Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1077: The Early Church on Military Service and Killing: Dr. George Kalantzis

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

George was born and raised by the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and moved to the United States after highschool. He recieved his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and currently serves as a professor of Theology at Wheaton College. George is the author of several books and peer reviewed articles, including the book that forms the basis of our conversation: Caesar and the Lamb: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service. https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/faculty/george-kalantzis/

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Iran. My guest today is Dr. George Kalantzis. George is a professor of theology and director of the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies at Wheaton College outside of Chicago. George has several master's degrees and a PhD in religious and theological studies from Northwestern University. He's the author of a few books, including my favorite, titled Caesar and the Lamb, Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service, which basically is the topic of our discussion today. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. George Clancys. George Clancis, a scholar that I've admired, I mean, from a distance for a while. Never, this is the first time we're talking.

So thanks so much for coming on Theology in Iran. Thank you. Wonderful meeting you. So we're just chatting offline. Your book, Caesar and the Lamb, Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service. I love the cover. Did you pick this out? This is really daring. No, no the the publisher did okay we had a little bit of a debate about the cover because the book is about the roman empire and that's a greek helmet so

and probably three people do that right that's That's right. Yeah, yeah, okay. So I wrote a book. It was originally called Fight. Now it's called Nonviolence. And I have a whole chapter on the pre-Nicene church and their attitudes towards killing in particular, but also military service. And that's not my primary area. So when I came across your book, I was like,

oh my word, this is exactly what I'm looking for. And so I just devoured, I loved, loved reading through this. It's been over 10 years now in that book. My book was published in 2013. When was yours? 2011 or something or 11 or 12, 12. I remember it came out shortly, like while I was doing research. So I was like, man, this is, this is a godsend. So give us an old, I mean, this is your area of expertise. Give us an overview. What was, you know, when, and then when I say pre- give us an, I mean, this is your area of expertise. Give us an overview. What was, you know, and when I say pre-Nicene,

I'm talking like, you know, was it 312? Is that the 313? Is that the, oh, no, no. Nicene is 325. 325. So persecution ends with the Edict of Milan and 313, is that correct?

Okay. So before 313, you know, Christianity Okay, so before 313, you know, Christianity is largely a persecuted minority. All of a sudden, you know, Constantine could save, sort of, and now Christianity is pretty popular. And then there comes, you know, the official religion of the empire later on that century. So a lot of changes going on there. So we're looking at the pre, like before that,

before the church came into positions of power. So what were the early Christian attitudes towards, I guess, killing and military service? Oh, that's a wonderful question. And I want to say that 300 years is a long time. So we need to take it period by period. The earliest, then the middle, which is the period closer to the 250s or so, the last 50, 70 years before Constantine, and then right before Constantine, the last few years from roughly 284, 285 through the rise of Constantine. So these are three different periods. And if we start from the end of that, right, the peri-Nicene period, Constantine comes to the throne in the beginning of the century, in 305-306, in the western part of the empire, and becomes sole emperor, in other words, reunites the east and western part of the empire in 324,

in the summer and fall of 324, a year before Nicaea. So that middle period is crucial because that's also a period of great, this is called the Great Persecution. It's about 10 years of, roughly about 10 years, where the persecution is, and we read about that in Eusebius of Caesarea and Lactantius and other historians of that time, actually framed, that persecution framed, how the Christians of that period saw war, military service, bloodshed, the empire, everything. And that is because in their lifetime, the church had been at peace. So for about 40 years before that, the church had not been persecuted at all. So peace, the church had, Christianity had been recognized as a legal religion from the 260s. So we have a 40-year, roughly, period of relative peace. Well, 40 years, it's almost two generations. And during those two generations, a number of people

served in administration, served in the courts. They were converted while in the military. So that is right before Constantine, what has happened. And then in 305, we have the persecution hits. The persecution is primarily present in the eastern part of the empire. That means the Greek-speaking part of the empire, not the western part of the empire where Constantine is. It's in the eastern part of the empire, and it is brutal. So for writers like Eusebius, the great church historian, don't think of historian the same way we speak of historians today—but his

history of the Church, that was an apocalyptic moment, because we thought we were at peace, and now the end is coming. At the end of that affair, Constantine comes now with the proposition of uniting the empire under one faith. Well, the Christians of that time then see that as a millennial moment. Oh, yeah. Jesus is coming back in the form of Constantine. So the descriptions of the ecclesiastical history, the last two books, which are the Constantinian period, versus the first eight books, which are the pre-Constantinian period, are substantially

different. Because for Eusebius, Jesus just returned. When you say returned, did they think Constantine was actually the embodiment of Jesus, or just he represented? He was the expression of Jesus. The expression, okay. Right, yeah. So how would Jesus come back? Well, either come from the heavens riding on a horse, or wait a minute, here is Constantine marching into battle with the Christian symbol, claiming the name of God, recognizing Christianity as a permanent part of the conscience of the Roman Empire, confessing to be a Christian, right? Being baptized later in life as a Christian. The kingdom started. Wow. Wow. So the fourth century has a lot of millenarian attitudes.

