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 Thom Stark said...

EXCERPTED FROM: Alan Kreider, "Military Service in the Church Orders." JRE 31.3:415-422 (2003) pp. 417-430:

The Church Orders and Their Use

But we must, of course, constantly test every consensus by the sources. And there is one genre of sources on which Hornus concentrated to which Johnson, Cahill, Helgeland, Swift and other recent scholars have given very little attention—the “church orders.”5 These documents, often claiming apostolic or even dominical authority, were manuals which purported to guide church leaders in ordering the liturgy, organization, communal life and discipline of early Christian communities. Some of these, such as the Didache and the Apostolic Tradition, have become well-known; and the Apostolic Tradition has had a formative role in the liturgical life of many Christian traditions in the past half century. Others, such as the Canons of Hippolytus, the Testament of Our Lord, and the Apostolic Constitutions, have been less well publicized. But all of these, in my view, are important in the debate about early Christianity andwarfare. The reason is simple. The church orders as a genre are cumulative. Many of them drew extensively on previous documents, adding, deleting, revising. In the 380s, for example, the Syrian compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions incorporated and revised materials from the secondcentury Didache, the third-century Didascalia Apostolorum, and the largely third-century Apostolic Tradition. Thus, across a period of several centuries, the church orders enable us to monitor the changing views of thinkers in several early Christian communities as they handled the same texts and dealt with similar problems. And specifically they enable us to observe changing approaches to the question of military service.

In this paper I shall examine the church orders as they open windows to the cultures and practices of certain early Christian communities.6 Unlike Hornus, I will not claim that the church orders at any point represented “the position” of the Christian church as a whole; there was certainly much regional variation and the authority for practice of the church orders is, as I shall indicate, open to question. But I find the church orders to be both intriguing and significant.

So how did the church orders treat the question of military service? Let us begin to answer this by examining the Apostolic Tradition, which speaks about military service explicitly.7


THE APOSTOLIC TRADITION, c.16:
In the Legions without Killing

Apostolic Tradition c 16 (variant texts): Bradshaw/Johnson/Phillips 2002, 88–90

Sahidic
A soldier who has authority, let him not kill a man. If he is ordered, let him not go to the task nor let him swear. But if he is not willing, let him be cast out. One who has authority of the sword, or a ruler of a city who wears the purple, either let him cease or be cast out. A catechumen or faithful [person] if he wishes to become a soldier, let them [sic] be cast out, because they despised God.

Arabic
A soldier in the sovereign’s army should not kill, or if he is ordered to kill he should refuse. If he stops, so be it; otherwise, he should be excluded. Concerning those who wear red or believers who becomes soldiers or astrologers or magicians or such like: let them be excluded. One who has the power of the sword or the head of a city and wears red, let him stop or be excluded. A catechumen or a believer, if they want to be soldiers, let them be excluded because they distance themselves from God.

Ethiopic
They are not to accept soldiers of an official, and if he is given an order to kill he is not to do it; if he does not stop, he is to be expelled. Concerning other people, either a believer who becomes a soldier or an astrologer or magician or the like. An official who has a sword or a chief of appointed people and who wears purple is to stop or be expelled. A catechumen or believer, if they wish to become a soldier, are to be expelled because they are far from God.

John Helgeland and his colleagues, who argue that the early Christians were worried about idolatry in the Roman legions but not killing, have paid little attention to the Apostolic Tradition.8 Some liturgical scholars, in contrast, have paid immense attention to it, believing that it provides nothing less than the official liturgy of the church of Rome in the third century. In part because of its purported Roman origin, the Apostolic Tradition has arguably been the most influential of early Christian writings in the reform of the eucharistic liturgy and the renewal of the catechetical processes of many contemporary churches. Recent scholarship, however, has established a more complex view of the document’s origins (Metzger 1988; Metzger 1992; Metzger 1992a). Scholars have long known that the purported Greek-language original of the Apostolic Tradition doesn’t exist; all that we have is versions in Latin, Sahidic (Coptic), Arabic and Ethiopic—and for chapter 16, which concerns us, the best version, Latin, is lacking. Furthermore, scholars such as the team, led by Paul Bradshaw of the University of Notre Dame, who have just produced the Hermeneia commentary on the Apostolic Tradition, have studied the texts of these documents very closely. They now see this as “an aggregation of material from different sources, quite possibly arising from different geographical regions and probably from different historical periods.” Some of these materials may come from as early as the mid-second century, while other materials may come from as late as the mid-fourth century (Bradshaw/Johnson/Phillips 2002, 14).9 All of this complexity makes this an endlessly intriguing document. The document’s significance is obvious: itwas copied repeatedly, and altered by local churches to adapt it to immediate needs; it was, as we shall see, incorporated with adaptations into many later church orders. Its authority for practice is never clear. Nevertheless, in its bewildering variety of versions extending across several centuries, the Apostolic Tradition remains one of the most informative texts about the life and worship of early Christian communities.

