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 become a fairly regular element in Christian belief. With the Jews, who had a land and a Holy City of their 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 harshness, 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 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.” 1 Nevertheless, this belief in a warrior-Christ who would conquer his enemies, played a certain part in preventing 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 separated 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 concerning 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 Christiarts 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 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 guility. 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. 5 . . . 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 themselves 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 Christ” 1 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 conditional 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 allusions 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 Jerusalem, 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 themselves from God in return for their treatment of Christ. 4 Minucius Felix makes Octavius say to his pagan interlocutor 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 forsaken, and that they were not, as thou impiously sayest, captured with their God, but were given up by God as deserters from (His) discipline.” 1 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 something 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 symbols 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) 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 ( ). And—though it seems a strange thing to say ( )—(when God) handed them over to the(ir) enemies, (He was) sparing them, for He saw ( ) 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 (consequently) no longer able to bear those who had dared (to commit) such a crime against Jesus.” 2 It is interesting to notice that Origenes says elsewhere that we must guard ag ainst 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. 3 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 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) acting violently.” 1 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 desolation 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 Didaskalia 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 Romans 4 ; 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 thrist; that then they should feed on the bodies of their own (people) and consume one another; lastly that they should come (as) captives into the enemies’ hands and 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), everything 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.” 1 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 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 destruction 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

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 exemplification 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 ( ) of those who serve Him, and quotes the Isaianic threat: “If ye are unwilling and will not hear me, the sword shall devour you.” 2 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. 3 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 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.” 5 Tertullianus assumes the idea of war being a chastisement sent by the Creator as a doctrine common to himself and the Markionites, and presses in opposition to them the saying that Christ had come to send a sword 1 : 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 warth 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 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 displayed 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, 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, apocalyptlc,” 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.” 1

The Functions of the State .—All the connections, hitherto studied, in which war received some sort of recognition from the early Christians, lay within ideal realms of thought remote from the concrete 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 chastisement 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. Thought the severity of persecution (among other causes) led some to take up a position of uncompromising 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 prevention 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 A postle 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 good work, but to evil. Dost thou wish not to be afraid of the magistracy ( ) ? 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 ( ) upon him who does evil. . . . They are God’s officers, subsisting for this very (purpose).” 1 The view of Peter is substantially similar, though he calls the state a human, not a divine, institution. “Be submissive to every human institution ( ) 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 fascinating 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 representative writers of our period, viz. Clemens of Rome, the Fourth Gospel, 4 Polukarpos, Athenagoras, the apocryphal Acts of John, Theophilos, the Acts of Apollonius, Eirenaios, Tertullianus, Hippolutos, 5 Minucius Felix, 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 punishment 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 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 without 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, 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 tranquillity—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 manifold wrongdoing of the gentiles. And accordingly, those who exact tribute from us are ‘God’s servants,’ ‘serving for this very purpose.’ 1 ‘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 punishment 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 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).” 1 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 the be subject to the magistrates (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 condemn those who do amiss” 5 —implying apparently that he would be perfectly right in doing so, if he lived uprightly.

In his Commentary on Romans, Origenes says, a propose 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, 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.” 1 Later, in his reply to Celsus, Origenes quotes Romans xiii. 1, 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

Many of the complaints made about the maladministration 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 murderer. 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 condemned by the will, not of the law, but of the judge.” 1 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 Arnobius says that as the images of the gods do not deter men from crime, “recourse is had to the sanctions 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 “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).” 1 “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 misdeeds” 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’ punishment. 5 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 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 judgment 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 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 them so useful 1 are probably to be connected with his clear and repeated statements 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. 1b-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 administration of justice, one of the usual departments of the royal office, and in particular with the military genius of Moses, from whom, he says, Militiades and Thrasuboulos borrowed their tactics. 5 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 bed and in the courts, being ashamed to become captives of pleasure.” 1 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 (‘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 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 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 ( ) 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 ( ) 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 governments and wars for fatherlands.” 5 He speaks of the Emperor’s soldiers as “those who render military service righteously.” 1

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. 3 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, 7 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 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, 5 and says that his death was not like “the brave endurance 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 grateful 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, 7 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 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.” 1 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, peace and pardon are asked for all—magistrates, armies, kings, friends, enemies?” 1

