Zu's musings: March 2006

Grrrrrrrrrr

You know what I hate? When people bring food into class. It's cool to bring a bottle of pop or a bag of chips in. That doesn't bug me. But when people bring in a whole box lunch or a bag full of burgers and fries, it really irritates me. First off, who is really so pressed for time that they can't eat at home or at the fast food joint? Is it absolutely essential for your survival to make all kinds of noise and spread food out all over your desk while I'm trying to take notes? You can't be like almost everyone else in the class and wait until later? And it's always something that has a really intense smell. Like french fries or a sandwich with some kind of spiced cold cut. Within seconds, everyone around the food is sniffing and getting really hungry. Now they can't concentrate because they just realized how much they wanted some fries.

Today in my 597 class, some dude, who stumbled in like 20 minutes after class started, managed to combine eating a full meal in class with my other pet peeve, screwing around on your computer. As he was sitting there dipping french fries in his frosty, he opened up his laptop and signed onto the internet. That's cool. You can use wireless internet to dowload the class outlines and type your notes up nice and neat with a word processor. But he didn't do any of that. Instead he proceeded to peruse facebook, check fantasy baseball drafts, chat on AIM, and check his email. It wouldn't have been that bad, but he was sitting in front of me. Every time I looked up to look at the powerpoint presentation, I'd find my eyes drawn to the pictures of random girls at a party or stats for A-Rod. Grrr!

I imagine this is the reason God decided not to give me superhuman abilities. People who irritated me would surely be destroyed in a vulgar display of my own might.

Of course Dawna is excluded from this rant due to her busy schedule.

Augustine & Falwell on Iraqi Freedom

I forgot to include the Augustine part in my thesis WIP. I'm still working on the Just War part, which is hard because I forgot a couple of my books that helped to separate Augustine from Thomas Aquinas, but I'll soldier on.

...

Perhaps that's an unfortunate turn of phrase

Aaaaaaaaaaanyways, here.

Augustine

St. Augustine divides the universe into two “cities”. The first is a city of God which is the realm of heaven. On earth is the “city” of man, the corporeal world. The now official Christian religion had to deal with the fact that it existed in the earthly city and that sin and vice was a large part of that existence. By making war and other sins necessary evils that the state could carry out as a last resort, Augustine let the church be able to exist in its new role in the Roman Empire.

The very existence of war, Augustine argues, is the work of the divine. Wars can be used to guide humanity and to teach people harsh lessons. Augustine argues this in Book one of City of God.

“They ought rather, had they any right perceptions, to attribute the severities and hardships inflicted by their enemies, to that divine providence which is wont to reform the depraved manners of men by chastisement, and which exercises with similar afflictions the righteous and praiseworthy -- either translating them, when they have passed through the trial, to a better world, or detaining them still on earth for ulterior purposes.”

For Augustine, God punished the wicked, tested the patience of the saintly, and sped along the repentance of sinners through warfare. While Christians should always search for peace, the world is full of those who would destroy it. Therefore, to paraphrase Vegetius, if the Christians of the Roman Empire wanted peace, they would have to prepare for war.

Augustine separates deeds committed by men into two categories. There are deeds which a man does of his own free will and his own desires. If these deeds are sinful, then that man has sinned. But if a man does something under orders from a legal authority, then he is simply a tool in the hand of his ruler; a ruler, who, as St. Paul said, had authority because God gave it to him. This fits nicely into a discussion of the legitimacy of war and a Christian’s participation in it.

“They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Abraham indeed was not merely deemed guiltless of cruelty, but was even applauded for his piety, because he was ready to slay his son in obedience to God, not to his own passion”

Augustine says that there are obligations in society that force men to choose between the lesser of two evils. Warfare is sometimes the lesser of two evils in the world. But even if faced with a perfectly valid reason to wage even a defensive war, Augustine says man should still lament.

“For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and this wrong-doing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man because it is man's wrong-doing. Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling.