The excerpt from chapter 16, which I have included here, survives in three languages—Sahidic, Arabic and Ethiopic. The provenance of these, in location and date, is uncertain. The severest of the three versions is the Ethiopic, which refuses to admit soldiers into the catechumenate even if they refuse to kill. The Cistercian scholar Eoin de Bhaldraithe sees this as the earliest, “primitive” formulation (De Bhaldraithe 2001, 170). Together with the somewhat more lenient Sahidic and Arabic versions, which are willing to catechize and baptize lower-ranked soldiers who commit themselves to refrain from killing, the Ethiopic version may reflect a church policy prior to and somewhat less flexible than that to which Tertullian refers in his De Idololatria and De Corona.10 The Sahidic and Arabic texts would thus be thinkable for early third-century North Africa, and these may parallel Roman practice (De Bhaldraithe 2001, 170). Let us note four things about these texts.

First, the location of these texts within the Apostolic Tradition is significant. They occur in the midst of a section (chaps. 15–16) which provided guidance for teachers who were screening people for their suitability as potential catechumens. The early churches, unlike most churches today, did not welcome prospective members with open arms. Instead church leaders assessed each candidate by asking questions about their commitments and lifestyle. The catechists’ concern was not to determine whether their behaviour was sinful or wrong; it was rather to find out whether they were living in such a way that they were, in the words of chapter 15, “able to hear the word.”11 So when the catechists inquired into the marital state of their candidates, their relationship to their masters (if they were slaves), and their crafts and professions, their primary concern was: were these such as to enable them to hear the word? Actors, for example, who gave pagan theatrical performances—could these hear the word in a community which vigorously repudiated polytheism? Gladiators, who killed in the arena—could these hear the word in a community which forbade the taking of life? Prostitutes—could these hear the word in a community that emphasized chastity and continence? All of these needed to leave their professions or be rejected as potential Christians; their professional commitments rendered them unable to comprehend the life and message of the Christians. Were they to be admitted as catechumens, they simply could not “hear the word.” The Apostolic Tradition adjudged members of certain other professions, however, to be capable of hearing the word if they took the socially-costly steps of modifying their behaviour. Sculptors or painters, for example, could be accepted as catechumens if they refrained from depicting pagan themes. And this is where the soldiers enter. The Apostolic Tradition assessed soldiers, like the members of other professions, by their capacity to hear the word: did their external professional commitments—the tasks and milieux and religious concomitants of their jobs—enable them to receive the Christian good news in churches in which reconciliation with the alienated brother was a precondition for prayer (e.g., Cyprian, Lord’s Prayer 23)? The Apostolic Tradition’s assumption is clear. Inner and outer are inextricable; if you live in a certain way outside of the church you cannot hear, comprehend, or live the gospel that the Christian community is seeking to embody as well as teach.

Second, the three strands of the Apostolic Tradition dealt separately with soldiers who were under orders (“a soldier who has authority” [Sahidic])12 and soldiers who gave orders (“One who has authority of the sword” [Sahidic]). All three versions refused to admit soldiers in positions of command to be catechumens or members; but the Sahidic and Arabic versions did admit the rank-and-file soldiers to catechesis, under certain conditions.

Third, all three strands of the Apostolic Tradition forbade catechumens or believers to enlist voluntarily as soldiers; if they did so, they were adjudged to have despised God, and hence were to be rejected— dismissed if they were catechumens and (it appears) excommunicated if they were believers.