Before that, in the earliest, if you go to the other side of Christianity, after the New Testament period, the Apostolic period, Christianity as a dominant religious, political, social event or player, or would assume that at any level, Christians would be in power. That's why also all the writings from that period, including the New Testament, are from the margins. This is how you behave towards the emperor or the king. This is how you behave towards your civil responsibility, taxes and authorities, etc. Nowhere would Paul ever imagine that the Caesar would be Christian. That's just unimaginable, right? Why? Because that's not the place of Christianity. So Christianity's place is to be at the margins, proclaiming a counter-kingdom, a different kingdom.

The letter of Diognetus, right, in the middle of the second century, or the letter to Diognetus. It's an open letter. It's an apologetic letter. It's an open letter to the emperor. Basically, it's, please don't kill us we are we are not a threat to you why are we not a threat to you because we do not rebel we love our enemies we feed and clothe those who persecute us we take care not only of our own who are in need but your co-religionists who are in need. We are friends to everyone,

Dave Neidho says, and yet we're persecuted by everyone. So those are two different, almost completely antithetical ways of looking at church and state at the beginning of our story and at the end of the story. At the beginning of the story,

it's never a question of power. At the end of the story, that may of the story it's never a question of power at the end of the story that may work is it just the numbers christianity just kept growing and growing and growing is that really what it comes down to i mean when you have you know two percent of the or whatever you know i don't have these stats in front of me but if two percent of the empire is christian it's like yeah they're yeah you're by definition on the margin but if all of a sudden you have like 48 or 57 at the end of you know so just it's a numbers game really it's a numbers game once once christianity starts getting above 10 which is roughly the middle of the third century or in the 200s then it's sociologically a group to be reckoned with or to be accounted for. By the time of Constantine, by the time of the late third, early fourth century, Christianity is a strong minority.

It has never been a plurality until the late fourth century. Even at the time of Constantine, it was under 50%, somewhere in the low 40%. That's massive growth. I remember reading a book years ago by Rodney Stark. He was a secular, at the time, a secular sociologist.

Is that the rise of Christianity? Is that still kind of a go-to? Is that like, or is that one of many books that have talked about why Christianity? Right. It's one of the many books of why Christianity arose. But Stark's

book actually shows us extrapolated statistics of how it arose. And the reasons for the rise of Christianity, of course, was the way it treated those in need and the marginalized.

Especially women, right? Wasn't it just it grew like wildfire with so many women being converted and carrying on the kingdom? Yeah, Christianity, even to this day, global Christianity, to this day, is over two-thirds women. The church globally is over two-thirds women. And that makes sense in the Roman world, where the Corsus Honorum, or the Corsus Honorum, the career, administrative career, pertains to the men, not the women. So the men had to follow the religious practices of the time in order to advance in political office, or to be

able to conclude contracts, or to sell and buy, and all that. Very few people would care about what your family thought of. It's you as one, as the male head of the household, do you participate in the ritual practices of the community, religion, right? Not what your household looks like. Yeah. Okay, so there's, there's different, we shouldn't think of just one flatline kind of like, like. Right.

A Christian political position in these 300 years. So there's, there's differences, there's growth, there's, you know, more coming into more potential power. Was there, let's go back to the question then. So Christians, the Christian view on military service, on killing, on violence as a whole. Can you give us an overview of, you know,

take it into account the different kind of. Yeah. With that in mind, we have to separate the questions of killing, which is against the sixth commandment and war or rather military service. and war, or rather military service. And military service is not seen any differently than administrative service or political service or civil service. Why?

Because the order of joining either body or either branch of the services is the same. It begins with an oath, right, which the Romans called the sacramentum. That's how a Roman soldier enters the legions, enters the army. So the entering into the army is under the auspices of the gods and the particular god who is superintending the affairs of this particular region or particular legion. So to enter into military service is a religious affair. Then to be in military service is a religious affair. Every year, every few months, you have to stand in front, in formation, in your good uniform,

and offer sacrifices to the gods who are going to protect you. The beginning of a campaign begins with sacrifices and omens from the gods and to the gods. So everything in the Roman world is superintended by the gods. If you say as a Christian, yeah, but they're not real. How do you march into battle? How do you march into battle? Who's protecting you in battle because everyone around you affirms that they're protected by this deity or that deity can they trust you because actually

you are the one who's going to bring the wrath of the gods on the cohort on the legion right does that make sense yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah so it's i mean you can't separate military participation from just participation in in the pagan religion of the time absolutely and that is why in the church order documents we see for centuries to come for the next three fourth centuries when we come to the church order documents which are the church order documents or documents that speak of how the church functions as a church, right? On the sections of baptism, they have whole sections. If so-and-so or somebody who is a brothel keeper comes and wants to be baptized,

they have to cease from being a brothel keeper. If a slave trader, if a gladiator, whatever. If a soldier comes and says that they want to be baptized, now we have two categories. Those who are before they joined the army and those who are already in the army. So how do you treat them? Well, the church order documents say those who are already in the army and want to be baptized, they have to understand, they have to be told, but they have to refuse the order to i mean that that gets you killed right gets you a little bit in trouble right yeah let's march into battle but i'm not gonna kill yeah right and go and of course the other category is those who want to join the

military but also want to be baptized stop this is You're not allowed to do that because you lie. Well, why do you lie? Well, if you are baptized, you claim you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your confession is that Jesus is Lord. Okay. And then on Tuesday, you walk over to the camp and say, I now want to claim Caesar as my Lord. You go, those two don't go together. You got to choose who your Lord is.