Augustine developed two main conditions that had to be met before a Christian state could, in good conscience, wage a war. First there had to be proper leadership. The person ruling the state had to have the proper ruling authority as granted by God. The other requirement was a proper cause for war. A state couldn’t go to war for revenge or just to conquer new territories. It had to be threatened in some manner. A state had to respond defensively. This isn’t to say that a state could not attack. If another state was preparing to attack or exhibiting dangerous tendencies, it was fair game. The evil of waging war had to be weighed against the evil of letting another state gain the power and dominance to carry out more wicked deeds. War had to be carried out regretfully and Augustine admonishes his readers to let “necessity slay the warring foe, not your will”

Also, here's a page or two I wrote about a series of three sermons from early 2004 about the Iraq War. I stopped just where I was going to compare his thoughts on Just War with Augustine.

Operation Iraqi Freedom Sermons, Early 2004[1]

Rev. Falwell deals with Operation Iraqi Freedom in three sermons from January and May of 2004. In all three he again draws on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 as a justification that war has its place in the world. Just like in the earlier sermon, Isaiah 9:6 is used to show the Messiah as a prince of peace, Romans 12:18 is a call for Christians to live in peace, and the Jesus of Revelation is shown as a mighty warrior.

In two of these sermons[2], Dr. Falwell references Matthew 5:43-45 which calls on Christians to love their neighbors. But, as Rev Falwell argues, God sometimes calls for war. Besides the passage from Revelation about Jesus leading the final battle against evil, Rev. Falwell uses Exodus 15:3 to show that God is a warrior. “The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name." He uses the earlier example of Moses and Joshua again, saying that God gave them strength for battle.

With the Old Testament as his guide, Rev. Falwell gives evidence that God supported wars in the past. In I Chronicles 14:15, it is said to the Israelites “then thou shalt go out to battle: for God is gone forth before thee to smite the host of the Philistines.” Proverbs 20:18 says “Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.” Finally Rev. Falwell cites Isaiah 13:4 where it is said that “the Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle.”

Dr. Falwell then asks when there is a justified time for war. He then lays out three categories. First, war is justified when “freedom must be defended,” secondly war is allowed when a nation must “defend innocent people,” finally, a just war must “stop the spread of evil.”

[1] http://sermons.trbc.org/20040125.html, http://sermons.trbc.org/20040530.html, http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36859

[2] “Why ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ is a Just War” (January 25^th 2004), “Operation Iraqi Freedom is a Just War” (May 30^th2004)

And now I'm going to take a break and enjoy my break a little.

Grades!

Oh, for anyone that cares, I totally aced that anthro class. My final grade was like... 298/300 total points. I wish we got A+'es. I got a B- in Latin and it dropped my GPA a little bit. If we got above 4.0 for really good grades, I could have made dean's list this quarter. Plus all I got was an S in my thesis class, and even though it counts as 5 credits, it doesn't factor into the GPA, so my 4.0 + a 2.7 = a 3.35 for the quarter. This is why I don't like the +/- system without an A+. If I got a 4.3 for getting a 99% in that anthro class, it would have bumped my total GPA for the quarter to a 3.50. Or even if there weren't any +/- at all. I'd have a 4.0 and a 3.0 which would be a 3.5.

Oh well. Maybe next quarter the +/- system will work to my advantage.

Thesis statement

I never posted any kind of new intro/thesis statement since I changed the focus of my paper, so here's one for my legions of dedicated readers who were confused by the new entries about religious right writers.

While many conservatives in the modern religious right claim to have theological ties with the early Christian church, a careful comparison of their sermons with the writings of church fathers shows a significant disconnect. While the church fathers reflected mainly on the New Testament and the break with the Old that Jesus represented, the religious right draws heavily upon the Old Testament. Those like Tertullian and Origen refused to believe that anything justified a break with the pacifism of Jesus but modern leaders of the religious right cast aside these hesitations and justify their calls to war with passages reflecting the warlike God of old. Finally, Augustine’s writings about the theory of a just war are appropriated by the religious right, but rarely real depth of understanding.