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 counteract 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 controverting 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 the agent or of his doings. The Apocalypse says that ‘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, quâ 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 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 government and of war, though real and sincere, was only a relative justification: it was relative to the non-christian condition of the agents concerned. It therefore furnished no model for Christian conduct and no justification 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 abstention 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, 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 justly , and à 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 tyrant. 5

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 connection 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.” 1 It is clear from this comparison 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’ contention 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, 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 blameable, 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 condemned 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.” 1 Origenes does not explicitly 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 on 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 kingdoms and established two ages. . . . Two kingdoms have been appointed, the one (the kingdom) of what 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 destruction 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, in as much as he is not of the one essence which is solely inclined to evil, can, by a change in his composition, become good. For not even now does he do evil, though he is evil, having received power to do evil lawfully ( ).” 1 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 outside 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 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 hastened 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 Himself 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 Himself, and then again He forbids it. . . .“ 1 The passage is unique in early Christian literature for the place it gives to the differing subjective 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 justification 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 personally 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 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 Christians may be said to have ‘accepted’ war necessarily committed them to participation in it. It cannot, however, 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 compromise 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 interpretations. 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 consequence 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 conduct, 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 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, 5 the one sidedness of the terms in which his doctrine of the State is set forth, 6 and his communication to the military commander 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 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 gentleness 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 speaking, such cases were very rare before the middle of the third century. Athenagoras, Clemens of Alexandria, Tertullianus, and the Didaskalia, all regard it as forbidden to Christians to sue wrongdoers in the pagan courts. Origenes wrote in 248 a.d. as if Christians 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 expelled 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 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.” 1 Another case was that of the governor ( ) 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 bloodshed of the law-courts. 4 After the triumph of Constantinus 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 functions 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 favorable impressions 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. 5 The penitent soldiers baptized by John the Baptist, 1 the centurion of Capernaum, who built the Jews a synagogue and at whose faith Jesus marvelled, 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 proconsul of Cyprus, 5 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 their friends to visit them, and was ultimately converted; the tribune also was induced 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 Laodicea, 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 represented as availing themselves of the friendly help of Cornelius the centurion. 8

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 centurion 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 literature nowhere express disapproval of the continuance of these men—assuming they did continue—in their calling, 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 arms 1 : 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 Quadi, 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 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 (i.e. thundering) in memory of what happened. 2 Now there is no doubt at all that either Eusebios misunderstood 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, 5 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 genuine, but interpolated 1 ), 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 Xiphilinos 4 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 considerable 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.

Julius Africanus appears to have served as an officer in the expedition of the Emperor Severus against Osrhoene in 195 a.d. 1 : 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 abstract, 3 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 navigation, but (sail) calling upon the heavenly Pilot: has the (true) knowledge taken hold of the (when) serving as a soldier? Listen to the General who orders what is righteous.” 4 Some years later, when writing for Christian readers, he says: “Barefootedness is very becoming to a man, except when he is on military service” 5 ; 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’.” 6 He says that the divine ‘Instructor,’ under the heading of forbearance, “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 exemption 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 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 susceptibility to Christian influence of soldiers employed in the horrible work of persecution—a susceptibility which led in many cases to their conversion. 3 One or two cases merit repetition here. The soldier Basileides of Alexandria had, while still a heathen, received instruction under Origenes. During the persecution of 202 a.d. , it fell to his lot to conduct the Christian maiden Potamiaina 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 record 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, whose conversion took place at the time of the martyrdom of Perpetua and her companions at Carthago, 1 though we do not know what became of him afterwards. 1

The information contributed by Tertullianus is important. 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 “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 decries, 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.” 5 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, namely), of soldiers, shepherds, and husbandmen.” 1 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 occasion. His fellow-Christians in the army—not to mention 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 Idololatria’ 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’ 1 may be taken to imply that in practice cases had already arisen in which both these questions had been answered in the affirmative. 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 campaigns.’ 4 Another inscription, about the middle of the 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 persecution, 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. 5 We have already spoken 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 Maximilianus in Numidia, the proconsul of African 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. 5 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 consequently retired from the service, and a few suffered the 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 others—a 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 persecution 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. 5 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 the soldiers.” 1 When the persecution actually began, Christian soldiers were its first victims. 2 The fact that many of them suffered martyrdom is sufficiently established, 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 (nec alicuius inferior pugnavi). The commander never saw me go wrong; and dost thou think that I, who had been found faithful 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 Ferreoleus, a military tribune, at Vienna in Gaul, 8 Theodorus of Tyrus at Amasia in Pontus, 9 and Seleukos of Cappadocia at Caesarea. 10 In 303 a.d. a revolt broke 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 campaign of Licinius against Daza, after his meeting with Constantinus at Milan, would enlist Christian sympathy as warmly as did that of Constantinus against Maxentius. Both conflicts were regarded, not unnaturally, as 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. 3 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 finally 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 during these closing years of our period. In the unfortunate 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 Christians 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 position 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 Christians 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

