Non-Violent Enemy-Love Sampler From Tertullian

Tertullian wrote roughly around 200 AD.  He was an eloquent author.  We will see that the case he makes is consistent with the other writings we have considered.

I will let him do most of the talking. I include limited comments or clarifications along the way.  Some comments are embedded in the excerpts, noted by brackets and italics.  Bold-fonted emphases will isolate important phrases not to miss.  The translations used are those provided by George Kalantzis in Caesar and the Lamb, with some rewordings by me where the wording was stiff (the book could stand a re-editted edition).  Older translations of this and virtually all other ancient materials are available online. 

Some think it madness that, although we could offer the sacrifice right here and now and then go away unharmed, even preserving our mental reservation [the Romans didn’t mind if Christians performed the Roman sacrifices “without meaning it in their hearts”], we prefer to be obstinate rather than safe; that is to say, you [Rome] give us advice on how to cheat you [by faking piety to Rome].  But we recognize the origin of these suggestions, and who it is that prompts all of this – how sometimes by cunning deception, and sometimes by cruel rage, he [Satan] works to throw us off our constancy.  Apology 27:2-3

Moreover, it is clearly unjust to force free persons to sacrifice against their will, for under all other circumstances, a willing mind is required for discharging one’s religious obligations [yet recall how the self-empowered Church itself abandoned this conviction after achieving the status of State Religion by the Fifth Century]…  You are led by necessity [i.e., by edict] to force us [to sacrifice], just as much as it is our duty to face the danger.  Apology 28:1

While we spread ourselves before God, let the hooks pierce us, the crosses suspend us, the flames engulf us, the swords slash our throats, the beasts leap upon us. They very posture of the Christian at prayer is preparation for any punishment.  Apology 30:7

In the emperors, we respect the judgment of God, since He has set them over the people. We know that in them is that which God has willed, and so we wish that what God has willed be safe and sound; and we consider this a great oath.  We are under obligation to respect [the emperor] as the one chosen by our Lord. So I might well say, “Caesar belongs more to us, since he has been appointed by our God.” As he is mine, I do more for his welfare…because I pray for it to Him who can truly grant it….  Also, because I set the majesty of Caesar below that of God, I commend him all the more to God to whom alone I subordinate him.  Apology 32:1 – 33:2

If then, as we have said above, we are expressly commanded to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? And if when someone injures us we are forbidden to retaliate, so that the action may not make us [and you] alike, whom then can we injure?  Apology 37:1

How often without your authority has the hostile mob of their own mere motion [beat down our door intending us harm and] invaded us with showers of stones and fire!  …But in all of this conspiracy of evils against us, in the midst of these mortal provocations, what one evil have you observed to have been returned by Christians?  …Away with the thought that those who are taught by God should either revenge themselves with human fire or resent the fire that is sent to refine them.  Apology 37:2-3

For what kind of war would we not be fit and ready (despite our inferior numbers), we who willingly submit to the sword, if it were not for the fact that according to our doctrine we are given the freedom to be killed rather than to kill?  Apology 37:5

There is for us a battle, because we are called to trial in court so that we may fight there for the truth while our life hangs in the balance. And the victory is to hold fast to that for which we have fought. This victory has attached to it the glory of pleasing God and the reward of eternal life. We have won the victory when we are killed; we escape at last when we are led forth [to execution]….  Carry on good magistrates; you will become much better in the eyes of people if you sacrifice the Christians for them. Crucify us, torture us, destroy us! Your injustice is the proof of our innocence. That is why God permits us to suffer all of this….  [Do you see the parallels with the lessons of 4 Maccabees?]  Apology 37:2-3,12

In this world we have exposed our very life and our very body to all manner of injury, and we endure this injury with patience. [There is no sign of turning the other cheek only to a point, is there?]  Shall we, then, be hurt by the loss of lesser things?  …If one attempts to provoke you by manual violence, the admonition of the Lord is at hand: “To him,” He said, “who strikes you on the face, turn the other cheek likewise.”  Let [their] outrageousness be wearied out by your patience. [You defeat them by loving not your life even unto death, remember?]  Whatever that blow may be, conjoined with pain and humiliating treatment, it shall receive a heavier one from the Lord. You wound [your enemy] more by enduring; for he will be beaten by Him for whose sake you endure. If the tongue’s bitterness break out [against you] in malediction or reproach, look back at the saying, “When they curse you, rejoice!”  …Let us servants, therefore, follow our Lord closely, and be cursed patiently, that we may be able to be blessed.   Patience 8:1-3

But how will a Christian go to war? Indeed, how will he serve even in peacetime without a sword which the Lord has taken away?  [Matthew 26:52  Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.  John 18:36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm."]  For even if soldiers came to John and received advice on how to act, and even if a centurion became a believer, the Lord, by taking away Peter’s sword, disarmed every soldier thereafter. We are not allowed to wear any uniform that symbolizes a sinful act.  [I will suggest a parallel here with "Thus He declared all foods clean." His magnificent actions in both cases subsume into Himself the old commandments against foods and for war.]    Idolatry 19:3

Is it right to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword? Will a son of peace take part in battle when he should not even go to court?  The Crown 11:2

