“We Slay Demons”: Moral Progress and Origen's Pacifism

Abstract

This article evaluates Origen's criticism of Christian participation in the Roman army in relation to two prominent themes in his writings: the moral progress of the Christian and the role of demons in God's providence. I argue that, for Origen, to be a Christian is to be a soldier, albeit one whose adversaries are not human combatants, but the Devil and his angels. The battle is won when Christians refrain from sinning, attaining moral perfection through their study of the scriptures, and adoption of ascetic practices. By avoiding the physical battlefield, Christians remain unsullied by the passions that inflame the soldier, enabling them to fight demons more effectively. But this spiritual combat is not without risks to the physical body. As Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom attests, execution could be the providentially ordered outcome of a Christian's combat against demons. Origen presents the violent persecution of Christians as consistent with divine providence and martyrdom as a gift of God to the church. His opposition to Christian military participation is rooted neither in a wholesale rejection of warfare nor a deep respect for embodied life, but in his concern for human moral progress—progress that could be advanced by providentially sanctioned violence.

Stretching back to the Reformation, one stream of scholarship investigating Christianity's early centuries has claimed that, prior to the ascension of Constantine, pacifism was either the official or the predominant position of the Christian church.¹ A handful of passages in the writings of Origen (c. 185–254 CE), which are critical of Christian military participation, feature prominently among the evidence cited in support of this position. Origen's reasons for criticizing Christian soldiers are, however, contested. John Helgeland and Peter J. Leithart have argued that Origen primarily opposed the participation in pagan sacrifice required of soldiers in the Roman army, an objection later resolved by its Christianization in the fourth century.² Ronald J. Sider disagrees, contending, “Origen's primary reasons for opposing Christian participation in war are that Christians do not take vengeance on their enemies, but seek to love their enemies and follow Christ's teaching.”³ Similarly, George Kalantzis attributes to Origen “an ardent defense of the non-violent character of the Christian faith and practice,”⁴ while Jean-Michel Hornus counts Origen among the early Christians whose opposition to warfare was based “on a fundamental decision: to reject violence and to respect life.”⁵

In this article, I evaluate Origen's statements regarding Christian military participation in relation to two prominent themes in his writings: the moral progress of the Christian and the providential role played by demons in that process. I argue that a consideration of Origen's criticism of Christian military participation in light of his theological anthropology—that is to say, his understanding of the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings⁶—reveals that his objections cannot be reduced either to a rejection of Roman idolatry or to a condemnation of violence motivated by respect for human life. For Origen, to be a Christian is to be a soldier, albeit one whose enemies are not human combatants but demons, the “principalities and powers,” “against whom we maintain a struggle and wrestle.”⁷ To battle against demons is in no way a metaphor; the fact that a Christian's enemies were not human soldiers did not make them any less physically present, nor any less real.

I begin by providing a brief account of Origen's theory of the relationship between humans and demons. As rational beings, demons share a common origin with humans and play a crucial role in stimulating their moral progress. I then turn to the practicalities of battling against demons as addressed in by Origen in his Homilies, in which he instructs Christians to defend against demonic attacks via skillful biblical exegesis and ascetic practices. As we shall see, for Origen, to battle against demons was not merely a figure of speech denoting a struggle within the mind of the Christian. Rather, as Gregory A. Smith has demonstrated, “It is very hard, and very important, to remember that ancient demons had bodies.”⁸ Fighting demons thus carried with it the very real possibility of the mortal body of the Christian suffering pain, injury, and even death. In his Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen asserts that a violent and painful death could be the providentially ordered outcome of a Christian's combat against demons. In the final section of the article, I read Origen's criticism of Christian participation in the Roman army in the context of the Christian war against the demons. While Origen certainly opposed the idolatry inherent in Roman military campaigning and affirmed Jesus's teachings against vengeance and self-defense, I argue that his opposition to Christian military service is primarily rooted neither in his disdain for Roman idolatry nor in respect for the value of human life. Rather, Origen objects to Christians soldiering on Rome's behalf because fighting on physical battlefields impeded their success as soldiers in the more consequential war against the demons.

The Opposing Powers and Moral Progress

Like many of his contemporaries working in the Platonic philosophical tradition, Origen was deeply interested in questions concerning the provenance of human souls and the possibility of human salvation.⁹ His thinking on these matters finds expression throughout his corpus but is most directly addressed in his treatise On First Principles.¹⁰ At its outset, Origen draws a distinction between doctrines clearly taught by the scriptures or church tradition and matters open for further investigation.¹¹ Among the former he includes the doctrine that “every rational soul possesses free will and volition [omnem animam esse rationabilem liberi arbitrii et uoluntatis]” and that human souls are engaged in “conflict against the devil and his angels, and opposing powers [contrarias virtutes], because they strive to burden it with sins.”¹² No clear statement is set forth, however, on the question of how human souls come into being. Similarly uncertain is the provenance of the devil and his angels, whose existence is nevertheless affirmed by the scriptures. Clear instruction on these matters being lacking, Origen offers his own (admittedly speculative) account of the origins of humans and of demons.

