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Christians as Levites: Rethinking Early Christian Attitudes toward War and Bloodshed via Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2019
Abstract
This article seeks to break the scholarly deadlock regarding attitudes toward war and bloodshed held by early Christian thinkers. I argue that, whereas previous studies have attempted to fit early Christian stances into one or another “unitary-ethic” framework, the historical-textual data can be best accounted for by positing that many early Christian writers held to a “dual-ethic” orientation. In the latter, certain actions would be viewed as forbidden for Christians but as legitimate for non-Christians in the Roman Empire. Moreover, this dual-ethic stance can be further illuminated by viewing it in connection with the portrayal in the Hebrew Bible of the relation between Levites and the other Israelite tribes. This framing enables us to gain a clearer understanding not only of writers like Origen and Tertullian, who upheld Christian nonviolence while simultaneously praising Roman imperial military activities, but also of writers such as Augustine, whose theological-ethical framework indicates a strong assumption of a dual-ethic stance in his patristic predecessors.
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- © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2019
Footnotes
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I thank Simeon Burke, Julia Snyder, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.
References
1 In this essay, I use the term “bloodshed” to refer to acts causing the death of human beings; I do not address the related issue of shedding the blood of animals.
2 For overviews of the scholarly debate, see David, G. Hunter, “A Decade of Research on Early Christians and the Military,” RelSRev 18:2 (April 1992) 87–93Google Scholar; George, Kalantzis, Caesar and the Lamb: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012) 3–6Google Scholar.
3 See, e.g., John, Howard Yoder, “War as a Moral Problem in the Early Church: The Historian’s Hermeneutical Assumptions,” in The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective (ed. Harvey, L. Dyck; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) 90–110Google Scholar; Jean-Michel, Hornus, It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight: Early Christian Attitudes toward War, Violence, and the State (trans. Alan, Kreider and Oliver, Coburn; rev. ed.; Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Kalantzis, , Caesar and the Lamb, 39–68.Google Scholar
4 E.g., John, Helgeland, “Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine,” ANRW II.23.1 (1979) 724–834; John, Helgeland, Robert, J. Daly, and J. Patout, Burns, Christians and the Military: The Early Experience (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985Google Scholar); Peter, J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010) 255–78Google Scholar; cf. Alan, Kreider, “‘Converted’ but Not Baptized: Peter Leithart’s Constantine Project,” in Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate (ed. John, D. Roth; Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013) 25–67.Google Scholar
5 Although many scholars use the contrast of “religious” versus “moral/ethical” to refer to “concerns about idolatry” versus “concerns about bloodshed,” such terminology is problematic, insofar as early Christian objections to bloodshed can be seen as also having a religious or cultic dimension, and objections to idolatry can be seen also as having a moral dimension. The conceptual binary between religious/cultic and moral/ethical may itself reflect a failure to properly take into account the dual-ethic orientation displayed in both biblical and early Christian texts.
6 One partial exception can be found in Louis, J. SwiftGoogle Scholar, whose account rightly highlights certain aspects of the apparently doubled elements. However, his failure to recognize the priestly-Levitical dynamic leads him to present the Christian thinkers as having an ambivalent attitude toward questions of war and bloodshed, rather than having, as I argue, a deliberate duality of roles. See Swift, “War and the Christian Conscience I: The Early Years,” ANRW II.23.2 (1979) 835–68, at 841, 851, 854–55, 859–60, 866, 868; and idem, The Early Fathers on War and Military Service (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1983) 39, 49–50, 55, 78. Moreover, even when he rightly describes Origen as having a “bifocal view,” he then goes on to cast this as “coming perilously close to a double standard of morality, one for Christians and one for non-Christians” (“War and the Christian Conscience,” 854–55). This more pejorative language of “perilously” and of “double standard” reflects an attempt to account for the data from an assumed norm of a unitary ethic, rather than taking into account the possibility of a normative dual-ethic framework.
