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Author: Despina Iosif Publisher: ISBN: 9781611434866 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
The traditional view is that early Christians, prior to emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity, were pacifists who stubbornly refused to enlist in the Roman army and engage in warfare, preferring to die rather than betray their beliefs. However, a plethora of literary and archaeological evidence demonstrates that was not usually the case. The majority of early Christians did not find military service or warfare particularly problematic. Christians integrated with the dominant mores of society and that included military service. It is, in fact, possible that Christianity was particularly attractive to those in military service. This study looks to reposition early Christian ethics and the attitude towards war and to bring new understanding to the relationship between military service and Christianity.
Author: Despina Iosif Publisher: ISBN: 9781611434866 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
The traditional view is that early Christians, prior to emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity, were pacifists who stubbornly refused to enlist in the Roman army and engage in warfare, preferring to die rather than betray their beliefs. However, a plethora of literary and archaeological evidence demonstrates that was not usually the case. The majority of early Christians did not find military service or warfare particularly problematic. Christians integrated with the dominant mores of society and that included military service. It is, in fact, possible that Christianity was particularly attractive to those in military service. This study looks to reposition early Christian ethics and the attitude towards war and to bring new understanding to the relationship between military service and Christianity.
Author: George Kalantzis Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1621894487 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
Through the available patristic writings Caesar and the Lamb focuses on the attitudes of the earliest Christians on war and military service. Kalantzis not only provides the reader with many new translations of pre-Constantinian texts, he also tells the story of the struggle of the earliest Church, the communities of Christ at the margins of power and society, to bear witness to the nations that enveloped them as they transformed the dominant narratives of citizenship, loyalty, freedom, power, and control. Although Kalantzis examines writings on war and military service in the first three centuries of the Christian Church in an organized manner, the ways earliest Christians thought of themselves and the state are not presented here through the lens of antiquarian curiosity. With theological sensitivity and historical acumen this companion leads the reader into the world in which Christianity arose and asks questions of the past that help us understand the early character of the Christian faith with the hope that such an enterprise will also help us evaluate its expression in our own time.
Author: John Howard Yoder Publisher: Brazos Press ISBN: 1587432315 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 480
Book Description
One of the most important thinkers on just war and pacifism describes, analyzes, and evaluates various patterns of thought and practice in Western Christian history.
Author: Perry T. Hamalis Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess ISBN: 0268102805 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 441
Book Description
Many regions of the world whose histories include war and violent conflict have or once had strong ties to Orthodox Christianity. Yet policy makers, religious leaders, and scholars often neglect Orthodoxy’s resources when they reflect on the challenges of war. Through essays written by prominent Orthodox scholars in the fields of biblical studies, church history, Byzantine studies, theology, patristics, political science, ethics, and biology, Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War presents and examines the Orthodox tradition’s nuanced and unique insights on the meaning and challenges of war with an eye toward their contemporary relevance. This volume is structured in three parts: “Confronting the Present Day Reality,” “Reengaging Orthodoxy’s Tradition,” and “Constructive Directions in Orthodox Theology and Ethics.” Each exemplifies the value of interdisciplinary reflection on “war” and the potential for the Eastern Orthodox tradition to enhance ecumenical and interfaith discussions surrounding war in both domestic and international contexts. The contributors do not advance a single account of “the meaning of war” or a comprehensive and normative stance purporting to be “the Orthodox Christian teaching on war.” Instead, this collection presents the breadth and depth of Orthodox Christian thought in a way that engages Orthodox and non-Orthodox readers alike. In addition to offering fresh resources for all people of good will to understand, prevent, and respond faithfully to war, this book will appeal to Christian theologians who specialize in ethics, to libraries of academic institutions, and to scholars of war/peace studies, international relations, and Orthodox thought. Contributors: Peter C. Bouteneff, George Demacopoulos, John Fotopoulos, Brandon Gallaher, Perry T. Hamalis, Valerie A. Karras, Alexandros K. Kyrou, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Nicolae Roddy, James C. Skedros, Andrew Walsh, and Gayle E. Woloschak.