Finally, the Apostolic Tradition in all strands indicated certain behavior, characteristic of military service, which disqualified men from admission to the Christian community. The Sahidic text forbade the soldier to “swear”; the soldier’s sacramentum was incompatible with the Christian’s sacramentum—his baptismal commitment to the Lord. Further, in all three strands there is a manifest concern with killing. A rank-and-file soldier shall “not kill a man” (Sahidic).13 Not even if he is commanded to do so: “If he is ordered, let him not go to the task.” The Apostolic Tradition did not forbid the soldier who was a catechumen to burn incense to the legion’s gods; it forbade him to kill. If idolatry had been the primary issue, and if army religion was as unavoidable as some scholars have indicated (“the Christian in the army was caught in a religious net of exceedingly fine mesh”; Helgeland et al. 1985, 51)), it is hard to see how any Christians could have stayed in the army. But the document assumes that it was possible to be a rank-and-file soldier in the Roman legions without committing acts of idolatry (a tacit assumption) and without killing (an explicit assumption). It is killing that the Apostolic Tradition expressly proscribes.14


Divergent Early Christian Arguments and Practices

Soldiers in the imperial legions who for Christian reasons didn’t kill— was this thinkable? From the late second century onwards there is evidence that some Christians found it possible to justify being both a Christian believer and a Roman legionary. In 176 there is the famous story of the “Thundering Legion” from Asia Minor, whose prayers preceded (and elicited?) a colossal rainstorm which defeated their opponents. From this time onwards there are reports, growing in number as the third century progressed, of Christians in the legions.15 These may have been more numerous in the East than theWest, and more on the fringes of the empire (e.g., on the eastern frontiers) than in the imperial heartlands. According to a recent study the congregation which met in the famous domus ecclesiae of Dura Europos was “primarily made up of soldiers” (Wischmeyer 1992, 37). Already in Tertullian’s day, in North Africa, there were Christians who were serving as soldiers, and they (possibly with others) were beginning to develop a Christian rationale for their military calling. Tertullian (De Idololatria 19)was not impressed by their thinking (he called it “making sport with the subject”), so he did not report it in detail; but he provided an outline of their arguments. These Christians appealed to the Old Testament (“Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the people warred”); in the New Testament they found encouragement from a centurion who had believed (Mt 8.5ff or Lk 7.1ff or Acts 10?). But their chief argument seems to have been an appeal not to Jesus but to John the Baptist. When soldiers came to John, he had not forbidden them to kill, but had given them “the formula of their rule”—they were not to engage in extortion or threats and they were to be contented with their wages (Luke 3.14). Prior to Constantine I have not found theologians and writers who elaborated upon these arguments (Bainton 1960, 66), but they may have been common among Christians in the legions, and they certainly were to have a great future in the Christianized empire.

In contrast, the theologians of the pre-Constantinian church vigorously, and with considerable unanimity, forbade killing in its many guises (Sch¨opf 1958).16 In Athens Athenagoras (Legatio 35) argued that Christians could not “endure to see a man being put to death even justly,” and distanced believers from gladiatorial contest, abortion, and the exposure of infants. “We are altogether consistent in our conduct,” he proclaimed. In Palestine the mature Origen (Contra Celsum 3.7) stated of warfare: “the lawgiver of the Christians . . . [forbade] entirely the taking of human life.”17 Similar texts are numerous, and are not in doubt. They are congruent with the traditional Christian emphasis upon loving the enemy, and with the attempts of church leaders to construct Christian communities as cultures of peace (Ferguson 1999). The question is: how did this fit together with the apparently small but growing number of Christians in the legions?


Militare without bellare

The Apostolic Tradition attempted to provide a way for Christians to be in the legions without taking life. In its Sahidic and Arabic variants it realistically accepted that there would be Christians in the legions, but it attempted to equip them to be there without abandoning the values and the theology of the Christian church. Christians could be soldiers, but they were not to fight.

It is hard to assess how this worked out in practice, but socio-political realities of the third century may have made it possible. Forty years ago Yale ancient historian Ramsay MacMullen argued that in the late second century the emperor Septimius Severus sought to promote military recruitment and social stability by lowering the barriers between soldiers and civilians; troops, who had been confined to camps, were now found in the imperial cities, where they became involved in a wide variety of activities that we would call civil service. “Many, for their full twenty-five years, did nothing but write; many attended magistrates as messengers, ushers, confidential agents, and accountants, measuring their promotion from chair to chair.” By this process, the later empire was progressively “militarized” (MacMullen 1963, 155–157, 176). In certain parts of the empire, it was possible for Christians to think of being in the legions but not fighting, of being willing to serve (militare) but not to kill (bellare) (Secr´etan 1914; Rordorf 1969, 109–110; Brock 1994).

