Vengeance and genocide: sanctified violence in the Scriptures and slasher film theology, part 1

This post begins a three-part series on how Christians might be able to appropriate biblical texts of violence and genocide redemptively. In posts to come, I will be reading the Canaanite genocide narratives through the lenses of three early films from Wes Craven: “Last House on the Left” (1972); “The Hills Have Eyes” (1977); and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984); and suggesting that the stories these movies tell about “righteous” communities who undertake total warfare against a threat can teach us something about how to understand the Canaanite genocide stories. Then I will discuss how God’s Word embodied in Jesus sits in judgment of those stories, and how that judgment allows us to own and use them well.

Whoever sheds human blood,
        by a human his blood will be shed. (God to Noah, just after the Flood, Genesis 9.6 CEB)

Put the sword back into its place. All those who use the sword will die by the sword. (Jesus to a disciple who has used violence to defend him, Matthew 26.52 CEB)

Early in the history of the world, while the planet was still quite young, humanity–indeed, the whole earth–was held in a vise grip of violence. In Genesis 6.6, we are told that, The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and he was heartbroken. What was it that caused this great regret in God? He confides in one human, Noah: it was because they have filled the earth with violence (Gen. 6.13).  God’s response to humans killing each other off was to preemptively kill most of them off himself, along with most other living things. I will wipe off of the land the human race that I’ve created, says God. From human beings to livestock to the crawling things to the birds in the skies, because I regret I ever made them (Gen. 6.7). God’s solution was to send a great deluge, a violent baptism, to purge the earth not only of sin, but sinners. Only Noah, his household, and the animals they brought aboard a floating breadbox were spared the LORD’s rage. A rage that can only be borne of lonely heartache. From just expectations continually unmet. From happy dreams deferred for generations, and replaced with hellish nightmares.

From a very early age, I found God’s response troubling and terrifying. God was understandably infuriated and aggrieved by the violence that threatens to destroy his world. But it also seemed to me problematic that God’s “solution” entailed unleashing a torrent of divine super-violence. Engaging in genocide to put an end to violence has always made about as much sense to me as throwing an orgy to wipe the out clap.

On the other hand, as much as I might be tempted to judge God, I must admit that I am not so sure I could have come up with anything better. Was the Flood all that much different than my deleting a paragraph with which I am unsatisfied; jotting down the points I liked; and starting it over again? I do this all the time.

But we do know this: God learned something from the experience. I have a good friend with whom I have engaged in a series of near-disastrous misadventures. And whenever we emerge from such an event, one of us will always say to the other: “Let’s not do this again.” This is essentially what God says to Noah and the generations to come after the Flood: I will set up my covenant with you so that never again will all life be cut off by floodwaters, God says. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth (Gen. 9.11). In other words, Let’s not do this again. And yet, God wants humans to know that he will not tolerate us killing each other. This is the grossest violation, an utter dereliction of the duties we were created to perform. Whoever sheds human blood, by a human his blood will be shed; for in the divine image God made human beings (Gen. 9.6).

So after the Flood, God tells Noah (and those who will come after him) that, Whoever sheds human blood, by a human his blood will be shed. What is interesting here is that thousands of years later, when God’s Son lived among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son told one of his disciples something that sounds eerily similar: All those who use the sword will die by the sword (Matt. 26.52). Say the two sayings one right after the other. Jesus is saying the same thing to his disciple (some Gospels report that it was resident redneck disciple, Peter) that God said to Noah. Now the really crucial thing to recall is that if there ever was a time when drawing a sword to shed human blood would seem justified, it would have been at that moment. Peter was trying to defend the Son of God against a crowd of military thugs dispatched by imperial bureaucrats who had been tipped off the Jesus’ whereabouts by a snitch named Judas. Always known more for his spunk than his precision, Peter was probably trying to behead some infidel, but only succeeded in slicing off the ear of a hapless chaplain’s assistant. Jesus told Peter to cut it out. All those who use the sword will die by the sword, he said.

I say all that to say this: one of the things it means to be anywhere in the vicinity of orthodox Christianity is to believe that Jesus is God’s first and final Word. That’s the gist of classic Christological go-to passages like John 1.1-14 and Hebrews 1.1-3. This means that whatever we say about God is mediated and interpreted through the words and the life and the cross and resurrection of Jesus.[1] It also means that Jesus is about a bazillion times more qualified to interpret anything his Father ever said than are we. All that being said, Gen. 9.6 reads pretty darned prescriptive: if someone kills someone, you go kill them. But that’s not how Jesus interpreted it. Jesus took it less like a prescription and more like . . . well, something that’s somewhere between a proverb and a prophecy. If you use violence to solve your problems, you become an occasion for violence. If you try to secure your life by means of violence, your life will end violently.

Jesus has elevated the word, Whoever sheds human blood, by a human his blood will be shed, from a matter of case law to a statement about the way the universe works.

Okay, that’s 1,000+ words, and it’s only prologue. So far we have God regretting that he ever made humans because they had grown so violent, and then committing an act of uber-genocide, the Flood, to purge the earth of violence. But the Flood doesn’t make God feel any better, so God swears never to do that again. Yet he does say that,  Whoever sheds human blood, by a human his blood will be shed. When Jesus shows up, he says something similar, but he seems to be speaking descriptively (this is what does, in fact, happen) rather than prescriptively (this is what ought to happen).

There’s a lot of tension in that account, isn’t there? And faithfulness demands that we own that tension, that we make ourselves at home in it. For one of the things it means to be a Christian is to inhabit the tensions that obtain in God’s revealing of himself to us. And that’s mostly what I want to talk about. That a people who are called to be aliens and strangers in the world might also find themselves in strange and uncomfortable places in the text that tells them who they are. And that we ought to learn to work with it.

One of the tensions that obtains for Christians is the peaceful witness of Jesus against the bloody backdrop of the Hebrew scriptures. In particularly sharp relief is Jesus–whose cross demonstrates a God who is willing to die rather than kill everyone else–set against the Canaanite genocide. These two accounts of what God is like seem to butt heads with each other, leaving the spiritually sensitive with a concussion. No wonder Christian history contains contradictory figures like the ancient heretic Marcion and the recent theonomist, Greg Bahnsen. Marcion taught that the God Jesus proclaimed as Father just couldn’t be this bloodthirsty monster of the Old Testament. By contrast, the late Greg Bahnsen–and the theonomy or “Christian Reconstruction” movement he popularized–urged Christians ditch the modern liberal democratic state in favor [2] of a government modeled after the commands of the Torah. The overwhelming majority of Christians rightly reject the claims of both Marcion and Bahnsen, but our attempts to resolve the tension between the God behind the Canaanite genocide and the God who speaks from the cross tend to lean toward one of them or the other.

The reason that texts like the account of the Canaanite genocide rightfully make Christians uneasy is that they challenge our assumptions about who God is. “The only good Canaanite is a dead Canaanite” as God’s posture towards a people in toto simply sounds discordant with the New Testament presentation of a God who loves his enemies enough to die for them (Rom. 5.6-11). At this point, some will want to step in and apologize for God. They might cite Deut. 9.4-5 as justification for the Canaanite slaughter:

It is . . .  because of these nations’ wickedness that the Lord is removing them before you. You aren’t entering and taking possession of their land because you are righteous or because your heart is especially virtuous; rather, it is because these nations are wicked—that’s why the Lord your God is removing them before you, and because he wishes to establish the promise he made to your ancestors: to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Those who want to soft-sell God at this point will highlight the particular wickedness of the Canaanites. They were just prodigiously wicked. Like a cancer that needed to be removed. They were incorrigibly rotten, down to a man, down to the women and children (even infants), and one would suppose even their pack animals. Because Moses commands the Israelites, you must not spare any living thing (Deut. 20.16). Those who are quick to justify the wholesale slaughter of entire tribes often even speak in terms of virtue; for instance, they propose that killing the Canaanite infants actually constitutes a form of mercy killing. Yet many of us strongly suspect that our brothers and friends who so blithely justify the slaughter even of Canaanite infants by framing it as a morally praiseworthy act are really just trying to let God off the hook. Furthermore, it is disingenuous to speak of the bludgeoning and hacking of Canaanite babies as a “mercy killing,” especially since the text says, You will destroy all the peoples that the Lord your God is handing over to you. Show them no pity (Deut. 7.16).