Author: Niko Huttunen Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004428240 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
In Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire: Mutual Recognition Niko Huttunen challenges the interpretation of early Christian texts as anti-imperial documents. He presents examples of the positive relationship between early Christians and the Roman society. With the concept of “recognition” Huttunen describes a situation in which the parties can come to terms with each other without full agreement. Huttunen provides examples of non-Christian philosophers recognizing early Christians. He claims that recognition was a response to Christians who presented themselves as philosophers. Huttunen reads Romans 13 as a part of the ancient tradition of the law of the stronger. His pioneering study on early Christian soldiers uncovers the practical dimension of recognizing the empire.
Author: Jean-Michel Hornus Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 160608934X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 373
Book Description
It is not lawful for me to fight. With these words Saint Martin of Tours left the Roman army in AD 356. In so doing, he-who ironically in later centuries was named patron saint of numerous garrison chapels-was acting in accordance with the teaching and discipline of the pre-Constantinian church. The Early Church, as Dr. Hornus demonstrates in this historical and theological study, consistently maintained the stance of enemy loving and nonviolence. It forbade believers to take life, and was deeply suspicious of the military profession. Only in the course of the fourth century, in the context of general ethical decline and cultural accommodation, did anti-militarism cease to be the church's official position. Dr. Hornus concludes his study by reflecting upon the relevance of the thought and action of the early Christians for our own violent age.
Author: Daniel M. Jr. Bell Publisher: Brazos Press ISBN: 1441206817 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
This provocative and timely primer on the just war tradition connects just war to the concrete practices and challenges of the Christian life. Daniel Bell explains that the point is not simply to know the just war tradition but to live it even in the face of the tremendous difficulties associated with war. He shows how just war practice, if it is to be understood as a faithful form of Christian discipleship, must be rooted in and shaped by the fundamental convictions and confessions of the faith. The book includes a foreword by an Army chaplain who has served in Iraq and study questions for group use.
Author: John F. Shean Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004187332 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 476
Book Description
This new study argues that the religious attitude of the Roman army was a crucial factor in the Christianization of the Roman world. Specifically, by the end of the third century, there was a significant Christian presence within the army which was ready to act in the interests of the faith. Conditions at this time were thus ripe for the coming to power of a Christian emperor: when Constantine converted to Christianity he could rely upon the enthusiastic support of his Christian soldiers. Constantine strengthened his Christian base by initiating policies which accelerated the Christianization of the army. The continuation of these policies by Christian Roman emperors eventually allowed them to use the military as a vehicle for the suppression of paganism and ‘heretical’ Christian sects.
Author: Jonathan H. Ebel Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691162182 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
Faith in the Fight tells a story of religion, soldiering, suffering, and death in the Great War. Recovering the thoughts and experiences of American troops, nurses, and aid workers through their letters, diaries, and memoirs, Jonathan Ebel describes how religion--primarily Christianity--encouraged these young men and women to fight and die, sustained them through war's chaos, and shaped their responses to the war's aftermath. The book reveals the surprising frequency with which Americans who fought viewed the war as a religious challenge that could lead to individual and national redemption. Believing in a "Christianity of the sword," these Americans responded to the war by reasserting their religious faith and proclaiming America God-chosen and righteous in its mission. And while the war sometimes challenged these beliefs, it did not fundamentally alter them. Revising the conventional view that the war was universally disillusioning, Faith in the Fight argues that the war in fact strengthened the religious beliefs of the Americans who fought, and that it helped spark a religiously charged revival of many prewar orthodoxies during a postwar period marked by race riots, labor wars, communist witch hunts, and gender struggles. For many Americans, Ebel argues, the postwar period was actually one of "reillusionment." Demonstrating the deep connections between Christianity and Americans' experience of the First World War, Faith in the Fight encourages us to examine the religious dimensions of America's wars, past and present, and to work toward a deeper understanding of religion and violence in American history.
Author: Despina Iosif
Author: Despina Iosif
Author: George Kalantzis
Author: John Howard Yoder
Author: Perry T. Hamalis
Author: Niko Huttunen
Author: Jean-Michel Hornus
Author: Daniel M. Jr. Bell
Author: Ernest William Barnes
Author: John F. Shean
Author: Jonathan H. Ebel