Videogames + School = Educational?

I'm still reading and writing about the sermon on how Operation Iraqi Freedom is a just war, but when I was eating lunch, I read an interesting article in PC Gamer. If I knew how to have my entries in different categories like on Warhistorian, I'd file this one with the discussion on tactics/videogames from last year.

At West Nottinghamshire College in Nottinghamshire, England, a teacher made a module in the popular RPG game Neverwinter Nights. A module is like... if anyone has ever played Dungeons and Dragons, it's what a Dungeon Master makes and references when he runs an adventure. In the game, it includes Non-Player Character dialogue, scripted events, different monsters that can pop up, the terrain, etc...

Anyways, this teacher used his module to test and reinforce things that the students learned in class. They were doing math work, so the teacher, Gavin Smith, has the students shop for supplies for a journey on a boat. "It's designed to test ratios and fractions," Gavin explains. "And the students immediately want to learn. They come to their teachers demanding knowledge."

The college thinks it works pretty well. More than 500 students have passed through the course, the team won an award, and the exam board endorse the module as an official teaching product. The national average for students' "retention and achievement" is 34% but the college averaged 94%.

part 2

War and Easter Sermon. Jerry Falwell March 30, 2003[1]

Addressing the issue of war very directly in the beginning of his sermon, Dr. Falwell says the following: “Christians have struggled with the subject of war for centuries. People of faith have wrestled with war since the beginning of time. Some use the Scriptures to justify themselves as warmongers. Others use the Scriptures to justify their pacifism. The Bible does neither.”

He then goes on to present several key themes, first among these the idea that God loves peace. As evidence, he uses a passage from Isaiah 9:6 prophesizing the coming of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace. He follows by saying that peace is not always possible, using Romans 12:17-18. This passage states “If it be possible, as much as is in you, have peace with all men. “ Dr. Falwell asks is war is ever acceptable to God and then answers unequivocally, YES. For proof, he points to Ecclesiastes 3:8, which lists the various things that have their time under heaven, the most important of these being “A time of war, and a time of peace.”

Drawing on Revelation, Dr. Falwell says that “Jesus himself will become commander in chief of Earth’s final war.” He then goes on to list biblical figures like Moses, Joshua, and Aaron who also waged war. These are the very same figures that Tertullian used earlier as examples of the break between the rules of the Old and New Testaments. Moses and Joshua waged war because they lived before the time of Christ. Tertullian argued that Christ “unbelted every soldier”[2] when he took Peter’s sword away, and that Christians should not take it up again.

As the sermon comes to a close, Dr. Falwell draws on the swords into plowshares imagery of Isaiah 2:3-4, and says that there will one day be a perfect peace, but until that day there will be war. He offers Christian ways to deal with war however. First they are to pray, as told by St. Paul in Timothy 2:1-4. They should trust God, as Psalm 27 instructs. Christians should seek peace and encourage one another. Again St. Paul is quoted, this time in Galatians 6.2

[1] http://sermons.trbc.org/20030330.html

[2] On Idolatry, Chapter 19

omg

Hey! Blogger worked! Now to post some stuff before it decides to stop.

Augustine and The Institute for American Values.[1]

The Institute for American Values issued a “Letter from America” in February of 2002. In this letter, the Institute follows the just war reasoning of Augustine very closely. They outline different suitable causes of war. Firstly, wars should not be fought over small or trivial matters, and they should not be fought if the problem can be solved in a non-violent manner. But, if the enemy “seeks is not your willingness to negotiate or comply, but rather your destruction” they argue that proportional force is justified as a response.

They agree with Augustine that a just war can only be declared by a sovereign ruler, not any “freelance” groups like al-Qaeda. Furthermore, this war can only be waged against combatants. Civilian targets are off limits, even if the enemy targets and attacks non-combatants. The Institute does say however that sometimes non-combatants will be killed as a result of accidents in targeting or intelligence. This is regrettable, but still morally justifiable as long as the non-combatants were not the intended target.