Humans, angels, and demons, Origen proposes, are all rational beings who share a common nature, created for the purpose of worshipping their creator but endowed with free will to pursue either what is holy or what is wicked.¹³ What distinguishes an angel from a demon—or a human—is the degree to which each participates in the divinity of the Trinity.¹⁴ In the words of Rufinus's translation, “But, if they are negligent and careless about such participation, then each one, by fault of his own slothfulness, becomes—one more quickly, another more slowly, one to a greater extent, another to a lesser—the cause of his own lapse or fall.”¹⁵ Most rational beings have fallen from their created state of beatitude.¹⁶ As the ardor of their initial love for God became sluggish or satiated, these rational beings transformed into souls through a process likened to cooling, which was thought to be indicated by the similarity of the Greek word for soul, psychē, with the word for cold, psychros.¹⁷ Those beings who have sustained their love for God most fully are now angels.¹⁸ Others have fallen from their original state of blessedness, but not “irremediably”; rather, “reformed by instruction and salutary discipline, they may be able to return and be restored to their former state of blessedness.”¹⁹ It is from these beings, Origen speculates, that the human race has been established.²⁰ Still other rational beings, however, have embraced evil so fully that they have become unworthy of God's chastening attention.²¹ These, Origen proposes, are the devil and his angels, who no longer pursue their own reformation but exist as adversaries for humans pursuing moral progress. As a result, the human mortal life “is full of conflicts and struggles, for opposing and attacking us are those who have fallen from a better condition without looking back, who are called the devil and his angels and the other orders of wickedness, which the Apostle names amongst the opposing powers [contrariis virtutibus].”²²

The purpose of human life, then, is to return to the state of union with and contemplation of God that is both the soul's origin and its telos. Demonic temptation functions as a goad, spurring humans out of complacency and toward the soul's perfection.²³ The assaults of the demons therefore constitute part of God's providential plan for human salvation. The question of whether Origen taught that demons, like humans, would eventually be restored to beatitude as part of a final apokatastasis has long been contested²⁴; his detractors condemned him for teaching that even Satan himself would ultimately be saved, while Rufinus maintained that Origen taught no such thing.²⁵ Whatever his views on the final fate of the opposing powers, in the present age, demons are understood by Origen to be rational beings whose attacks on human souls function providentially to spur their moral progress. As David Brakke observes, “Origen treated demons primarily in terms of their resistance to the human being's efforts to love God and do the good . . . demons paradoxically facilitated that progress by providing the resistance they had to overcome.”²⁶

“He Teaches Us Peace by This Very Reading of Wars”

As presbyter in the church at Caesarea Maritima, Origen had a clear message for the novice Christians who gathered to hear his homilies²⁷: confessing Christ is fundamentally a declaration of war: “You must know that when you decide to keep the command of this precept and reject all other gods and lords and have no god or lord except the one God and Lord, you have declared war on all others without treaty [hoc est bellum sine foedere denuntiasse omnibus ceteris].”²⁸ Candidates preparing for baptism were required not only to desist from pagan worship, but to embark on a process of transformation that would reorient their desires away from created things and toward union with God.²⁹ To accomplish this goal, catechumens undertook a program of training (askēsis) involving both intensive ascetic disciplines and instruction in the scriptures’ proper spiritual interpretation.³⁰ To an outside observer, the training required of catechumens may have appeared more bookish than bellicose. Yet Origen consistently described the gatherings he addressed as a kind of preparation for warfare.