PART IV: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

An attempt must now be made to gather together the scattered threads of the foregoing records and to present something in the nature of a general summary of the whole question. We saw at the outset that Jesus adopted for himself and enjoined upon his followers principles of conduct which, inasmuch as they ruled out as illicit all use of violence and injury against others, clearly implied the illegitimacy of participation in war, and that it was for this reason that he resisted the temptation to establish the Kingdom of God by the use of arms. We saw that his principles were meant to guide the conduct, not of the whole of unredeemed humanity all at once, but that of the growing group of his own followers as members of the Kingdom, that these principles of so-called ‘non-resistance’ had their positive counterpart in the power of love to overcome sin in others and did not reduce those who adopted them to helpless cyphers in the conflict against evil, but on the contrary made them more efficient units in that conflict. We saw too that the various pleas that have been put forward with a view to emancipating the Christian disciple from compliance with these principles—as, that they are meant to refer only to the inner disposition or spirit and not to the outward actions, or that they are counsels of perfection practicable only in a perfect world, or that they affect only the personal and private conduct of the disciple and not his duties as a member of society, or that they are an interim-ethic which is invalidated by the existence of historical conditions which Jesus did not foresee—all rest on various easily demonstrated misapprehensions.

The early Christians took Jesus at his word, and understood his inculcations of gentleness and non-resistance in their literal sense. They closely identified their religion with peace; they strongly condemned war for the bloodshed which it involved; they appropriated to themselves the Old Testament prophecy which foretold the transformation of the weapons of war into the implements of agriculture; they declared that it was their policy to return good for evil and to conquer evil with good. With one or two possible exceptions no soldier joined the Church and remained a soldier until the time of Marcus Aurelius (161–180 a.d. ). Even then, refusal to serve was known to to be the normal policy of the Christians—as the reproaches of Celsus (177–180 a.d. ) testify. In the time of Tertullianus (say 200–210 a.d. ), many soldiers had left the army on their conversion; and his writings are the earliest record we possess of any Christians joining the army when already converted. While a general distrust of ambition and a horror of contamination by idolatry entered largely into the Christian aversion to military service, the sense of the utter contradiction between the work of imprisoning, torturing, wounding, and killing, on the one hand, and the Master’s teaching on the other, constituted an equally fatal and conclusive objection. The Church-Order framed probably by Hippolutos of Rome early in the third century and widely circulated in the East required magistrates and soldiers to abandon their calling before baptism, and excommunicated the Christian who insisted on joining the army. Origenes, the finest thinker the Church possessed for many generations, the man who was exempt from those crude eschatological notions which are generally represented as the context in which all early Christian utterances on social duty are to be read, took it for granted that Christians generally refused to serve in the army, and that they did so, not in fear of idolatrous contamination, which does not seem to have been a difficulty when he wrote (248 a.d. ), but on the score of bloodshed; and he defended them for doing so in a series of acute arguments that have never since been answered. Cyprianus, a highly influential and thoroughly loyal Churchman, appears to have held the same views on the matter as his ‘master’ Tertullianus. Arnobius almost certainly disapproved of Christians fighting, and his contemporary Lactantius (early fourth century) unequivocally pleaded for the same conclusion. No Church writer before Athanasios ventured to say that it was not only permissible, but praiseworthy, to kill enemies in war, without the qualification—expressed or implied—that he was speaking of pagans only. 1

While the application of Jesus’ teaching to the question of military service was in a way unmistakable, and was in fact generally made in the way that has just been described, it is nevertheless true that the conditions in which the early Christians were placed did not in many localities call for any such application for a very long time. Jews and slaves were not enrolled at all in the Roman army. The Emperors (who were legally entitled to fill their legions by conscription)—not to mention the Herodian princes and the Jewish Temple-authorities—could normally get all the soldiers they wanted by means of voluntary enlistment; hence the chances of a Christian being pressed into military service against his will were practically nil. This position of affairs meant that for the vast bulk of Christians in the earliest times, the question as to the legitimacy or otherwise of their entering the army simply did not arise; the mind of the Church, while in full possession of the pertinent teaching of Jesus, had for a long time no occasion to make a definite application of it to this particular question or to lay down a definite ruling in regard to it. There was thus a certain unguardedness, a certain immaturity of reflection, which, besides accounting for the silence of early Christian authors on the point, helped to make room for various compromises and commitments.

