fulfilment of that wish. Lactantius could have justified a good deal of what he said about the justice of anger, and so on, had he made allowance for the partial relativity of all morality to subjective conditions ; but even so he would have had to find a larger place for love, expressing itself through non-resistance and gentle ness and suffering, as the characteristically Christian policy for overcoming sin in others.

We are without exact information as to the extent to which Christians entered on political life in general, held office as magistrates, and brought suits to the pagan courts. There may have been a few cases of such action in the very early times. But broadly speak ing, such cases were very rare before the middle of the third century. Athenagoras, Clemens of Alexandria, Tertullianus, and the Didaskalia, all regard it as for bidden to Christians to sue wrongdoers in the pagan courts. Origenes wrote in 248 A.D. as if Christians

1 Just i Ap xvi. 14.

2 Backhouse and Tylor, Early Church History, p. 130.

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generally refused public office. But Christian feeling and practice grew laxer from that time onwards. The Clementines relate how the friends of Peter, being alarmed at the indignation which Simon of Samaria had excited against him at Antioch, sent for the Roman centurion Cornelius, who happened to be there with a message from the Emperor to the Governor of the province, and asked for his assistance. Cornelius offered to give it out that the Emperor had ordered sorcerers to be sought for and slain at Rome and in the provinces, that many had already been so dealt with, and that he (Cornelius) had been secretly sent by the Emperor to seize and punish Simon. This news being conveyed to Simon by Peter's spies, the former speedily departed in accordance with the Apostle's desire. 1 This amusing piece of fiction sheds an interesting sidelight on the author's view of the Christian's relations with the State and the army ; but too much of course must not be made of it. In 272 A.D. a synod of Christian bishops appealed to the Emperor Aurelianus to eject from the cathedral house and church of Antioch the bishop, Paulus of Samosata, who had been condemned for heresy and deposed some years earlier, but had kept his place under the protection of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. The Emperor's decision was in favour of the appellants. " Thus," says Eusebios, " the aforesaid man was ex pelled from the church by the secular government with the utmost disgrace." 2 Under Diocletianus, before the persecution, Christians were appointed to the governorships of provinces,3 which of course involved judicial and military duties. One of the martyrs in the

1 Clem Horn xx. 13, Recog*. 54 f. Eus HE VII xxx. 19.

3 Eus HE VIII i. 2.

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persecution was Philoromos, who " had been appointed to no mean office in the imperial administration of Alexandria, and daily administered justice, attended by soldiers according to his rank and Roman dignity." J Another case was that of the governor (err -parriyog) of the Phrygian town, the population of which was martyred en masse. 2 Constantius, who governed Western Europe, regularly employed Christians as his ministers of state.3 The Synod of Illiberis provided for Christians who held the annual office of duumvir in Spanish towns and took part in the violence and blood shed of the law-courts.4 After the triumph of Con- stantinus all but a few remaining barriers were swept away. The clergy were not supposed to shed blood in war or to administer justice outside the ecclesiastical courts, and the ascetics and a few like-minded Christian laymen also refrained : but apart from these cases, it came to be taken for granted that the ordinary func tions of civil government were as open to the average Christian as they had been to the average pagan.

THE CHRISTIANS' EXPERIENCE OF GOOD IN THE CHARACTER OF SOLDIERS. Before investigating the actual participation of Christians in military life, it will be well to take note of the favourable impres sions received by them on various occasions in regard to non-Christians engaged in it. This study thus forms the counterpart of our earlier sketch of the Christians' experience of bad treatment at the hands of soldiers.s The penitent soldiers baptized by John

1 Eus HE VIII . 7.

3 Eus HE VIII xi. i : see above, p. 95. = Eus Vit Const i. 16 f.

4 See above, pp. is6f. s See above, pp. 89-96.

16

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the Baptist, 1 the centurion of Capernaum, who built the Jews a synagogue and at whose faith Jesus mar velled, 2 the centurion at the cross who exclaimed at the death of Jesus : * Truly this man was a son of God/ 3 Cornelius, the centurion of Caesarea, and the ' pious soldier.' who waited on him,4 Sergius Paulus, the pro consul of Cyprus,s the man doubtless a soldier who, at Agrippa's bidding, led James the son of Zebedee to the judgment-seat, confessed himself a Christian, asked and received the Apostle's pardon as they were led away, and was beheaded with him, 6 the dutiful and officious but otherwise humane gaoler of Philippi,7 the various military officials who had charge of Paul 8 more particularly the centurion Julius, who took him to Rome and showed him great kindness on the journey 9 all these are significant for the impression they made on the minds of Christians in their own day, as well as of the evangelists, etc., who wrote of them later. The apocryphal Acts of John represent the soldiers who had charge of the Apostle as treating him with great kindness. 10 Basileides, a military officer in Egypt at the time of the persecution of Severus, had to lead the maiden Potamiaina to death, and on the way defended her from the insults of the crowd and showed her much pity and sympathy. 11 When Perpetua and her friends suffered at Carthago in the same persecution, the military adjutant Pudens, who was in charge of the prison, was struck with their virtue, allowed many of