Origen describes two different kinds of battles, and two kinds of opponents, that the newly recruited Christian soldiers will face:

We have often said the battle of Christians is twofold. Indeed, for those who are perfect, such as Paul and the Ephesians, it was not, as the Apostle himself says, “a battle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and authorities, against the rulers of darkness in this world and spiritual forces of iniquity in the heavens.” But for the weaker ones and those not yet mature, the battle is still waged against flesh and blood, for those are still assaulted by carnal vices and frailties.³¹

As they begin their training toward perfection, new Christians must first gain mastery over their flesh and blood, which Origen takes to indicate the inordinate desires that arise as a result of their embodiment. The body, Origen insists, is not itself evil. Rather, its manifest limitations spur the soul on in its pilgrimage of return to its divine source. In the words of Peter Brown, “For Origen, the fall of each individual spirit into a particular body had not been in any way a cataclysm; to be placed in a body was to experience a positive act of divine mercy.”³² Life in the body may be “burdensome” but, as Benjamin Blosser observes, Origen understands embodied life in the physical cosmos to be “not a penitentiary, but a gymnasium,” a training ground that prepares catechumens to face yet more fearsome foes.³³ In Hom. Ex. 11, Origen interprets Exodus 14:14, “The Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace,” to suggest that demons are too dangerous for immature Christians to oppose directly. Connecting this verse to 1 Corinthians 10:13 (“He does not permit us to be tempted above that which we are able,”) and Mark 3:27 (“Nor does he allow weak men to encounter ‘the strong man”), Origen concludes that, during the initial stage of the catechumen’s instruction, God himself takes up the battle against demons on behalf of believers.³⁴ Mature Christians progress to battle the host of demonic enemies listed in Ephesians 6:12, however their continued embodiment prevents them from fully transcending the temptations of the flesh, with which the demons work in tandem.³⁵

In his Homilies on Joshua, Origen delivers a series of sermons that serve as basic training for the Christian soldier in the twofold battle against demons and the flesh. When it is read literally, the biblical Book of Joshua narrates the Israelites’ conquest of the Promised Land. Interpreted spiritually, however, Origen contends that “the book does not so much indicate to us the deeds of the son of Nun, as it represents for us the mysteries of Jesus my Lord [liber hic non tam gesta nobis filii Naue indicet quam Iesu mei Domini nobis sacramenta depingat].”³⁶ In Joshua, we meet Jesus in the guise of a general, one who “leads the army” comprised of Christian soldiers.³⁷

The Battle of Ai, narrated in Joshua 8, serves as a paradigmatic plan for the battle against the demons. Read literally, the text appears to sanction genocide, as it depicts God commanding the wholesale slaughter of Ai's inhabitants. At the level of the letter, it is a “text that kills”; in order to “give life,” it must be interpreted spiritually.³⁸ Taking the narrative as an allegory for the soul's battle against the forces that compel it to sin, Origen argues that the enemies Joshua slaughters should not be interpreted as literal humans, but figurative representations of the demonic enemies that oppose the people of God. Ai, Origen contends, means “chaos,” which is the dwelling place of the “opposing powers” (contrarias virtutes), over which the Devil himself rules as “the king and commander” (rex et princeps).³⁹ The hanging of the king of Ai is revealed to be a profound mystery signifying the crucifixion of the Devil together with Jesus on the cross at Golgotha.⁴⁰ Joshua/Jesus's initial “flight” from the warriors of Ai is interpreted as a flight from the vices of fornication, pride, deceit, and falsehood.⁴¹ The subsequent ambush of Ai signifies the utter destruction of demonic foes. Far from sanctioning indiscriminate killing of humans, Origen contends, the text instructs Christians to slay demons by holding fast against the temptation to sin:

We ought not to leave any of those demons deeply within, whose dwelling place is chaos and who rule in the abyss, but to destroy them all. We slay demons, but we do not annihilate their essence [Interimimus autem daemones non ipsam eorum substantiam perimentes]. For their work and endeavor is to cause persons to sin. If we sin, they have life; but if we do not sin, they are destroyed. Therefore, all holy persons kill the inhabitants of Ai [Interficiunt ergo habitores Gai sancti], they utterly destroy them and do not let any escape.⁴²

The wars of ancient Israel are revealed as an allegory for the extirpation of the chaos-causing demons from the soul. Read in this way, Jesus, in the guise of Joshua, “teaches us peace from this very reading of wars [pacem nos docet ex ipsa lectione bellorum].”⁴³

Christians can improve their efficacy as demon slayers by adopting ascetic practices. In Hom. Jos. 15.3, Origen considers the command in Joshua 11:8–11 that the Israelites hamstring the horses of their conquered opponents. The horses he interprets figuratively as both demons and as the passions of the body, that is, lust, licentiousness or pride, and fickleness, “by whom the unfortunate soul, just as a rider, is borne and carried headlong to danger.” Disaster can be averted by hamstringing these figurative horses by acts of endurance: “The horse, of course, is hamstrung when the body is humbled by fastings and vigils and by every pain of self-denial.. . . If we wage war properly under the leadership of Jesus, we ought to cut off their vices in ourselves and, taking ‘the spiritual sword,’ hamstring that whole stable of pernicious vices.”⁴⁴