Was it so, I remember this coming up a lot in my research. Again, I'm reaching back over 10 years, but, you know, some people said, you know, the only reason why Christians had a problem with military service, it wasn't with military per se. It wasn't with, you know, even killing on the battlefield, killing for your country. It was simply because it was so, it was what you said it was all idolatry is that the only and i guess it's kind of a loaded question because i i feel like i i know that in my reading i did obviously it's like obviously giving your description of what the military is is like that that'd be huge

problems for any christian and military service but I remember seeing that that wasn't the only reason. They did see it, and they had an ethical problem simply with killing. Is that correct? Yes. But in our time, and that's why I presented that in the book, to realize the order of things. Because in our time, we flip the order. We see the objection to killing as the primary prescription against joining armies, etc. For Christians, that was understood as the consequence of worshiping the true and living

God of the Bible, Jesus, rather than the gods of the pagans. What do the gods of the pagans demand? Sacrifice, blood, including the battlefield, right? What does Jesus demand? Peace and love of enemy, right? So there's an order to these things. So first is, under who is your lord secondly is what does

your lord demand and third therefore why do you participate or refuse to participate in the practices demanded by your lord in the system in which you find yourself so it's yeah that's interesting so it's it's a whole like intertwining of just complete fundamental, different kingdom values. And, and, and exactly. Did they use language of kingdom in that?

Like, like we, you know, we just have a, we Christians have a whole, whole other way of going about living in this world. Like it just absolutely just, just conflicts with what Rome's trying to do.

That's right. And they did. And even all the way down later, two centuries later, in the city of God by Augustine. Augustine, remember, lives in a completely Christianized world. It's a completely different world than the world of the first two centuries. The two kingdoms, like Vasilia Theoum, or the kingdom of God, is everywhere present in these writings. Origen talks about that, Tertullian talks about that,

Diognetus talks about that. So the idea of Jesus is my Lord, and that is not just a religious affection, that is also a political statement, means that my king, who's my lord, is not of this world. And therefore, you, O king of this world, are subordinate to the lord under whose kingdom you're supposed to be. So, we would pray for you for wisdom and peace and health and justice, but we're not going to obey you because we obey the king of our kingdom, which is the kingdom of God. They still, I mean, Christians were, would you say in these three centuries-ish, were they good citizens, one, and were they known for being good citizens? Or were they seen as kind of like, were they seen as so non-conforming that they were, you know, a threat to the empire? Well, I guess when they're in small numbers, they're not a threat.

But yeah, how, yeah. Does that question make sense? Kind of two sides of the same. Absolutely makes sense. Absolutely. And we have to remember that Christians, like most people, vary, right? Should Christians do X? Well, no, but do Christians do X? Well, yes. That doesn't make it permissible. It makes it life. So one of the first accusations against Christians during the period of persecution was treason, sedition. Why? Because they would not swear allegiance to Caesar as Lord. But parallel

to that, all Christian, like all the apologetic by the Christians for the first few centuries is, please, you Romans realize that because we do not obey your commandments, it doesn't mean we rebel against you, right? We honor you, but we do not obey you. And that's the key difference. Christians, and Tertullian makes a huge argument out of that, are not rebels. are not rebels. In history, in the history of scriptures, in the history of the tradition out of which Christianity arose, Maccabees, for example, just a few generations earlier, are a great example of a rebellion, right? We will not accept what you Greeks and Roman Greeks at that time, the Syrian typists, want to impose on us and we'll take arms against you. Christians go,

no, no, no, Christians do not take arms. We do not take up arms. And that would differentiate between obeying and honoring. And that's Peter's argument, right? Honor the king. It doesn't say obey the king. Obey the king does not exist anywhere in the New Testament. It says honor the king. And the difference, of course, in practice is how do you honor the king without obeying the king? The king said, or the authorities, right? The king said to Peter and Paul and the apostles, stop preaching or we will kill you. What did they do?

They said, you have the right to kill us. Here's my neck. Kill me. That's honoring Caesar or the king. But you don't obey the king. It's like accepting the results of civil disobedience. I mean, MLK is a classic example. When he disobeyed, he would say, we have a moral obligation to disobey an unjust law, but I'm a good citizen. I'm going to accept the consequences. You want prison time? Okay, I'll go do, I'll accept the consequences because I will submit to my governing authorities, you know, but I'm not going to obey them when they're doing unjust things, you know. Exactly. That's it.

That's it. That's what part of what we're, I'm sorry, that's part of what we're missing quite often. That's part of what we're missing quite often. And that is why reading the acts or the stories of the martyrs, especially the military martyrs, is very, very important. Because these are all stories of people who came to that point of civil disobedience, saying, wait a minute, I have not been thinking about this the right way. I have been serving in the military for these many years. the right way. I've been serving in the military for these many years, but now that you, pagan, put me on the spot and say, as a Christian, can I do that? Obviously, I cannot do that. So now I have a choice. Do I continue participating in what I was thinking that I could get away with before, or do I accept the consequence? And in all these stories, they accept the consequence.

