Christians have had diverse attitudes towards violence and nonviolence over time. Both currently and historically, there have been four attitudes towards violence and war and four resulting practices of them within Christianity: non-resistance, Christian pacifism, just war, and preventive war (Holy war, e.g., the Crusades). In the Roman Empire, the early church adopted a nonviolent stance when it came to war because the imitation of Jesus's sacrificial life was preferable to it. The concept of "Just War", the belief that limited uses of war were acceptable, originated in the writings of earlier non-Christian Roman and Greek thinkers such as Cicero and Plato. Later, this theory was adopted by Christian thinkers such as St. Augustine, who like other Christians, borrowed much of the just war concept from Roman law and the works of Roman writers like Cicero. Even though "Just War" concept was widely accepted early on, warfare was not regarded as a virtuous activity and expressing concern for the salvation of those who killed enemies in battle, regardless of the cause for which they fought, was common. Concepts such as "Holy war", whereby fighting itself might be considered a penitential and spiritually meritorious act, did not emerge before the 11th century.
The Bible and violence
The Bible contains several texts which encourage, command, condemn, reward, punish, regulate and describe acts of violence.
Leigh Gibson and Shelly Matthews, associate professor of religion at Furman University, write that some scholars, such as René Girard, "lift up the New Testament as somehow containing the antidote for Old Testament violence". According to John Gager, such an analysis risks advocating the views of the heresiarch Marcion of Sinope (c. 85–160), who made a distinction between the God of the Old Testament responsible for violence and the God of mercy found in the New Testament.
Mahatma Gandhi embraced the concept of nonviolence which he had found in both Indian Religions and the New Testament (e.g. Sermon on the Mount), which he then utilized in his strategy for social and political struggles.
Christian violence
J. Denny Weaver, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Bluffton University, suggests that there are numerous evolving views on violence and nonviolence throughout the history of Christian theology. According to the view of many historians, the Constantinian shift turned Christianity from a persecuted into a persecuting religion.see e.g.: John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration on Protestant England 1558–1689, 2000, p.22
Miroslav Volf has identified the intervention of a "new creation", as in the Second Coming, as a particular aspect of Christianity that generates violence. Writing about the latter, Volf says: "Beginning at least with Constantine's conversion, the followers of the Crucified have perpetrated gruesome acts of violence under the sign of the cross. Over the centuries, the seasons of Lent and Holy Week were, for the Jews, times of fear and trepidation. Muslims also associate the cross with violence; crusaders' rampages were undertaken under the sign of the cross."
The statement attributed to Jesus "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" has been interpreted by some as a call to arms for Christians. Mark Juergensmeyer argues that "despite its central tenets of love and peace, Christianity—like most traditions—has always had a violent side. The bloody history of the tradition has provided disturbing images and violent conflict is vividly portrayed in the Bible. This history and these biblical images have provided the raw material for theologically justifying the violence of contemporary Christian groups. For example, attacks on abortion clinics have been viewed not only as assaults on a practice that Christians regard as immoral, but also as skirmishes in a grand confrontation between forces of evil and good that has social and political implications", sometimes referred to as spiritual warfare.
Higher law has been used to justify violence by Christians. The Cleansing of the Temple has sometimes been considered a violent act by Jesus,War, A Catholic Dictionary: Containing some Account of the Doctrine, Discipline, Rites, Ceremonies, Councils, and Religious Orders of the Catholic Church, W. E Addis, T. Arnold, Revised T. B Scannell and P. E Hallett, 15th Edition, Virtue & Co, 1953, Nihil Obstat: Reginaldus Philips, Imprimatur: E. Morrogh Bernard, 2 October 1950, "In the Name of God: Violence and Destruction in the World's Religions", M. Jordan, 2006, p. 40 but some scholars note that the original text is more complex and, after grammatical analysis, conclude that the text does not describe a violent act of Jesus against the merchants themselves.
Historically, according to René Girard, many Christians embraced violence when it became the state religion of the Roman Empire: "Beginning with Constantine, Christianity triumphed at the level of the state and soon began to cloak with its authority persecutions similar to those in which the early Christians were victims."
Wars
Attitudes towards the military before Constantine The study of Christian participation in military service in the pre-Constantinian era has been highly contested and has generated a great deal of literature.
Through most of the twentieth century, a consensus was formed around Adolf von Harnack's view that the early church was pacifist, that during the second and third centuries, a growing accommodation of military service occurred, and by the time of Constantine, a just war ethic had arisen.