Moral progress therefore requires corporeal exertion and can cause physical pain. By foregoing food, sleep, and other material comforts, the Christian learns how to resist the temptations of gluttony, sloth, and luxury. Moreover, ascetic training prepares the Christian body to withstand the temptation to sin even when faced with the threat of suffering physical violence. With a nod to Hebrews 12:4, Origen asks his listeners, “Do you see that the fight proposed for you is against sin and that you must complete the battle even to the shedding of blood?”⁴⁵ The physical pains that result from ascetic self-denial thus serve as a foretaste of—and a preparation for—an even greater corporeal struggle that awaits an elect few: the contest of martyrdom.⁴⁶

Martyrdom as Combat

In the Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen presents the martyr's death as the ideal end of human moral progress.⁴⁷ Martyrs are not victims, nor are their deaths tragic. Rather, they are victorious champions in the battle waged against the demons and the weakness of the flesh. By defeating these foes, the martyr wins salvation and accrues benefits for the Christian community. Origen describes martyrdom not as a humiliation to be passively endured, but active combat contested against demonic opponents.⁴⁸ In this extended paraenetic treatise addressed to his friend and wealthy patron, Ambrose, and to Protoctetus, a presbyter in the Caesarean church, Origen encourages his addressees not to apostatize should they be arrested. By declaring their allegiance to God in the covenant of baptism, Ambrose and Protoctetus assumed “the entire citizenship of the Gospel,” including its stark requirement to take up the cross.⁴⁹ The terms of this covenant are clear: “Whoever would save his soul would lose it, and whoever loses his soul for my sake will save it.”⁵⁰

Continuing a well-established tradition in Christian martyrdom literature, Origen encourages his addressees to see themselves as athletes, and he urges them to imagine themselves as combatants preparing to do battle in the arena.⁵¹ He employs the analogy already in the opening lines of the Exhortation, addressing Ambrose and Protoctetus as no longer babes in need of milk but as weaned athletes who welcome their present afflictions on the basis of hope for future reward.⁵² He urges his readers to “look not at the present sufferings but at the prizes kept for athletes who by their endurance of these tests compete according to the rules in Christ.”⁵³ Returning to the image of athletic contest in section 18, Origen paints a vivid scene of the would-be martyrs as fighters preparing for combat in the arena:

A great theater is filled with spectators to watch you contending and you being summoned to martyrdom, just as if we were to speak of a great crowd gathered to watch the contests of combatants supposed to be champions. And no less than Paul, you will say when you enter the contest, “we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.” (1 Corinthians 4:9)⁵⁴

In this arena, the athletes of Christ submit to the judgment not only of human spectators, but also of the other rational beings, both beneficent and malign:

The whole cosmos and all the angels of the right and the left, and all people, those from God's portion and those from the others, will hear of us when we contend for the sake of Christianity [ἀγωνιζομένων τὸν πɛρὶ χριστιανισμοῦ ἀγῶνα]. Indeed, either the angels in heaven will cheer us on . . . or, may it not happen, the powers from below which rejoice in evil, will cheer.⁵⁵

Not only do demons occupy the grandstands, but they themselves are the opponents to be faced in the ring. In a homily on Exodus, Origen contends that the human persecutors of the Christians operate under demonic influence. “If,” he submits, “you ever see your persecutor raging very much, know that he is being urged on by a demon as his rider and, therefore, is fierce and cruel.”⁵⁶ Origen urges his charges to withstand the persecutors’ ferocity in the language of active, combative resistance. Borrowing a pugilistic image from the Apostle Paul, Origen exhorts, “Let each one of you say when you smite the opposing spirits, ‘I do not box as one beating the air.’”⁵⁷ By the very act of shedding his blood, the martyr “beats down aerial troops of demons who are attacking it.”⁵⁸ While the martyrs refrain from lashing out against their human persecutors, their endurance is described by Origen as “beating,” “smiting,” and otherwise counter-attacking their demonic enemies.

In Exhortation 42, Origen shifts the setting from the arena to the battlefield. Evoking the imagery of a Roman military triumph, he urges prospective martyrs to envision themselves as soldiers returning victorious from war. Although those condemned to martyrdom may appear outwardly to be defeated, it is the Christians who are “celebrating a triumph rather than being led in triumph.” “The martyrs in Christ,” Origen writes, “disarm the principalities and powers with Him, and they share His triumph as fellows of his sufferings, becoming in this way also fellows of the courageous deeds wrought in his sufferings.” Among the defeated foes are “the principalities and powers which in a short time you will see conquered and put to shame.” Origen presents the torture and execution that awaited the martyrs not as a fate to be feared but as the ultimate opportunity to demonstrate their demon-disarming skills so as to secure the supreme prize.