Frankly, I would suggest that those who are so quick to defend the Canaanite genocide are being intellectually dishonest. I don’t mean that they are intentionally lying, per se, but I do believe that they are not adequately wrestling with the ethical and social consequences that arise from being so quick to justify the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants. They do not seem to appreciate the soul-killing effect that such activity would have on those who actually undertook it. They should need to look no further than the damaged soldiers that have returned to the U.S. from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the past 40 years, suffering from PTSD and other severe mental and emotional conditions. Many of those who can so easily reconcile themselves to the Canaanite ban have also been vocally supportive of these military activities. I would suspect that there is more than a hint of correlation.

Now, aside from excusing the Canaanite ban on the grounds of “they were just following orders,” another popular tack has been to remind readers that the land conquest narratives originate not from bloodthirsty conquistadors, but from history’s perpetual losers. In other words, Israel actually had a very difficult time establishing themselves in the land, and they told these stories about the “good old days” to make themselves feel better. Richard Nelson typifies such an approach, writing:

The communities who wrote and read Joshua were constantly threatened by the loss of their land or dispossessed exiles hoping for its return. Attack from outside and foreign oppression repeatedly endangered Israel’s possession of the land . . . In other words, it was usually Israel who played the role of an indigenous people menaced by politically and technically superior foes. It was Israel whose culture and religion were endangered by hostile outsiders and alien groups with whom Israel shared the land . . . Retelling the stories of past heroes was one way of conceptualizing and strengthening Israel’s title to its homeland. (The Historical Books, Interpreting Biblical Texts [Nashville: Abingdon, 1992], 82)

But does this apology actually solve any of the tension? It is worth noting that very often, such stories of heroes of old, told to foster tribal solidarity, will also have the effect of cultivating a violent tribalism. The end result is very often what we like to refer to as “terrorism,” though I will be the first to admit that when those of us who live comfortably in the First World rail against terrorism emanating from developing nations, we are but whistling in the dark concerning the security of our privileged status. So I don’t wish to play a simple language game of equating terrorism “from below” with terrorism “from above.”

What I am searching for is a way to work with the whole Bible, to allow the church to own all of the Bible–even the unpleasant parts which are in deep tension with God’s revelation in Christ. The Canaanite ban is probably the most notorious nasty part. To figure out how to accept that account as a gift, we will need to find “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12.31 NRSV) to receive this text than a) using it to underwrite the idea that it is morally praiseworthy to annihilate those with whom we are in contention through some form of total warfare; or b) excusing it on the grounds that it was produced as self-affirmation for an oppressed people. I would suggest that however “respectful” of the text is the first option, and “sympathetic” to the context is the second, both fall far short of helping to form a people gathered by, around, and in the Prince of Peace.

What I wish to suggest in the posts that will follow is that texts like the Canaanite conquest narratives invite us to participate in “critical traditioning.” That is, a way of appropriating the biblical texts which, in the words of Ellen F. Davis, “preserves (in some form) our mistakes and atrocities as well as our insights and moral victories.” According to Davis, this way of receiving the tradition “preserves side by side the disagreements that are still unresolved in the present.” (“Critical Traditioning,” in The Art of Reading Scripture, ed. Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays, 169 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003]). Indeed, the ways in which I shall develop my thoughts concerning Christian use of the Canaanite ban stories are deeply indebted to Davis’ essay. One way in which this should already be apparent is the suggestion that biblical narratives like the Canaanite genocide might preserve “our mistakes and atrocities as well as our insights and moral victories.” For the stories about the Canaanite ban are not just stories about an ancient tradition of which we are not a part; rather, they are part of a tradition that we Christians inherit. Those stories are part of our story, whether we wish them to be or not. We already own them; it is up to us to use them well. I want to suggest that the art of critical traditioning is what allows us to function as scribes trained for the kingdom of heaven, able to bring from our canonical storehouse treasures new and old (Matt. 15.32)

In the posts that follow, this critical traditioning will be pursued in two parts. First, I will employ as a sort of hermeneutical lens three early films of horror movie director Wes Craven: “The Last House on the Left” (1972); “The Hills Have Eyes” (1977); and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984). These films are variations on the same plot line: a “righteous” family or community finds themselves threatened by some incorrigible evil. In order to conquer that evil, they must engage in total warfare against it. But even defeating the evil, the “righteous” community always comes out damaged by the experience. They are left to wonder what they have had to become to supplant the wickedness that threatened them, and there are long-term consequences for them. That tension, I believe, is encoded in the biblical texts themselves as they relate to issues raised by the Canaanite genocide. In the final post, I will suggest ways in which Jesus, as God’s final word, speaks in judgment of all of human history, even the Canaanite conquest stories that have formed his people. The judgement of God’s word in the person of Jesus allows the church to own these stories about ourselves in a different way than we would have been otherwise able.

_______________________________________________________

[1] I feel the need to so spell out what it means to say Jesus is the first and final word from God because of a point made by Morgan Guyton in a recent blog, Seven Obnoxious Jesus Jukes. The number 1 juke is, “Why do you make things so complicated? The answer is Jesus.” Guyton explains this juke by noting that, “‘Jesus’ is often a code word for a specific set of beliefs about Jesus which have little to nothing to do with the personality of Jesus displayed in the gospel.” To say that Jesus is God’s first and final Word might easily be misconstrued as such a thought-terminating juke. You simply cannot divorce what Jesus does from who Jesus is.

[2] I also take serious issue with modern liberal secular democracy, but would advocate that Christians simply need to divest ourselves of pretensions to power and concern ourselves with the task of being the church. Bahnsen and the Reconstructionists want to dismantle the current authority to gain authority for themselves.

Re-thinking the “qualifications” of elders: Thoughts on Titus 1.6-9 and elsewhere

We who inhabit the particular tribe of Christians known as the Campbellites are perhaps an overly pragmatic people. We tend to interpret Scripture as a recipe or technical manual. We are very fond of lists, especially checklists, to which we give fancy-sounding names, such as:

• “The Marks of the True Church”

• “The Five Acts of Worship“

• “The Five-Finger Plan of Salvation“

And we come up with these lists in the name of a supremely practical dictum: “Let’s call Bible things by Bible names, and do Bible things in Bible ways.” I’m not saying this to make fun of my people or to suggest that we are lazy in our interpretation of the Bible or that we are stranger than any other tribe. Sufficient to each denomination is the oddness thereof is what I always say.

One of the “checklists” that determines how we in Churches of Christ go about the business of being ourselves is how we determine who gets to be an elder (or overseer/bishop/pastor/shepherd–we are sure we at least pay lip service to these other descriptions of the function of church leadership). We have found Titus 1.6-9 to be a handy checklist for sorting out who is “qualified” to be an elder and who is not. This passage reads:

if any man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having children that believe, who are not accused of riot or unruly. For the bishop must be blameless, as God’s steward; not self-willed, not soon angry, no brawler, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but given to hospitality, as lover of good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled; holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to convict the gainsayers. (KJV)

Of course, we may not be sure what all these words mean, so we basically abbreviate our “qualifications” even further, I suppose in a nod to modesty. In practice, what the qualifications amount to is:

1. The husband of one wife. This means that he has to be a dude, first. Beyond that, we tend to quibble over the meaning of “the husband of one wife.” Does this mean not divorced? Not divorced and remarried? Not polygamous? If his wife dies, he has to quit being an elder? If he was widowed and then remarried, does this “disqualify” him? But assuming that it is a dude and the particular church has a working definition of “husband of one wife,” they move on to the next checkmark.
2. Having children that believe, who are not accused of riot or unruly. In practice this typically means that all his young ‘uns are baptized and aren’t as bad heathens as the preacher’s kids. Unless of course you’re “installing” your preacher as an elder.
   
3. Not self-willed. This one seems to conflict too much with American boot-strapsism, so we sort of nod and chuckle and check this one off with our fingers crossed behind our backs, which is typically a source of grief and strife later on.
4. No brawler, no striker … a lover of good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled. We tend to lump these all together into one category. Assuming Joe Bob meets qualifications 1 and 2 and hasn’t been in a fistfight since at least the early 1980s, and he’s a pretty good old boy, we’ll go ahead and give him a pass here, too.
5. Not greedy of filthy lucre. But it helps if he is a successful businessman. 
6. Given to hospitality. Is he apt to throw a good barbecue? Does his wife serve a mean casserole? Hospitality so defined is generally treated as a plus rather than a necessity. Check.
   
7. Holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to convict the gainsayers. In practice this often means that he is capable of conducting a Bible class with Gospel Advocate Quarterlies.

One thing that always got my goat from the time I was a very young fellow was the nagging inclination that these “qualifications” ought to obtain in any Christian (except for the being a dude part, since women are Christians, too). But seriously–shouldn’t all Christians be faithful to their spouses? Shouldn’t Christian parents raise their brood in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Shouldn’t we all be self-controlled, not self-willed folk who get angry at the drop of a hat and get drunk and brawl? Shouldn’t we all be hospitable? Shouldn’t none of us be greedy for filthy lucre? Shouldn’t we all be able to articulate what we believe? It seemed to me that what we were really doing by using Titus 1.6-9 as a go-to checklist to determine which middle-aged guy was “qualified” to be an elder was advocating our own brand of counsels of perfection, which frankly went against the grain of everything I had been taught we were about. I am still inclined to believe that this is what we are doing in practice.

The more I got to reading Paul, the more it struck me that Paul was not in the least bit interested in sending out letters chock full of checklists for us to mark off to assure ourselves that we are doing church “right.” Paul’s letters are occasional–he is responding to flesh-and-blood problems involving real people at particular places in history. For more on this, read my recent post, “People are not topics: a problem in biblical interpretation.” This is as true for Titus as it is for, say, Galatians. In other words, if Paul is writing to Titus and he lists some positive traits elders in the church need to embody, it can only mean that the church where Titus was embedded had some elders among them who were lecherous and greedy, prone to drunkenness and fighting, not self-controlled, not hospitable, and forcing strange doctrines on the church. My hunch is proven right in v10 when Paul gives his rationale for the characteristics he names in vv6-9: For there are many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers. It was because some of the fellows functioning as elders in Crete were “unruly men, vain talkers, and deceivers,” that Paul called Titus to appoint their contrasts to serve in shepherding the flocks there.

My point is, there must be some qualities in those selected as elders that are prior to (in terms of both chronology–prior as before–and importance–e.g., priority) those named by Paul in Titus 1.6-9. For these, I would look to Jesus’ words to his disciples about leadership in the days when there was no such thing as a congregation with the specific function of elder in it:

An argument broke out among the disciples over which one of them should be regarded as the greatest. But Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles rule over their subjects, and those in authority over them are called ‘friends of the people.’ But that’s not the way it will be with you. Instead, the greatest among you must become like a person of lower status and the leader like a servant. So which one is greater, the one who is seated at the table or the one who serves at the table? Isn’t it the one who is seated at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22.24-27 CEB)

Someone qualified to be an elder is the sort of person who serves others. Someone who will learn from the wisdom of others. Someone who will pay rapt attention to the “least of these” (Matt. 25.40). Someone who is concerned about the dignity of “the parts of the body that people think are the weakest,” and who ascribe the most honor to the parts of the body often dismissed as least honorable (1 Cor. 12.22-23). In other words, if an elder prospect ain’t the kind of person you could imagine holding a hardened criminal in his arms as the guy weeps like the wounded man-child he is mourning for his sins and the wreckage of his life; if changing his decrepit father’s diaper is a job he feels best left up to “professionals”; if you suspect he might be prone to breaking “bent reeds” and snuffing out “smoldering wicks” (i.e., being harsh with the weak and dismissive of the aggrieved), he ain’t elder material. I don’t give a flying flip about Titus 1.6-9 then; if the elder prospect doesn’t embody Luke 22.24-27, for Christ’s sake and the sake of his sheep, I implore you put that fellow to work cleaning the bathrooms and working with the nursing home ministry or the AIDS hospice until God makes a servant out of him.

Jesus makes the point in these verses that, The kings of the Gentiles rule over their subjects, and those in authority over them are called ‘friends of the people.’ But that’s not the way it will be with you. This means that leadership in the church must display a striking contrast to what leadership means in the world. Too often we select men as elders because they have been successful “leaders” in business, politics, or the military. I would suggest that this is a fatal flaw in our reasoning. We assume that if a man knows how to run a business or a platoon or pacify the city council, he must possess the skills necessary to lead the church. Not so, says Jesus. Those who know how to lead according to the standards of the world may in fact be least qualified to lead in the church. I’d like to suggest that we start looking for elders among the janitors, bricklayers, nurses, teachers, plumbers, firefighters, and veterinarians among us rather than the CEOs, managers, and administrators. Leading in a bureaucracy does necessarily not equip one to lead in a church.

One more thing. I have noticed a promising trend in a lot of Churches of Christ in deemphasizing the elder/overseer language (precisely because such language can be bent in such a hierarchical and bureaucratic manner foreign to the intention of the biblical authors) in order to reemphasize the pastoral function of church leaders that we see in passages like 1 Pet. 5.2: Like shepherds, tend the flock of God among you. Watch over it. Don’t shepherd because you must, but do it voluntarily for God. Don’t shepherd greedily, but do it eagerly. While I find this shift helpful, because language shapes perceptions, simply using a different word to describe the same reality accomplishes nothing but the devaluation of a friendly metaphor. Look, if you constantly have to remind your “flock” that you are a shepherd or an elder, there’s a problem. There’s a leadership crisis and I’d suspect it’s not all their fault. What was it Jesus said about shepherding?

The one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep … He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. Whenever he has gathered all of his sheep, he goes before them and they follow him, because they know his voice. They won’t follow a stranger but will run away because they don’t know the stranger’s voice. (John 10.2, 3b-5 CEB)

To you who constantly find yourselves reminding your flock that you, after all, are their shepherd, I have this to say: Your sheep may not be rebellious or stupid. They may simply recognize a voice that sounds like Jesus’, and your voice is not it. If your flock is running like the dickens to get away from you, it may be because they saw you climb over the wall instead of being let in through the gate.

People are not topics: a problem in biblical interpretation

In an article from several years back, Cynthia Briggs Kitteredge paid a thoughtful compliment to feminist interpreters of Scripture: “They understand women as historical agents who contributed to the formation of early communities of Christ-believers, rather than as ‘topics’ addressed by biblical writers.” [1]

Embedded in this compliment is a challenge to how, at least in my experience, we generally interpret the Bible. We tend to abstract “topics” from what were concrete struggles between flesh-and-blood people, and interpret where a certain author may or may not have “landed” on a specific “topic” from his or her writing.

My concern is that we go to Scripture looking for guidance on “topics,” be it the role of women in the assembly, household structures, the role of elders in the church, or even the big scary bugaboos of our day like gay marriage. We want to draw a line between the “topic” addressed in the Bible and the analogous “topic” that confronts us now. The danger is, we cease to view other people as people, and view them as a “topic,” which gives us a certain detachment. We then feel justified in making lofty pronouncements on the basis of “for the Bible tells me so,” without pausing to consider the human factor in it all. I don’t know that this is a positive development for the witness of the church. For one thing, it’s a lot easier to dismiss a topic than it is a person. You don’t worry as much about “as much as depends on you, live at peace with all topics.” Have you ever tried to “love your topic as yourself”? Furthermore, you can’t witness to topics: you witness to people. And people are not topics.

How might our use of Scripture change if we focused on people rather than “topics”? How might such an interpretive strategy help us relate the Bible to people caught up in flesh-and-blood struggles? This line of thinking may be especially helpful for how we use the epistles, because they were not addressed to topics, but to people struggling to be faithful.

I have a few suggestions off the top of my head, all from Pauline letters. You could probably fill in others:

1) The premise of Romans. Since the Reformation, Christian interpreters of Scripture have been wont to read Romans as a treatise on the “topic” of law vs. gospel or faith vs. works. Unfortunately, we have also tended to read Luther’s antisemitism onto Paul, to the point where we really read Romans as a letter from Paul attacking Judaism. What if, instead, we read Romans as Paul’s letter to Jewish and Gentile Christians tempted to divide along cultural, liturgical, and even ethical lines? What if we read Romans as Paul’s word to these deeply divided congregations for healing and reconciliation, the apostle at pains to keep fellowship among believers he knows by name and dearly loves?

