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

Guns And Athenagoras: Inverting The Order (part six)

Quoting from:

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/287311237/kentucky-southern-baptists-draw-crowds-with-gun-giveaways

That article provides an example of a church appealing to people's self-empowerment drives, and calling it evangelism. 

It's an hour before suppertime, and the line outside Lone Oak First Baptist Church in Paducah, Ky., is wrapped around the building. The people are waiting for more than a Bible sermon; there's a raffle tonight. Twenty-five guns are up for grabs.

There's nothing new about gun raffles in Kentucky, even at a church. Last year, there were 50 events like this one in the state. The Kentucky Baptist Convention says it's a surefire way to get new people through church doors....

In attendance is Tom Jackson, who's not a particularly regular churchgoer. "I do believe in God and I do believe in living the way that he wants you to live, let's put it like that," he says.

Jackson says he believes in turning the other cheek, but also in the right to defend himself and his family how he sees fit. You can turn the other cheek, he says, only to a point.

"[If] somebody kicks your door down, means to hurt your wife, your kids, you — how do you turn the other cheek to that?" Jackson asks.

"Turn the other cheek, only to a point."  I don't recall that being the theme of Christlike response to abuse and threats.  And back when Judas led to Gethsemane the Roman soldiers who kicked down the door with intent to hurt Jesus, the one man who fought back was rebuked by Jesus.

The early churches, who faced real kick-the-door-in mobs as well as hateful magistrates and emperors, provide us with a refreshingly different but very difficult answer to Jackson’s question, “How do you turn the other cheek to that?”

Let’s return to the Epistle of Diognetus for help first, then I will introduce a new early church writer.

Christians are in the flesh, but they do not live according to the flesh [so much for shooting people]. They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven [if they don’t take up arms for Lord Jesus (do medieval crusaders get some exemption?), why would they take up arms for Lord Caesar?]… They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted [they don’t shoot them].  They are unknown, yet they are condemned; they are put to death [they don’t shoot back], yet they are brought to life…  They are dishonored, yet they are glorified in their dishonor [glorified by God, not by Smith and Wesson].  They are cursed, yet they bless; they are insulted, yet they offer respect [they don’t get even].  For doing good, they are treated like evildoers [they don’t pull the trigger]….  Epistle to Diognetus 5:9-16a

The author then moves into a lengthy analogy, which I think is very relevant to provide:

In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, which is invisible, is confined in the body which is visible; in the same way, Christians are recognized as being in the world, and yet their religion remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wages war against it (even though it has suffered no wrong) because it is hindered from indulging in its pleasures; so also, the world hates the Christians (even though it has suffered no wrong) because they set themselves against its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and Christians love those who hate them [love is not expressed with gunfire]…. The soul, which is immortal, lives in a mortal dwelling; similarly Christians live as strangers amid perishable things, while waiting for the imperishable in heaven. The soul, when poorly treated with respect to food and drink, becomes all the better; and so the Christians when punished daily [by someone kicking in the door looking to cause harm] increase more and more. Such is the important position to which God has appointed them, and it is not right for them to decline it [it is not right for them to shoot].  Epistle to Diognetus 6

The entire feel, theme, intent, and message of the preceding words flies in the face of the idea that we turn the other cheek only to a point.

The new writer I will introduce is Athenagoras, who wrote Plea On Behalf of the Christians to the emperor around 177 AD.  After commending the emperor for allowing the multitude of religions in the empire (yet 200 years later Christians revoked that openness toward the others), he turns to making a plea for equal openness toward Christianity:

While admiring your mildness and gentleness and your peaceful and benevolent attitude towards all, everyone enjoys equal rights; and the cities, according to their rank, share in equal honor; and, through your wisdom, the whole empire enjoys profound peace.

But you have not cared for us who are called Christians in this way; and although we commit no wrong, but as it will be shown in this discourse we are of all people most piously and righteously disposed toward God and your reign, you allow us to be harassed, plundered, and persecuted – the mob making war upon us only because of our name….

The injury we suffer from our persecutors is not aimed merely at our money, or our civil rights, or our honor, or anything of less importance – after all, we hold these things in contempt (although they appear of great importance to the masses), for we have learned not only not to return blow for blow, or to bring to court those who plunder and rob us, but to those who strike us on the one cheek to offer the other, and to those who take away our shirt to give also our coat – for when we have given up our property, they plot against our very bodies and souls….  Plea On Behalf of the Christians 1:2b-4

These statements from among the great cloud of witnesses point so clearly to Christlikeness.

Compare them with the words of the main speaker at the gun raffle evangelism show:

"I brought a gun with me tonight," McAlister says. "I know that's very controversial."

...And he welcomes the controversy; the best seats in the house are reserved for reporters. On stage, he cocks what he calls his most valuable gun.

"There's no government on the face of this earth that has the right to take this gun from me," he says to thunderous applause.

The closing line of the article quotes the speaker's own justification of his message:

"If simply offering them an opportunity to win a gun allows them to come into the doors of the church and to hear that the church has a message that's relevant to their lives, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that," he says.

Your “relevant” message would have no relevance at all to a persecuted church, like those who lived and died the Christlike way 1900 years ago.  Your message feeds the virus of self-empowerment.

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.