Many historians with a just-war agenda have proposed one or more of three explanations for early Christian pacifism apart from principled nonviolence.

(1) IDOLATRY. The first and most common is idolatry. According to these historians, the primary objection of Christians to participation in the Roman army was not bloodshed but the necessity of idolatry. As we have seen, this view does not have its bases in the facts. Although there are some statements by the early Christian writers about the problem of idolatry in the military, the vast majority of objections to Christian participation in warfare is based on gospel nonviolence or love of enemy. Under this rubric there are a host of nuanced variations, some mature, some less so, including absolute faith in the power of God, patience, and the imitation of Jesus Christ, among others. Furthermore, if idolatry was unavoidable, no Christian would have been permitted to remain a soldier upon conversion, and as we have seen this was not the case. Christians were permitted to remain soldiers so long as they were able to refrain from bloodshed and other sins frequented by Roman soldiers. While early Christians certainly did oppose idolatry, and were well aware of the danger of idolatry in military life, this is clearly not a valid explanation of early Christian pacifism.

(2) ATTITUDE TO ROME. Others have attributed the Christian aversion to warfare to a general Christian hostility toward Rome as a persecuting power. This is an interesting claim, but ultimately an empty one, for there is not historical or literary evidence for it. The closest we have seen to an objection of this sort is in Tertullian’s rhetorical question, “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?” Nevertheless, this kind of objection is unique among the many varied Christian objections to warfare, and it itself is only one in a list of many objections. There certainly was a capacity in the Christian writers for prophetic critique against Roman imperialist pretentions and propaganda, as we have seen most clearly in the writings of Tertullian, Origen, and Lactantius, among some others. Nevertheless, it is also most strongly in these writers that the case for Christian pacifism is made from a commitment to the teachings and example of Jesus, in patient endurance, enemy love, and cosmopolitanism. Thus, as an explanation for early Christian pacifism, this too fails to account for the data.

(3) ESCHATOLOGY. A third approach taken by those wishing to explain early Christian pacifism in terms other than New Testament ethics is that of eschatology. Some historians claim that early Christians chose to abstain from warfare on account of their belief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. But this too fails to do justice to the historical situation. By the period in question, the expectation of a quick return had long since waned. The Montanists were a group who sought to keep alive the eschatological hope, and they were repudiated by the church at large for their belief in an imminent return. Some have tried to attribute Tertullian’s pacifism to his latter-day association with the Montanists, but such attempts ignore two glaring problems: (1) Tertullian’s major pacifist writings were penned before he joined the Montanists, and (2) Tertullian never once gives an expectation of the imminent return of Christ as a reason for Christian abstention from warfare. Nor, for that matter, does any other early Christian writer.