To be sure, the case is different for those who are converted after they have been bound to military service. John admitted soldiers to baptism;  next were the two most faithful centurions: the one whom Christ praised, and the other whom Peter instructed. But, once we have embraced the faith and have been baptized, we either must immediately leave military service, as many have done, or we must resort to all kinds of excuses in order to avoid any action which is also forbidden to civilian faithful, lest we offend God.  Or last of all, for the sake of God we must suffer the fate which a mere faithful civilian was no less ready to accept [prison or execution].  For military service offers neither exemption from punishment of sins, nor relief from martyrdom. The Gospel is one and the same for the Christian at all times whatever his occupation in life.  The Crown 11:4-5

In his Letter to Scapula, Tertullian makes two points that I really wish to not permit us to miss. Considering the darkness of my own heart, I sense that our innate, normative, and routine resistance to seriously following the Christlike example of non-violent, sacrificial enemy-love arises from the reality that, simply but profoundly put, we do not trust God. Not like Job. Not like Joseph. Not like Daniel. Not like Jesus. And I think a substantial reason for that is because "what we were won with is what we were won to":  fire insurance, best life now, better friends, more parties, hundred-fold returns.  How many of us had self-sacrificial enemy-love really emphasized and placed clearly before us on the day we were saved?  Exactly.  Note, however, a couple of points Tertullian makes with little fanfare concerning his day:

For us, the things we suffer at the hands of ignorant men are not a source of great fear or dread. When we joined this sect we plainly undertook to accept the conditions this involved.  [The majority of comfortable western casual Christians who join the church today begin, continue, and end clueless to this; it is never made plain that this is what is involved, and hence suffering and persecution are a huge demotivator for those who depart. What else should we expect when these self-empowered members of self-empowered churches come to find out that they had no real power after all?]   To Scapula 1:1

It is the teaching of our faith that we are to love even our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Here lies the perfection and distinctiveness of Christian goodness.  [How can you know if the Holy Spirit is working in you? Ask yourself how this is working out for you.]  Ordinary goodness is different, for all men love their friends, but only Christians love their enemies. We are moved with sorrow at your ignorance, and with pity for the errors of men’s ways;  and as we look to the future, we see the signs of impending distress every day. In such circumstances, we have no choice but to take the initiative and openly and publicly lay before you those things which you refuse to listen to.  To Scapula 1:

In a way, this is what I am doing here. I am laying out before you, and before me, things that we all have refused to listen to.

Non-Violent Enemy-Love Samplers from Athenagoras and Clement of Alexandria

In the red corner, we have our wildly popular contestant, proud of his strength and armed to the teeth and daring any government to just try to do something about it:   
       Mr. Turn-the-Other-Cheek-Only-to-a-Point.

And in the blue corner, mocked and spat upon for his weakness, rejected by zealots, with a sign nailed over his head saying, "The son of a liberal":
       Mr. Clement Athenagoras

What, then, are those teachings in which we are brought up?  “I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that persecute you; that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven, who causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”  Allow me here to lift up my voice boldly in loud and audible outcry, pleading as I do before philosophic princes. For which of those [smart, intelligent, elite philosophers and rhetoricians]…have purged their souls so that, instead of hating their enemies, they love them?  And instead of speaking ill of those who have reviled them (to abstain from which is of itself an evidence of no mean forbearance), to bless them; and to pray for those who plot against their lives?  …But among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable to prove with words the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds they exhibit the benefits that arise from their persuasion of its truth:  they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves.   Athenagoras, Plea on Behalf of the Christians 11

For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest [are] the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which you [the emperor] sponsor? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have forbidden ourselves such spectacles. How then, when we do not even watch it so as to avoid guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that "those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion," on what principle should we commit murder? For it is not fitting that the same person who regards the very fetus in the womb as a created being and an object of God's care, to be willing to kill it well after its birth.   Athenagoras, Plea on Behalf of the Christians 35

Will not Christ, who has blared a song of peace to the very ends of the earth, gather together His own soldiers of peace?  Indeed, O people, he did assemble a bloodless army by His blood and His word, and to them he entrusted the kingdom of heaven. Christ’s trumpet is His gospel. He blew it, and we heard. Let us put on the armor of peace: putting on the breastplate of righteousness and taking up the shield of faith and putting on the helmet of salvation. Let us sharpen the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. This is how the Apostle arranges us in the battleline of peace. These are our invulnerable weapons. Armed with them, let us take our position against the evil one.   Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 11

The Etruscans use the trumpet [to charge into] war, the Arcadians use the pipe, the Lacedemonians the flute, the Thracians the horn, the Egyptians the drum, and the Arabs the cymbal. But as for us, we make use of one instrument alone: only the Word of peace, by whom we honor God, no longer with ancient harp or trumpet or flute which those trained in war use.   Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator 2.4.42:2-3

Do not be deceived, you who have tasted of truth and have been deemed worthy of the great redemption!  Contrary to the rest of the people, gather for yourself an army without weapons, without war, without bloodshed, without anger, without stain; an army of pious old men, of orphans loved by God, of widows armed with gentleness, of men adorned with love…whose Commander is God; for whose sake a sinking ship rises, steered by the prayers of saints alone;  and disease at its height is subdued, put to flight by the laying on of hands;  and the attack of robbers is disarmed, its weapons stripped by pious prayers….   Clement of Alexandria, Salvation of the Rich 34:3

Celsus And Origen: Inverting The Order (part four)

Celsus was a Roman philosopher who opposed Christianity.  Among his many points of attack, he accused Christians of a lack of patriotism toward Rome.  He wrote his work, called The True Doctrine in 177 AD.