Really? So we have lots of stories of Christian martyrs in the military for refusing to bow the knee to Caesar while being in the military, and so they just... Wow. Yeah, they're killed. And that's the beauty of the story of Cornelius, for example, right? Cornelius. Luke talks about Peter's visit to Cornelius, who's a centurion of the first order. That means that his rank is somewhere between a major and a lieutenant colonel, we remember the story. Peter preaches the gospel to him. He's a God-fearer. And the household is baptized.

And Cornelius says, look, confessed Jesus as Lord. Now, I would expect Luke to continue. And Peter told him to stop killing people or stop being in the military. That's not what Luke says. Luke doesn't say anything. And many, I have to respond to a lot of people who say, see, Cornelius says, you know, that's a good point for the gospel to say, stop serving in the military.

But it doesn't. Therefore, that's permission. You go, not if one understands, as a classicist or understands how the Roman military worked. Because Cornelius is not just a military leader. Cornelius has a priestly office in his legion. It's his job, it's his duty to offer

sacrifices on behalf of his troops. Once a month he would stand in front of his troops in full uniform and offer sacrifice as a priest on behalf of his leaders. He's a pagan worship leader, not just a military commander, right? Yes, absolutely. So it's, I mean, because, yeah, and I get this a lot, you know, argument from silence or the fact that God, you know, or even like in Luke, was it Luke 3? You know, you have people, the soldier, you know, argument from silence or the fact that God, you know, or even like in Luke, was it Luke three?

You know, you have people, the soldier, you know, what should I do to follow Jesus? And it's in this context where everything's about money and economics. It's not like this holistic, here's a laundry list of things you need to stop doing. But, you know, people take that as, you know, see, he didn't tell them to leave the military. the military, but what you're saying is just a basic understanding of what the Roman military was would make it just utterly incompatible to stay in the military and not be living a very synchristic, you know, either, you know, violating basic Christian principles. So we have to assume that if Cornelius was a faithful follower, he would have, he would have had to have left the military, right? That's right. And his period, and actually have had to have left the military, right?

That's right. And his period, and actually that period of the middle of the first century, is one of the two periods where whoever wanted could actually retire from the military, leave the military without consequence. The other one is at the end of the third century century, in the Diocletian purge. Oh, so he wouldn't have had his head on the chopping block if he said, hey, I'm out. Yeah, he would lose his pension, but he's out. Yeah, interesting. I want to go back to, so the early Christian view, let's just say in general, as you know, serving in the Roman military is incompatible for a few reasons, you reasons you know idolatry which is intertwined with also ethics it's just a there's a conflict

here um between how this kingdom lives how the christian kingdom is supposed to live was there diversity of thought because we would you know today we have you know our own range of christian perspectives on you know the. Did you have that kind of range back then? Or was there a consensus view or yeah. Also, I mean, just for our audience, it's not aware. I mean, prior to, and you're the expert. So tell me if I'm saying something totally off the wall, but like, you know, prior to the edict of Milan, I mean, Christianity is growing in pockets around the empire. Um, but man, as a persecuted minority i mean they're not like having big meetings you know like the council of nicaea they're all getting together all right what do

we believe like we've got like disagreements on all kinds of doctrines disagreements on what books belong in the bible you got alexandrians reading almost you know largely the same bible but they're including books and excluding books and then you have people in asia minor do you know, largely the same Bible, but they're including books and excluding books. And then you have people in Asia Minor, you know. So, yeah, Christianity is really dispersed and disparate and kind of fractured. And so one part of the empire might look quite different. So I would expect there to be diversity. There's diversity in almost everything back then.

Was there diversity on Christians and military service? One would expect that. And actually much has been made of the fact that there has to be variety of opinion on this. What is surprising is we don't have a single one, not one, not a single document, not a single argument for the service in the military. Before the middle of the fourth century. Wow. I mean, that's what I came across, but I'm not the expert. So I'm like, maybe I'm missing something here.

Because I don't want to claim as if I've read everything back then. But how do you explain that? That's fascinating. That's what surprised me out of it. Because I was expecting to see, okay, under these circumstances, you can do that. That's fascinating. That's what surprised me out of it, because I was expecting to see, okay, under these circumstances, you can do that. Which again, as a historian, as a theologian, conceptually would not make sense to me because of the claim of sovereignty and lordship of Christ. But let's assume that we find something. And yet there is none, not one, not a single one that says

service in the military or the government is a pious, admirable, even permissible Christian engagement. Can you expand on the government piece? Because a lot of listeners perked up here, I think, like, whoa, whoa. And we're not, we're dealing with history here. We're not necessarily saying, therefore go and do likewise. But I think understanding the first Christians,

how they lived in light of Christ and the New Testament. And I think that does, that should do something to how we, you know, it should speak to our current situation on some level. That's right.