A picture of what this might have been like comes from John Chrysostom, catechizing in Antioch a century later, but reflecting a reality that would have been familiar earlier (Baptismal Instructions 8.17). He refers to Christians, among them soldiers, who gathered in Antioch at dawn for prayer. After prayers, strengthened with God’s assistance, each one scattered to his daily tasks, “one hastening to work with his hands, another hurrying to his military post, and still another to his post with the government.” During the day they avoided idle talk, indecent thoughts, and failure “to control [their] eyes.” In the evening they returned to church to render account for their day’s activities. The soldier in this account appears to have had an office job, and Chrysostom didn’t express the concern that he might have to kill. In Antioch it was evidently possible for soldiers to live without warring, although Chrysostom recognized that wars were occurring “in the distance, on the borders of the Roman Empire” (Comm on Isaiah 2.4). There soldiers might have to take life, but in the imperial heartland even at the end of the fourth century it seemed possible for the Apostolic Tradition’s apparent solution to work—to serve but not to kill, militare but not bellare.

CANONS OF HIPPOLYTUS, c. 13–14:
Penance in event of killing

Concerning the Magistrate and the Soldier they are not to kill anyone, even if they receive the order: they are not to wear wreaths. Whoever has authority and does not do the righteousness of the gospel is to be excluded and is not to pray with the bishop.

Whoever has received the authority to kill, or else a soldier, they are not to kill in any case, even if they receive the order to kill. They are not to pronounce a bad word. Those who have received an honour are not to wear wreaths on their heads. Whoever is raised to the authority of prefect or to the magistracy and does not put on the righteousness of the Gospel is to be excluded from the flock and the bishop is not to pray with him. A Christian is not to become a soldier. A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God. Canons of Hippolytus, 13–14: Bradshaw 1987

It is fascinating to trace the revisions which the fourth-century church orders made in this passage from the Apostolic Tradition. In these church orders we can observe writers in Christian communities, mainly in the East, as they tried to come up with coherent Christian approaches to warfare in a changing environment. Not surprisingly, these documents record both continuity and change. The earliest of these is the so-called Canons of Hippolytus. This was written in Egypt between 336 and 340 and was then translated from Greek into Coptic and finally Arabic, in which it survives.18 Like the Apostolic Tradition, the Canons of Hippolytus (chaps 13–14) assumed that there would be catechumens and believers in the legions. However, unlike the Apostolic Tradition (Sahidic and Arabic), the Canons of Hippolytus did not make a distinction between the magistrate and the soldier; and, it assumed that Christians who issued commands as well as those who received commands would be in the legions. The Canons insisted that all Christians in the legions must “do the righteousness of God.” For example, it states twice that they were not to wear wreaths; they were not to “pronounce a bad word” (swear an oath?). And above all, they were not to “kill in any case, even if they receive the order to kill.” The final paragraph states that the Christian soldier was not “to burden himself with the sin of blood.”

But the author of the Canons was aware that Christians were living in a world they could not control. So the Christian was not to become a soldier, “unless he is compelled by a chief bearing a sword.” A similar adjustment was provided for soldiers who transgressed against the apparently well-established Christian refusal to “shed blood” by introducing a significant innovation—an early version of the system of canonical penance. If a Christian soldier took life, he was to be excluded from the mysteries until he had been “purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing.” The Canons did not stipulate how long this period of penitential exclusionwas to last; but soon writers in other communities were being more specific. In the 370s in Cappadocia, for example, Basil of Caesarea (Ep 188.13) counselled that “those whose hands are unclean. . . abstain from communion for three years”—which, as the twelfth-century canonist Balsamon observed (Commentary on the Canons 13.2.65), if enforced, would mean that combatants “who are engaged in successive wars” would “never partake the divine Sanctified Elements.” This, according to Balsamon, was “unendurable” and required revision (Viscusso 1995). In theWest, Councils and penitential documents, in similar fashion to the Canons of Hippolytus in the East, also excluded soldiers who killed from the eucharists for varying periods (Vanderpol 1925, 116–118).

TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD, 2.2:
Luke 3.14 for catechumens

If anyone be a soldier or in authority, let him be taught not to oppress or to kill or to rob, or to be angry or to rage and afflict anyone. But let those rations suffice him which are given to him. But if they wish to be baptized in the Lord, let them cease from military service or from the [post of ] authority. And if not let them not be received.