For during this embryonic and quiescent stage of Christian ethical thought there were certain other factors at work, which militated against aclear pronouncement on the illegitimacy of the use of arms by Christians. To begin with, warfare stood on a different footing from other pagan customs which it was quite easy for the Church to condemn and reject without compromise. It was unlike adultery, in that it was esteemed and honoured by pagans, and not condemned: it was unlike idolatry, in that it concerned only a few, and not members of society in general. It was inseparably bound up with the police system by which law and order were maintained; and the severity of the Christian judgment against it was thus mitigated by its association with that against which the Christian objection was not so easily felt or framed. Then again, there were various connections in which the Christians themselves thought of war without any admixture of repulsion or censure. They were fond of speaking of the Christian life itself as a warfare and of themselves as soldiers of Christ. Scripture taught them to think with reverence and esteem of the warriors of old as men acting with the approval and under the guidance of God. Many of them looked forward to a great military triumph of Christ over his enemies at the end of the age. In the meantime, they could think of war as a means of divine chastisement: they regarded the great victories of the Romans over the Jews in 67–71 a.d. as a divine punishment of the latter for their treatment of Christ. They were taught to think of the Emperor as appointed by God for the purpose of checking sin and maintaining order—tasks which they knew he could not fulfil without using soldiers. We have already examined in detail all these Christian aspects of war and seen that none of them, when rightly understood, contained anything inconsistent with the most rigid abstention of the Christians themselves from the use of arms. At the same time, it is easy to see that these lines of thought must have predisposed many Christians to miss the essential point when they came to consider the question of their own personal conduct. The various complications just enumerated and the absence of a unanimous or authoritative ruling on the point combined to render the issue far less clear to many than it would otherwise have been. This, of itself, meant that at any time after the inception of Christianity, the existence of Christian soldiers was at least a possibility.

Several other factors contributed to facilitate the actualization of this possibility. Not only was the question in some respects a complicated one; but many members of the Christian Church were, as we know, of a very simple, unintellectual, and unreflective type of mind, and shunned on principle anything in the nature of clear dialectics. Such people were peculiarly liable, in that day as in this, to draw illogical conclusions touching their conduct as Christians from Old Testament wars or from Paul’s use of military similes. As a matter of fact, we learn from Tertullianus, that the Christian soldiers of his time justified their position, not by any public-spirited appeals to the obvious needs of society, 1 but by references—often of an extremely puerile kind—to Old Testament precedents. They quoted not only the wars of Joshua and the Israelites, but Moses’ rod, Aaron’s buckle, and John the Baptist’s leather belt, just as Christians who wished to attend the circus appealed to David’s example in dancing before the ark and to Elijah as the charioteer of Israel. 2 Another circumstance that operated in the same direction was the gradual and steady growth throughout the Church of a certain moral laxity, which engaged the serious and anxious attention of Christian leaders as early as the time of Hermas (140 a.d. ) and had become an acute problem by the time of Pope Kallistos (216–222 a.d. ): this abatement of the primitive moral rigour would naturally assist the process of conformity to the ways of the world. 1 The same too would be the effect of the gradual waning of the eschatological hope, which, while far from constituting the true ground of the Christian refusal of military service, was yet with many a main plea for their general aloofness from worldly life. 2 And not only was the eschatological hope itself waning, but even in circumstances where it was still powerful, the Christian was reminded of the Apostolic counsel: “Let everyone remain in the calling wherein he was called” 3 —a ruling which had not yet received in any definite form the limitation which it obviously needed. The converted soldier was the more willing to give himself the benefit of this ruling, inasmuch as his withdrawal from the army on the ground of his change of religion was a process attended with no little difficulty and danger. 4 Finally, Christianity was characterized by several features, such as monotheism, absolutism, universalism, use of military language, wars in Scripture, and so on, which would naturally appeal to the military mind. 5