Ambrose requested to Origen that he write a response to Celsus. Origen did so in 248 AD, quoting Celsus extensively.

The first thing to note is that Origen wrote in response to arguments, not to a man, since Celsus was likely long dead.  But six decades after it was written, Celsus' book was deemed problematic enough by Ambrose that he requested Origen to write a response.

The second thing to note is that the defense of Christianity that Origen wrote in 248 AD was consistent with the faith that Celsus had hated enough to write against in 177 AD.

Therefore, be sensitive both to the practices of second century Christians that Celsus was trying to refute, and the defense offered by third century Origen.  By doing so, we will see a consensus between second and third century Christians on the topic that follows.

To begin our present purposes, Celsus argued that if Christians will not honor the Roman gods (and Caesar was among them), then he wished Christians would not grow up to marriageable age, nor get married, nor have children, nor do anything else except to depart the world with no posterity so that Christianity will cease to exist.

Nasty, eh?  But it reminds me of the self-empowered preacher who made the news by saying that all homosexuals should be locked in pens until they all died off.  And the world frequently reminds us all about that preacher, and uses him as part of their apologetic; and because of him many people were led to mock and blaspheme Christ.

Back more strictly on topic, here are several chapters, or parts of chapters, from Book 8 of Origen's book Against Celsus. Numbers in brackets denote chapters:

[56] Even though by his words Celsus dismisses us utterly from life in order that, as he supposes, this race of ours may entirely cease to exist on earth, yet we who are concerned with the business of our Creator will live according to the laws of God....  For we worship the Lord our God, and serve Him only, praying that we may become imitators of Christ....  That is why we do not render the customary honor to the beings whom, Celsus says, earthly things have been entrusted -- because "no one can serve two masters."  We cannot at the same time serve God and mammon, whether the name refers to any one particular thing or to many....  It is preferable for us to dishonor mammon by the transgression of the law of mammon in order to pay honor to God by keeping God's law, rather than to dishonor God by the transgression of the law of God in order to pay honor to mammon by keeping the law of mammon.... 

[65] We ought to despise the kindly disposition of men and of emperors if to propitiate them means not only that we have to commit murders and acts of licentiousness and savagery, but also that we have to blaspheme the God of the universe or make some servile and cringing utterance....

Celsus argued that if every Roman followed the example of Christians, then the emperor would be "abandoned, alone, and deserted" and would not be able to stand against enemies:

[68] Celsus goes on to say: "We must not disobey the ancient writer, who said long ago, 'Let one be king, whom the son of crafty Saturn appointed;'" and adds: "If you set aside this maxim, you will deservedly suffer for it at the hands of the king. For if all [Romans] were to do the same as you [Christians], there would be nothing to prevent his [the king] being left in utter solitude and desertion, and the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians; and then there would no longer remain among men any of the glory of your religion or of the true wisdom...." 

But we are far from setting aside the notion of a providence, and of things happening directly or indirectly through the agency of providence. And the king will not "inflict deserved punishment" upon us, if we say that it wasn't the son of crafty Saturn who gave him his kingdom, but He who "removes and sets up kings." And I wish that all were to follow my example in...maintaining the divine origin of the kingdom, and observing the precept to "honour the king"! In these circumstances the king will not "be left in utter solitude and desertion," neither will "the affairs of the world fall into the hands of the most impious and wild barbarians." For if, in the words of Celsus, "they do as I do," then it is evident that even the barbarians, when they yield obedience to the word of God, will become most obedient to the law, and most humane; and every form of worship will be destroyed except the religion of Christ, which will alone prevail. And indeed it will one day triumph, as its principles take possession of the minds of men more and more every day.

Christians in 177 AD, and their brotherly defenders in 248 AD, will not war at all:

[70] But if all the Romans, according to the supposition of Celsus, embrace the Christian faith, they will, when they pray, overcome their enemies; or rather, they will not war at all, being guarded by that divine power which promised to save five entire cities for the sake of fifty just persons. For men of God are assuredly the salt of the earth: they preserve the order of the world; and society is held together as long as the salt is uncorrupted: for "if the salt have lost its savour, it is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill; but it shall be cast out, and trodden under foot of men. He that has ears, let him hear" the meaning of these words. When God gives to the tempter permission to persecute us, then we suffer persecution; and when God wishes us to be free from suffering, even in the midst of a world that hates us, we enjoy a wonderful peace, trusting in the protection of Him who said, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And truly He has overcome the world. Therefore the world prevails only so long as it is the pleasure of Him who received from the Father power to overcome the world; and from His victory we take courage. Should He even wish us again to contend and struggle for our religion, let the enemy come against us, and we will say to them, "I can do all things, through Christ Jesus our Lord, which strengthens me." For of "two sparrows which are sold for a farthing," as the Scripture says, "not one of them falls on the ground without our Father in heaven." And so completely does the Divine Providence embrace all things, that not even the hairs of our head fail to be numbered by Him.