7 John, F. Shean (Soldiering for God: Christianity and the Roman Army [History of Warfare 61; Leiden: Brill, 2010]) helpfully emphasizes that in this regard it is “no longer possible to speak of a single Christian mindset” during this period (105), and that the views of the church fathers must be distinguished from the question of whether certain other Christians on the ground viewed joining the army as less problematic (80, 121–22Google Scholar, 163). For further evidence regarding the phenomenon of Christians in the military, see also Helgeland, , “Christians and the Roman Army,” 765–97Google Scholar. Conversely, one contemporary source regarding this issue, not treated by Helgeland, may be Celsus, who, in generalized formulations, appears to view Christians in his day as rejecting military service and thus criticizes them for this. See Origen, , Cels. 8.55, 68–69Google Scholar, 73 (Origen, Contra Celsum [trans. Henry, Chadwick; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953] 493–94, 504–6, 509).Google Scholar
8 For an overview of the differing portrayals of Levites in different biblical texts, see Menahem, Haran, Temples and Temple-service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns 1985 [1978]) 58–64Google Scholar. For an approach that seeks to uncover the social-political historical background to these portrayals of the Levites, see Mark, Leuchter, The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017Google Scholar). Leuchter’s introductory chapter (1–33) provides a good account of recent scholarly debate on the Levites and their status.
9 For elements found in common in presentations of the Levites across the different biblical texts, see Haran, , Temples and Temple-service, 70–71, 112–13.Google Scholar
10 My presentation of the theological conceptuality of the biblical portrayal of the Levites shares much in common with John, C. Nugent’s account in The Politics of Yahweh: John Howard Yoder, the Old Testament, and the People of God (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011) 105, 122–23Google Scholar, 191–210, and see also the further secondary sources he cites on 191–92. However, my primary aim in this presentation is to highlight the dual-ethic aspects of the biblical presentation, a theme which receives less emphasis in Nugent’s account.
11 See the analysis of military terminology in Baruch, Levine, Numbers 1–20 (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 134.Google Scholar
12 See John, R. Spencer, “PQD, the Levites, and Numbers 1–4,” ZAW (1998) 535–46Google Scholar, at 543; Levine, Numbers 1–20, 125.
13 See Nugent, Politics of Yahweh, 200–202. The commandment for the Levites to refrain from the physical violence of warfare is all the more notable given multiple narrative passages in which the tribe of Levi or representatives therefrom are directly linked to acts of violence, e.g., Gen 34, Gen 49, Exod 32, and Num 25. This priestly-Levitical connection to violence has been noted by Joel, S. Baden, “The Violent Origins of the Levites: Text and Tradition,” in Levites and Priests in Biblical History and Tradition (ed. Mark, Leuchter and Jeremy, M. Hutton; Ancient Israel and its Literature 9; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2011) 103–16Google Scholar, and by Yonatan, S. Miller, “Sacred Slaughter: The Discourse of Priestly Violence as Refracted through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015Google Scholar). However, Baden and Miller do not discuss the commanded legal separation of the Levites from the physical violence of Israelite warfare (although cf. Miller’s brief reference to the association of Phinehas with “peace and peacemaking” [“Sacred Slaughter,” 237]). Leuchter (Levites, 12) briefly points out that “none of the narratives” regarding Israel’s settlement of the land “feature Levites actually waging war” but also does not address in depth how the latter point meshes with “the Levites’ tradition of violence.” As such, sustained analysis of the ways in which the Levites’ distinctive nonviolence in Israelite warfare relates to narratives of priestly violence remains a scholarly desideratum.
14 As Spencer (“PQD,” 546) puts it, “The Levites are the militaristic defenders of the cult and its cultic centers.” Leuchter (Levites, 90) also notes the “militaristic overtones” to the Levites’ cultic duties.
15 We can note, from passages such as 1 Sam 4:1–11, that the presence of the ark itself does not inherently mean that God is with Israel in battle; however, the biblical text still indicates that the ark (and hence the role of the Levites) constitutes a necessary, even if not sufficient, element in Israel’s warfare.
16 See Jon, D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988Google Scholar) 115. For ways in which related themes are taken up in various ways in different streams of Second Temple Judaism, see Martha, Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylviania Press, 2006).Google Scholar
17 Benjamin, Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) 84–87Google Scholar, 114–15. See also Sommer’s commentary in The Jewish Study Bible (ed. Adele, Berlin and Marc, Zvi Brettler; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 895, 903, 906.Google Scholar
18 See Himmelfarb, , Kingdom of Priests, 135–42.Google Scholar
19 For more on aspects of the New Testament that portray the entire Christian community in priestly terms, see, e.g., Ernest, Best, “Spiritual Sacrifice: General Priesthood in The New Testament,” Int 14 (1960) 273–99Google Scholar; John, Scholer, Proleptic Priests: Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991Google Scholar); Peter, J. Leithart, “Womb of the World: Baptism and the Priesthood of the New Covenant in Hebrews 10.19–22,” JSNT 78 (2000) 49–65.Google Scholar
20 Origen emphasizes that his affirmation of the lasting normative status for Christians of the Old Testament (when properly interpreted) sets him apart from those, such as Marcion, who rejected the Old Testament and restricted its meaning to the literal sense. See Christian, Hofreiter, Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) 58–65, 78.Google Scholar