[1] http://www.americanvalues.org/html/wwff.html

Finals!

Whew. I'm done with finals. My anthro final was weak. It was 50 questions and took me 18 minutes. My Latin final however...

See, I can read Latin. I can translate it and make sense of it and know what conjugations the verbs are all in and stuff like that, but when it comes to explaining the grammar... not so much. It's the same as English. I can instinctively write complex English prose, but if you asked me to explain what subordinate clause I used and why, I'd be like "uhh... 'cause it sounded right?"

Anyways, the 40 chapter book we used is finished and next quarter will be us reading from Caesar's: The Civil War, and some poems from Catullus. Like so:

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas
meas esse aliquid putare nugas.
Iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum
omne aevum tribus explicare cartis...
Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli—
qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
plus uno maneat perenne saeclo!

Anyways, I'll get back to posting about the thesis tomorrow or so. My spring break plans to see spring training kinda fell through, so I'll just be farting around Columbus. My mom is demanding that I come home for a few days too. So I'll have lots of time to read and write.

Check you later!

update`

Hey, that last post was my 100th. Wooooo blog!

Also, I won't be nearly as prolific with my posts this week because I have to do a lot of studying for Latin. The gerund and gerundives are kicking my... nates. Brush up on your anatomical Latin to figure out what's being kicked! Or I guess you could tell from the context, but what fun is that?

Aaaaaaaand I'm spent

Jesus and the Gospels

In Luke 3 we are presented with the scene of Saint John the Baptist baptizing people from many different walks of life. When, in verse 14 of the Vulgate, he baptizes Roman centurions, he has a very interesting answer to their question.

“And the soldiers also asked him, saying: And what shall we do? And he said to them: Do violence to no man, neither calumniate any man; and be content with your pay.”

At first glance, this passage seems to give a very pacifistic message. John quite simply says not to hurt anyone or to slander against them. However he then tells the soldiers to be content with their pay. These are soldiers who are in the employ of the Emperor. If he didn’t want them to be soldiers, why would he have said for them to be content with their pay? Why didn’t he answer their question by saying “Leave the army and pray for the coming of the Messiah, the Lamb of God, he who will rule an empire that will make yours as insignificant as a grain of sand on the beach.” or something equally polemical?

The answer is that he wanted them to remain soldiers, but soldiers that acted justly and in a Christian manner. They could soldier under the command of Caesar, but they ought to avoid violence outside the battlefield. Slaying an enemy in combat would be permissible, but rape, pillaging, and torture should be forbidden. This foreshadows later writing on just war theory that breaks war into two parts. The causes for a war to take place, jus ad bellum, and the restraints placed on Christians participating in a war, jus in bello. In this case, John is giving these soldiers instructions on jus in bello.

It is interesting to note that the text was changed in the New American Bible and that it is more in line with this form of thinking. Instead of telling the soldiers to do violence to no man, it says “"Do not practice extortion.” Furthermore, Jesus was a part of this baptism ceremony. If he did not agree with John, or wanted to speak up about soldiering, he probably would have.

Further along in chapter 7 of Luke, Jesus is approached by Jewish elders acting on behalf of a centurion. The elders tell Jesus that the centurion’s servant is close to death, and they beg of him to heal the slave. Jesus starts off for the centurion’s home but before he arrives, the centurion sends friends outside to stop him. They deliver this message:

“Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof. For which cause neither did I think myself worthy to come to thee: but say the word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man subject to authority, having under me soldiers: and I say to one, Go, and he goeth: and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doth it.”

At this time, Jesus has before him a prostrate soldier seeking healing, but not feeling worthy enough to let Jesus enter his home. Just like in the earlier passage, the soldier is not denounced and his profession is not forbidden. Jesus could have told him to leave the army or give up his violent ways, but instead he remarks to his companions “Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith, not even in Israel!” The servant is found miraculously healed and Jesus goes on to resurrect a dead boy in the next town.