1 Lk. iii. 14. 3 Lk vii. 2-10 ||.

3 Mk xv. 39 ||s. 4 Ac x. 1-8, 22.

s Ac xiii. 7, 12. 6 Clem Alex in Eus HE II ix.

7 Ac xvi. 24, 27, 33 f.

8 Ac xxi. 31-40, xxii. 24-29, xxiii. 10, 17-35, xxiv. 22 f, xxviii. 16, 31.

9 Ac xxvii. i, 3, 43. I0 Acts of John 6 (ii. 154 ; Pick 129 f). 11 Eus HE VI v. 3 : see more fully below, p. 233.

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their friends to visit them, and was ultimately con verted ; the tribune also was incjuced to grant them privileges. 1 Origenes performed his visit to the Emperor's mother Julia Mammaea at Antioch and doubtless also that to the Governor of Arabia under a military escort. 2 Gregorios Thaumatourgos, with his brother and sister, were conducted from his home at Neo-Caesarea in Pontus to Palestine by the soldier who had been sent to bring the last-named to her husband, and to invite her brother to travel with her.3 In the Decian persecution, Besas, a soldier of Alexandria, rebuked those who insulted the martyrs, and soon after perished as a Christian.4 Imprisoned Christians were often able to procure minor privileges by paying money to the soldiers who had charge of them ; and the Didaskalia bade the friends of prisoners send them money for this purpose. 5 When Cyprianus was waiting to be taken before the proconsul just before his death, a military officer, who had formerly been a Christian, offered him a dry suit of clothes, as the martyr's own garments were soaked with sweat. 6 Eusebios of Lao- dicea, while resident at Alexandria at the time of the revolt of Aemilianus (260 or 262 A.D.), was on the friendliest terms with the Roman general, and obtained from him a promise of safety for those who should desert from the besieged quarter of the town.7 We may recall here the episode in the Clementines, in which the Apostle Peter and his friends are repre sented as availing themselves of the friendly help of Cornelius the centurion. 8

1 Perpet 9, 16, 21. 3 Eus HE VI xix. 15, xxi. 3 f.

3 Greg Thaum Panegv. 67-72. 4 Dion Alex in Eus HE VI xli. 16.

s Didask V i. i. 6 Pont Vit Cypr 16.

7 Eus HE VII xxxii. 8 f. 8 See above, p. 224.

228 The Early Christian Attitude to War

' THE PARTICIPATION OF CHRISTIANS IN MILITARY SERVICE. The purpose of this section is to present the reader with as complete and accurate a statement as possible of the extent to which Christians actually served as soldiers in the pre-Constantinian period. It will thus serve as the complement to the former section dealing with the Christian refusal of service, alongside of which it will naturally be read, and will involve a certain amount of overlapping with what has gone before. Taking first the period of the New Testament, and excluding the converts of John the Baptist, the cen turion of Capernaum, and the centurion at the cross, as not being disciples of Jesus at all, Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, as not being a full convert to Christianity in the ordinary sense, 1 and the soldier if soldier he was who was executed with James the Apostle, as being relieved by his prompt martyrdom of all necessity of deciding whether he ought to remain in his calling or to resign it, 2 we are left with Cornelius, the one or two soldiers who may have been baptized with him, and the gaoler at Philippi,3 as the only real cases of Christian soldiers in New Testament times. The New Testament itself and the earliest Christian litera ture nowhere express disapproval of the continuance of these men assuming they did continue in their call ing, or of the military calling in general. It is even possible that Luke, who records these cases, as well as the conversation between John the Baptist and the soldiers, may have meant to intimate thereby his view as to the propriety of admitting soldiers to the Church without requiring them to abandon the profession of

1 See above, pp. 97 f- 2 See above, p. 226.

3 Ac x. I if, 7 ff, 47 f, xvi. 27-34.

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arms J : and the existence even of these few cases makes it possible that from the earliest times there may have been soldier-converts in the Church. 2 But as a matter of fact there is no trace of the existence of any Christian soldiers between these cases mentioned in Acts and say 170 A.D. The supposed records of Christian soldiers of the times of Trajanus and Hadrianus are without historical value.3