There were therefore quite a large number of factors at work, which combined to facilitate the conversion of soliders to Christianity and their continuance in military life after their conversion, despite the fact that such a state of affairs conflicted in reality with the ethical demands made by the Church. The anomaly of their position was easily overlooked by the men themselves, who had become inured to their grim duties and had all their lives regarded the profession of arms as honourable. Most of the considerations helping to justify their position to themselves would also help to secure toleration for it in the eyes of their fellow-Christians; and the inclination of these latter to disapprove would also be further checked by yet other considerations, such as the fewness of the cases involved, at any rate in early times, joy at the erection of Christ’s banner in the devil’s camp, 1 distance from the battlefield and easy blindness to its horrors, and lastly, that charitable leniency which naturally deters the Christian from objecting to a good many acts of a co-religionist which he would not feel justified in doing himself. It is thus that we are to account for the omission of the Church to take a decided line on this matter from the beginning. Apart from the Church-Orders, the influence of which—though probably extensive—we cannot exactly measure, we have no extant record of any attempt being made to compel solider-converts to leave the army on baptism.

The admission of these few soldier-converts to the Church sometime, let us say, in the second century, perhaps not earlier than the reign of Marcus Aurelius, proved to be the thin end of the wedge. It constituted a precedent by which the judgment of the Church at large was imperceptibly compromised. If a Christian who was a solider before conversion may remain so after it, then it follows that a Christian layman might become a solider if he wished to. That this conclusion was drawn by the end of the second century we have already seen. If a few soliders can be tolerated in the Church, then any number can be: if a few Christians may enlist, then any number may do so. Once the beginning has been made and allowed to pass muster, the obstacles in the way of a general reversion to a stricter standard become virtually insuperable. 1

While all this is true, it is very easy to exaggerate and misrepresent the extent of the concession which the Church made to her solider-members. For one thing, the absence of a definite ruling on the concrete point decades before circumstances had arisen calling for such a ruling, has been interpreted, quite erroneously, as if it implied a considered judgment, on the part of the whole Church, in the direction of conformity with the ways of the world. Thus Professor Bethune-Baker refers to the centurion of Capernaum, the soldiers baptized by John, Cornelius of Caesarea, Sergius Paulus, the soliders who defended Paul, the command in I Tim to pray for kings, and the words of Paul in Rom xiii, as proving that war was sanctioned by the immediate disciples of Christ. 2 Like many others who have written on the subject, he not only makes no allowance for the immaturity of Christian thought on this topic, but recognizes no distinction between what is sanctioned for the Christian and what is sanctioned for those who have not yet reached Christianity. If his argument is meant to show that the Christians of the first generation had come to the conclusion, after full consideration, that there was nothing in their Master’s teaching which interfered with their own participation in war, then the double oversight just alluded to must be held to invalidate the argument. The attitude of laissez-faire, to which he alludes, was the attitude of those who had not yet realized that there was a problem to be solved: it is inadequate as an index even to the convictions and practice of the apostolic age, and still more so as a basis for modern Christian ethics. Bigelmair’s account of the early Christian position embodies what may well have been the plea of some of the most unintellectual of the early Christian apologists for war. He regards the abolition of war as one of the ideals foreshadowed in the Sermon on the Mount, but as unattainable even in our own day and much more so in the time of the early Church. “Besides,” he says, “in the struggle for it the individual is almost powerless.” From this he concludes that the apostolic dictum “Let everyone remain in the condition in which he was called” was regarded as applying to soldiers, and that that is why we find Christian soliders in the earliest times. 1 But if the fact that a certain calling cannot yet be abolished because the world is imperfect is sufficient to justify a Christian in pursuing it, then it is difficult to see why the sale of intoxicants, and prostitution, and even highway robbery, should not be regarded as permissible Christian vocations. 1 It is probable that there were in the early Church those who argued as Bigelmair does, but the argument is none the less radically unsound, and furthermore unrepresentative of the normal Christian habit of mind, both in regard to behaviour in general—for the early Church was very sensitive as to the rightfulness of the callings pursued by her members—and in regard to the particular question we are considering.