One also wonders if Jesus does not see in this man something of himself. The line “For I also am a man subject to authority” hints at this. Jesus and the centurion are in the same position. The centurion has to fight because he is subject to the authority of his commanders, even if he does not want to. This mirrors Jesus’ feelings later in the garden. We are told that he prays so feverishly that it appears as if blood is dripping from him as sweat. He begs of his heavenly father to take the burden of his sacrifice away, but he knows that he will carry out the Lord’s will if it is asked of him.[1]

A point of contention will no doubt be when Jesus told Peter to put his sword away as he was captured. But the line “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” does not have to carry any negative connotation. Jesus could merely have been saying that people who use violent means are killed by those same means. Soldiers stab their enemies on the battlefield and are eventually stabbed themselves. Peter had a higher purpose; therefore Jesus did not wish to see him die prematurely that night in the garden. Jesus also knew that he had to die and that a fight in the garden would be contrary to his planned sacrifice. Furthermore, Jesus tells Peter that if he wanted to escape, he could have his Father summon twelve legions of angels to defend him.[2]

Dual Authority: Heavenly and the Corporeal

Jesus and St. Paul, it seems, were trying to set up a dual authority system like the one espoused by St. Augustine. They use centurions and soldiers as an analogy for this system. Throughout the passion, it is the common soldiers who torment Jesus. They represent humanity as they whip him brutally, place a crown of thorns on his head, drape him in a scarlet robe, taunt him as he carries the cross, drive nails through his hands and feet, cast lots for his garments, and eventually pierce his side with a spear. It was everybody that killed Jesus and it was everybody who was saved by his sacrifice. This is reflected in the fact that the common soldier that speared Jesus was splashed with blood and water from his side. In later non-canonical legends[3], this soldier, Longinus, was healed of blindness from the blood and water that splashed his face.

On the other hand; the centurions, Caesar, and other expressions of corporeal authority are usually respected. Centurions are baptized along side of Jesus by John, a gentile centurion is found to be more faithful than all of those in Israel, and it is a centurion who, upon seeing the death of Jesus, remarks “Truly, this was the Son of God!”[4]

When Jesus is questioned by the Pharisees about the legality of paying tribute to Caesar, he responds with “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's: and to God the things that are God's.”[5] In saying this, Jesus effectively splits the world into two halves. He suggests that money and other worldly deeds are strictly for this world while spiritual things like prayer and sacrifice and other virtues are given to God in the spiritual realm. He says that Caesar isn’t a god, but he has control over worldly things like the empire’s economy. This line of thought is further explored by St. Paul in Romans 13 when he says:

“Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves.”

The split between earthly and heavenly authority as illustrated by Jesus and Saint Paul Is important later. When Augustine seeks to argue that it is not murder when someone kills another under the command of a higher authority, he harkens back to these earlier examples. For Augustine, the one who carries out the killing is merely a “sword in the hand of him who uses it.”[6]

Tertullian

Tertullian is problematic in the development of a “unified” thought process on war. He writes mainly about the fact that the military required ceremonies and oaths that placed the Emperor as a divine being. At first it seems like he objects more to the fact that a blasphemous oath is uttered then to the actual act of killing someone. But in his book, De Corona, he goes back and inquires “whether warfare is proper at all for Christians.”[7] Even in this book, he still puts a lot of emphasis on the symbolism of the Roman army.

“And shall he keep guard before the temples which he has renounced? And shall he take a meal where the apostle has forbidden him? And shall he diligently protect by night those whom in the day-time he has put to flight by his exorcisms, leaning and resting on the spear the while with which Christ's side was pierced? Shall he carry a flag, too, hostile to Christ? And shall he ask a watchword from the emperor who has already received one from God? Shall he be disturbed in death by the trumpet of the trumpeter, who expects to be aroused by the angel's trump? And shall the Christian be burned according to camp rule, when he was not permitted to burn incense to an idol, when to him Christ remitted the punishment of fire? Then how many other offences there are involved in the performances of camp offices, which we must hold to involve a transgression of God's law, you may see by a slight survey. The very carrying of the name over from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is a violation of it.”[8]

Later on in this same chapter, he makes an exception to certain people in the bible that encountered faith after military service. Tertullian takes the passage about John the Baptist and the centurions and interprets it far differently than what has been discussed earlier.