Christian refusal to go to war is in response to a higher calling, from obedience to be crucified with Christ, from citizenship not of this world, with love for their enemies. It is not a rejection of a State's right to bear the sword: 

[73] In the next place, Celsus urges us "to help the king with all our might, and to labour with him in the maintenance of justice, to fight for him; and if he requires it, to fight under him, or lead an army along with him." To this our answer is, that we do, when occasion requires, give help to kings, and that, so to say, a divine help, "putting on the whole armour of God." And this we do in obedience to the injunction of the apostle, "I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority;" and the more any one excels in piety, the more effective help does he render to kings, even more than is given by soldiers, who go forth to fight and slay as many of the enemy as they can. And to those enemies of our faith who require us to bear arms for the commonwealth, and to slay men, we can reply: "Do not those who are [pagan] priests at certain shrines, and those who attend to certain gods, as you account them, keep their hands free from blood, that they may with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods; and even when war is upon you, you never enlist the [pagan] priests in the army. If that, then, is a laudable custom, how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, Christians too should engage as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure, and wrestling in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that whatever is opposed to those who act righteously may be destroyed!" And as we by our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up war, and lead to the violation of oaths, and disturb the peace, we in this way are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them. And we do take our part in public affairs, when along with righteous prayers we join self-denying exercises and meditations, which teach us to despise pleasures, and not to be led away by them. And none fight better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army— an army of piety— by offering our prayers to God.

[74] And if Celsus would have us to lead armies in defence of our country, let him know that we do this too, and that not for the purpose of being seen by men, or of vainglory. For "in secret," and in our own hearts, there are prayers which ascend as from priests in behalf of our fellow citizens. And Christians are benefactors of their country more than others. For they train up citizens, and inculcate piety to the Supreme Being; and they promote those whose lives in the smallest cities have been good and worthy, to a divine and heavenly city, to whom it may be said, "You have been faithful in the smallest city, come into a great one," where "God stands in the assembly of the gods, and judges the gods in the midst;" and He reckons you among them, if you no more "die as a man, or fall as one of the princes."

Wrestle with the following, as I do as well. Origen and the earlier Christians whom Celsus was condemning refused not just going to war but also refused serving in public office:

[75] Celsus also urges us to "take office in the government of the country, if that is required for the maintenance of the laws and the support of religion." But we recognise in each state the existence of another national organization, founded by the Word of God, and we exhort those who are mighty in word and of blameless life to rule over Churches. Those who are ambitious of ruling we reject; but we constrain those who, through excess of modesty, are not easily induced to take a public charge in the Church of God. And those who rule over us well are under the constraining influence of the great King, whom we believe to be the Son of God, God the Word. And if those who govern in the Church, and are called rulers of the divine nation— that is, the Church— rule well, they rule in accordance with the divine commands, and never suffer themselves to be led astray by worldly policy. And it is not for the purpose of escaping public duties that Christians decline public offices, but that they may reserve themselves for a diviner and more necessary service in the Church of God— for the salvation of men. And this service is at once necessary and right. They take charge of all— of those that are within, that they may day by day lead better lives, and of those that are without, that they may come to abound in holy words and in deeds of piety; and that, while thus worshipping God truly, and training up as many as they can in the same way, they may be filled with the word of God and the law of God, and thus be united with the Supreme God through His Son the Word, Wisdom, Truth, and Righteousness, who unites to God all who are resolved to conform their lives in all things to the law of God.

We will continue to pursue the position of Christian non-violence in the next post.

Inverting The Order (part three)

Quick review:  The church of the first three centuries was serious about following Jesus' cross-bearing example.  They understood, by personal experience, the life-encompassing nature of the faith, the reality of martyrdom, and the delight of enemy love.  I have suggested that the liberation brought about by the conversion of Emperor Constantine caused Christendom to drift away from martyr cross racing and drift toward self-empowerment, due to the absence of literal martyrdom and an increasing dependence on earthly power.

Lactantius was an early church father who lived and wrote during the early fourth century AD, including the eras before Constantine and after Constantine.  Last time, I posted a portion of his pre-Constantine writings:

When God forbids killing, He doesn't just ban murder, which is not permitted under the law [of men] even; He is also forbidding to us to do certain things which are treated as lawful among men.  A just man may not be a soldier (since justice itself is his form of service), nor may he put anyone on a capital charge: whether you kill a man with a sword or a speech makes no difference, since killing itself is banned. In this commandment of God no exception at all should be made: killing a human being is always wrong because it is God's will for man to be a sacred creature.

I want to provide a few more quotes from the pre-Constantine writings of Lactantius:

Let us see whether justice can have any bond with folly....  Why should a just man [Christian] go to sea, or what would he want from other people's lands when his own sufficed? Why go to war and tangle himself in other people's lunacies when his heart was full of peace with everyone eternally?

And again,

[The world thinks it is] folly for a man to prefer to be in need or to die rather than cause hurt or seize another man's property.

And again,

How can a man be just who does harm, who hates, who ravages, who kills? And all those are actions of people striving to do their country good. People who think that the only useful or advantageous thing is something you can grasp simply do not know what doing good is. But what you can grasp, another can grab.

And again,

We must avoid [the gladiator shows] because they are a strong enticement to vice, and they have an immense capacity for corrupting souls. Rather than contributing something to a happy life they are, in fact, exceedingly harmful. For anybody who finds it pleasurable to watch a man being slain (however justly the person was condemned), has violated his own conscience as much as if he had been a spectator and participant in a clandestine murder.

What might that mean about our present-day lifelike theatrical blood-lust?

Lactantius' opposition to Christians serving in the military reflected the broad and established consensus of the church from 30 AD to 312 AD.  Contemporary American Christians would likely be astonished, and even highly offended, at the early church's insistence that military service was no more of a viable vocation for a Christian than was being a pimp.  More on that in later posts.