21 Origen, Cels. 2.30 (Chadwick, 92).
22 Origen indicates that the distancing of Christians from physical acts of warfare and violence applies not simply to the pagan Roman Empire but as a more general principle; see, e.g, Cels. 7.26.
23 Ibid., 8.73 (Chadwick, 509).
24 Notably, Origen does not assign significance to the respective numbers of people in each role. He holds (Cels. 8.69) that even if all people in the Roman Empire became Christians, God would still provide victory: even though the people, as Christians, would be prohibited from engaging in physical warfare, God would save the people as a whole, as he did in the context of Exodus 14, where God defeats the Egyptians while commanding the Israelites themselves to “stand still” (Exod 14:13–14).
25 In this regard, Origen’s dual ethic may differ in certain ways from the Hebrew Bible’s dual ethic, insofar as in the latter there is not an expectation (or even a possibility) of more and more non-Levites becoming Levites. Likewise, unlike the biblical portrayal, those who in Origen correspond to non-Levites (i.e., Roman pagans) are not presented as commanded directly by God to wage war. I thank Julia Snyder for emphasizing this point.
26 Origen, Cels. 8.73 (Chadwick, 509).
27 As we shall see, in other writings intended primarily for Christians, Origen does indeed explicitly link the Christian calling more broadly to pentateuchal priestly-Levitical portrayals. Thus, while the more outward-facing argumentation in Contra Celsum, assuming a largely pagan audience, may speak of pagan-priestly roles, it is likely that a biblical-priestly orientation plays a significant role in shaping the basic substance of his argument here. Notably, Helgeland, with regard to Origen’s stance in this passage, states, “In arguing that Christians were set apart, like Roman priests, he may have been thinking of the Old Testament priesthood” (“Christians and the Roman Army,” 765; see also Helgeland’s comment [755] linking Cyprian’s concerns about bloodshed to “the Old Testament concept of ritual purity”). However, Helgeland does not pursue the further implications of this observation.
28 See, e.g., Augustine, Faust. 22.74, where he emphasizes that the problematic aspect of warfare lies not in striking, wounding, or causing death per se, but only in engaging in such actions out of base motives. By contrast, he argues, if those same acts of warfare are engaged in out of virtuous intentions, they are ethically-religiously unproblematic.
29 Origen, Cels. 8.74 (Chadwick, 509).
30 Ibid., 8.75 (Chadwick, 510).
31 As J. Patrick, Ware (The Mission of the Church in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians in the Context of Ancient Judaism [NovTSup 120; Leiden: Brill, 2005Google Scholar] 272) notes, the “noun λειτουργια ... in contrast to λατρεία, which is in the Septuagint frequently used of the worship of the entire people of Israel, is in the LXX used only of the sacerdotal service of the priests and Levites.”
32 On Christian separation from bloodshed and warfare, see also Origen, Cels., 3.7, 3.8, 5.33, 7.26.
33 Origen, Hom. Josh. 17.2 (Origen, Homilies on Joshua [ed. Cynthia White; trans. Barbara, J. Bruce; FC 105; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002] 161).Google Scholar
34 See Origen, Hom. Josh. 17.2 (FC 105:159). See also Origen, Comm. Jo. 1.9–11 (Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Books 1–10 [trans. Ronald, E. Heine; FC 80; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989] 33–34).Google Scholar
35 For a similar portrayal of Origen’s stance in this regard, see Gerard, E. Caspary, Politics and Exegesis: Origen and the Two Swords (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979) 125–36.Google Scholar
36 Origen, Hom. Lev. 9.1 (Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1–16 [trans. Gary, Wayne Barkley; FC 83; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990Google Scholar] 177); see also his similar comments in 4.6 (FC 83:78), 6.2 (FC 83:118), 9.9 (FC 83:196), 13.5 (FC 83:242).