“Of course, if faith comes later, and finds any preoccupied with military service, their case is different, as in the instance of those whom John used to receive for baptism, and of those most faithful centurions, I mean the centurion whom Christ approves, and the centurion whom Peter instructs; yet, at the same time, when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many; or all sorts of quibbling will have to be resorted to in order to avoid offending God, and that is not allowed even outside of military service; or, last of all, for God the fate must be endured which a citizen-faith has been no less ready to accept.”

This seems somewhat suspect. Tertullian says that once a man becomes a believer, they have to abandon their previous lifestyle, but the centurions he mentions did not. St. John the Baptist told the ones he baptized to be satisfied with their pay, leading one to believe that they were to keep their employ as soldiers. The centurion whose servant was healed by Jesus was also never told to stop what he was doing. These men showed faith, and that faith alone was enough for them to be accepted into the fold.

Returning to the symbolism issue, in chapter 12 of his book, Tertullian says that the “crown”, in this case the classic laurels worn behind the ears, is too associated with false gods for a Christian to accept. Even a Christian doesn’t utter the oath to the Roman gods, he is still accepting them by wearing those leaves. The laurel is “sacred to Apollo or Bacchus”, “the myrtle belongs to Venus, the mother of the Æneadae, the mistress also of the god of war”, “the olive is associated with Minerva”, etc…

Tertullian even takes exception with the fact that a soldier could sell his crown.

“The laurel is likewise commanded (to be used) at the distribution of the largess. So you see idolatry is not without its gain, selling, as it does, Christ for pieces of gold, as Judas did for pieces of silver.”

Tertullian discusses the passage from the Gospel about rendering unto Caesar at the end of this chapter, and he uses it as a command to avoid service.

“But even then you are still the soldier and the servant of another; and if of two masters, of God and Caesar: but assuredly then not of Caesar, when you owe yourself to God, as having higher claims, I should think, even in matters in which both have an interest. “

In another book, On Idolatry, Tertullian uses the Caesar reference again, saying “One soul cannot be due to two masters--God and Caesar.[9]” This is a key part of any reasoning behind the “legality” of a Christian warrior, but different authors take drastically different things from it. Augustine’s entire theory of the two cities is based off of a critically different interpretation of the very same lines from the Bible.

Later on in his book, Tertullian presents a very strong pacifistic interpretation of the Gospel and its break with the Old Testament.

“And yet Moses carried a rod, and Aaron wore a buckle, and John (Baptist) is girt with leather and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred: if it pleases you to sport with the subject. But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action.”

This is another example of a passage that can take two meanings. While some cannot see how Jesus telling Peter to put his sword down is a command to all Christians, others like Tertullian do.

Origen

In Contra Celsus, Origen is refuting the claims of Celsus that Christians are bad and rebellious because they will not serve in the Emperor’s army. He argues against the belief that Christians are a rebellious people because they were founded in rebellion. Origen points out a few flaws in the argument. First, he says that Celsus is wrongly thinking that the Jews were Egyptian. They were not, and their exodus was not a rebellion. Origen instead says:

“The ancient Egyptians, after inflicting many cruelties upon the Hebrew race, who had settled in Egypt owing to a famine which had broken out in Judea, suffered, in consequence of their injustice to strangers and suppliants, that punishment which divine Providence had decreed was to fall on the whole nation for having combined against an entire people, who had been their guests, and who had done them no harm; and after being smitten by plagues from God, they allowed them, with difficulty, and after a brief period, to go wherever they liked, as being unjustly detained in slavery.”[10]