On October 28, 312 AD, Constantine went into battle after having the sign of the Christogram inscribed on his soldiers' shields -- the first time in history Christian symbols led the way into war.  We all know that Constantine won the battle.

After Constantine was converted (a good thing, if it was legitimate) and the persecutions of Christians had ceased (a good thing), Lactantius continued ministry and writing.  Note how his later statements will contrast with his earlier statements of absolute opposition to taking human life and participating in war.  He shifts from saying that a just man cannot participate in war, to saying that just men won their wars.  This was just a subtle beginning.  Lactantius recounts:

Constantine was advised in a dream to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields of his soldiers and then engage in battle. He did as he was commanded and...marked Christ on their shields. Armed with this sign, the army took up its weapons. The enemy came to meet them without their emperor and crossed the bridge. The lines clashed, their fronts of equal length, and both sides fought with the most extreme ferocity.

Long story short, Constantine won. An ally of his, Licinius, also fought a battle against an enemy of Rome. Lactantius tells us:

An angel of God appeared to Licinius in his sleep telling him to get up right away and, with his entire army, to offer prayers to the all high God. If he did that, the victory would be his....  The angel stood at his side and told him how to pray and what words to use. When he woke up, Licinius called for his secretary and dictated to him the words he had heard: "All High God, we beseech You; Holy God, we beseech You. To You we completely entrust our just cause; to You we entrust our safety; to You we entrust our empire. Through You we have life; through You we are victorious and blessed...".

Licinius also won.  A joint announcement was written by Constantine and Licinius after their victories. Lactantius quotes it, and I provide a snippet here:

...The [new] arrangements which above all needed to be made [as a rule for the Empire] were those which ensured reverence for Divinity, so that we might grant both to Christians and to all people freedom to follow whatever religion each one wished, in order that whatever divinity there is in the seat of heaven may be appeased and made propitious towards us and towards all who have been set under our power.

This initial liberating decree was a call for freedom of religion for all, including (with particularity of intent) Christianity. For the first time, Christians would no longer be forced to perform acts of worship to Caesars. Their religion was now accepted among all of the others.  A good thing.

Let's turn to a closing word from Lactantius about these victories:

With great rejoicing, then, let us celebrate the triumph of God; let us extol the victory of the Lord; day and night let us pour out our prayers in rejoicing. Let us pray that He establish forever the peace that has been granted to His people after ten years [of hard persecution prior to Constantine's victory].

George Kalantzis summed it up this way:

Lactantius's rejoicing for the victories of Constantine and Licinius is unquestionably at odds with his earlier attitudes towards war and military service, from a time when it was not imaginable that the commander-in-chief could be obedient to the true God. Yet, as that last statement reveals, this rejoicing in the defeat of enemies was also the expression of jubilation by a generation that had lived through one of the most brutal and far-reaching persecutions.

Who wouldn't feel a euphoria at the death of your persecutors at the hands of those who promise you liberty? I'm not even remotely suggesting that such feeling is inappropriate.  What I am suggesting, however, is that with this new freedom, and with the power of the State's sword on their side, and with martyrdom fading as a real and present danger, the church (1) generally drifted into reliance upon physical power, (2) failed to maintain living a martyr's life, (3) increasingly dressed itself with self-empowerment, and (4) lost its grasp of enemy-love.  Christ's inverted ordering of power and love was blindly being flipped back to its original state.

Before the 4th century was even over, Rome passed legislation establishing Christianity as the State religion; now all of those other religions were illegal!  Standing behind the State's sword, the persecuted became persecutor -- after only a mere 70 years removed from her own sufferings.

Increasingly, Christians during that era were becoming detached from the voices of the suffering church fathers, and having no problems serving in Roman armies and marching into foreign lands to kill Rome's enemies instead of redeeming them. And today, our patriotic militaristic American Church carries on that tradition, as she probably sends more men and women overseas with guns, prepared to kill, than she sends overseas with Bibles, prepared to die.

Martyr cross racing is an attempt to address, and maybe begin to reverse, the self-empowerment mutation that has long been encoded within our religious DNA, endangering our integrity and embarrassing our witness.

Inverting The Order (part two)

Continuing with Caesar and the Lamb by George Kalantzis:

The first account of a Christian martyr is the stoning of Stephen (Acts 6:1-8:2) and the earliest recorded prayer of the church for the state is found in the First Letter of Clement (60:4-61:3), sent by the church of Rome to the church of Corinth at the end of the first century (ca. 90-95 CE). Scarcely a generation earlier, Paul had written to the churches in Rome to "be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God" (Rom 13:1). Paul had also instructed the Romans to "pay to all what is due them -- taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due" (Rom 13:17; also, 1 Tim 2:1-2). Jesus had talked about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's (Matt 22:21). To these, Peter added: "For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by Him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.... Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor" (1 Pet 2:13-15).

It was the same Peter, however, who, along with John, defined for the Christian community what "honoring the governing authorities" meant and how submitting oneself to the authorities was not to acquiesce to the [worship] demands of the state. Following the example of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, Peter and John affirmed that obedience to the command of God superseded the orders of the state: "We must obey God rather than any human authority" (Acts 5:29, 4:19). With this seemingly simple declaration, the apostles exposed the true nature of the conflict and identified every other authority, secular or religious, as subordinate to God. The Good News of God's imminent kingdom (Mark 1:15) was interpreted as "the rejection of one emperor, Caesar, by the proclamation of another, namely, Jesus" (cf. Acts 17:6)....