We come however upon an important piece of evidence in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. During one of that Emperor's campaigns against the Ouadi, a tribe inhabiting what is now Moravia, in 173 or 174 A.D., the Roman army found itself in serious difficulties owing to lack of water. In the Twelfth Legion, the Legio Fulminata, which was recruited and usually stationed in Melitene, a region in eastern Cappadocia where Christianity was strong, there were a considerable number of Christian soldiers. These prayed for relief from the drought, and at once a shower refreshed the Roman troops, while a storm discomfited the enemy. Such is, in bare outline, the story of what as far as we can make out actually happened. It was evidently an incident of some importance, for it was commemorated on the column set up by Marcus Aurelius at Rome, and noticed by a number of writers, both Christian and pagan. The pagan accounts do not mention the Christians in the army at all,4 and so are of no value for our immediate purpose, beyond confirming the historical background of the story. The earliest Christian witness is Apolinarios, bishop of Hierapolis

1 Harnack MC 53. - So Harnack ME ii. 52. 3 See pp. 99-101. 4 The pagan witnesses are the pillar of Marcus, Dio Cassius (Ixxi. 8, 10), and Capitolinus (Hist. Aug. Life of M. Antoninus Philosophus, xxiv. 4).

230 The Early Christian Attitude to War

in Phrygia, who gave a simple account of the incident probably very soon after its occurrence perhaps in the Apology which he addressed to Marcus Aurelius. 1 As reported by Eusebios, he spoke as if the whole legion had been Christian, and said that it received from the Emperor the name of KepavvofitiXog (i.e. thundering) in memory of what happened. 2 Now there is no doubt at all that either Eusebios mis understood and misreported Apolinarios,3 or else Apolinarios himself made a mistake about the name of the Legion : for the Twelfth Legion was called Fulminata (thunderstruck) not Fulminatrix (thundering), and had moreover borne that name since the time of Augustus or at least that of Nero.4 In view of this error, the value of Apolinarios as a witness for the existence of a whole legion of Christian soldiers simply disappears; and it is more than doubtful whether he meant to speak of such a legion at all. The next witness whom we can date with any confidence is Tertullianus, who twice mentions the incident^ but without committing himself as to the number of soldiers. Even the so-called Letter of Marcus Aurelius to the Senate 6 (which some put before the time of Tertullianus, some as late as early in the fourth century ,7 and which is usually regarded as a Christian forgery, 8 though Harnack regards it as substantially

1 So Harnack (C i. 360 f), though the dates are a little difficult to reconcile. 2 Eus HE V v. 3 f.

3 So Lightfoot AF II i. 491. 4 DCB iv. iO24a.

5 Tert Apol 5 (i. 295) (illam germanicam sitim christianorum forte militum precationibus impetrato imbri discussam), Scap 4 (i. 703) (chris tianorum militum orationibus ad Deum factis).

6 Text in Otto's Justinus i. 246 ff, Lightfoot AF II i. 485 f, Blunt 133 f; ET in ANCL ii. 68 f.

7 Bigelmair 186 n i. 8 Lightfoot AFll i. 490 ; Blunt 131 f.

The Early Christian Acceptance of War 231

genuine, but interpolated J ), does not claim a whole legion of Christian soldiers does not in fact mention the legion at all but contents itself with the vague phrase, * a great crowd ' 2 of * those who with us are called Christians.' Eusebios seems to have believed that the whole legion was Christian,3 and was probably unintentionally responsible for the attribution of this view to Apolinarios. The remarks of Xiphilinos4 are interesting, but much too late to be of any value as evidence. While the Christian versions contain obvious embellishments and exaggerations, and the idea of a whole legion of Christian soldiers must be dismissed,5 there can be no doubt about the main fact, that, in or about 174 A.D., the Legio Fulminata contained a con siderable number of Christian soldiers. This means that the conversion of soldiers to Christianity must have been going on for some little time previously, though for how long we do not know. It is often said that these men were not censured or criticized by their fellow-Christians for their position 6 ; but in view of the fact that Celsus's censure of the Christians in general for objecting to military service came within a few years of the incident just described,7 and in view of the fact that the later decision of the Church would tend to obliterate records of the earlier rigorism, it is not safe to conclude from the absence of any extant criticism of these Christian soldiers that their position passed uncriticized.

1 Harnack C i. 702. - irXrfioQ icai peyeOoc avruv.

s Eus HE V v. 1-4. * Dio Cassius Ixxi. 9.

s So Stokes in DCB iv. iO24b.