And the argument for participation in the government or positions of authority, the magistrate, et cetera, it doesn't have to go all the way to the palace, like magistrate, et cetera, is the same. It's parallel to the military service. How does a Roman enter civil service? Well, by a pagan oath and a pledge of allegiance to the emperor as lord, to the gods who superintend the empire and the city, right? So how do you become a magistrate? Tertullian has a section

on that. Let's assume, he says, that you can become a magistrate without taking the oath, without taking a bribe, without giving a bribe, without promising that you will bring law and order, basically, and without ever using the sword, because that's the other part. To be a magistrate, you have the responsibility of condemning persons to death. Let's assume he says that you can do all that. First, he says, what good are you? Because the office of the magistrate demands those things from you, right? Like, you know, I'm going to be your mayor, but I will do nothing of the things that the mayor does. So what's the point of that?

And the second, he says, is what makes you think that entering an office that has been soiled by others, you will remain clean? Been soiled by others? In other words, others have abused the office, others they have bribed, they have killed, and they have misused the office. He says, if you wear a dirty cloak, the cloak of the magistrate, in other words, look at what you're trying to do historically. What's this position for? What makes you think that you will remain clean by entering that same condition? There's something intrinsically morally unclean with this office itself. So when you go into there, we have a track record of everybody falling into unethical forms of power and abuse and all the, you know, okay. Which is a different story for our times, right?

Or perhaps it raises different questions for our time, right? Can I reform the office? Right. I don't know. But that's the point. The point is we have no writings. And it just, as I read all the primary, every single primary document we have, and that's why I present them in the book. There are those who say,

well, those who affirmed participation didn't write. They're a silent majority. My cheeky counter-argument to that is, one, the majority of the New Testament is written by one family of thought, the Pauline family of thought, right? Look at letters. How do we know that the vast majority or the silent majority do not, you know, advocate for divorce, advocate for syncretism? All we have is what we have. We cannot make the argument from silence when every other evidence we have is against that particular practice. Well, even if that was the view of the populace, wouldn't you see that reflected in the writings? Wouldn't the writers, the theologians, the leaders be addressing that through their writings? Somewhere, it should say that.

And I'm trying to think of the counter... Maybe the counter-argument would be, well, the fact that they had to say, Christians shouldn't do this, Christians shouldn't do this, there were Christians that were doing it. And I would assume that's true, but to say that that's kind of the consensus majority view of the populace, I don't know. And that's why we have to separate practice from principles. Okay, yeah. from principles. Again, both Tertullian and Origen talk about, and those who are in the armies, and that almost always meant soldiers who have been converted to Christianity. These are not Christians who joined the religions, it's those who become Christians

being religious. This is what you're supposed to do now. You're supposed to exit if you can, you're supposed to stop obeying the commandment to kill, right? Because this is serious business. So it's the same question. If someone comes to baptism and is a slave trader, they have to stop that. Why would you include that if no slave traders ever came for baptism? That's the idea. But the response is always, and it's univocal.

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You said, okay, I don't want to get, this is a, maybe a footnote because we, we, or early, early, we talked about the language of obedience, submission, honor. I want to throw in another word, allegiance, the word you just used. So, so in here, I'm just going to draw on my modern day thinking where, you know, I, I, I, allegiance feels too religious to me to say I can give my allegiance to anything other than Christ as Lord. So, for instance, you know, and I've said this before, and I, you know, some people are thankful I said, other people are upset, whatever, you know, my journey. But like, I don't pledge the allegiance specifically because I'll stand, I'll give honor. I'll give respect. I'll be a, I'll be the best citizen in Babylon as an exile. I got my exile shirt.

But, you know, allegiance, hand over the heart. Like that to me, that feel like I don't, I can't imagine a first century or first three century of Christians giving allegiance to Caesar as this is how I submit to my governing authorities. I give my allegiance to them. I'm like, those are two, those feel very different. So here's my question. Is there language that would be translated allegiance that Christians talk about this,

like allegiance? Or was it simply like, yeah, we don't worship Caesar, you know, for obvious reasons. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. The language that we, the language of allegiance does not mean the same thing in antiquity. Okay. But what it does is the practice of allegiance.

So when we speak of the imperial cult or the sacrifices to Caesar, no one was dumb enough to think that you offer a sacrifice to Caesar to bring rain down. That's not the point. The imperial cult or the imperial worship is that. It's pledge of allegiance. Okay. You come in front of the city in an altar, and you say specific words. Bring the name of Caesar to the gods, pledging allegiance to him, in essence. That's the idea.

It is like standing up, putting your hand over your heart, and saying, I pledge allegiance to Caesar. And Christians go, no, no, no, we cannot do that. Why? Because we have pledged allegiance to Christ. If in my baptism, I have pledged allegiance to Christ, that means I have recognized Jesus as Lord. I cannot stand in front of the city and say, Caesar is Lord. I'm lying. In one of the two statements, I am lying. So I could hear people say, well well yeah but in in today's world again in that day and age you're dealing with everything's religion and politics is so

intertwined that you know to do so would be idolatry but now we have a separation church and state our allegiance to the country we're living in is simply a political thing not a religious thing i i would i think there's a lot more civil religion in politics than people realize. But would that be a fair distinction, do you think? It would be a linguistic. It's a distinction without a difference. The Romans don't care who's in your heart. Like Jesus in your heart doesn't matter.