The apostles neither rebelled against Rome nor sought a particular national identity separate from the eschatological kingdom of Christ. Christians honored the emperor and the governors as his appointed authorities by following the example of Christ in refusing their consent and by submitting themselves to the consequence of their rejection, including scourging and death. That is what "rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's" would look like in the new economy; a simultaneous "yes" and "no" that points back to God as supreme. In doing so, they overturned yet again the normative paradigms of the classical traditions and showed how, for the Christians, power is gained through submission. A truly countercultural movement the Romans did not comprehend.

Martyrdom, then, was not the fate of the powerless, those finally forced to admit the grandeur of the state. Martyrdom was a witness to the state of its subordination to the God of heaven. Paul had already given expression to that: "For Your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things  we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us" (Rom 8:36-37).  (pp. 34-35)

Kalantzis sums up this section a little later:

The witness of the New Testament and of the early Christians was not one of an autonomous Christian political order, and yet, it was a wholly new political order. They honored the emperor by putting him in his proper place, under God, and commending him to divine favor. "I will honor the emperor," wrote Theophilus of Antioch (ca. 170 CE), "not by worshipping him, but by offering prayers for him.... He is not God. He is a man whom God has appointed to give just judgment, not to be worshipped." The distinction is crucial: the emperor has been given authority by God to govern according to God's justice, not Rome's. 

Christians insisted that their refusal to acquiesce to the simulacra [image?] of justice and worship [it] ought not to be interpreted as subversion or disloyalty but as a call to the state to repent and acknowledge its proper place under the authority of God (cf. John 19:11). It was civil disobedience.

A first principle of civil disobedience is the proposition that one cannot act contrary to conscience, even under compulsion. One acts or refuses to act, based on a higher conviction which, in the case of the Christian martyrs, was divine law. An equally important feature of civil disobedience was its non-violence. This, too, was an incontestable principle early Christians inherited from the teachings of Christ and the New Testament.  (pg 38)

Tying this together with my previous posts, the emperor's pursuit of your acquiescence is a reflection of how much he does not want to submit to God.  He will threaten to kill you if you do not acquiesce (or even "pretend" to), because your acquiescence is how he desires to kill God: by your own hands.  Our standing firm against him is for his own good, both as a testimony to him of God's lordship, and as a mirror by which he cannot help but know himself to be soaked in the blood of martyrs.  Our time to prepare to stand firm is today, not down the road.

Therefore, honor emperors and obey them insofar as they are not compelling you to worship them (or their State) by dictating to us new practices that denounce God and repudiate Christ.  But when he makes his move against Christ, he must be rejected; and yet you still can show him due honor by facing the unjust sword he bears against you.  By your death you defeat him, and testify to him that his true place is subjected to the God he hates.

So, if Christ by His own example has so reversed the pagan order of honor in relation to the State, how has He not also done so in how we relate to each other, and to our coworkers, and to any neighbor?  But of course He has!  Go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, give your coat also!  Blessed are the meek and the abused; rejoice and be glad!  This is true strength through personal weakness.  This is trusting God's crushings.  This is blessing the name of the Lord.

Let's return to Kalantzis once more:

For Justin [Martyr], Christianity had created a completely new ethic, inconceivable by the competing moral systems of his time: "We who formerly killed one another not only refuse to make war on our enemies, but in order to avoid lying to our interrogators or deceiving them, we freely go to our deaths confessing Christ" (Apol 1.39).  The Second Letter of Clement, the writings of Irenaeus (bishop of Lyon), Athenagoras' Plea on Behalf of the Christians, the Letter to Diognetus, the writings of Clement of Alexandria, as well as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, all speak of the irreducible relationship between love of enemy and the Christian call to nonviolence. Love of enemy, insisted Tertullian, is a peculiar idiom found among Christians alone and it separates them from all other people.

We need to note, however, that neither Justin's argument nor that of the other early Christian writers, was one of passive acceptance of the pepromenon, a fatalism that acquiesced to fate at the hands of an omnipotent state. If interpreted as such, Christian pacifism loses its scriptural underpinnings and ignores the fact that Jesus called His disciples engage in active peace-making. The scriptural call to nonviolence locates the positive call to love -- especially the enemy -- at the nonnegotiable center of the Christian message. This reversal of power that originates voluntarily from the one in the perceived position of weakness, and is directed toward the strong, is expressed in the form of prayer for one's persecutor and aims to bring the enemy into Christian communion (cf. Rom 12:21)....  Christians do not kill or participate in war because the rule of Christ demands otherwise. In the fourth century, Lactantius put it this way:

When God forbids killing, He doesn't just ban murder, which is not permitted under the law [of men] even; He is also forbidding to us to do certain things which are treated as lawful among men.  A just man may not be a soldier (since justice itself is his form of service), nor may he put anyone on a capital charge: whether you kill a man with a sword or a speech makes no difference, since killing itself is banned. In this commandment of God no exception at all should be made: killing a human being is always wrong because it is God's will for man to be a sacred creature.  (pp 52-53)

Today, we commit murder all too often with speeches and writings. Not literally, but in the spirit of "he who is angry with his brother will be liable to the judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire," and also "What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder."