6 So Harnack ME ii. 55 ("Neither then nor subsequently did any Christian censure these soldiers for their profession "), MC 57 ; Bigel- mair 189. ? See above, p. 104.

232 The Early Christian Attitude to War

Julius Africanus appears to -have served as an officer in the expedition of the Emperor Severus against Osrhoene in 195 A.D. r : but we have already seen reason for refusing to regard him as in any way a representative Christian. 2 Clemens of Alexandria does not seem ever to have faced the problem of Christianity and war ; and hence, despite his clear grasp of Christian principles in the abstracts he uses expressions which concede the compatibility of military service with the Christian faith. He appeals to the Greek thus : " Be a farmer, we say, if thou art a farmer ; but know God (while thou art) farming : and sail, thou lover of navi gation, but (sail) calling upon the heavenly Pilot : has the (true) knowledge taken hold of thee (when) serving as a soldier ? Listen to the General who orders what is righteous." 4 Some years later, when writing for Christ ian readers, he says : " Barefootedness is very becoming to a man, except when he is on military service " s ; and later, criticizing the love of wealth and display : " But even now the soldiers wish to be adorned with gold, not having read that (passage) in the poet : ' He came to the war, wearing gold, like a young girl.' " g 6 He says that the divine * Instructor/ under the heading of for bearance, " enjoins by John upon those in military service to be content with their wages only." 7 He quotes the Mosaic regulations in regard to the exemp tion of certain classes of men from military service and of summoning the enemy to come to terms before attacking them, without any intimation that they would

1 Gelzer, Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chrono- graphie, i. 8. - See above, p. 207. 3 See pp. 71 f, 78.

4 Clem Protr x. 100. 5 Clem Paedll xi. 117.

6 Clem Faed II xii. 121. Clem Paed III xii. 91.

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not be "applicable to Christians. 1 He mentions "the soldier's hope and the merchant's gain " along with life, angels, etc., as examples of the " things present " which are powerless to oppose faith. 2

We have already had occasion to notice the suscep tibility to Christian influence of soldiers employed in the horrible work of persecution a susceptibility which led in many cases to their conversion^ One or two cases merit repetition here. The soldier Basileides of Alexandria had, while still a heathen, received instruc tion under Origenes. During the persecution of 202 A.D., it fell to his lot to conduct the Christian maiden Pota- miaina to death, and apparently to preside over the execution, which consisted of boiling pitch being poured over the girl's body from the feet upwards. He showed her what sympathy and kindness he could under the circumstances, and the experience issued as well it might in his conversion. This was at first kept a secret, but soon became known through his refusal as a Christian to take an oath when challenged to do so by his fellow-soldiers. He was led to the judge, confessed, and received sentence. He was visited in prison by the Christians, and baptized, and the next day was beheaded. Nothing is said in the extant rebord as to his conversion leading him to want to resign his post in the army. 4 Somewhat similar was the case of the adjutant Pudens,

1 Clem Strom II xviii. 82, 88.

2 Clem Strom IV xiv. 96. Ramsay (Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia> ii. 718) is mistaken in including Clemens among those who "absolutely forbade that Christians should be soldiers or bear arms."

3 See above, pp. 226 f. Harnack says (MC 75) : " That the soldier who accompanied a Christian to death, in particular the (soldier who acted as) informer, himself became a Christian, gradually became a stereotyped feature in the stories of martyrs, but is not always legendary." For instances in more or less fictitious martyr-acts, see Neumann 288-290.

4 Eus HE VI iii. 13, v.

234 The Early Christian Attitude to War

whose conversion took place at the time of the martyr- dorri^of Perpetua and her companions at Carthago, 1 though we do not know what became of him afterwards. 2

The information contributed by Tertullianus is im portant. In 197 A.D. he wrote to the pagans : "Ye cry out that the state is besieged that there are Christians in the fields, in the fortified towns, in the islands." 3 44 We are (people) of yesterday, and we have filled all that belongs to you cities, islands, fortified towns (?) (castella), country towns, places of assembly, the very camps, the tribes, the decuries, the palace, the senate, the forum." 4 " With you we go on voyages and serve as soldiers and farm and trade : we mix (our) industries (with yours) ; we make our work public for your service." s He refers to the incident in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when the drought afflicting the Roman army was removed " by the shower obtained by the prayers of the Christian soldiers (who were) by chance (serving under him)." 6 A little later, in arguing that no Christian ought to be a soldier, he lets us see that there were Christians who took the opposite view and supported their position by appealing to the examples of Moses, Aaron, Joshua, the Israelites, and even John the Baptist.7 He himself says that Paul, in " teaching that everyone ought to live by his own labour, had introduced plenty of examples, (those,

1 See above, pp. 226 f. 3 DCB iv. 52ob.

3 Tert Nat i. I (i. 559) : similar words in Apol i (i. 262). The word translated ; fortified towns ' castellis may mean simply ' villages.'