The stakes of the martyr's battle therefore could not be higher. Repeatedly, Origen impresses on Ambrose that the desire for union with God must outstrip love for any earthly attachment.⁵⁹ If the purpose of human life is to overcome material desires in pursuit of union with God, then any attachment that binds the soul to fleshly concerns—even familial love and patriotic duty—provides an opening to sin that can be exploited by demonic foes. By choosing a martyr's death over life with his family, Origen argues, Ambrose entrusts his children to the providential care of God. In so doing, he does them more benefit than he would by remaining alive.⁶⁰ Moreover, the benefits provided by the martyrs extend beyond their kin, unleashing a great flood of blessings upon the entire Christian community.⁶¹ God's purpose in permitting martyrdom may be, Origen suggests, to remedy post-baptismal sin the church⁶²:

Let us also remember the sins we have committed, and that it is impossible to receive forgiveness of sins apart from baptism, that it is impossible according to the gospel laws to be baptized again with water and the Spirit for the forgiveness of sins, and that the baptism of martyrdom has been given to us. . . . Consider, as well, whether baptism by martyrdom, just as the Savior's brought purification to the world, may not also serve to purify many.⁶³

Like the crucifixion of Christ, the executions of the elect have redemptive power; to submit to martyrdom is to imitate Christ in the fullest sense.⁶⁴

The crown of martyrdom is therefore neither to be feared nor reviled, but desired. “Death comes to us as ‘precious,’” Origen concludes, “if we are God's saints and worthy of dying not the common death, if I may call it that, but a special kind of death, for the sake of Christianity, piety, and holiness.”⁶⁵ By submitting to a martyr's death, Christians dramatically affirm their desire to be delivered not only from the demons, but from the weight of the material “body of death” and the temptations of the flesh. Submitting to violence in the form of “beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors” is therefore to be embraced as an opportunity to acquire the virtue that God will richly bestow.⁶⁶ “If such a view seems hard to anyone,” Origen asserts, “then he has not thirsted for God, the Mighty One, the living God.”⁶⁷ In the Exhortation to Martyrdom, the preservation of human mortal life and the avoidance of physical suffering are presented by Origen not as goods to be pursued but as temptations to be overcome.

Military Participation and Moral Progress

We have seen that Origen describes human life as a struggle waged against the temptations of the body and the assaults of demons. The battle is won when the Christian refrains from sinning, achieving moral perfection through intensive study of the scriptures and the adoption of ascetic practices. For a select few, the pursuit of perfection may result in torture or death at the hands of persecutors. To suffer such violence is not a humiliation or a tragedy but a gift, a means by which God bestows salvation on those whom he deems worthy.

A very real battle against demons and the flesh is therefore ever incumbent upon every Christian—which is why they ought not join the Roman Army. Below, I review a selection of texts frequently cited as evidence of Origen's pacifism. As we shall see, in each case Origen's rejection of military participation is premised not on a rejection of violence and warfare in the abstract, but on the need for Christians to maintain the ascetic discipline required to ensure their moral progress and effectively fight foes more consequential than human soldiers.

The failure to recognize the centrality of the early Christian war against the demons has caused some readers mistakenly to interpret the Homilies on Joshua as a rejection of Christian participation in all warfare. Origen begins his fifteenth Homily on Joshua with the caveat, “Unless those physical wars bore the figure of spiritual wars, I do not think the books of Jewish history would ever have been handed down by the apostles to the disciple of Christ, who came to teach peace, so that they could be read in the churches.”⁶⁸ George Kalantzis interprets this passage as teaching that “Christians have no place in war; nor do they have any use for it.”⁶⁹ This gloss, however, misses Origen's point, which is to demonstrate that scripture must be interpreted according to the spirit if it is to be properly understood. If the Hebrew scriptures were mere historical accounts of Israel's wars, they would indeed be useless for Christians, whose lives are understood by Origen to consist of “contests of the soul against spiritual adversaries.”⁷⁰ As we have already seen, however, Origen interprets the Book of Joshua not as history but as a battle plan for Christian warfare against bodily passions and demons. It is precisely because the scriptures have a spiritual interpretation that Joshua's account of Israel's wars is useful for Christians, as it provides instruction, in figurative form, for the warfare against spiritual adversaries in which they very much still have a place. The wars of ancient Israel are useful because they instruct Christians to do battle against “the swarms of opposing powers from among the spiritual races that are called ‘spiritual wickedness in the heavens,’ and that stir up wars against the Lord's Church, which is the true Israel.”⁷¹