2) Romans 13. Many are the treatments of this passage that assume Romans 13 constitutes a treatise on the “topic” of Church and State. How might our use of this passage be improved if we saw it instead as addressed to specific Christians in the heart of the Empire who might have been tempted to revolt–either a tax revolt or armed insurrection? How might our reading be improved if we remembered that these were people Paul had just told to bless their enemies, and to repay evil with good by feeding a hungry enemy and watering a thirsty one (Rom. 12.14-21)?

3) The Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11.17-34. Is Paul addressing the “topic” of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor. 11? This one is tricky, because much of 1 Corinthians is comprised of Paul responding to questions the Corinthians have asked him. On the other hand, it seems that this is an issue Paul broaches on his own, and notice that he does it on personal terms, calling out the wealthy Corinthian “patrons” for pigging out and leaving poorer “client” brothers and sisters hungry. Is this really a passage about the “topic” of the Lord’s Supper? Or is it, in fact, one facet of an overarching pattern of mistreatment of some Corinthian Christians by others? Do we not hear the plight of the marginalized brothers and sisters embedded in what Paul has to say here? How might our use of 1 Cor. 11.17-34 change if we “took it personal”? Because the excluded brethren sure did, and so did Paul.

I suspect that if we read our Bibles with an eye seeing those they addressed as “agents who contributed to the formation of early communities of Christ-believers, rather than as ‘topics’ addressed by biblical writers,” it will go a long way in promoting healthy fellowship and conflict resolution within the church, and perhaps even foster more goodwill in our conversations with those without the church.

One interpretation of Rembrandt’s enigmatic painting, “Two Old Men Disputing,” is that the old men in question are the apostles Paul and Peter. How might learning to read the Bible as addressed to “people” rather than “topics” aid the church in our use of Scripture for practical moral reasoning?

[1] Cynthia Briggs Kitteridge, “Corinthian Women Prophets and Paul’s Argumentation in 1 Corinthians.” In Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpetation, Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl, ed. Richard A. Horsley (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2000), 104.

Matthew 7.6: a (brief) history of interpretation

In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), Jesus turns immediately from his teaching on judging (7:1-5) to offer a brief proverb: “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you” (Matt. 7:6).[1] It is not immediately clear what this proverb signifies, or how it connects with the surrounding context.

There are essentially two ways to approach this verse. Some, for various reasons, choose to treat it as a free-standing logion, and thus interpret it without regard to surrounding context.[2] Others wish to demonstrate a close connection between Matt. 7:6 and its surrounding context.[3] The reading strategy chosen by an interpreter, in terms of if or how the passage fits into the surrounding material, greatly impacts how it is interpreted. Therefore, in this survey of interpretations of Matt. 7:6 various proposals will be grouped according to how the interpreter chose to treat the passage in relation to its surrounding material.

The earliest documented interpretations of Matt. 7:6 are best described as proof-texts, and as such, interpret the verse as a free-standing logion. Matt. 7:6 was taken by some to mean that the unbaptized should be forbidden from sharing in the Lord’s Supper.[4] It was also used to inveigh against the frivolous conduct of heretics, who allowed the uninitiated to participate fully in the worship assembly, permitted women to teach, and chose unqualified men as elders.[5] Elsewhere, Matt. 7:6 is taken as a warning about apostasy, the dogs and swine representing those who turn their backs on the gospel and scorn its messengers.[6] The common conceptual thread running through these various options is the idea that what is holy—the Eucharist, or the preaching of the gospel—should be reserved for holy people.

John Calvin’s interpretation of Matt. 7:6 was based upon a similar line of reasoning to the ones noted above, namely that some degree of discrimination is in order when sharing sacred mysteries. He asserted that the holy item and the pearls represented the preaching of the gospel, and the dogs and pigs are “those who, by certain proofs, have displayed a determined contempt for God.”[7] There is nothing overly profound in Calvin’s interpretation itself. What is more interesting is that he arrived at it based on a sort of prototypical source or redactional critical method, for he begins his comments by explaining to his readers that the Sermon on the Mount is not a monolithic piece. He then goes on to state that Matt. 7:6 “does not attach to the last discourse, but is quite separate from it,” though he produces no evidence for this contention.[8]

T. W. Manson posited two different interpretations of Matt. 7:6. On one occasion, Manson adopted a rather psychoanalytical reading of the verse, offering that it speaks of a reticence to “lightly speak of the things that most profoundly move us.”[9] If this stance is adopted, then Matt. 7:6 warns against a level of self-disclosure inappropriate for a given situation. However, when Manson proposed to delve into the provenience of the verse in another setting, he concluded that it was constructed by an exclusivist sect of Jewish Christians as a polemic against the Gentile mission.[10]

Matthew Black thought he discerned an Aramaic back-reading that would explain Matt. 7:6. “What is holy” (tò hágion), he contended, was possibly a mistranslation of qĕdāšāʾ—a golden ring—as quddĕšāʾ, or, “holy.” Hence, he proposed that the original words of Jesus were something along the lines of: “Give not a (precious) ring to dogs, and cast not your pearls before swine.”[11] The “precious ring” of Matt. 7:6 would then function similarly to the device of the “gold ring in a swine’s snout” of Prov. 11:22.[12] Black further argued that since the rabbis often referred to the law as a “gold ring,” and individual statutes as its “pearls,” tò hágion may not have been a mistranslation after all, but an explanatory gloss.[13] Black, however, fails to develop the idea any further; how one may use this reconstruction to aid in interpretation is left to conjecture.[14]

Another treatment of Matt. 7:6 as a free-standing logion comes from the redaction critic Robert Gundry. Gundry argues that Matthew himself composed the saying, and that it “warns against easy conditions of entrance into the church,” as such a scenario would allow false disciples into community, who may turn against their brethren in times of persecution (Matt. 24:10).[15] The imagery of dogs in Matt. 7:6 comes perhaps from Ps. 22:16, where just such a scenario is pictured.[16] Thus, for Gundry, Matt. 7:6 is a warning to the disciples “not to allow into fellowship those who are recognizably undiscipled.”[17]

A final option for treating Matt. 7:6 as an independent logion is simply not to interpret it at all. This is the approach taken by Ulrich Luz. Luz has isolated the verse from its surrounding context, stating that both its origin and its meaning in the Matthean context are enigmatic.[18] He then offers a concise history of interpretations, but refuses to come down on any of them, leaving the reader to decide which one seems most plausible, or perhaps join him in a display of deliberate agnosticism concerning the meaning of Matt. 7:6.[19]

Several more recent studies have paid closer attention to how Matt. 7:6 functions within the broader structural scheme of Matt. 7:1-12. Matt. 7:6 has recently been treated at some length in a discussion between Dale Allison and Glen Stassen, each of whom proposes a triadic structure for the Sermon on the Mount.[20] Allison sees two corresponding triadic units in Matt. 6:19-7:12, and those are 6:19-24 and 7:1-6. The exact correspondence Allison suggests is as follows:

6:19-21: Prohibition     7:1-2: Prohibition

6:22-23: Eye and sight   7:3-5: Eye and sight

6:24: Incompatibles      7:6: Incompatibles

Allison further notes the linguistic similarities between Matt. 6.19 and 7:1 (both begin mē + second plural present imperative), and the play on the terms “the/your eye” in 6:22-23 and 7:3-5.[21] By this construal of the structure of Matt. 6:19-7:12, Allison concludes that 7:6 goes with 7:1‑5, because like its counterpart in 6:24 (God and mammon), it speaks of incongruity (holy things and dogs). It is also followed in 7:7-11 by an argument a minori ad maius concerning the Father’s concern, a feature also observed in 6:25-34.[22] What this means for Allison is that, just as those who suffer anxiety about physical needs in Matt. 6:24-35 trust God’s generosity, those who are told not to judge (7:1-5), but must still “discern and act on the difference between the unclean and the holy (7:6)” can depend on God to give them wisdom for this task (7:7-11).[23]