4 Tert Apol 37 (i. 462 f). The statement is of course an exaggeration, and must be taken with a grain of salt. Tertullianus makes a reference in Apol 32 (i. 447) to Christians taking the military oath.

. s Tert Apol 42 (i. 491). 6 See p. 230 n 5.

7 Tert Idol 19 (i. 690 f) : see above, p. [09.

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namely), of soldiers, shepherds, and husbandmen." x Later still (211 A.D.), we have from him an account of the circumstances which occasioned the composition of his treatise ' De Corona Militis.' Shortly after the accession of the Emperors Caracalla and Geta, an imperial largess was being distributed to the Roman troops in Numidia, when one Christian soldier made himself conspicuous by refusing to put on the laurel garland which everyone else was wearing for the occa sion. His fellow-Christians in the army not to men tion the heathen soldiers and some at least of the Christian civilians as well, condemned his action on the ground that it was rash and presumptuous and likely to provoke persecution, and that nowhere in Scripture are we forbidden to be crowned. 2 The incident shows that there were at that time many Christians in the Roman army in Africa, and that some possibly a majority of the members of the local church raised no objection to their being there. It does not prove that the whole of the local church still less that the Church generally had no scruples at all about its members serving as soldiers.3

It is important also to notice that the { De Idolo-

1 Tert Marc v. 7 (ii. 487). I do not know any passage in Paul's letters justifying this statement about soldiers.

2 Tert Cor i (ii. 76 f). He astutely points out the similarity between the Christian and the pagan criticisms : exinde sententiae super illo, nescio an Christianorum, non enim aliae ethnicorum, ut de abrupto, etc., etc. Harnack has suggested (ME i. 418 n, ii. 56, MC 68) that this soldier's object was to secure for his Christian comrades in the army the same exemption from the semi- idolatrous garland that was enjoyed by the worshippers of Mithras.

3 It is therefore a gross exaggeration to say that the fact that the soldier was condemned " is conclusive proof that the Christian society of the time found no cause of complaint in the fact of its members serving in the legions, and that they did not regard such service as incompatible with their religion " (B. -Baker ICW 25).

236 The Early Christian Attitude to War

latria ' and ' De Corona ' of Tertullianus are our oldest pieces of evidence for the existence of Christian soldiers who had joined the army after their conversion. In the former, his discussion of the questions 'whether a believer may turn to military service, and whether the military . . . may be admitted to the faith ' z may be taken to imply that in practice cases had already arisen in which both these questions had been answered in the affirma tive. In the * De Corona ' his condemnation of the act of * transferring (one's) name from the camp of light to the camp of darkness ' 2 shows pretty clearly that the thing had been done. Immediately afterwards he speaks of those who had been converted when already in the army as a special class of Christian soldiers 3 ; evidently, therefore, there were others who had become soldiers after conversion. These passages, however, are the earliest references we have to Christians becoming soldiers after baptism : all the Christian soldiers mentioned before the period of ' De Idololatria ' (198-202 A.D.) may quite well have been for all we know to the contrary converted when already in the army. Such would obviously have been the more normal case.

In the year 217 A.D. the tomb of an imperial official, Marcus Aurelius Prosenes, received a supplementary inscription from his freedman, the Christian Ampelius, who described himself as * returning from the cam paigns.' 4 Another inscription, about the middle of the

1 Tert Idol 19 (i. 690) : see pp. 108 f.

2 Tert Cor n (ii. 92) : see above, p. in. 3 Ib. : see above, p. 112. 4 The inscription runs : Prosenes receptus ad Deum V non [aprjilis

Sa[uro in Campjania, Praesente et Extricato II (sc. consulibus). Regrediens in Urbe(m) ab expeditionibus scripsit Ampelius lib(ertus) (De Rossi, Inscriptiones Urbis Romae, I 9 ; Marucchi, Christian Epigraphy, 225 : Neumann (84 n) gives a slightly different interpretation).