Let a catechumen or a believer of the people, if he desire to be a soldier, either cease from his intention, or if not let him be rejected. For he hath despised God by his thought and, leaving the things of the Spirit, he hath perfected himself in the flesh, and hath treated the faith with contempt. Testament of Our Lord, 2.2, Syriac version: Cooper & Maclean 1902

Later in the fourth century, an author penned a second revision of the Apostolic Tradition, this time claiming dominical authority. This document, the Testament of Our Lord, was probably written in Greek, very possibly in Asia Minor, and has survived in Syriac and Ethiopic versions, of which I use the Syriac.19 The Testament, like the Canons of Hippolytus, both continued and altered the emphases of the Apostolic Tradition. Like the Ethiopic version of the Apostolic Tradition, but unlike the Sahidic and Arabic versions, the Testament (2.2) makes no distinction between the rank-and-file soldier and the soldier in authority. Both could be taught, evidently as catechumens, what appropriate behaviour might be for a soldier who wanted to become a catechumen. This advice is familiar to us—it is an amplified version of John the Baptist’s instructions to soldiers. The Testament’s amplification is significant. It forbade not only robbing and discontentment with wages, as in Luke 3.14, but also various misdeeds which it evidently viewed as characteristic of soldiering—“to oppress or to kill or to rob, or to be angry or to rage and afflict anyone.” In keeping with the Apostolic Tradition, among the actions which the Testament prohibited was killing. This teaching, however, was only for the catechumens. If soldiers of any rank wished to be baptized and become believers, they must “cease from military service or from the [post of ] authority.” If they did not they were to be rejected. So John the Baptist’s counsels were provisional, for catechumens while they were learning; these counsels were to be superceded by a more complete fidelity specified by Christian teaching—which must have been imparted in the catecheses—which forbade military service and killing. In denying that Christians may be soldiers, the Testament is similar in its severity to the Ethiopic version of the Apostolic Tradition. And the distaste with which the Testament viewed the military is indicated by its emendations to the clause which prohibited catechumens or believers to enlist as soldiers. Such a person, “leaving the things of the Spirit, . . . hath perfected himself in the flesh . . . .”

THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS, 8.32.10:
Luke 3.14 for all

If a soldier come, let him be taught to do no injustice, to accuse no one falsely, and to be content with his allottedwages; if he submit to those rules, let him be received; but if he refuse them, let him be rejected. Apostolic Constitutions, 8.32.10: Donaldson 1989

It was the words of John the Baptist from Luke 3.14 which pointed the way forward for Christians as they entered Christendom. The Apostolic Constitutions, probably compiled in or near Antioch in the 380s, represents a more accommodating approach to warfare than any earlier church order in the Apostolic Tradition’s tradition.20 It is fascinating to compare the Apostolic Constitutions with the prior documents which it incorporates and revises. In book 7, for example, it revises the Didache’s “two ways” teaching. Whereas the Didache (1.4) had said, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn your other one to him too,” the Apostolic Constitutions added, “Not that revenge is evil, but that patience is more honorable” (7.2). “Do not murder,” the Didache had stated, quoting the decalogue (2.2), which the Apostolic Constitutions also nuanced: “Not as if all killing were wicked, but only that of the innocent; but the killing which is just is reserved to the magistrates alone” (7.2).21 Soldiers, it is clear, were now a part of the Apostolic Constitutions’ immediate world of experience. They could still seem threatening, so the community prayed at the eucharist “for the king and all in authority, for the whole army, that they may be peaceable towards us” (8.12). But soldiers were now giving gifts to the church. The third-century Didascalia Apostolorum, a Syrian church order, viewed soldiers among the “reprehensible persons” whose polluted donations, if received at all, could only be used for firewood (162–163 [4.5]). In contrast, the Apostolic Constitutions 4.6 was happy to accept accept donations from a soldier, provided he could meet the familiar standards of John the Baptist; the church must, however, turn down the gifts of “a soldier who is a false accuser and not content with his wages, but does violence to the needy, a murderer, a cut-throat . . .”