But apart from misinterpretations due to treating the silence or the laissez-faire attitude of the early Christians (which as we have seen arose largely from the immaturity of the problem and of the minds that had to solve it) as if it were the mature and deliberate judgment of men long familiar with the ins and outs of the question, we find even in the best modern authors a striking tendency to overestimate the degree of approval that was given by the Church to those of her members who took arms. Thus Bestmann, speaking of Origenes, says: “In regard to military service, his Church thought differently from her apologist.” 2 Bethune-Baker: “The Christian society of the time found no cause of complaint in the fact of its members serving in the legions.” 3 Bigelmair: Tertullianus “may very well have stood quite alone in his circle, somewhat as the soldier, who lays aside the crown,. . . is the only one of his many comrades.” 4 Harnack: “As for the rigorous party, they hardly made anything of their prohibitions. . . . But these rigorists effected no change whatever in the actual situation” 5 : “these injunctions of the moralists were by no means followed in the third century.” 1 Cunningham: “Military service was uncongenial to Christians, but was not regarded as in itself wrong.” 2 All this fits in well enough with one set of facts, but is flagrantly out of keeping with another set. It underrates, in the first place, the immense compromises to which the Christian soldier was committed by his position. Apart from all question of contact with idolatry and special temptations to which his place in the army exposed him, he had not only to take the lives of his fellow-men in the indiscriminate conflicts of the battle-field and to scourge and torture prisoners in the judgment-courts, but he was not even allowed to use his own discretion as to whether this severe treatment was justified in any given circumstances: for his military oath obliged him to inflict it, not when he felt it was needed, but whenever his superior officer—usually a pagan, and possibly a cruel and unjust man as well—thought fit to order him to do so. It is impossible to believe that the early Church swallowed this enormous compromise as easily as these modern authors would have us believe.

That as a matter of actual historical fact the Church did not do so, there is abundant evidence to prove—evidence to which the statements just quoted give far too little weight. The view usually taken is that the Church as a whole sided from the first with the soldiers, and that the authors who took a different line were individual extremists, mere voices crying in the wilderness, to whom nobody paid much attention. The reverse of this would be nearer the truth. The Christian soldiers of the time of Tertullianus were evidently under the necessity of defending their position, and the way in which they seem to have done it does not enhance our respect for their clear-mindedness. No Christian author of our period undertook to show that Christians might be soldiers. The Church-Order of the third century forbade them to be so. Celsus, Tertullianus, Hippolutos, Origenes, Cyprianus, and Lactantius, all testify to the strength of the Christian objection to military service. If it is allowable to speak at all of a general position taken by the early Church in this matter, it will be that of the stricter rather than that of the laxer party to which we shall have to apply the term.

It is generally thought that, with the accession of Constantinus to power, the Church as a whole definitely gave up her anti-militarist leanings, abandoned all her scruples, finally adopted the imperial point of view, and treated the ethical problem involved as a closed question. 1 Allowing for a little exaggeration, this is broadly speaking true. The sign of the cross of Jesus was now an imperial military emblem, bringing good fortune and victory. The supposed nails of the cross, which the Emperor’s mother found and sent to him, were made into bridle-bits and a helmet, which he used in his military expeditions. 2 In 314 a.d. the Synod of Arelate (Arles) enacted a canon which, if it did not, as many suppose, threaten with excommunication Christian soldiers who insisted on quitting the army, at least left military service perfectly free and open to Christians. 3 Athanasios, the ‘father of orthodoxy,’ declared that it was not only lawful, but praiseworthy, to kill enemies in war 1 ; Ambrosius of Milan spoke similarly, if less baldly 2 ; while Augustinus defended the same position with detailed arguments. 3 In 416 a.d. non-Christians were forbidden to serve in the army. 4

Historians have not failed to notice, and in some cases to deplore, the immense compromise to which the Church was committed by her alliance with Constantinus. Thus Dean Milman says: “And so for the first time the meek and peaceful Jesus became a God of battle, and the cross, the holy sign of Christian redemption, a banner of bloody strife. 1 This irreconcilable incongruity between the symbol of universal peace and the horrors of war, in my judgment, is conclusive against the miraculous or supernatural character of the transaction,” viz. Constantinus’ vision of the cross before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. Milman adds in a footnote: “I was agreeably surprised to find that Mosheim concurred in these sentiments, for which I will readily encounter the charge of Quakerism.” Then follows a quotation from Mosheim. The text above continues: “Yet the admission of Christianity, not merely as a controlling power, and the most effective auxiliary of civil government (an office not unbecoming its divine origin), but as the animating principle of barbarous warfare, argues at once the commanding influence which it had obtained over the human mind, as well as its degeneracy from its pure and spiritual origin.” 2 Lecky remarks: “When a cross was said to have appeared miraculously to Constantine, with an inscription announcing the victory of the Milvian bridge; when the same holy sign, adorned with the sacred monogram, was carried in the forefront of the Roman armies; when the nails of the cross. . . were converted by the emperor into a helmet, and into bits for his war-horse, it was evident that a great change was passing over the once pacific spirit of the Church.” 3 Bigehnair observes: “It was a long way from the cross, at the foot of which Roman soldiers had once cast lots for the garment of the Jewish misleader of the people, to the cross which hovered at the head of the Roman legions as a military standard.” 1