The Early Christian Acceptance of War 237

third century, found at Hodjalar in Phrygia, gives us the epitaph on the family tomb of two Christian soldiers. 1

Cyprianus tells us that the two uncles of a certain Christian who suffered in the persecution of Decius (250 A.D.) had been soldiers. 2 Dionusios of Alexandria tells us that there were soldiers among the martyrs in that very persecution.3 At Alexandria during the per secution, a soldier named Besas rebuked the crowd that was insulting the martyrs on their way to execution. He was immediately challenged, arraigned as a Christian, confessed, and was beheaded.4 On another occasion a squad of five soldiers, attending at the trial of a Christian, attracted attention by making violent gestures of anxiety when the accused threatened to deny his faith, and then rushed before the tribunal and confessed themselves Christians. The governor, as well as his council, was amazed, but seems to have ordered them to execution^ We have already spoken

1 Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, ii. 717.

2 See above, p. 147 n 2.

3 Dion Alex in Eus HE VII xi. 20 : the letter of Dionusios here quoted refers to the Decian persecution, though Eusebios erroneously connects it with that of Valerianus (Feltoe 65).

4 Dion Alex in Eus HE VI xli. 16.

5 Dion Alex in Eus HE VI xli. 22 f. Their conversion seems to have been due to a sudden rush of feeling under the affecting circumstances of the hour. Harnack, I think, overlooks the fact that only five men were concerned, assumes that before their public confession they were already virtually Christians (" Christen oder . . . christlich Gesinnten"), and infers that Christianity must have been very widespread in the army in Egypt, as there could have been no idea of picking out Christian soldiers for this particular task (Harnack ME ii. 58, MC 76 f). This seems to me to be making too much out of the passage. Sudden conversions were not un common at scenes of persecution ; and there is no reason to suppose that these five men were in any way definitely Christian before this incident. They may have known about Christianity and been sympathetic towards it, but that does not warrant Harnack's conclusion that Christianity was widespread in the army in Egypt. I pass by the untrustworthy ' Acts of Polueuktes,' the soldier who is said to have been beheaded for refusing to sacrifice in compliance with an edict of ' Decius and Valerian ' ! (Cony- beare 123-146 ; Harnack ME ii. 61, MC 83).

238 The Early Christian Attitude to War

of the Christian military officer Marinus, who was martyred at Caesarea in 260 A.D. 1 "The number of Christian officers and soldiers in the army gradually increased . . . after the reign of Gallienus ; so much so that the military authorities began to connive at Christianity ; they made allowance for it, and looked on quietly while Christian officers made the sign of the cross at the sacrifices. Moreover they also dispensed silently with their attendance at these sacrifices." 2 In 295 A.D., on the occasion of the martyrdom of Maxi- milianus in Numidia, the proconsul of Africa said to him : " In the sacred retinue of our lords Diocletianus and Maximianus, Constantius and Maximus, there are Christian soldiers, and they serve (as such)." 3 The silence of the Synod of Illiberis on the legitimacy of military service is significant. The Spanish bishops seem to have realized that there was too much to be said on both sides for them to commit themselves to either.4 Eusebios tells us that long before the outbreak of the general persecution in 303 A.D., the Emperor Galerius attempted, by means of degradation, abuse, and menace of death, to compel the Christians in the army, beginning with those in his own household, to desert their faith.s We learn from Eusebios and Hieronymus that about 299 A.D. a general named Veturius attempted to purge the troops under him of Christian soldiers ; and a great number of them conse quently retired from the service, and a few suffered the

1 See above, pp. 151 f. 3 Harnack ME ii. 54 : cf MC 81 f.

3 See above, pp. 149 f. Fabius Victor, the martyr's father, seems to have been a Christian before the trial, and may have been a soldier (see p. 150 n 2) : anyhow, he had bought his son a new military coat in anticipation of his joining up.

• Harnack MC 79 n 2 (80). s Eus HE VIII appendix, K

The Early Christian Acceptance of War 239

penalty of death. The devil, says Eusebios, thought that if he could first subdue the Christians in the army, he would easily be able to catch the othersa remark which indicates that in Eusebios' belief the Christians in the army at that time were numerous and highly respected. 1 The martyrdom of the Christian centurion Marcellus in Mauretania in 298 A.D. 2 may have been the outcome of a similar movement on the part of the military authorities in that quarter of the Empire. Typasius, another soldier of Mauretania, is said to have obtained his discharge from the army before the persecu tion broke out.3 The famous legend of the martyrdom of the whole Thebaic legion (recruited in the Egyptian Thebaid) at the hands of Maximianus at Agaunum near the Lake of Geneva, is variously referred to 286, 297, or 302 A.D. The evidence for it is late, and the story as it stands is impossible. It may be that the actual martyrdom of a few conceivably a few hundred Christian soldiers for refusing to sacrifice underlies the legend : more than that cannot be said.4 In 302 A.D. Diocletianus, alarmed by unfavourable omens, which the priests attributed to the presence of Christians, required his whole retinue to sacrifice on pain of being scourged, and wrote to the commanding officers that soldiers should be required to sacrifice and, if they would not obey, dismissed from the service.s The following winter, when Galerius was urging him to undertake a general persecution of the Christians, Diocletianus long persisted "that it would be enough if he forbade that religion only to those at court and to

1 Eus HE VIII iv (with McGiffert's note) ; Hieron Chron ad ann 2317 ; Harnack ME 59 n, MCSo. * See above, p. 152. 3 See above, p. 153.