Luke 3.14 also was the means by which the Apostolic Constitutions justified receiving soldiers as catechumens and members. Compared to the Apostolic Tradition and the other church orders we have examined, the Apostolic Constitutions stated an approach that is shorter and less complex. Gone is all concern about distinctions between soldiers in positions of command and those in the rank-and-file; gone is all worry about Christians joining the forces; gone is any articulated worry about killing. Instead the Apostolic Constitutions now adopted John the Baptist’s requirements for repentant soldiers as its “rules.” The church was to teach soldiers not to do injustice, not to accuse people falsely, and to be content with their wages. That was enough. If soldiers refused this, they were to be rejected. Of course, as Ramsay MacMullen has pointed out, in view of the typical behaviour of Roman legionaries these stipulations must have made some soldiers squirm as they examined their consciences and careers (MacMullen 1988, 130–132, 153, 160). It is also clear that some churches which were influenced by the Apostolic Constitutions viewed these rules as too lax. The Ethiopic version of the so-called Alexandrine Sinodos, a fifth-century variant of the Apostolic Constitutions, still required that a potential catechumen have “left that [military] occupation.”22

Nevertheless, the Apostolic Constitutions, by making Luke 3.14 central to its provision re soldiers and by deleting reference to killing, indicated the way in which the church would go. John the Baptist’s requirements became a central proof-text in the anti-pacifist argumentation of many theologians. Augustine was typical here. In correspondence with Count Boniface (Ep 189.4), who was troubled by the (traditional?) idea that it was “impossible for any one to please God while engaged in active military service,” Augustine appealed to Luke 3.14. “The sacred forerunner of the Lord,” he wrote, “certainly . . . did not prohibit them to serve as soldiers when he commanded them to be content with their pay for the service.”23 But Augustine was also aware of the potential of this passage to critique military behaviour; in Sermon 302.15 he quoted it to rail at soldiers “by whom the poor are oppressed.” At their best, the moralists of Christendom would not provide carte blanche for soldiers.


NOTES

[4] Brock 1988 lists 111 books, articles and chapters in books which appeared in the previous century.

[5] Johnson 1987 and Cahill 1994 deal with other patristic sources, but not the church orders. Helgeland 1979, 752 and Swift 1983, 47 each devote a single page to the Apostolic Tradition and say nothing about the subsequent church orders. The best introduction to this genre is Bradshaw 1992, chap 4.

[6] My reading of these documents has been helped by the work of a cluster of scholars associated with the University of Notre Dame: Bradshaw 1992; Bradshaw, 1996; Johnson 1996; Yoder 1996. I have also built upon several parts of Hornus’ work—notably his comparatively extensive treatment of the church orders (Hornus 1961; Hornus 1980, chap 5).

[7] For editions, see Apostolic Tradition 1968 (ed Dix/Chadwick); 1989 (ed Botte); 1987 (ed Cuming); and 2001 (ed Stewart-Sykes). The Hermeneia edition, edited by Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson and L. Edward Phillips, has appeared since this article was accepted for publication (Bradshaw/Johnson/Phillips 2002), and I have made some slight alterations to my text in light of it. It is now the standard translation of the variant sources, and its editorial comments are learned and suggestive.

[8] Helgeland 1979, 752 comments that the Apostolic Tradition has two “very brief ” statements, whose meaning is unclear: was the objection to enlistment on the basis of combat, idolatry, or some other reason? The document, says Helgeland, was clearly worried about the oath, which was probably its “chief objection.” The most fruitful approach, according to Helgeland, is to see the clauses about military service in the context of the Apostolic Tradition’s treatment of crafts and professions, in which concerns about immorality and idolatry were very clear. Helgeland et al. 1985, 35–36 add: “There is no reference whatever to prohibition of killing in combat whether in defense or in expansion of the empire.” Helgeland and his colleagues, we may note, use the Dix translation, which, unlike other translations, renders “execute” instead of “kill.” They do not explain why the early Christians would have had theological or pastoral problems with capital punishment, but not with killing in warfare. Nor do they examine the later church orders as a means of understanding the concerns of the Apostolic Tradition.