This consensus was challenged mostly by the work of John HelgelandProfessor Emeritus of Religious Studies and History at North Dakota State University: in the 1970s and 1980s. He said that most of the early Christians opposed military service because they refused to practice the Roman religion and they also refused to perform the rituals of the Roman army, not because they were against killing. Helgeland also stated that there is a diversity of voices in the written literature, as well as evidence of a diversity of practices by Christians. George Kalantzis, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, sided with Harnack in the debate writing that "literary evidence confirms the very strong internal coherence of the Church's non-violent stance for the first three centuries."
David Hunter has concluded that a "new consensus" has emerged and it includes aspects of Helgeland's and Harnack's views. Hunter suggests that the early Christians based their opposition to military service upon both their "aboherrence of Roman army religion" (Helgeland's view) and their opposition to bloodshed (Harnack's view). Hunter notes that there is evidence that by the 2nd century Christian practices had started to diverge from the theological principles espoused in early Christian literature. Hunter's third point of the "new consensus" is the assertion that the just war theory reflects at least one pre-Constantinian view. Finally, to these three points, Kreider added that Christian attitudes towards violence were likely varied in different geographical locations, pointing out that pro-militarist views were stronger in border areas then they were in "heartland" areas which were more strongly aligned with the Empire.
There is little evidence concerning the extent of Christian participation in the military; generalizations are usually speculation. A few gravestones of Christian soldiers have been found.
Just war
Just war theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin studied by moral theologians, ethicists, and international policy makers, that holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophical, religious or political justice, provided it follows certain conditions.
The concept of justification for war under certain conditions goes back at least to Roman and Greek thinkers such as Cicero and Plato. However its importance is connected to Christian medieval theory beginning from Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.Christians and War: Thomas Aquinas refines the "Just War" Theory According to Jared Diamond, Augustine of Hippo played a critical role in delineating Christian thinking about what constitutes a just war, and about how to reconcile Christian teachings of peace with the need for war in certain situations. Partly inspired by Cicero's writings, Augustine held that war could be justified in order to preserve the state, rectify wrongs by neighboring nations, and expand the state if a tyrant will lose power in doing so.
In Ulrich Luz's formulation; "After Constantine, the Christians too had a responsibility for war and peace. Already Celsus asked bitterly whether Christians, by aloofness from society, wanted to increase the political power of wild and lawless barbarians. His question constituted a new actuality; from now on, Christians and churches had to choose between the testimony of the gospel, which included renunciation of violence, and responsible participation in political power, which was understood as an act of love toward the world." Augustine of Hippo's Epistle to Marcellinus (Ep 138) is the most influential example of the "new type of interpretation".Ulrich Luz, Matthew in History, Fortress Press, 1994, p26-27
Just war theorists combine both a moral abhorrence towards war with a readiness to accept that war may sometimes be necessary. The criteria of the just war tradition act as an aid to determining whether resorting to arms is morally permissible. Just War theories are attempts "to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable uses of organized armed forces"; they attempt "to conceive of how the use of arms might be restrained, made more humane, and ultimately directed towards the aim of establishing lasting peace and justice."
The just war tradition addresses the morality of the use of force in two parts: when it is right to resort to armed force (the concern of jus ad bellum) and what is acceptable in using such force (the concern of jus in bello). In more recent years, a third category—jus post bellum—has been added, which governs the justice of war termination and peace agreements, as well as the prosecution of war criminals.
Holy War
In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II declared that some wars could be deemed as not only a bellum iustum ("just war"), but could, in certain cases, rise to the level of a bellum sacrum (holy war). Jill Claster, dean of New York University College of Arts and Science, characterizes this as a "remarkable transformation in the ideology of war", shifting the justification of war from being not only "just" but "spiritually beneficial". Thomas Murphy examined the Christian concept of Holy War, asking "how a culture formally dedicated to fulfilling the injunction to 'love thy neighbor as thyself' could move to a point where it sanctioned the use of violence against the alien both outside and inside society". The religious sanctioning of the concept of "holy war" was a turning point in Christian attitudes towards violence; "Pope Gregory VII made the Holy War possible by drastically altering the attitude of the church towards war... Hitherto a knight could obtain remission of sins only by giving up arms, but Urban invited him to gain forgiveness 'in and through the exercise of his martial skills'." A holy war was defined by the Roman Catholic Church as "war that is not only just, but justifying; that is, a war that confers positive spiritual merit on those who fight in it".
In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "'The knight of Christ may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently; for he serves Christ when he strikes, and saves himself when he falls.... When he inflicts death, it is to Christ's profit, and when he suffers death, it is his own gain."Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise Of The New Knighthood, ca. 1135
Jonathan Riley-Smith writes,