While Allison’s triadic proposal for the structure of the Sermon on the Mount is based on parallel themes and echoed phrases between units,[24] Glen Stassen’s proposed triadic structure is based on common linguistic features found throughout Matt. 5:21-7:12.[25] He defines the identifying characteristics of each triad as follows: (1) the first portion of each triad addresses a topic drawn from traditional Jewish piety. Its main verb is typically a future indicative or a subjunctive. (2) The second portion of the triad will present a vicious cycle, with an attending judgment. Its purpose is to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between behaviors and outcomes. Its main verb is typically a participle, an infinitive, a subjunctive, or an indicative. This section begins with de, oun, dia touto, mepotē, mē, or ouk, and may be modified with lego humin (“But I say to you”). (3) The final portion of the triad is an initiative for constructive behavior in place of the destructive behavior diagnosed in the previous section. Its main verb will be an imperative, and it often begins with de.[26]

When applied to Matt. 5:21-7:12, Stassen’s triadic structure leaves the reader with a series of self-contained literary units, neatly cordoned off from one another. On this model, Matt. 7:1-5 is a triad about judging, while 7:6‑12 is a triad about where believers should place their trust.[27] For Stassen, linking Matt. 7:6 with 7:1-5 is problematic because those who have just been told to renounce judging others would thereby be expected to judge who may be classified as “dogs” and “pigs.”[28] If, however, Matt. 7:6 begins a new triad, culminating in 7:12, casting sacred and valuable items before unclean animals may be seen as a presentation of traditional piety in a proverbial format. That the unclean animals would trample the items and maul the giver is the vicious cycle. Then, Matt. 7:7-11 is a detailed presentation of an initiative for change. Stassen reads it thus, and concludes that “dogs” and “pigs” are shorthand for Gentile culture and power structures.[29] Therefore, Matt. 7:6 is for Stassen a proverb about not giving loyalty and allegiance to the dominant culture of the day. According to this construal, the meaning of our passage is that if believers allow their ethics to be shaped by the force of culture that same force will turn on them.[30]

Finally, Thomas J. Bennett has offered yet another reading of Matt. 7:6, attaching its interpretation to 7:1‑5.[31] Bennett is troubled by interpretations, such as the one advocated by Allison above, wherein Matt. 7:6 functions as a qualifier for 7:1-5. The primary issue with reading the passage this way is that it undercuts the sort of ministry modeled by Jesus himself: if “dogs” and “pigs” stand for outsiders, sinners, or Gentiles, then Jesus, who ministered patiently to those very sorts of people, was not preaching what he practiced.[32]

Bennett sees a tidy linguistic parallel between the imperatives and consequences of Matt. 7:1 and 7:6, which may be illustrated as follows:

“Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine” (Matt. 7:6a)

= Do not judge (Matt. 7:1a)

“lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you” (Matt. 7:6b)

= lest you be judged (Matt. 7.1b).[33]

This linguistic parallel between Matt. 7:1 and 7:6, based upon a shared “do not . . . lest they/ you” formula, is strengthened when one considers Matt. 7:2, which explains the purpose of withholding judgment: “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get”. The reader is conditioned to expect retaliation in kind by 7:2. Matt. 7:6, likewise, portrays a scenario in which miscalculated judgment is followed by retaliation.[34] Hence, Bennett proposes to stress the ironic character of this proverb, so that “what is holy” and “pearls,” along with their counterparts, “dogs” and “swine” represent the subject’s own estimations of what he is giving, and to whom he is giving it. This interpretation makes Matt. 7:6 a picturesque recapitulation of 7:1-2, and removes the seeming contradiction between Matt. 7:1-5 and 7:6.[35]

However, the final three options presented here—those presented by Allison, Stassen, and Bennett—probably offer the most fruitful results for use by the church. Their mutual strong point is a close reading of Matt. 7:6 in relation to its surrounding material. Of the three, Bennett’s case is the strongest, primarily because it removes the apparent contradiction between Matt. 7:1-5 and Matt. 7:6. All of the other interpretations surveyed in this study result in a formal contradiction between these materials, because while Matt. 7:1-5 assumes that the reader is incompetent to judge, Matt. 7:6, if taken at face value, assumes that the reader is competent to decide who should be considered dogs and pigs. On the other hand, the linguistic and structural analyses offered by Allison and Stassen are compelling, though perhaps too formal. A promising avenue for further study would be to discuss how Matt. 7:6 may serve as janus material between 7:1-5 and 7:7-12.[36]

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[1] All biblical references in this paper are taken from the Revised Standard Version.

[2] So, e.g., Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, 418-19; Donald Hagner, Matthew 1-13, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 33a (Dallas: Word, 1993), 170-72.

[3] E.g., Dale C. Allison, Jr., “The Structure of the Sermon on the Mount,” Journal of Biblical Literature 106.3 (1987):434-39; Glen H. Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122.2 (2003):288-94.

[4] Didache 9.5.

[5] Tertullian On Prescription Against Heretics 41.

[6] Origen First Principles 3.1.17.

[7] John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke Volume 1, trans. A. W. Morrison, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s Commentaries (Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1972; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 227-28.

[8] Ibid., 227.

[9] T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 108.

[10] T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM, 1950), 174. Hans Dieter Betz offers a similar interpretation, on the basis of Matt. 15:21‑28 (cf. Mark 7:24-30), where the Canaanite woman is addressed as a dog and told that it is not proper to give food meant for children (i.e., Israel) to dogs (Gentiles). See his Sermon on the Mount, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 499-500.

[11] Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3^rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), 200.

[12] Ibid., 201.

[13] Ibid., 201.

[14] One may presume that this is yet another interpretation which would have Matt. 7:6, in its original setting, critiquing the Gentile mission.

[15] Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 122.

[16] Ibid., 122-23.

[17] Ibid., 122.

[18] Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, 418.

[19] Ibid., 419. Similar is Rudolf Bultmann’s judgment that Matt. 7:6 is a profane proverb treated as if it were a dominical saying. If it is determined that Jesus did not, in fact, say what is recorded in Matt. 7:6, there is no burden placed upon the church to interpret it, or even acknowledge it beyond the descriptive realm. However, Bultmann weakens his own case by admitting that there will always be a subjective element in determining which of the sayings of Jesus is authentic. See his History of the Synoptic Tradition, rev. ed., trans. John Marsh (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, n. d.), 102-03.

[20] Dale C. Allison, Jr., Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 173-216. This chapter is a revision of his previous article, “The Structure of the Sermon on the Mount,” 423-45; Glen H. Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount,” 267-308. Allison has updated his previous structural proposal, in part to address Stassen’s work.

[21] Allison, Studies in Matthew, 192-93.

[22] Ibid., 192.

[23] Ibid., 191.

[24] Ibid., 198-205.

[25] Glenn Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount,” 267-75.

[26] Ibid., 275.

[27] Ibid., 288-89.

[28] Ibid., 289.

[29] Ibid., 291-92. Here, Stassen is substantially dependent upon Ched Meyers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), 190-94.

[30] Ibid., 293-94.

[31] Thomas J. Bennett, “Matthew 7:6—A New Interpretation,” Westminster Theological Journal 49 (Fall 1987): 371-86.

[32] Ibid., 386.

[33] Ibid., 384-85.

[34] Ibid., 384.

[35] Ibid., 384-85.

[36] This final suggestion is unwittingly anticipated in the exchange between Allison and Stassen. Allison, Studies in Matthew, 192, offers that Matt. 7:7-11 parallels Matt. 6:25-34. Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount,” 286, places 6:24 with 6:25-34. It strikes this author that Matt. 6:24 functions as a janus between the material on storing up treasures (Matt. 6:19-23) and seeking the kingdom of God (6:25-34). Matt. 7:6 could fulfill a similar role in providing a thematic link between the material in 7:1-5 and 7:7-12.

“One Soul Cannot Serve Two Lords: God and Caesar”: An investigation of pacifism in the moral discourse of the early church

This is a paper I wrote for the class Early and Medieval Church  at Harding Grad in fall 2008. I presented it at a paper reading there in early 2009.

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Until recently, a broad consensus prevailed in the scholarly community concerning pacifism in the early church, often extending even to those scholars who were not pacifist. This consensus maintained that (1) Christian participation in military service was scant or nonexistent until the mid-to-late second century, (2) grew rapidly in the third century, until (3) the early Christian pacifism gave way to just war theory in the fourth and fifth centuries, after Constantine’s legitimization of Christianity. This consensus has been challenged by studies which claim that the evidence for the aforementioned scenario is scant at best, and that the older consensus needs to be revised. These recent challenges to the previous consensus invite a reappraisal of the early church data upon the matter, so that appropriate revisions may be made.

