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War and the Early Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2024

Victor White O.P.
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We have seen that the idea of war as the instrument of God’s judgment permeates the Bible from Genesis to the Apocalypse. It is the ruling idea which gives unity and consistency to the most ‘militarist’ as well as to the most ‘pacifist’ passages of Scripture, diverse historical situations and epochs calling forth diverse applications of that dominant conception. It now remains to suggest that this same idea has dominated the authentic Christian idea of war and attitude towards war throughout the changing circumstances of the situation of the Christian Church in the world. For just as this conception dominates the Scriptures from Genesis to the Apocalypse, so it has ever been uppermost in the authentic mind of the Church from the Apocalypse—which foresees wars as the outcome of the outpouring of the ‘vials full of the wrath of God’—to Benedict XV—who, in September, 1914, cried, ‘We beg and implore ... all the sons of the Church ... to beg that God, mindful of His mercy, may lay aside this scourge of anger with which He inflicts on the people the penalty of their sins.’

But just as, as we have previously said, we must avoid expecting to find in the Scriptures ready-made solutions to our present problems, so, if we would scan the pages of Christian history for light in our present perplexities, we must beware of expecting to find in them exact precedents for our present attitudes and conduct.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 20 , Issue 234 , September 1939 , pp. 643 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © 1939 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 See Wars and Rumours of Wars (Blackfriars, June, 1939).

2 For the bibliography see that at the end of T. Orotolan's article Guerre in La Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique. This article itself provides an excellent summary. Among the numerous works published subsequently, special mention must be made of The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations by John Eppstein published for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by Messrs. Burns, Oates & Washbourne in 1935.

3 ‘The general attitude of “the world” towards the Church founded by Christ was at first an attempt of stamping her out; secondly of enslaving her; thirdly of denying her claims.’ Dr. H. C. E. Zacharias, Blackfriars, August, 1939. p. 568.

4 The principal data for the attitude of Christians to war during this period will be found collected in Mgr. Batiffol's L'Eglise et le Droit de Guerre, and by Abbot Cabrol in his article Militarisme in the Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne.

5 Les actes des martyrs… in La Revue des Êtudes Latins (1939, I).

6 For Tertullian himself, however, after his defection from the Catholic Chuch, there was no alternative for the soldier convert except desertion or martyrdom (De Corona, ii).

7 Its attitude was formulated in the Canons of Hippolytus (of doubful date and origin). Canon 13 runs: ‘Soldiers may not kill, even if ordered to do so.’ And Canon 14: ‘No Christian ought to volunteer for military service nor become a soldier unless forced to do so by his ruler. Let him who bears the sword beware lest he shed blood. If he has shed blood let him be excluded from the mysteries until he be purified by making amends with tears and grief.’

8 The relevant passages of the Contra Celsum are quoted by Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, pp. 41 sqq.

9 The authenticity of the letter is unimportant so long as it witnesses to the current idea of what a Christian legionary should be. Mr. Eppstein translates: ‘When therefore I had compared myself and the number of my men with the hordes of the barbarian enemy, I betook myself to pray to the Gods of my fathers. But, since they neglected me and I saw to what straits my forces were reduced, I called out of the ranks those whom we call Christians, and, having questioned them, I perceived what a great multitude of them there were and I raged against them: which indeed I should not have done, because I afterwards perceived their power. For they did not begin with the contemplation of spears or arms or trumpets (which is hateful to them because of the God which they keep in their conscience; for it seems as if these men, whom we suspect of being atheists, have a God residing of his own will in their conscience), but prostrating themselves upon the ground they prayed not only for me but also for the whole army, that they might slake our present hunger and thirst. For we had had not water for five days, because it was utterly lacking; and we were in the midst of Germany and in the enemy's country. But no sooner had they knelt upon the ground and invoked the God whom I knew not, than a most cooling rain fell straight from heaven upon us, but upon the enemies of the Romans lightning and hail.’

10 An article will follow on the medieval theory of the ‘just war’ and its present relevance and irrelevance.