37 For priestly-Levitical applications to inner-Christian differentiation, see Bryan, A. Stewart, Priests of My People: Levitical Paradigms for Early Christian Ministers (Patristic Studies 11; New York: Lang, 2015Google Scholar). For priestly-Levitical applications to the Christian community as a whole, see James, Leo Garrett, Jr., “The Pre-Cyprianic Doctrine of the Priesthood of All Christians,” in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History: Essays Presented to George Hunstson Williams on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. F. Forrester, Church and Timothy, George; Studies in the History of Christian Tradition 19; Leiden: Brill, 1979) 45–61Google Scholar; Laurence, Ryan, “Patristic Teaching on the Priesthood of the Faithful,” ITQ 29 (1962) 25–51Google Scholar; Hank, Voss, The Priesthood of All Believers and the Missio Dei: A Canonical, Catholic, and Contextual Perspective (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016); see in particular the summary listing of early Christian applications of the “royal priesthood” in Voss, Priesthood, 247–50.Google Scholar
38 English translations drawn from Tertullian, Apologetical Works, and Minucius, Felix, Octavius (trans. Rudolph, Arbesmann, Sister Emily, Joseph Daly, and Edwin, A. Quain; FC 10; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1950).Google Scholar
39 Cf. Apol. 25.14 (FC 10:80): “[E]very kingdom or empire is acquired by wars and extended by victories. Yet, wars and victories generally consist in the capture and destruction of cities ... there is indiscriminate destruction of city walls and temples, slaughter of priests and citizens without distinction.” As in the case of Origen, we should note that while Tertullian acknowledges the reality of bloodshed in warfare, and while he does not explicitly say that non-Christians ought to refrain from such actions, we need not see Tertullian as positively endorsing such bloodshed on the part of non-Christians. Indeed, since he holds that non-Christians ought to become Christians and thus cease from bloodshed, there may be an implicit condemnation of bloodshed on the part of human beings more generally, even if he simultaneously asserts a dual ethic insofar as the non-Christians have not yet become Christians.
40 In a number of places in his Apology (5.6, 42.3, and see also 37.4), Tertullian (using the term militare) does indicate awareness of the fact that some Christians were serving in the Roman army. Yet, as R. F. Evans argues, the actual wording of these passages does not appear to indicate Tertullian’s personal or normative endorsement of such behavior; rather, Tertullian may be making use of such facts to further his apologetic argument, to a pagan audience, on the general social integration of Christians in society. See R. F., Evans, “On the Problem of Church and Empire in Tertullian’s Apologeticum,” StPatr 14 (1976) 21–36Google Scholar. (I thank Simeon Burke for this reference.) In this regard, Evans (23–29) argues that while Tertullian’s views on other topics may have changed in his later Montanist period, his basic normative stance against military service should not be viewed as substantively different in his earlier writings than in his later writings; the differences in formulation are more likely rhetorical differences in writings geared toward pagan audiences or inner-Christian audiences, respectively. For a recent related analysis of early and late Tertullian, see Geoffrey Dunn, “Tertullian and Military Service: The Scriptural Arguments in De corona,” in Sacred Scripture and Secular Struggles (ed. David Vincent Meconi; Bible in Ancient Christianity 9; Leiden: Brill, 2015) 87–103, at 100–102. In this sense, Tertullian, particularly in the Apology, can be seen as holding a normative opposition to Christian military service, yet without feeling obliged to focus on condemning or anathematizing individual Christians who did happen to serve in the military. Cf. Shean, Soldiering, 121–22.
Furthermore, even in relation to Tertullian’s acknowledgment of some Christians engaging in militare, we can note that Alan Kreider, building upon Jean-Michel Hornus and John Howard Yoder, has pointed to the potential difference between militare (acting as a soldier) and bellare (engaging in physical violence of warfare), suggesting that typical Roman army life meant that some Christians could have remained in their soldiering roles without engaging in the violence and killing of warfare per se. See Kreider, “Military Service in the Church Orders,” JRE 31 (2003) 415–42, at 424–25; Yoder, “War as a Moral Problem,” 99–100; and Hornus, It is Not Lawful, 158. We can also observe, from a different but related angle, that the notion of engaging in (a certain type of) militare alongside a refraining from bellare fits quite well with the biblical portrayal of the Levites’ role in Israel’s warfare, serving in the military camp (Num 1:53), yet not with weapons.
41 Other places where Tertullian explicitly asserts the normative incompatibility of bloodshed and military violence with Christian commitment include Idol. 17.2–3 and 19.1–2 and Cor. 11–12.