4 DCB Hi. 64ib-644b ; Bigelmair 194-201 ; Harnack ME ii. 61 n I, MC 83 ; De Jong 17 f. s La C t Mart Pers x. 4.

240 The Early Christian Attitude to War

the soldiers." x When the persecution actually began, Christian soldiers were its first victims. 2 The fact that many of them suffered martyrdom is sufficiently estab lished, and little purpose would be served by adding details concerning all the individual cases known to us. One of them, Julius, who suffered in Moesia, said to the judge : " During the time that I was, as it appears, going astray in the vain service of war (in vana militia), for twenty-seven years I never came before the judge as an offender or a plaintiff (scelestus aut litigiosus). Seven times did I go out on a campaign (in bello), and I stood behind no one (post neminem retro steti), and I fought as well as any (nee alicuius inferior pugnavi). The commander never saw me go wrong ; and dost thou think that I, who had been found faithful 1 in the worse things, can now be found unfaithful in the better ? " 3 Other soldier-martyrs were Marcianus and Nicander in Moesia (or Italy),4 Dasius, also in Moesia,5 Nereus and Achilleus, apparently at Rome, 6 Tarakhos in Cilicia,7 Ferreolus, a military tribune, at Vienna in Gaul, 8 Theo- dorus of Tyrus at Amasia in Pontus,9 and Seleukos of Cappadocia at Caesarea. 10 In 303 A.D. a revolt broke

1 Lact Mort Pers xi. 3.

a Eus HE VIII i. 8 ; Epiphanios Haeres Ixviii. 2 (Migne PG xlii. 185) (some of them, like some of the clergy, gave way and sacrificed).

3 See the Acta Julii in Anal Bolland x. 50 ff, reprinted by Harnack in MC 119-121. An older edition is given by Ruinart (569 f). Another Christian soldier had been martyred just before Julius, and when he went to his death, a third was awaiting sentence.

4 Ruinart 571-573 ; cf Harnack ME ii. 62 n 4.

DCB i. 7&9b ; Harnack ME ii. 62 n 5, MC 83 n 5 ; Bigelmair 192 f.

6 See above, pp. 153 f.

7 Ruinart45i ff; Harnack C ii. 479 f; DCBiv. 781 : see above, p. 153.

8 Ruinart 489 ff; DCB ii. 5o6b. Ruinart 506-511 ; DCBiv. 956 f.

10 Eus Mart xi. 20 ff (see above, p. 153). I pass by the doubtful story of the * quattuor coronati,' four soldiers who are said to have been flogged to death at Rome for refusing to sacrifice (DC A i. 461 f ; DCB iv. 702 f ; Bigelmair 328-330, Harnack C ii. 478 n 2). It is just possible that Getulius and Amantius, the husband and brother-in-law of Symphorosa,,

The Early Christian Acceptance of War 241

out in Melitene and Syria, and Diocletianus suspected that the Christians were at the bottom of it, and it is possible that his suspicions were not altogether without foundation. 1 We know that the Christians of Armenia, when the Emperor Maximinus Daza tried to force them to abandon their Christianity, took up arms and defeated him. 2

There must have been large numbers of Christians in the armies of Constantinus and Licinius in their campaigns against Maxentius and Maximinus Daza. Pachomius, later famous as a monk, served in the war against Maxentius, and was won to Christianity by the love which his Christian fellow-soldiers showed to himself and others.3 The Constantinian troops were witnesses of the professed adherence of their great leader to the Christian faith just before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, and actually bore in that battle the sign of the cross upon their shields and in their standards : they took part in the bloodshed of the battle, and doubtless joined in their leader's confident boast that he had conquered by virtue of that same sign.4 The cam paign of Licinius against Daza, after his meeting with Constantinus at Milan, would enlist Christian sympathy as warmly as did that of Constantinus against Maxen tius. Both conflicts were regarded, not unnaturally, as

who are said to have been military tribunes under Hadrianus and to have suffered martyrdom for refusing to sacrifice, were really among the sol dier-martyrs of the great persecution under Diocletianus (see above, pp. 100 f). It is also barely possible that Albanus, the proto-martyr of Britain, was martyred about this time and was a soldier (Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, p. 271 ; DCB i. 69 f). Other soldier- martyrs of minor importance and questionable historicity are mentioned by Bigelmair (192-194) and Harnack (MC 84 n 3).