The Scandal of Pacifism in the Early Church

Church historian Roland Bainton presented an account of the morphing of attitudes concerning Christian participation in warfare that for many has become quite standard. Said he:

The three Christian positions with regard to war . . . matured in chronological sequence, moving from pacifism to the just war to the crusade. The age of persecution down to the time of Constantine was the age of pacifism to the degree that during this period no Christian author to our knowledge approved of Christian participation in battle.[1]

To this, in order to deliver a stronger rhetorical punch, Bainton added that it is best to trust the judgment of the early church upon the matter, “because the early church is frequently regarded as the best qualified to interpret the mind of the New Testament.”[2] Such an explanation of the peaceful church of the New Testament and apostolic times devolving into the Crusading mentality via a Constantinian infusion of political power in the fourth century A.D. is a story retold in many studies and histories which touch upon the subject, especially from those associated with a broad section of traditions dubbed “peace churches.”[3]

Regarding the pacifism of the early church, the vision offered by Bainton is essentially a concise articulation of the argument of peace churches since the early days of the Waldensians: “the apostles did not wield the sword; the Church’s preaching of crusade is condemned.”[4] The ecclesial legend observed by such peaceful traditions is one in which the church fell from its original purity in the wake of Constantine, and the loss of the pacifist outlook was but one symptom of this fall.[5] Though scholars such as Adolf von Harnack, James Moffat, and Umphrey Lee[6] had previously argued that a view such as the one expressed by Bainton was overly truncated and offered the illusion of more homogeneity on the subject than probably actually existed in the early church,[7] there still existed a broad consensus among scholars of formative Christianity concerning three essential matters:[8]

(1) When the matter of Christians serving in the military, or warfare in general, was directly addressed by Christian writers of the first three centuries, it was opposed on grounds essentially pacifist in scope (e.g., aversion to bloodshed).

(2) The end of the second century marked recognition of Christians serving in the military, with records of even more Christians serving in the third century.

(3) By the end of the fourth century, Christian just war theories were being formulated, most notably by Augustine.

That older broad consensus has been challenged by more recent investigations, however, with two studies standing out in particular as representatives of this challenge. The first is from John Helgeland, Robert J. Daly, and J. Patout Burns,[9] who argue that “Overly broad and uncritical pacifist assumptions often serve, ironically, to discredit pacifism and nonviolence and weaken the cause of peace.”[10] Eschewing pacifism as “a fully rounded religiophilosophical and political position,”[11] these authors instead opt to frame the NT passages from which the early church took its cues on this matter in terms of a call to love and nonviolence. This, they argue, is not precisely the same as anti-military service.[12] These authors also produce a broad set of evidences from the works of the Fathers and other early Christian documents to show that the witness of the early church on the matter of military service is, at best, ambiguous.[13] They conclude, ultimately, that the refusal of military service on the part of many Christians owed more to the idolatrous environment of the army than aversion to bloodshed.[14]

Perhaps more significant for our discussion is a 1984 article by James Childress exploring early Christian moral discourse on war up to and including Augustine.[15] Childress suggests that the exchange between Celsus and Origen (which will be explored later in this study), wherein Celsus faulted Christians for non-involvement in the protection of the Roman Empire’s interests, was an important factor in legitimizing Christian participation in warfare, as well as shaping Christian just-war theory. According to Childress, when Origen answered Celsus by saying that Christians did their share by praying for positive outcomes, he essentially opened the door for Christian participation in military service: “As Christianity spread and threats to the Pax Romana continued and increased, it was predictably harder to justify Christian participation only by prayer rather than through killing in conflict, especially under a Christian emperor.”[16]

Childress offers three motivating factors for the shift from the pacifism displayed by Christian writers of the second and third centuries of the church to the embrace of just war theory by the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries. First, the very love command that prompted the early Christians not to use violence against another (Matt. 7.11, 22.39; Mark 12.31, 33; Luke 10.27) also demanded that they seek to prevent or remove harm from others. Second, and related to the first, is the notion that people are liable for harm to others that they do not try to prevent. The third factor, already noted above in Celsus’ challenge to the Christians of his day, is the “generalization test”; that is, “If everyone did so [e.g., refused to fight], what would happen?”[17]

Although these factors nurtured a legitimization of Christian participation in warfare, certain tensions still existed for many between the realism that forced them to accept wars and the demands of non-violence found in Jesus’ teachings (e.g., Matt. 5.38-48). Childress argues that the Christian just war theory arose out of a need to ease those tensions, or as he puts it, “to reduce the scope or the weight of the radical demands.”[18]

These challenges to the older consensus invite us to return to the early Christian moral discourse concerning warfare. The key questions we will ask of the passages that follow are: (1) What is the scope of the argument (i.e., to what precisely is it referring, and how far does it go in establishing principles for Christian involvement or non-involvement in warfare?); and (2) What are the motivating factors behind the argument (i.e., scriptural or societal).

A Survey of Discourse Pertinent to Pacifism in the Early Church

The quotations below are ones most commonly cited in the discussion of moral discourse concerning warfare and pacifism in the early church.[19] I shall present the sources chronologically, in an effort to discern, if possible, whether there are major differences in approach or motivating factors as Christian thinking develops on the matter. The quotes from Justin Martyr and Athenagoras taken up below will be of a different order than those of Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen after them. This is because up until about 170 A.D., there is no record extant of Christians serving in the military.[20] Thus, it is only after 170 A.D. that Christian military service became a concrete issue.

Justin Martyr

[W]e who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons,—our swords into ploughshares and our spears into implements of tillage,—and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have through the Father Himself through Him who was crucified; and sitting each under his vine.[21]

This quote, from Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, is from the mid-second century A.D. This section of the Dialogue is a commentary of sorts on Mic. 4.1-7, which Justin had quoted in the previous section. His application of the text seems fairly straightforward in this context: Justin sees the events subsequent to Pentecost (cf. Acts 2) as a fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy. There is then, for Justin, a tacit presupposition that the embodiment of Micah 4.1-7 entails a posture of peacemaking. This passage in Justin’s Dialogue is the first time such an explicit connection was made between the church and the Micah passage, but this became something of a theme for later writers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen who also expanded the locus of application to its Isaiah parallel (Isa. 2.2-4) and analogues (4.2-6; 11.6-9).[22] To sum up, in this passage, Justin is not offering a condemnation of war (unless it be tacit); rather, he is offering a seminal biblical vision for a constructive peace ethic. The image of forging weapons into agricultural implements is an offer of an alternative reality.

Athenagoras

For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly, who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? . . . But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fœtus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it.[23]

Admittedly, this passage, taken from A Plea for the Christians, is a refutation of the rumor that Christians engaged in ritual killings,[24] and is not referring to warfare but to gladiatorial contests. Yet, it does provide evidence for an aversion to bloodshed in early Christians. Athenagoras presents a general attitude toward state-sanctioned violence that has “natural implications for the Christian attitude in time of war.”[25] Note Athenagoras’ logic in the abortion analogy as well: it does not do to prohibit killing a person in the womb if one will then justify doing so after that same person is born.[26]

Aside from Athenagoras’ rhetoric concerning Christian aversion to bloodshed, the Plea is significant because of the stance he takes in it. Athenagoras argued that the Christian community was “a distinct people with its own politeia, which deserves the same rights as other peoples.”[27] Such an understanding of the church is in line with a strand of NT teaching (Phil. 3.20). The quote from Athenagoras, understood in its broader context of pleading for tolerance for the Christian politeia, would indicate that one of the distinctive features (at least for Athenagoras) of that politeia is a renunciation of bloodshed.[28]

Tertullian

Tertullian, writing in the early part of the third century, is a central figure to the discussion of pacifism in the early church. He is at once one of the earliest Christian sources confirming a Christian presence in the Roman military and the first vocal critic we have on record of Christians serving in the in such a role. The challenge of reading Tertullian on the matter is attempting to reconcile these two facts.