42 As in the case of Origen discussed above, while Tertullian does not explicitly link these discussions of bloodshed to scriptural portrayals of the Israelite Levites and priests, he does draw explicitly upon the latter in other writings, thus lending additional weight to a reading of his dual-ethic approach in priestly-Levitical terms. See the discussion in Garrett, “ ‘The Pre-Cyprianic Doctrine,” 58–60; Ryan, “Patristic Teaching,” 32–33; Stewart, Priests of My People, 27–43.
43 Helgeland, “Christians and the Roman Army,” 764.
44 Ibid., 765; Shean, Soldiering, 80, 121, 142, 163.
45 In terms of conceptual terminology, Helgeland’s contrast between ethical and religious in this regard has itself been criticized, as an opposition to bloodshed can itself be bound up with religious concerns. See, e.g., Yoder, “War as a Moral Problem,” 108–9; Hunter, “A Decade of Research,” 87, 93.
46 Helgeland, “Christians and the Roman Army,” 751, 766.
47 See nn. 32 and 41 above.
48 While John Howard Yoder’s thought approaches this idea in certain ways, he tends to stop short of arguing for a Levite-like dual ethic in the early Christian thinkers. John C. Nugent argues that Yoder would have benefited from a more “robust canonical engagement with Israel’s priesthood” and the ways in which the latter has structural similarities to the type of identity Yoder sought to ascribe to the church. See Nugent, “The Politics of YHWH: John Howard Yoder’s Old Testament Narration and Its Implications for Social Ethics,” JRE 39 (2011) 71–99, at 89; see also Nugent, Politics of Yahweh, 105, 122–23, 191–210.
49 See, for example, Caspary’s contrast between Origen and Hippolytus of Rome (Politics and Exegesis, 136–39). For sources from a range of early Christian thinkers in this regard, see Kalantzis, Caesar and the Lamb.
50 See Kreider, “Military Service in the Church Orders,” 423.
51 Thus, as Christopher Walter emphasizes, the earliest available historical sources and evidence endorsing the notion of Christian warrior saints date specifically to “the post-Constantinian ideological climate,” even when the narratives about the saints are set in the pre-Constantinian period. As Walters states, “[t]he public expression of the cult of saints only became general after Constantine had given official recognition to the Christian Church.” See Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) 265–66. See also Hofreiter, Making Sense, 161.
52 Augustine, Faust. 23.77 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1 [ed. Phillip Schaff; 14 vols.; 1886–1890; repr.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994] 4:302).
53 In this regard, cf. Origen, Cels. 7.25–26.
54 “Letter 185: Augustine to Boniface,” in Augustine: Political Writings (ed. E. M., Atkins and R. J., Dodaro; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 185.Google Scholar
55 For more on this dynamic in Augustine, see Daniel, M. Bell, Jr., Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009) 28–29.Google Scholar
56 Augustine, “Letter 185,” 188.
57 Again, this theological-normative portrayal by Augustine should be distinguished from the historical question of whether, as seems likely, some Christians did in fact serve in the Roman army even prior to Constantine. Likewise, in historical reality, there were likely developments of a more gradual nature in the period before and after Constantine, rather than the sharp periodization Augustine presented. However, his presentation may still capture important elements and contours of an actual historical shift of substantial significance.
58 At the same time, there may be some precedent to be found in, for example, the book of Revelation for Augustine’s conception of earlier Christians as refraining from violence for a limited temporal period until a future historical shift; see Matthew Streett, Here Comes the Judge: Violent Pacifism in the Book of Revelation (LNTS 462; London: T&T Clark, 2012); and Paul Middleton, The Violence of the Lamb: Martyrs as Agents of Divine Judgement in the Book of Revelation (LNTS 586; London: T&T Clark, 2018). However, the question of the degree to which earlier notions of anticipated future eschatological triumph did play a role in shaping greater acceptance of Christian participation in bloodshed in the wake of the Constantinian transition is too complex to address here and would require a careful separate treatment in light of this essay’s analysis.
59 Augustine similarly emphasizes the temporal specificity of this shift in stating that “the church receives power through God’s generosity and at the appropriate time, because of the king’s religion and faith” (“Letter 185,” 188). For a different but related analysis of late antique perceptions of this post-Constantinian shift, see Daniel H. Weiss, “The Christianization of Rome and the Edomization of Christianity: Avodah Zarah and Political Power,” JSQ 25.4 (2018) 394–422.