But while the greatness and importance of this historic decision are unquestionable, we must be careful not to imagine that the capitulation of the Church to the demands of the State was more complete or decisive than was actually the case. An important piece of evidence in this connection is the existence of the various Church-Orders. Without repeating all that has already been said in regard to them, it may be observed that ‘The Testament of our Lord,’ which forbids a soldier to be baptized unless he leaves the service, and forbids a Christian to become a soldier on pain of excommunication, was compiled in Syria or southeastern Asia Minor not earlier than the middle of the fourth century. 2 The Egyptian Church-Order, which lays down the same ruling, with the modification that, if a soldier has been received into membership and is commanded to kill, he is not to do it, and if he does he is to be rejected, is usually thought to belong to the first half of the fourth century. 3 The ‘Hippolytean Canons,’ in their present form, introduce further relaxations, but are of very uncertain, probably still later, date. The Apostolic Constitutions, in which the old stringency is really abandoned, are not earlier than the last quarter of the fourth century. 4 The existence of these Church-Orders is conclusive proof that in large sections of the Christian community, the decision taken by official Christendom, as seen for instance in the Canons of the Synod of Arelate, was not accepted. 1 Testimony is borne to the same effect from several other quarters. ‘The Disputation of Arkhelaos with Manes,’ a composition belonging probably to the second quarter of the fourth century, opens with an episode, one feature of which is the rejection of the military belt by a large number of soldiers at Carchar in Mesopotamia, on being converted to Christianity through the generosity of a certain Marcellus, who ransomed a crowd of captives from them. 2 Then we have the martyrdom of Theogenes in Phrygia, under Licinius, for refusing—in the manner of Maximilianus—to allow himself to be enrolled in the legions 3 ; the sudden decision of the revered St. Martinus of Tours to leave the army the day before a battle (he met the taunt of cowardice by offering to stand unarmed in front of the ranks) 4 ; the similar step taken later by his friend, St. Victricius, afterwards archbishop of Rouen 5 ; the letter of St. Paulinus of Nola (about 400 a.d. ), persuading a friend to do the same 1 ; the strictures passed by St. Gregorios of Nazianzus and by Khrusostomos (St. Chrysostom) on the military character 2 ; and lastly the opinion of St. Basilios the Great that those who had shed blood in war should abstain from communion for three years. 3 It would carry us beyond the scope of our subject to go further in this direction; but enough has been said to show that the decision to which the leaders and the majority of the Church were committed by the patronage of Constantinus was very far from winning the immediate and unanimous assent of Christendom. It is evident that in many quarters the settlement was accepted only gradually and with an uneasy conscience.

It was in the nature of the case that this should be so. For the settlement was itself the result, not of any attempt to solve the ethical problem on its merits, but of a more or less fortuitous combination of circumstances. During the period when the conditions of life in Empire and Church relieved all but a very few of the need of making a personal decision, with the result that the problem in its different bearings dawned on the Christian mind only fragmentarily and by slow degrees—during that period, I say, the simplemindedness of some, the worldliness of others, and the charitable tolerance—not necessarily the approval—of the rest, were already silently determining what the result was to be. The consequence was that when the triumph of Constantinus suddenly called upon the Church to come down definitely on one side of the fence or the other, she found that a free decision was no longer open to her. Her joy at the deliverance Constantinus had wrought for her was so great that it put her off her guard. She found herself compelled by the eagerness with which she had welcomed him, and by her own immaturity of thought and inconsistency of practice, to make his standards of righteousness in certain respects her own. Henceforth it was out of the question for her to insist on an ethical view and practice, on which her own mind was not completely made up, and which her great protector would inevitably regard as dangerous disloyalty to himself. Official Christianity was now committed to the sanction of war, so far as the practical conduct of Christian men as citizens was concerned, not only when they were convinced that the maintenance of righteousness demanded war—that in itself would have been a great and fundamental compromise—but in any cause, good, bad, or indifferent, for which the secular ruler might wish to fight. Further than that, the decision not only settled the practical question for the time being and doomed the dissentient voices, many and firm as they still were, to ultimate and ineffectual silence, but it tied up the freedom of Christian thought and made any unfettered discussion of the problem on its merits next to impossible for centuries to come.