In his essay, “Torture and Origen's Hermeneutics of Nonviolence,” Paul R. Kolbet argues that in the Homilies on Joshua Origen teaches a “hermeneutics of nonviolence that strikes at the root of violence in the self and society.”⁷² While Kolbet is indeed correct that the Homilies on Joshua aim to train Christians to achieve moral perfection, the goal of Origen's preaching is the eradication not of violence, but sin, from the soul. Recourse to violence in pursuit of vengeance, or even in self-defense, is rejected as inimical to the covenant inaugurated by Jesus; however, in these homilies, Origen frequently ascribes virtue to violent actions when they are rightly directed against demons. Once again, we must remember that for Origen, to battle demons is no mere metaphor. Demons are rational beings with bodies and are every bit as real as the human Amorites, Jebusites, and Canaanites vanquished by the ancient Israelites. As Gregory Smith warns, “It is far too easy to assume that invisible things were conceived as (merely) mental things, in the Cartesian sense: internal or imagined things, devoid of spatial extension, products or objects of pure thought.”⁷³ And so when Origen pleads, “If only my Lord Jesus the Son of God would order me to crush the spirit of fornication with my feet and trample upon the necks of the spirit of wrath and rage, to trample on the demon of avarice, to trample down boasting, to crush the spirit of arrogance with my feet,” he is expressing a desire not to eradicate violence, but to train his violent impulses upon appropriate recipients.⁷⁴

In his commentary on Matthew 26:52, Origen again makes the argument that Christians do not so much give up warfare as exchange battlefield engagements against human enemies for combat against demons. Commenting on Jesus's instruction to Peter to return his sword “to its place,” Origen writes, “There is, therefore, some place for the sword, from which he who is not willing to perish by the sword is not permitted to take it. For Jesus wants his disciples to be peacemakers that they might put away this ‘sword’ of war and take up the other peacemaking ‘sword’ that the Scripture calls ‘the sword of the Spirit.’”⁷⁵ Origen interprets the “sword of war” to indicate not only weapons issued to soldiers, but also the machinations of “those who are tumultuous and agitators of war and disturbers of human souls, especially of the churches.” While he instructs his charges not to “take out a ‘sword’ on the occasion of warfare or vengeance for our own injuries or for any other reason all of which this Gospel teaching of Christ abhors,” Origen reiterates the priority of the battle against the demons, noting that Jesus follows his command to put the sword in its place in Matthew 26:52 with an assurance that he commands an angelic army that stands at the ready in verse 53. Christians have no need for physical swords, for “wherever there are those who fear God, there are camps of angels around them,” and “an angel of the Lord will send help around those who fear him, and will deliver them.”⁷⁶

John Helgeland and Peter Leithart have argued that Origen's objections to military service derive not from a principled rejection of violence, as proposed by Kolbet and Kalantzis, but because soldiers were required to participate in rituals venerating the traditional Roman gods.⁷⁷ This impression is supported by passages such as a fragment preserved from a homily on 1 Corinthians 5:9–11, where Origen criticizes Christian soldiers who contend that “participating in idol worship is of no consequence.” He derides their excuses: “‘I am forced into it,’ they say. ‘The army demands it. I risk my life if I do not sacrifice or if I do not put on the white robe and offer incense according to the customs of the army.’ And yet such a person calls himself a Christian!”⁷⁸While Helgeland and Leithart are correct that the army's sacrificial practices were offensive to Christians, they overlook the relationship between these sacrifices and the Christian war against the demons. As Heidi Marx-Wolf observes, “In the second and third centuries, one of the most interesting rhetorical moves developed by Christian apologists, philosophers, and polemicists was to demonize the traditional Greek and Roman gods, repeatedly associating these gods with evil spirits”—in other words, the gods of the pagans were demons.⁷⁹ Like humans, demons needed to eat, and burnt offerings provided them sustenance.⁸⁰ Origen is therefore adamant that Christians must not equivocate and offer sacrifice under the pretense that the Roman gods do not really exist because, while it may be true that the statues venerated by pagans are simple objects of wood or stone, the sacrifices offered to them are not without effect.⁸¹ As he explains, “To remain in this thick atmosphere of earth [demons] need the food of rising smoke, and so they keep an eye on places where there are always the smell and blood of burnt sacrifices and incense fumes.”⁸² By requiring Christians to offer sacrifice, military authorities forced Christians to feed demons, turning them into either martyrs or idolaters. The choice, for Origen, was clear: “Let us take great care never to commit idolatry and subject ourselves to demons; for the idols of the Gentiles are demons.”⁸³