Origen then says that if Christians were a rebellious people, then “the Christian Lawgiver would not have altogether forbidden the putting of men to death” [11]While the Jews rose up against the Romans time and time again, the Christians did not. They were directed merely not to murder, but to love and be merciful to their enemies. Finally, Origen says:

“Nor would the Christians, had they owed their origin to a rebellion, have adopted laws of so exceedingly mild a character as not to allow them, when it was their fate to be slain as sheep, on any occasion to resist their persecutors.”[12]

Jesus was seen as an influential leader amongst his people when they were on the verge of rebellion against the Romans. And while Jesus’ messages on war can be taken in different ways, his message on rebellion is clear. You must render unto Caesar what is his. When he spoke to a rebellious mass from the mount, he told the people to love their enemies, and if they were struck in the face, to turn the other cheek. St. Paul goes a lot farther when he writes about utter obedience to earthly authority because it is given by God. Violence and war are horrible sins, but sometimes they have to be done to further a cause. Jesus died by excruciatingly painful means, but it had to be done to save mankind. Wars are crimes against humanity, but they are carried out by leaders who ostensibly have authority from God. But a lone man or a mob of people who decide to fight against the proper authorities with violence is unacceptable.

Later on in Contra Celsus, Origen focuses on how Christians can help the Emperor by prayer and that they have a duty not to fight while wearing Roman armor, but while wearing the armor of God. Origen says:

“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.” [13]

Christians, Origen argues, do their part to help Rome by praying and joining “self-denying exercises and meditations.” He finishes by saying “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.”[14]

Also, Origen points out that there is already a precedent for avoiding military service for religious reasons.

“Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and those who attend on 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 priests in the army. If that, then, is a laudable custom, how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, these 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!”[15]

Finally, Origen says that Christians should not lead armies because, in addition to the killing, there is a great deal of glory and honor heaped on generals. Christians should avoid doing things just to be seen and praised by others. “For "in secret," and in our own hearts, there are prayers which ascend as from priests in behalf of our fellow-citizens.”[16]

[1] Luke 22:42

[2] Matthew 26:52

[3] The apocryphal Acts of Pilate. In some Eastern Orthodox churches, Longinus is honored as a martyr.

[4] Matthew 27:54

[5] Matthew 22:21

[6] City of God 1:21

[7] De Corona, Chapter 11

[8] Ibid.

[9] On Idolatry, Chapter 19

[10] Contra Celsus, 3:5

[11] Ibid, 3:7

[12] Ibid

[13] Ibid, 8:73

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid

[16] Ibid, 8:74

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That runs almost 13 pages in Word when it's double spaced and I haven't even got to Augustine yet. To be sure I'll have to delete some of Origen because it kinda goes off topic, but I'm keeping it for now to use as a comparison to modern RR thinkers. Anyways, I'm getting burned out with writing so I think I'll stop for today.

Now we'll see if anyone besides those forex trader spam bots leaves their thoughts.

On Tertullian

When I first started the new thesis focus, I was confused as to how I would incorporate Tertullian and Origen and the other "middle" Church fathers. In studying contemporary RR documents, I have found my solution. Tertullian has a clear break between OT and NT when he describes how Aaron and Moses had swords, but how Christians shouldn't. Modern commentators like Jerry Falwell do almost the complete opposite. They ignore the NT and focus more on the fire and brimstone of the OT.

In other news, my arm is itchy. I better not have gotten a random disease from Tyk.

On the use of blogs for notes

I can't begin to say how much easier it is to write a paper when you've taken notes and published them on a blog. It was very simple for me to copy and paste different entries from the past year and put them into one unified Word collection. It was much harder however to collect all the notes that I had taken in real notebooks and then transcribe them to the computer. Sometimes it can't be helped. With all the waiting around I do on campus because of the UV busses, I have to read and write away from the computer, but it's a lot easier to collect everything when it's online. Anyways, go read the first 5 pages. I'm going to keep writing 'cause I'm in a good groove. We'll see how much I get done before the the magic time is over.

Here it is!