How is it today that we think we can treat the diversity among our own brotherhood so scornfully, while maybe even simultaneously becoming convinced to treat a God-hating tyrant with calm self-sacrificing respect?  How is it today that we can treat a tribe of naked, spearing headhunters on the opposite side of the world with more grace and patience than the we show to the church of a different denomination right next door?  Yes, yes, I know they aren't correct about doctrine X.  But does that justify your anger and insults and haughtiness?  Surely not.

How did we get this way?  We've hinted at it before, but Lactantius himself provides a big clue that we will look at next time.

Inverting The Order (part one)

From Caesar and the Lamb by George Kalantzis:

Christians had inherited their notions of martyrdom from their Jewish heritage and especially the martyrdom accounts of [Second and Fourth] Maccabees...[concerning those who] were killed for their unyielding faithfulness to God.  Origen looked to the martyrdom of the Maccabees and acknowledged it as "a magnificent example."

The Christians' primary inspiration, however, was in the power and hope of the resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor 15:13-14) whose life and example they were called to emulate. The descriptions of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 and the obvious connections with Jesus were from very early on the interpretive matrix through which Christians understood their own experiences and times. Jesus had warned them that in response to His call to discipleship they would be persecuted at the hands of the status quo (e.g. Matt 10:16-42, John 15:18-35). Jesus had called His disciples to see themselves as "blessed" when reviled and persecuted on His account and had assured them of the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:10-12, Rev 21:7). To quote Wilken again,

The Church gave men and women a new love, Jesus Christ, a person who inspired their actions and held their affections. This was a love unlike others.... The Resurrection of Jesus is the central fact of Christian devotion and the ground of all Christians' thinking....

It would be misleading, then, to read the accounts of the martyrs primarily as refusals by Christians to offer sacrifice, as their pagan counterparts [accused]. On the contrary, almost sacrificial in character, each of these accounts is a rich sacrificial narrative that rejects the dominant religio-political paradigm and reinterprets assumed perceptions of power dynamics. (pp 23-24)

Note how Kalantzis above places faithful martyrdom into a stark contrast with power dynamics. I can adjust the terminology by setting martyr cross racing in opposition to self-empowerment.

Kalantzis quotes Eusebius describing the brutality of the martyrdom of a slave woman named Blandina. Eusebius concluded,

And the heathen themselves confessed that never among them had a woman endured so many and such terrible tortures. 

Kalantzis picks up from there:

The reversal of power was complete. It was the pagans who were led to confess, not the Christians. The example of Christ, His response during trial and torture, even His physical posture of calm silence and assurance had given Christians a new vocabulary. It transformed profoundly deeply rooted ideologies about human beings, power, the world, and history. The classical Greek concept of arete, and its Roman equivalent of virtus, both linguistic  derivatives of "male/man," signified the ideal of individual greatness. Based on the heroic ideal, Aristotle identified a virtuous person as someone who is prepared to sacrifice himself...for one's friends or family or homeland, and, if necessary, to die for it. Many of the philosophers from the classical to the imperial era expressed similar views. To be humble was to be weak, poor, submissive, slavish, and womanish; it was the physical position of shame, humiliation, degradation and, therefore, to be understood as morally bad. The New Testament revolutionized these values wholly by their total inversion. It presented Jesus who "endured the cross, disregarding the shame" (Heb 12:2) as the One Christians ought to emulate (1 Pet 2:19-20), and Paul's boasting in his lowly status, tapeinos, and sufferings in imitation of Christ gave new meaning to humility, transforming it into a virtue.  (pg 33)

This very key trait -- that ensured the faithful Christlike depth of the early persecuted church as well as its growth in numbers -- has ceased to be found in her much anymore in our cultural context.  We are so like the world, intoxicated with position and winning and goods, that Christ is blasphemed to the world by our self-empowerment and worldliness.  I'm reminded of something that old preacher from my early adulthood would say:  "So many Christians are looking for the World Church to start, and they're sitting in it." It's easy to look at someone else as being worldly in order to distract us from our own worldliness.

We will pick up with more from Kalantzis next time, seeing again how Christ inverted the order of honor, and maybe we will catch a peak at how and why the church after Constantine inverted the order back to a more pagan view.

The Wisdom of Sirach for Healing

The Wisdom of Sirach is a book of the Jewish Apocrypha, written in Hebrew by Jesus ben Sirach around 175 BC, and published later in Greek by his grandson.  It is a book of wisdom similar to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and in Roman Catholic Bibles it is commonly known as Ecclesiasticus.  The book is intended to support a life devoted to Scripture, not to be a book of Scripture.  The grandson wrote a prologue in which he says:

Many great teachings have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them, and for these we should praise Israel for instruction and wisdom. Now, those who read the scriptures must not only themselves understand them, but must also as lovers of learning be able through the spoken and written word to help the outsiders. So my grandfather Jesus, who had devoted himself especially to the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the other books of our ancestors, and had acquired considerable proficiency in them, was himself also led to write something pertaining to instruction and wisdom, so that by becoming familiar also with his book those who love learning might make even greater progress in living according to the law. You are invited therefore to read it with goodwill and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where, despite our diligent labor in translating, we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly. For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language. Not only this book, but even the Law itself, the Prophecies, and the rest of the books differ not a little when read in the original.... I have applied my skill day and night to complete and publish the book for those living abroad [Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora, living outside of Israel] who wished to gain learning and are disposed to live according to the law. 