Tertullian makes passing reference to Christian presence in the Roman army in his Apology. On one occasion, he directs his readers to “refer to the letters of M. Aurelius, most venerable of Emperors, in which he testifies that the great drought in Germany was broken by the prayers of Christians, who, as it chanced, were among his soldiers.”[29] Elsewhere, he says, “We sail ships, we as well as you, and along with you; we go to the wars, to the country, to market with you.”[30]

In the latter of these two references, Tertullian is going to great lengths to show that Christians are not useless, but are indeed well-adjusted, integrated members of society. “[W]e are not Brahmans, naked savages of India, forest-dwellers, exiles from life,”[31] he claims. The former reference to the so-called “Thundering Legion,” who in A.D. 173 prayed up a storm (literally) that filled the Roman water casks and sent enemy soldiers scurrying from the lightning, has also been marshaled into Tertullian’s rhetoric for such an apologetic purpose. It is worthy of note because the event is further elaborated upon by the church historian Eusebius[32] and the pagan Cassius Dio, although the latter attributed the occurrence not to Christian soldiers, but an Egyptian magician.[33]

These passing references by Tertullian to Christians in the Roman military do not, however, amount to his approval of the practice. Elsewhere in the Apology, Tertullian, whilst explaining that the Romans have no need to fear a Christian uprising, offers the following smart assessment:

For if we wished to play the part of open enemies, and not merely hidden avengers, should we lack the power that numbers and battalions give? . . . We are but of yesterday, and we have filled everything you have—cities, islands, forts, towns, exchanges, yes! and camps, tribes, decuries, palace, senate, forum. All we have left to you is the temples. [We can count your troops; the Christians of one province will be more in number.] For what war should we not have been fit and ready even if unequal in forces—we who are so glad to be butchered—were it not, of course, that in our doctrine we are given ampler liberty to be killed than to kill?[34]

To what aspect of Christian doctrine was Tertullian referring when he said, “we are given ampler liberty to be killed than to kill”? Two further readings from Tertullian should illuminate this inquiry. In his later writing On the Crown, while dealing with the matter of Christians in relation to imperial politics, Tertullian would say: “I think we must first inquire whether warfare is proper at all for Christians . . . Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword?”[35] Again, in his treatise On Idolatry, Tertullian says:

But now the question at issue is whether a believer may enlist or whether military men can be admitted to the faith, even the private soldier or every lower rank, for whom there is no necessity to sacrifice or to pass capital judgment. . . But how will he wage war, nay, how will he even in peace do military service without the sword, which the Lord has taken away? For . . . every soldier of later times was ungirded by the Lord when He disarmed Peter.[36]

These two passages share a common inspiration in the account of Matt. 26.51-52. For Tertullian, this passage served a normative function for all believers, and that was the prohibition of doing violence to others. As military duty was implicated in violence, it too was prohibited.

What is even more interesting is that Tertullian’s thinking on the matter seems to have developed over time. As we have seen above, in his Apology, Tertullian mentions the fact of Christian soldiers, but also shares sentiments that betray his belief that Christians are not at liberty to take life. In On the Crown and On Idolatry, he spells out his reasons (on biblical grounds) for this belief.

An aversion to shedding blood, materially related to the example of Christ as seen above, was the primary reason for Tertullian’s rejection of military service for Christians. Yet there were many others: abandonment of the assembly of the saints, the pagan religion embedded in the military structure and ritual, and complicity with the very forces that persecute Christians.[37] And yet, even if these ostensibly non-pacifistic obstacles to military service were removed, there was still an overarching logic to Tertullian’s counsel against Christian participation in warfare, as seen in his On Idolatry: “One soul cannot serve two Lords: God and Caesar.”[38] Again, this is a biblically-motivated pronouncement (Matt. 6.24). For Tertullian, the all-encompassing claims of the military upon the life of the soldier would always be in tension with the all-encompassing claims of God upon the life of a disciple.

Hippolytus

A soldier of the civil authority must be taught not to kill men and to refuse to do so if he is commanded, and to refuse to take an oath; if he is unwilling to comply, he must be rejected. A military commander or civic magistrate that wears the purple must resign or be rejected. If a catechumen or a believer seeks to become a soldier, they must be rejected, for they have despised God.[39]

This passage from Hippolytus’ church order comes from a list of occupations forbidden for Christian converts. Also on this list are prostitutes, gladiators, charioteers, magicians, pagan priests, and surprisingly, artists and teachers.[40] As Ferguson notes, however, in those days, “curriculum for children involved teaching the basic texts of polytheism.”[41] The list does add some qualifications to the forbidden practices, however. Artists could continue their trade as long as they did not sculpt idols; teachers, if they could find no other employment, could continue as long as they did not teach the pagan curriculum.

These sorts of distinctions are drawn for soldiers, as well. A convert who was already a soldier could continue as long as they could do so without swearing the oath or shedding blood. Choosing to join the army after conversion, however, was grounds for expulsion from the church. This particular passage is important because it demonstrates, contra Helgeland, Daly, and Burns,[42] that an aversion to killing was just as much a part of the antipathy of many leaders of the early church toward military service as the idolatrous atmosphere.

Origen

In his mid-third century treatise Against Celsus, Origen took up the charges of an anti-Christian polemicist of the previous generation and sought to refute them. Near the end of this work, he picked up a quote from Celsus regarding the non-participation of Christians in the military. Celsus was quoted by Origen as saying:

For if all were to do the same as you, there would be nothing left to prevent his [the emperor] being left in utter solitude and desertion, and the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians; and then there would no longer remain among men any of the glory of your religion or of the true wisdom.[43]

To this, Origen smartly replied:

In these circumstances the king will not “be left in utter solitude and desertion,” neither will the “affairs of the world fall into the hands of the most impious and wild barbarians.” For if, in the words of Celsus, “they do as I do,” then it is evident that even the barbarians, when they yield obedience to the word of God, will become most obedient to the law, and most humane.[44]

Whether or not one finds Origen’s reply to Celsus quite naïve, perhaps even cheeky, the matter taken up by Origen does provide evidence for pacifism in the early church: Celsus knew that Christians did not, as a rule, join the army. This is important, because Tertullian, in his Apology, does mention Christians serving in the military a few years before Celsus would have written his challenge. That Tertullian brought up this point at all in his rhetoric defending Christians from the charge of sectarian aloofness suggests that it was not a normal occurrence in his day; certainly, Celsus was unaware of it.

Two other statements of Origen from Against Celsus are worthy of note before we move on to draw conclusions, and they are related. “Christians are benefactors of their country more than others,” he states. “For they train up citizens, and inculcate piety to the Supreme Being; and they promote those whose lives have been good and worthy to a divine and heavenly city.”[45] Also, he says, “[W]e recognize in each state the existence of another national organization, founded by the Word of God.”[46] These statements seem to fall in line with what we observed in the rhetoric of Athenagoras above: the church perceived as a politeia, with its own distinctive features. Origen thus sees the Christian refusal to wield military dominance as part of the character of that community, and thus it is materially related to the training of its citizens and nurturing of piety among them.

Conclusions

Though the works of Helegeland, Daly, and Burns and Childress have challenged the former pacifist consensus, they have not fully supplanted it. Rather, their challenges have helped refine the discussion of pacifism in the early church. Helgeland, Daly, and Burns have admonished scholars that pacifism was not a monolithic assumption among early Christians. Childress informs that the Christian just war theory which emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries stands in continuity with a strand of early Christian thinking, and that is the call to neighbor-love.

With those caveats in mind, I wish to propose some refinements to the older consensus, which read as follows.

(1) We possess no clear evidence for or against the presence of Christians in the military up until about 170-180 A.D.

(2) The evidence we do possess from that time period (the first 150 years or so of the church) indicates that (a) early Christians displayed a marked aversion to capital punishment and violence in general (Athenagoras), while (b) they perceived their function as a community to act as peacemakers (Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Origen).

(3) When Christian presence in the military was first acknowledged by a Christian author, that same author also heavily criticized the practice (Tertullian).

(4) At least some Christian leaders excluded soldiers from fellowship on account of their profession (Hippolytus).

(5) Early Christian leaders discouraged participation in the military for a variety of reasons—not only bloodshed, but constant exposure to pagan religious trappings, complicity with persecutors of the church, and the threat of divided loyalties (Tertullian).