1 Eus HE VIII vi. 8. 2 Eus HE IX viii. 2, 4.

3 DCB iv. i;ob ; Harnack ME ii. 63 n I, MC 85.

4 Eus HE IX ix. 1-12, Vit Const i. 26-31, 37-41, iv. 19-21 ; Lact Mort Pers xliv.

17

242 The Early Christian Attitude to War

struggles between Christianity and Paganism. Licinius himself prescribed for his soldiers a form of prayer, which was monotheistic, if not overtly Christian, in tone. 1 His victory would naturally attract additional Christian favour and support. 2 We do not know how far Christian soldiers were implicated in the bloody acts of vengeance the massacres, tortures, and murders that marked his triumph.s Later in his reign, between 315 and 322 A.D., Licinius relapsed into paganism, and required the soldiers in his army to sacrifice on pain of being degraded and dismissed the service. A number of martyrdoms resulted.4 The final war between Licinius and Constantinus was again a war between Paganism and Christianity, and ended in a decisive triumph for the latter.5

Reserving for Part IV all discussion of the position finaily attained through the ascendancy of Constantinus and all attempt to summarize the movements of Christian thought and practice which we have been studying, we may bring this section to a close with a word or two on the question of the numbers of Christians in the army

1 Lact Mart Pers xlvi. Harnack regards this act of Licinius as showing how widespread Christianity must have been in his army (MC 89 f ).

2 Eus HE IX x. 3.

3 Eus HE IX x. 4 (destruction of Daza's army), xi. 3 (all his favoured partizans slain), 4 (a few examples out of many given), 5 f (torture and death of Theoteknos and others at Antioch, cf PE I35cd), 7 f (Daza's children and relatives slain) ; Lact Mart Pers xlvii. 2-4 (immense slaughter of Daza's troops), 1. 2 f (death of Candidianus, son of Galerius, who had put himself unsuspectingly in Licinius' hands), 4 (Licinius slays Severianus, son of the late Emperor Severus), 6 (he slays Maximus, the eight-year-old son, and the seven-year-old daughter, of Daza, after throwing their mother into the river Orontes), li (Valeria, widow of Galerius, and her mother Prisca, caught at Thessalonica, beheaded, and their bodies cast into the sea). To the commission of such acts as these did those believers who took up arms under this Christian Emperor render themselves liable !

4 Eus HEX viii. 10, Vit Const i. 54. It is to this period (320 A.D.) that the legend of the forty soldiers martyred at Sebaste in Armenia belongs (cf DCB ii. 556 f ; De Jong 33 f). 5 Eus Vit Const ii. 16 f.

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during these closing years of our period. In the unfor tunate absence of any definite statistics, we have to content ourselves with a few vague statements. It is clear that there were more soldiers in the armies at the end than in the middle of the third century, and that Constantinus' accession to power increased the number still further. We may perhaps conjecture that before the persecution there was a larger percentage of Chris tians in the army of Constantinus, the tolerant Emperor of the West, than in those of the southern and eastern Emperors, though of this we cannot be sure, and the comparatively larger numbers of Christians in the eastern than in the western empire would tend to put the posi tion the other way round. It is doubtless true that there were * many ' soldiers in the legions of Diocletianus and Galerius round about 300 A.D. ; but what does

• many ' mean ? Figures are, of course, out of our

reach ; but when we consider that these two emperors endeavoured to purge all the Christians out of their army, we cannot imagine that the percentage of Christ ians could have been very high. No sovereign readily deprives himself of a tenth, or even of a twentieth part of his military power. Furthermore, as we shall see presently, Christian opinion, even at this date, was still very far from being unanimous as to the propriety of military service for Christians. A good deal of caution is necessary in accepting some of the phrases in which the state of affairs is at times described. 1

1 Harnack is on the whole cautious, but is a little inclined to over estimate the evidence (see his remarks quoted above, p. 237 n 5 and 242 n i, and cf. MC 83, 87). Cf Westermarck, The Origin and Develop ment of the Moral Ideas, i. 346 (" the number of Christians enrolled in the army seems not to have been very considerable before the era of Constan- tine ") ; De Jong 26 (" this is certain, that the Christians in the army were as yet only a small minority ").