The testimony of the early Church in regard to the participation of Christians in war will naturally vary very considerably in the strength of the appeal it makes to different types of Christians to-day. In view of all that we have just seen of pre-Constantinian times and in view of the subsequent history of Europe, it is difficult to resist the impression that the Church took a false step when she abandoned her earlier and more rigorous principles. How far the discovery of that mistake imposes upon Christians in these times the duty of correcting it—how far even the possibility of correcting it is still open to them—are questions on which opinion will be sharply divided. It is quite true that the Christian Church stands in a very different position from that in which she stood in the first three centuries of our era. But the question is, Is there anything in that difference, is there anything in our modern conditions, which really invalidates the testimony against war as the early Christians bore it, and as Origenes defended it? Not, we may answer, the passing away of the eschatological outlook, for the great apologia of Origenes is as independent of that outlook as any modern Christian could wish—not the development of national life and sentiment, for Christianity lifts the disciple of Christ above racial divisions and interests just as truly now, as it did then—not laws making military service compulsory, for the laws of States can never make right for the Christian what according to the higher law of the Kingdom of God is wrong for him—not his obligations to society, for these obligations he already renders in overflowing measure by the power and influence of his life and prayers as a Christian—not the breaking forth of high-handed aggression and tyranny and outrage, for these things were continually breaking forth in those early times, and the Christian now, as then, has his own appointed method of curing them, a method more radical and effectual than the use of arms and involving him in a full measure of suffering and self-sacrifice—not admiration for, or indebtedness to, fellow-citizens who have risked life and limb in the struggle for righteousness on the field of battle, for the right thing for a man to do has to be decided by reference to his own subjective conditions, and one can fully esteem and honour the relative good in a sub-christian course of conduct without being thereby bound to adopt it oneself—not our inability to discover at once the full meaning of Jesus’ teaching for our complicated social and economic institutions, for such discovery is a lengthy process, in which one forward step at a time has to be taken, and unless the step is taken on each issue as it becomes clear, no further light is to be hoped for on the issues that are next to it in order of obscurity and complexity—not the unreadiness of the rest of the world to become Christian, for the Christian’s work now as then is essentially one that has to be done by those who constitute only a portion, for the present a very small portion, of society—not the unreadiness of the rest of the Church to become pacific, for the individual Christian with a true message must never wait until the whole Church agrees with him before he lives up to it and declares it, otherwise all promise of spiritual progress within the Church is gone—not, finally, the offence and unpopularity which the message evokes or the vastness of the obstacles that lie in its path, for the best service Christians have ever done for the world has been done under the shadow of the world’s frown and in the teeth of the world’s opposition. Men of very varied opinions are in agreement to-day that the Church has failed: but the Church, unlike other religious bodies, possesses in the personal example and guidance of her Lord an ever ready corrective to bring her back from her aberrations. As Lecky (ii. 9) tells us: “Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the character and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of regeneration.” We can in fact measure the value of all the great reformative movements of Christendom — Franciscan, Lutheran, Puritan, Methodist, and so on—by the extent to which they embodied attempts to bring human life and conduct into closer conformity to the spirit and teaching of Jesus; and conversely, we can measure the unworthiness and harmfulness of the Church’s failures, for instance, the tone of her many controversies, and the great stain of persecution, by the extent to which they involved departure from the same spirit and teaching. Of those who accuse the Church of failure many will none the less still keep their faith in her and their hope for her; and of these again some will know clearly in which direction lies the way of amendment. It is for them to pass on to the world in its confusion and to the Church in her perplexity the knowledge that the true remedy for the most crying and scandalous evil of our time—an evil beneath which the whole human race is groaning and suffering—lies in a new and closer application to thought and life of the teaching of the Prince of Peace.