Of Origen's vast corpus, it is his apologetic Contra Celsum, a sprawling, eight-volume answer to a polemical treatise written by an otherwise-unknown Hellene philosopher named Celsus, that is most frequently cited to support claims of Origen's pacifism.⁸⁴ Although Christian objections to joining the army are discussed more extensively here than in any other of his surviving writings, Origen's purpose in Contra Celsum is not to provide a systematic consideration of the ethics of warfare. Rather, Origen's comments on Christian military participation are made in the context of a larger defense against “slanders” leveled by Celsus against Christians. In his responses, Origen reiterates that the Gospel of Jesus prohibits Christians from acting out of vengeance and self-defense. But he also concedes that warfare has been commanded by God in the past and suggests that Christians play an important role in securing victory for Rome's emperors on the battlefield through the efficacy of their demon-slaying intercessions made on Rome's behalf.

To Celsus's charge that Christianity originated in a violent revolt led by Jesus, Origen responds that, had the movement indeed begun as an uprising against the Roman Empire, “the lawgiver of the Christians would not have forbidden entirely the taking of human life.”⁸⁵ The proscription against killing humans is introduced by Jesus and marks a break with the Law of Moses. Origen concedes that wars of self-defense were lawful for the ancient Israelites, but he argues that Christians have been taught to submit to a new law that precludes the possibility of taking up weapons for any purpose, including self-defense. ⁸⁶ For this reason, Christians refuse even to defend themselves against their persecutors:

And if the Christians had had their origin in sedition, they would not have submitted to laws so gentle (ἡμέρους) that they sometimes cause them to be made away with “like sheep” and render them incapable of ever avenging (ἀμύνασθαι) themselves on their persecutors, since, having been instructed not to avenge themselves on their enemies, they have kept the gentle and philanthropic legislation (ἐτήρησαν τὴν ἥμɛρον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον νομοθɛσίαν).⁸⁷

Following Christ's law and its command not to avenge themselves on their enemies, Christians do not rise up together to defend their common interests with weapons, as did the Israelites governed by the Law of Moses. This is not because they are cowardly or ineffective as soldiers, but because they have a more potent warrior who comes to their defense:

What they would not have achieved if they had had the authority to make war, even if they had been all-powerful, they received from God, who always made war on their behalf and, at just the right time, stopped the adversaries of the Christians and those wanting to destroy them. As an example for others, a few people, at the right time and who are easily counted, have died for the for the religion of the Christians, so that, gazing upon those few fighting for piety, they may become more proven and despise death. But God prevented the provocation of war against the whole people, for he wanted them to endure and for the whole earth to be filled by this salvific and most pious teaching.⁸⁸

It is God himself who protects Christians from “annihilation,” Origen contends. Yet God also permits a few Christians to be killed by their persecutors. As in the Exhortation to Martyrdom, in his answer to Celsus, Origen describes the experience of violent persecution in beneficent terms. The suffering of the martyrs is permitted by God as a means of inspiring other Christians to piety. With God on their side, Christians do not need to take recourse to self-defense as their Jewish predecessors once did, for “the more emperors and rulers of nations and peoples in many places have humiliated them, the more they have increased in number.”⁸⁹

In the closing chapters of Contra Celsum, Origen responds to Celsus's charge that Christians abandon the emperor by refusing to offer sacrifices to the gods, serve in public offices, or fight wars on his behalf. Here Origen reiterates his claim that the idols venerated in Greco-Roman rites are not deities of a lower order, as supposed by Platonist philosophers, but demons “who drag the souls of men down to created things.”⁹⁰ Far from putting Rome at risk, he argues, the empire would be better protected if all its inhabitants refused to propitiate demons and prayed only to the God of the Christians. Origen speculates that if “all the Romans were convinced [of Christianity] and prayed, they would be superior to their enemies, or would not even fight wars at all, since they would be protected by divine power,” as evidenced by God's intervention on behalf of the people of Israel.⁹¹ A Roman Empire converted to Christianity would have no need for a military as God's favor would guard them against the aggressions of enemies more effectively than could any armed resistance.