With that introduction, I want to quote a small section of this book, with extreme Pentecostalism in mind -- whether the kind that handles snakes and drinks poisons, or the kind that forbids medicine as an act of "faith" (which is really self-empowerment and self-authentication).  I do so because around the same time the dead snake-bitten pastor was in the news, so were the parents of a young child who died for a lack of simple medical treatment because the parent's church forbids the use of medicine and even the wearing of seatbelts -- and tragically this was the second young child of theirs to die for the same reasons in recent years.

So what does Sirach have to say?

Sirach 38:9-11  9 My child, when you are ill, do not delay, but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you.  10 Give up your faults and direct your hands rightly, and cleanse your heart from all sin.  11 Offer a sweet-smelling sacrifice, and a memorial portion of choice flour, and pour oil on your offering, as much as you can afford.

Certainly, an extreme Pentecostal will have no problem with that. Pray for healing and repent of sins and offer up a sacrifice of praise!  Yet look at the very next verses as Sirach continues his wisdom on the topic:

Sirach 38:12-15   12 Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; do not let him leave you, for you need him.  13 There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians,  14 for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.  15 He who sins against his Maker, will be defiant toward the physician.

Martyr cross racing is laying down your own life (actual, financial, reputation) to save another, not laying down another's life to save face.  Make your own application.

(Disclaimer: "Make your own application" is a helpful charge borrowed from the Phoenix Preacher blog)

Aborting an Abortion: A Martyr's Life

There is a certain blog I occasionally visit because it is sometimes good, sometimes troubling, and always very honest.

A few years ago, I was troubled by one post and its subsequent discussions. Seems a seasoned, well-known mega-pastor in the western U.S. took a call on his radio program from a young woman seeking advice on going through with an abortion. She was carrying conjoined twins who shared the same body but had two heads. The doctors had advised abortion because of the high risk of complications and because such children rarely live for more than a day outside the womb. After hearing the situation, the pastor assured the woman that if she were to choose abortion the Lord would not condemn her. Something of an online war ensued about the pastor's counsel.

Some commenters on that particular blog thread claimed "This abortion can be justified using the self-defense argument," while others made strict pro-life arguments that condemned the woman and pastor, while still others had nothing more to say than "The Bible is silent here."

One pastor commenting in the discussion thread wrote something like, "Given the difficulty of her plight, I have no specific Biblical counsel to offer her." But he went far enough to say that if she were in his congregation, he promised "love and compassion" and he wouldn't permit anyone to condemn her for having an abortion. When I read that, I felt that he was probably using the term "condemn" with little if any differentiation from "rebuke" and "reprove." I marvel that the notions of Biblical rebuke and reproof are often presented as the opposites of love and compassion. Yes, we all know that church can be notorious for self-righteous judges and prideful condemnations. But this commenter was a pastor who would have nothing to do with loving her enough to rebuke and reprove her in Christ. Much more needs to be done to correct the "fire-at-will" crowd than to command a congregation to say nothing at all in opposition to her choice. But that issue is not what I am treating here. (But for future reference, that same pastor in the comments section is known to have a particular doctrinal affinity for theologian Ben Witherington, whom I plan to quote in a future post).

Back on topic, I think the comments in that discussion are partly a symptom of our overt short-sightedness as a whole. Part of what helped me to see it that way were some statements I read a short time later in William Gurnall's devotional, "The Christian in Complete Armor." For example:

Temptation is never stronger than when relief seems to dress itself in the very sin that Satan is suggesting.  [As in "abort the twins" or "eat the pork" or "curse the name"?]

And again,

 Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Of all his plots, this is perhaps the most dangerous to the saints, when he appears in the mantle of a prophet and silver-plates his corroded tongue with fair-sounding language. In this manner, he corrupts some in their judgment by interpreting gospel truth in such a way that God appears to condone questionable behavior. These Christians get caught up in the world's morality under the disguise of Christian liberty....  How we need to study the Scriptures, our hearts, and Satan's wiles, that we may not bid this enemy welcome and all the while think it is Christ who is our guest!  [Christ has no rebuke of your abortion. Your circumstances exempt you. Divine justice will excuse you for fearing the doctor when you are under compulsion (4 Maccabees 8:22).]

And again,

Some martyrs have confessed that their hardest work was to overcome the prayers and tears of their friends and relatives. Paul himself expressed those same feelings when he said, "What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? For I am ready, not to be bound only but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus!"  [I am ready, not only to live destitute for this child, but also to die in the hospital for him as a demonstration of the grace of the Lord Jesus!]

What I saw was that the twins' mom wasn't thinking, "Dying (figuratively or literally) for these twins is the most Christlike and God-rewardable thing I can do, as a testimony to the greatness of the name of Him whose love compels me."  The commenters on that blog weren't thinking this way either. And I don't think this way either.  That must change!

Can you, can I, can the twins' mom say,

"O Lord God Almighty, I bless You because You have considered me worthy of this needy child by whom I will likely be exhausted of everything I am and have, so that I might receive a place of 'martyrdom' in the cup of Your Christ"?

Or say,

"God has judged me worthy to be found with this child. It is good to be setting from this world to God, in order that I may rise to Him"?

Or say,

"I know that many have lived destitute lives so that they might ransom others. I will do so for my baby"?

If God works all things together for the good of His people, and if He works all of our weakenings together for our strength, then all things should be viewed as happening for our faith. And suffering with faith is suffering for your faith:  a daily martyrdom grounded in loyal adoration of our sovereign God, even in the bitter providences. Especially in the bitter providences. Call it a martyr's life.