[9] Since I wrote this article, a new edition of the Apostolic Tradition has appeared (ed Stewart-Sykes, 2001). This edition, which draws on the researches into the history of the church in Rome by Allen Brent of Cambridge, like the work of Bradshaw, Johnson and Phillips, sees the Apostolic Tradition as a “multilayered work.” But according to this analysis, all the layers come from Rome: some represent the ancient traditions of the Roman house churches; others reflect third-century trends in a church that has recently adopted nonepiscopal leadership. Both of these layers are reconciled in the Apostolic Tradition which expresses the position of a united community under the leadership of Pontianus, bishop of Rome, who was martyred in 235 (see Stewart-Sykes 2001, 14, 49–50). There will clearly be detailed debate between Bradshaw, Johnson and Phillips, on the one hand, and Stewart-Sykes and Brent, on the other. If the latter are correct, the Apostolic Tradition had considerably more authority than I in this article, following Bradshaw and his colleagues, have claimed.

[10] Tertullian (De Idololatria 19; De Corona 11) sees Christians as “sons of peace” for whom service in the military is intrinsically difficult. He recognizes that two conditions mitigate the difficulties: (a) when a soldier is in “the rank and file,” in which case “there is no necessity for taking part in sacrifices or capital punishments,” which were harder for the upper ranks to avoid; (b) when a soldier is serving “even in time of peace,” doing guard duty, in which case he could serve “without a sword, which the Lord has taken away,” in contrast to war-time service. Tertullian admits that a soldier “may be admitted to the faith,” but would ideally like a newly-baptized soldier immediately to abandon military service, or “all sorts of quibbling” will be necessary. He does not allow for a believer to enlist. Nevertheless, it is clear that things weren’t always happening as Tertullian wished.

[11] For another explanation of the church’s refusal to admit catechumens, see Dickie 2001.

[12] The translation of these texts varies. The literal translation of the Sahidic text would seem to be “a soldier in command,” and this is how Dix translated it (1968, 26); Bradshaw/Johnson/Phillips render the text “a soldier who has authority” (2002, 88). But as Stewart-Sykes following Botte points out, the context would indicate that the soldier in question is not in command but under the authority of a superior (Stewart-Sykes 2001, 102; Botte 1989, 37n). Cuming (1987, 16) renders this meaning in his translation: “a soldier under authority.”

[13] Dix’s edition (p. 26) translates the Sahidic as “execute men,” as if the import was capital punishment and not combat; Cuming’s translation is the more general “shall not kill a man” (p. 16). According to Maxwell E. Johnson, one of the editors of the Hermeneia edition, the words in context may have to do with capital punishment, but linguistically they do not restrict themselves to capital punishment, and their import is general: “if someone is in the military already at the time he is converted, then he has to agree to stop killing people, even under orders” (personal communication 22 April 1999).

[14] According to Tertullian (De Idololatria 19), both killing and idolatry seem to have been inescapable for soldiers of the upper ranks; they faced the “necessity for taking part in sacrifices or capital punishments.”

[15] Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.5.1–4; Tertullian, Apology 5.6; for comment, Harnack 1908, II, 52–64 (“The Spread of Christianity in the Army”).

[16] Sch¨opf 1958, 242–243, who however argues that the pre-Constantinian Christians were less than unanimous about capital punishment and were at times equivocal about warfare.

[17] For other early Christian texts on shedding blood, see Minucius Felix, Octavius 30.6; Tertullian, Apology 37; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.18, 6.20; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes 1.6.

[18] English translation by Carol Bebawi, in Bradshaw 1987; for comment, see Bradshaw 1992, 92–93.

[19] English translation by Cooper and Maclean 1902. The Ethiopic version of the passage on military service is, according to the French translation of Robert Beylot, very similar on essential points to the Syriac (Beylot 1984, 214–215). For the document’s date and place of place of origin, see Sperry-White 1991, 6. The document’s refusal of military service and its repeated mention of prophetic and charismatic gifts would seem to be additional evidence pointing to a fourth- rather than fifth-century date for the document.

[20] English translation by James Donaldson repr. 1989; but see also the critical edition of Metzger 1985–1987, along with Metzger 1992, which presents his French translation in one volume.

[21] Similar nuancing took place in the Apostolic Constitutions’ softening of the Didache’s prohibitions of anger with a brother (“without a cause”) and of swearing oaths (“But if that cannot be avoided, thou shalt swear truly”) (2.53; 7.3). 22 “If there is a man of the army, and if he wishes to come in and know (the Faith), and if he came into our law, let him leave his robbery and violence and calumny and transgression and folly, and he shall be content with his pay, and if he left that occupation he shall be received, otherwise he shall be rejected” (Horner 1904, 149, 208).

12/27/2007 04:19:00 AM  

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