To Celsus's plea that Christians come to the emperor's assistance, joining the ranks of his army and taking up weapons on his behalf should he ask them to do so, Origen replies that

At appropriate times we render to the emperors divine help, if I may say so, by taking up even the whole armor of God. And this we do in obedience to the apostolic voice which says: “I exhort you, therefore, first to make prayers, supplications, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all men, for emperors, and all that are in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1). Indeed, the more pious a man is, the more effective he is in helping the emperors—more so than the soldiers arranged in battle lines and destroying all the enemy fighters that they can.⁹²

Origen contends that Christians contribute to the success of Rome's wars without involving themselves in the bloodshed of the battlefield. As Daniel H. Weiss has argued, here Christians are presented by Origen as occupying a role in the Roman Empire analogous to that of the priestly tribe of the Levites in ancient Israel, whose work upholding Israel's sacrificial order required them to avoid the ritual pollution inherent in the shedding of human blood. The Levites’ non-engagement in military combat, however, did not entail a condemnation of the other tribes’ armed campaigns.⁹³ Rather, “Because God is the ultimate source of military success or defeat, the Levites are portrayed as directly contributing to Israel's military victories by tending to God's presence in the tabernacle.”⁹⁴ Like the Levites of old, Christians support the army's campaigns through their unceasing prayers. Christians do not oppose the emperor's wars but assist him by playing “a complementary role, alongside those who do the physical fighting for the Roman Empire.”⁹⁵ Origen contends,

How much more reasonable is it that, while others serve in the army, Christians also should be fighting as priests and ministers [στρατɛύονται ὡς ἱɛρɛῖς τοῦ θɛοῦ καὶ θɛραπɛυταί] of God, keeping their right hands pure and by their prayers to God contending [ἀγωνιζόμɛνοι] on behalf of those who take the battle field in a just cause and for the emperor who reigns justly [ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίως στρατɛυομένων καὶ ὑπὲρ τοῦ δικαίως βασιλɛύοντος], in order that everything which is opposed and hostile to those who act justly may be overpowered?

Moreover, by maintaining the purity of their hands, Christians are better able to put their well-developed demon-fighting skills to use on the emperor's behalf:

We, who by our prayers overpower all demons which stir up wars, violate oaths, and disturb the peace, are of more help to the emperors than those who seem to be doing the fighting. We who offer prayers with righteousness, together with ascetic practices and exercises which teach us to despise pleasures and not to be led by them, work hard for the common good. Even more do we fight on behalf of the emperor. And though we do not join in his expeditions with him, even if he presses for this, yet we are serving in war for him and composing a special army of piety through our intercessions to God.⁹⁶

It is the demons who disturb the peace of human souls and disturb the peace of empires.⁹⁷ The two are merely different theaters in one cosmic war. As more people are drawn from the multitude of nations into the church, Origen suggests, they will learn to do battle with demons, becoming peaceable as they are made perfect in Christ. Peace between nations will come about only as a by-product of the peace of individual souls. One day all war will come to end, when “the Logos will have overcome the entire rational nature, and will have remodelled every soul to his own perfection,” for “the end of [the Logos's] treatment is the destruction of evil.”⁹⁸ With some resignation, Origen concedes that “it is probably true that such a condition is impossible for those who are still in the body”—so long as humans are bound to their earthen vessels, demons will seek to disturb their perfection. “But,” Origen maintains, “it is certainly not impossible after they have been delivered from it.”⁹⁹

Conclusion: At Peace with War

The life of the Christian, as Origen presents it, is an unceasing battle against temptations arising from corporeal weakness and demonic attacks. Christian soldiers maintain their battle-readiness through an intensive regimen of Bible reading and ascetic disciplines, extirpating their bodily passions and slaying demons by means of intensive prayer and often-painful acts of self-denial. Although service in the emperor's army is to be rejected by Christians, who have taken on the demands of the new covenant inaugurated by Jesus and abdicated from vengeance and self-defense, Origen admits that the wars fought by the ancient Israelites were God-ordained and that Christians ought actively to support wars waged “rightly” by the Roman emperors via their prayers. Since wars are themselves stirred up by demons, participating as a soldier in physical wars is inherently sinful. Yet Origen does not entertain the hope of warfare ceasing until evil itself has been conquered through the perfecting work of the Logos, which will not happen while rational beings remain burdened by their mortal bodies. For Christians, it is not weapons of iron but the providence of God that guards them against the physical assaults of their enemies.

Or God might permit Christians to die. While Origen precludes Christians from using violence to defend their temporal lives from harm, his soteriology accommodates the violent persecution of Christians as part of divine providence, and he describes martyrdom as a gift of God to the church. The restoration of all rational souls to the blessedness of their original creation is the goal of human moral progress, not the preservation of earthly lives or limiting violence. Christ came “not to bring peace on earth, but to the souls of his disciples—and to bring a sword on earth.”¹⁰⁰ Peace, for Origen, is predicated neither on the abolition of violence nor respect for the material bodies of humans; it is the state of the soul unperturbed by the demons, a state that could be achieved through painful self-discipline—or the executioner's sword.