They care less about your personal little Jesus. Not at all. What they care about are the practices. Religion comes from religare, to bind together, right? In other words, religion is not what you think here. It is how you live your life. So do you, as a Roman citizen, live your life in accordance to the habits and the customs and therefore practices towards the gods, that we do.

In other words, are we doing this thing, civil thing, in front of the gods together? Or are you separating outside of the group, and therefore the wrath of the gods are going to come against us? are going to come against us. Romans would be very, very comfortable, very comfortable in our stadium of a modern game where we all practice together habits of religion. In unison, we turn and in unison, we say, and in unison, we pledge, right?

That's religion. Those are religious type practices. Those are liturgies, right? I mean, those are religious practices. That's right. Even if it's not blatantly called a religion, no one would say, yeah, when you pledge allegiance, you're literally worshiping America, whatever. But there is liturgical practices and rhythms going on that are designed that way to unite your citizenship and unite under one flag and so on um yeah which even that for a member of the global kingdom the global multi-ethnic kingdom of god

our communal unification is is not under one nation like my if anything if i'm going to stand and pledge anything in a corporate liturgical manner, it's going to be with representatives of the global kingdom of God. We have our civic temples. We used to call them malls, shopping malls. Those are civic religion places, right? They're structured so as to form common behavior. have them in like what's the first thing one does at morning at school for for 12 years right so you one wonders you come out

at the age of 18 fully formed citizen those practices it's always funny. I ask my students, I say, do you all remember the Pledge of Allegiance? They chuckle and go, okay, let's do this. So recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It takes a moment, and then they get into a rhythm. You have a class of 40 students. They keep the rhythm at the same, they're synchronized in the rhythm. The commas are in the same place. the periods are in the same place, they end together, right? Great. Now recite the creed.

Which one? That's question number one. And then you have, you know how the story's going to go with that. But that's the whole idea. The whole idea is that what we think as religion for the Romans, it's not Zeus in your heart. They don't care. The Romans really don't care.

They allow anyone and everyone to have anything they have, they want. to have anything they have, they won't. You can have Jesus in your heart as long as you come to the temple or the stadium to do the public thing together with us in honoring of the gods and Caesar and these things that we call Roman state. Who's in your heart? Your problem. Anyone can be in your heart. It's the civic participation, the participation in the civic liturgies. They won't call them liturgies, but they're, that's by definition, these are, these are liturgical. One quick question on the history that I want to ask a few questions of what, what do we, where do we go from here?

Kind of, kind of thing. Okay. So, so military service, killing in the military, sorry, there's a consensus among the writings we have. What about just killing in the military sorry there's a consensus among the writings we we have um what about just killing in general where you know would you say that by and large the early church works for lack of better terms pacifists as as a whole you know somebody comes in and breaks into their house whatever you know um did they talk about that as much or is it mainly just talking about killing in the military yeah those hypothetical questions somebody comes to your house and wants to kill you i usually respond

why do they want to kill me yeah why my house like i mean there's a whole set of presuppositions behind them right first of all killing accidental killing right you you're carrying a load it falls kills a child that's a completely different thing than intentional killing. Right. And intentional killing is both by Roman law and Christian law. Just forbid it's prohibited. Really? Even in self-defense? So that's absolutely key here. Christian writers who write about killing very specifically say Christians do not kill even in self-defense.

Why? Because we affirm the sovereignty of God. This is either something we affirm and live our lives by it, or it isn't. So I'm not going to resist. Remember, civil disobedience, right? I'm not going to resist so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna resist remember civil disobedience right i'm not gonna resist i'm not gonna rebel and therefore i will not have a reason to kill not the opportunity plenty of opportunities but the reason to kill right i will not defend myself why because god defends me and if god wants me dead, the resurrection is here. That was one, and we forget this.

We forget, as Christians, we forget what the resurrection means. For early Christians, the resurrection was the centering event. All of history, all of life, all of behavior is around the resurrection. Why? They live in a bloody world. The world of up to the last hundred years is a bloody world. Death rate is very high, especially for mothers and children. Expectancy of life is right around mid-30s, 36, 37,

all the way up to the 1800s, right? So mortality is everywhere. But for Christians, the resurrection is the key. So when they are presented with the option by the Romans, you either recant or in their way, they would speak is offer a sacrifice on behalf of Caesar, or we kill you. The Christian response is always

that's all you got? Jesus is going to raise us from the dead. That's what you got. That's your threat? You're going to take my life away? Go ahead. Their belief in the resurrection is so pervasive in how they just went about life

wow so so we forget that if i remember correctly we do forget i forget it um if i remember correctly even augustine augustine augustine do you have a preference the pronunciation augustine is a city in florida augustine is the saint of the church okay so even aug okay. So even Augustine, if I remember correctly, even he said no killing is self-defense. And I say that in a shocking manner because he was kind of one of the forerunners of just war theory. He kind of had a different... He wasn't a pacifist

as a whole, right? I mean... Maybe. He was not a pacifist, but book 19, and that's actually the next volume that I'm working on on this, is what does Augustine actually mean? Force, force for Augustine is pedagogical. It's for the good of the enemy, right? If you want to enter into a war or violence, it is always with a love of enemy at heart.