(6) Christians engaging in military service was not perceived as the norm by outsiders (Celsus).

Another caveat is in order as this study concludes, and this has to do with the fact that pacifism cannot be described as a monolithic assumption in the early church, because some Christians were soldiers, at least from about A.D. 170. This is true, but it should also be remembered that there is often a gap between popular and official religion, and that congregants are often less conservative than their leaders. Hence, that most of the voices of Christian leaders preserved for us from the first three centuries of the church’s existence betray overwhelmingly pacific tendencies should perhaps be granted more weight, in terms of what we view as normative for practice.

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Notes

[1] Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace (New York: Abingdon, 1960), 66.

[2] Ibid.

[3] These would include Anabaptists, Quakers, various brands of liberal Protestants, and up until just before World War II, many representatives from the Restoration Movement. A broad survey of the literature is as follows: C. J. Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War: A Contribution to the History of Christian Ethics (London: Headley Bros., 1919); T. S. K. Scott-Craig, Christian Attitudes to War and Peace: A Study of the Four Main Types (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938); Gerrit Jan Heering, The Fall of Christianity: a study of Christianity, the state, and war (New York: Fellowship Publications, 1943); Jean‑Michel Hornus, It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight: Early Christian Attitudes Toward War, Violence, and the State, rev. ed., trans. Alan Kreider and Oliver Coburn (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1980); Robert J. Daly, “The New Testament and the Early Church,” in Non-Violence: Central to Christian Spirituality, Toronto Studies in Theology 8, ed. Joseph T. Culliton (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1982), 34-62; Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak: Faith and Life in the First Three Centuries, 3rd ed. (Abilene: ACU Press, 1999), 215-24; Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism after Christendom: the theory and practice of Christian witness (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007). It is worth noting that the Ecclesiastical History Society’s 1982 symposium discussions on the matter of the church and war begin coverage with Augustine; see R. A. Markus, “Saint Augustine’s Views on the ‘Just War,’” in The Church and War, Studies in Church History 20, ed. W. J. Sheils (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 1-14.

[4] Peter Biller, “Medieval Waldensian Abhorrance of Killing Pre-c1400,” in The Church and War, 134.

[5] Bainton asserts that, “The accession of Constantine terminated the pacifist period in church history.” He adds that it is astounding that “neither the emperor nor the Church felt an impropriety in placing the cross upon the military labarum.” Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, 85, 86.

[6] Adolf von Harnack, Militia Christi: the Christian Religion and the Military in the first three centuries, trans. David McInnes Gracie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1905; reprint, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981); James Moffatt, “War,” in Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1918), 2:646-73; Umphrey Lee, The Historic Church and Modern Pacifism (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1943), 41-68.

[7] In his defense, let it be noted that Bainton admits: “The position of the Church was not absolutist, however. There were some Christians in the army and they were not on that account excluded from communion.” In Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, 66.

[8] David G. Hunter, “A Decade of Research on Early Christians and Military Service,” Religious Studies Review 18 (April 1992): 87.

[9] John Helgeland, Robert J. Daly, and J. Patout Burns, Christians and the Military: The Early Experience (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).

[10] Ibid. 1.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid. 10-16.

[13] Ibid. 16-47.

[14] Ibid. 48-51.

[15] James F. Childress, “Moral discourse about war in the early church,” Journal of Religious Ethics 12 (Spring 1984): 2‑18.

[16] Ibid. 11.

[17] Ibid. 4-8.

[18] James F. Childress, “Moral discourse about war,” 15.

[19] The particular citations observed in this study are suggested in Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 215-17. However, these have long been fixtures in the discussion of the matter. See Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, 66-84; J. Daryl Charles, Between Pacifism and Jihad: Just War and the Christian Tradition (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005), 34‑37; Jean-Michel Hornus, It is Not Lawful for Me to Fight, 29, 62-63, 85-87, 109, 124, 214; Helegeland, Daly, and Burns, Christians and the Military, 21-30, 35-44; C. J. Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, 51-52, 58-64, 75-75, 78-81. It should be noted such a proof-text methodology carries as much danger of misinterpretation with early Christian sources as it does in biblical interpretation. So Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, viii: “The gathering of many texts with limited comments may leave a false impression of homogeneity. Sometimes even when texts seem to agree, the different contexts from which they come may show a diversity in doctrinal viewpoint.”

[20] So C. J. Cadoux, “Apart from Cornelius and the one or two soldiers who may have been baptized with him by Peter at Caesarea (? 40 A.D.) and the gaoler baptized by Paul at Philippi (circ A.D. 49), we have no direct or reliable evidence for the existence of a single Christian soldier until shortly after 170 A. D.” In The Early Christian Attitude to War, 97; cf. 96-119. Also, Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, 67-68, who states, “From the end of the New Testament period to the decade A.D. 170-80, there is no evidence whatever of Christians in the army. The question of military service obviously was not at that time controverted. The reason may have been that participation was assumed or that abstention was taken for granted. The latter is more probable.” Cf. Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 217-18. Yet, this lack of evidence should also merit caution: “If this thesis is accepted, it obviously requires one to temper statements about the witness of the early church. The fact is that we have almost no solid information about how the followers of Christ for the first 150 years viewed military service in the Roman army.” James J. Megivern, “Early Christianity and Military Service,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 12 (Fall 1985): 178.

[21] Justin Martyr, Dialogue 110. Note that Helegeland, Daly, and Burns do not offer a treatment of Justin’s words here in their Christians and the Military. This is perhaps a function of those authors’ distaste for typological readings (see their discussion of the matter regarding Origen’s hermeneutics on pp. 41-42). However, if the task is to assess the incidence of pacifism in the early church—and this is a purely descriptive task—then typological hermeneutics cannot be dismissed, as they were employed by early Christians.

[22] For a discussion, see especially C. J. Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude To War, 60-66; also, Jean-Michel Hornus, It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight, 85-88.

[23] Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, 35.

[24] Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 217.

[25] Hornus, It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight, 109; cf. Cadoux, Early Christian Attitude to War, 104, 213.

[26] Athenagoras does extend the analogy thus: “and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it.”

[27] Frances Young, “Greek Apologists of the Second Century,” in Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 81-104.

[28] And indeed, violence in general, even in self-defense. For previously, in A Plea for the Christians, Athenagoras had described Christians as those “to whom it even is not lawful, when they are struck, not to offer themselves for more blows, nor when defamed, not to bless: for it is not enough to be just (and justice is to return like for like), but it is incumbent upon us to be good and patient of evil.” Athenagoras’ moral reasoning here is thus based upon a negative form of Matt. 5.38-41; Luke 6.27-29.

[29] Tertullian, Apology 5.6.

[30] Ibid. 42.3

[31] Ibid. 42.1.

[32] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.5. Eusebius seems to have been under the impression that the (a) entire legion was made up of Christians, and (b) they were called the “Thundering Legion” only after this event took place. Said he, “[T]hose soldiers that belonged to the Melitine legion, as it was called, by a faith which has continued from that time to this, bending their knees upon the earth whilst drawn up in battle array against the enemy . . . entered into prayer before God.” Following the miraculous storm, Eusebius (relying on Apolinarius), states that the legion “received an appellation appropriate to the event, from the emperor, being called the fulminea, or thundering legion.” Those two elements are legendary, especially since the legion had been called by that appellation well before the event described by Apolinarius, Tertullian, and Eusebius. See Helgeland, Daly, and Burns, Christians in the Military, 32-34; Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 223 n.8.

[33] For a discussion, see Helegeland, Daly, and Burns, Christians and the Military, 31-34, though they dismiss Dio’s version; Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, 229-31; Bainton, Christian Attitudes to War and Peace, 68; see also Hunter, “Decade of Research,” 88, who says that Tertullian’s mention of the Thundering Legion reads “more like rhetorical arguments advanced for apologetic purposes than as ethical guidelines for Christians.”

[34] Tertullian, Apology 37.4-5.

[35] Tertullian, De Corona 11.

[36] Tertullian, De Idololatria 19.1, 3.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Tertullian, De Idololatria 19.2.

[39] Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 19.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 220.

[42] Helegeland, Daly, and Burns, Christians and the Military, 48-55.

[43] Origen, Against Celsus 8.68.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid. 8.74.

[46] Ibid. 8.75.