It's not in self-defense. It's a situation in self-defense. It is so that they, the enemy, may come back to a right relationship with God. Oh, which can't happen if you kill them, right? That's right. A little bit difficult when you do that. But the whole idea of pacifism is also something that we need to think through if you have a moment. And people get surprised when I say pacifism is also something that we need to think through if you have a moment. And people get surprised when I say pacifism is not biblical. It doesn't exist in Scripture, at least the way

we understand it, which is sit at the margins, be in our time, declare your opinion digitally by a like or dislike, outrage in the digital world. That's not pacifism. What Scripture talks about is peacemaking. Blessed are the peacemakers, not the pacifists. In other words, the Christian life is not in the margins, sitting unaffected and remote. The Christian life is iridopietic or peacemaking. You enter actively in nonviolent resistance on behalf of the oppressed,

opposing the oppressor, whether that oppressor is a military force or a civil force or economic force or death itself. And that's how Christianity grew. Christianity grew by taking in widows and orphans and poor people and renegade slaves and giving them a new family that's not pacifism

at least in modern definitions that's peacemaking does that make sense? absolutely I don't like the term pacifist because it has a misunderstanding of passiveness in the face of evil. I mean, if I was going to be technical, I use Christocentric nonviolence, meaning the question of violence is a question of means of confronting evil, not whether we confront evil.

100% we confront evil is violence against another human, the Christian means by which we defeat the dragon or in Revelation 13. And the answer i came up with is no it's not it's not the means by which we address and confront evil so yeah it's yeah i don't i don't like i use it sometimes for simplicity because it's more familiar but um yeah so so the early church would you um would you say was this kind of a fundamental belief in the early church that we do not use violence, period? That's right. Wow.

Period. Yeah. Even in Re Diognetus, the letter is written in the mid-early part of the second century. We are persecuted by everyone and we bless everyone. That's key. So emperor or state, do understand who we are before you kill us. We, so, emperor or state, do understand who we are before you kill us. We love everyone,

we take care of everyone, and we will not return violence with violence. And that represents what you read in the first few centuries. Exactly. Tertullian says explicitly, this is the single difference, he says,

between Christians and everybody else. Love of the enemy. This one. Do pagans love their children? Sure. Do pagans love their cities? Absolutely. Do pagans take care of their poor neighbor or the orphan in their...

Absolutely. So what's the difference with the Christians? This one is love of enemy. We Christians love our enemies. George, I would love that we have a few more minutes here. Reflecting on all this, I mean, you're a Christ follower living in America. You were born in Greece, right? Right.

What town are you from? I've been to Greece a few times. I love my favorite country. I'm from Athens, central Athens. Central Athens. Yeah. The modern stadium of the modern Olympics. Oh, yeah.

The marble one. That was our track and field in high school. Seriously? So that's my neighborhood. Wow. Do you have a favorite island? You got so many beautiful islands. I have a lot of favorite islands.

There are 2,000 of them in Greece. Yeah. But Kefalonia and Paxos on the Ionian, Paxi and Kefalonia on the Ionian Sea is a beautiful place to be. Okay. I love that. I've only been to two, so Mykonos and Mylos. Yeah, Mylos is beautiful. I like Mylos a lot better. Mykonos is very busy and commercial and touristy and everything, and I like them more, but Mylos was just one of my favorite places. Love Athens too.

Anyway, so yeah, when did you come over? How old were you when you... 37 winters ago. I'm in Chicago. We count time by winters. Yeah. Have you gotten used to the winters here? Again, 37 winters. Yes. I came after high school.

So I finished high school. I came for college. The plan was to go back. Plans don't always go as planned. So you're American citizen now, right? How, in reading the other church, how has this shaped your personal view of your Christian identity in the face of politics today?

I'm trying to think of the right way, right way to frame it. Yeah. And of course, politics, when we use the word politics, we have to think about the context, right? So our context is North America because European context is very different. African context where I work with refugees is completely different thing than the American context. As a historian and as an immigrant, I'll start

with a story. When I graduated during our doctoral commencement from Northwestern, the event started the same way all such events begin, with a national land. And there was a floating camera.

Somebody had a camera on their shoulder to take the view of the crowd and all that. And as doctoral candidates, we were at the very front of that sea of graduates. So the camera starts coming around as the flag is being raised and as the national anthem is sung. And he comes right next to me. Like, the camera starts coming around as the flag is being raised and as the national anthem is sung. And he comes right next to me, like the camera is right here.

I don't know why. I'm an immigrant. I don't know the words to the national anthem. And I'm looking around and I see half my class are immigrants and have no idea what to say next. So I could see my face on the big screen up in the front and look into the camera and not say a word because that is not my civic practice. Yeah. So when I'm looking at our politics or our religio,

the way we do life together, I see it from the outside as somebody who has had almost 40 years of being inside. We don't recognize how similar we are to the Roman world. We have the same liturgies from simple things as simple, well, small things, not simple things of beginning the day with the Pledge of Allegiance. If you do that every day of your school years for 12 years, by the age of 18, it is part of your DNA. Somebody picks up a flag and lights it on fire.

What's your response? Well, even my response is that you feel a punch in the gut, right? Why? Because for 12 years, I have pledged allegiance to this thing, to a piece of fabric. But we do similar things. Our civic religion is so common, right? Even in our money, we say, in God we trust. That's a unitive element, right?

Which God? I don't know. But is it not incumbent upon Christians to ask, which God? Do you mean the true and living God of the Bible or something else? And if that's what you mean, then what about my Buddhist friends? Can they use that same currency? We live out of narratives that say we were founded by Christian values, or now it's Judeo-Christian values. And you go, which ones exactly? Like taking over a land, genocide, Which ones exactly? Like taking over a land, genocide, slavery, expansion, manifest destiny?

Which ones exactly? What happened in the fourth century when Christianity became the official religion in the latter part of the century? The analogy I use quite often is like the dog that was chasing the car now grabs the car. So now you're not responsible as Christians simply about the worship or the religion affairs of the religious affairs of the state, but now you're responsible for the buses But now you're responsible for the buses and for the electricity and for the sewers and for the borders. I can live with them. You're also responsible for the brothels. You're also responsible for the slave markets. You're also responsible for the casinos.

You're responsible for everything that comes with it. And now you have a problem. Because none of that is what you're for or made for. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. And we live in a similar world in which we want to impose a dominant system of civil cohesion with an overlayer of religious language without actually asking the questions, which God? What are the virtues we're advocating? What does this actually mean for who we are as Christians and then as peoples and a people.

So we are, as North Americans, very, very similar to the Roman world. The Romanitas of the Romans can be easily translated into Americanitas, right, of our time. We do have our gladiatorial games. We just call them football. The idea is the same. Put a hundred men in the field and let them beat the life out of each other. And the last one standing, okay, that's gladiatorial games. Our society, the way our society works is very similar to that.

We need the common blessing of the gods or God by practices. And how do we guarantee that or the unity of our people? By standing together during a game and in unison declaring our allegiance. So what happens when you say, I want to hold that concept accountable, which claim? Well, try it out. Kneel during the game and see what happens.

Yeah. Fail to participate in the civic liturgies is a pretty risky thing to do. So I get this question a lot that, that we can't map the Roman empire onto America. Okay. And I'm like, okay, obviously there are differences. I do, because people assume so many differences,

I often like to try to draw some similarities too. And obviously just 2000 years later, you know, 1500 years later, I mean, there's going to be just natural differences, but there's a lot of the similar principles. Um, I mean, some are as blatant as, you know, the apotheosis of Washington and the rotunda in the, in the Capitol building, you have this, basically it's like a painting that looks almost exactly like what you see of the deification of the Roman emperors after they die and you have washington i don't know who did that and is it i mean that that's just in your face in a capital building i'm like that's that's as roman as i mean it's

exactly rome you know um but then other things are more subtle like you know comparing you know football to gladiatorial games. These are, these are civic liturgies, um, that use similar kind of practices, obviously not killing each other, but I mean, it's, um, but it establishes some kind of civic cohesion and the, all these things are kind of blended together. So here's the, here's the question I often get is like, well, Christians had a really kind of separate, a strong separation from our kingdom. Rome's kingdom were very different, but they didn't have the opportunity to reform Rome. They didn't have the opportunity to establish justice in the world through politics, through involvement. They couldn't change.

They couldn't do anything in the room. They couldn't vote. They couldn't what all these things they were powerless. But now we have, have well it's vastly different we live in a democracy we can vote we can put better people in the office than other more wicked people or whatever and and the argument is and sometimes i think these conversations we miss each other because then they say therefore we should have civic involvement i'm like well i'm not saying no civic involvement again the whole pacifism thing i'm not saying we sit on the margins no we need to be agents of good and justice in the world.

Where I'm coming from is Babylon is Babylon empowered by the dragon. And we just always need to be very suspicious of the deep-seated, multi-layered differences between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God. We need to be very suspicious. And I think people always point to Martin Luther King, and I think he was pretty suspicious too. And I think his movement is a good example of doing something that's kind of separate, challenging the powers to be, but doing so through Christian means.

Anyway, all that to say, how do you help me think through the question of Rome, Christians had no power. Now we do have power. We should use that power for good. I want to say that Christians had a lot of power during the Roman Empire, not on the empire. The church is political. The church is politics. Why? Because the church is the affairs of people, right? Every time we come to church together, right? How do we greet one another? Brother and sister, right? That's not a religious statement.

That's a political statement. It means that you belong to my family. I belong to your family. We're one family. Regardless of your race, ethnicity, color, creed, you know, Presbyterians and Baptists can be brothers and sisters, right? That is a political statement. Why? Because then it changes our behavior with the community that surrounds us. I will treat you and you will treat me in the public sphere as a brother and a sister. That's politics. Christians take care of the poor. That's our job, right? As Christians, we take care of the poor. That's politics. Christians take care of the oppressed. That's politics. Why? Because it's the way communities behave with one another.

in advocacy for the oppressed on behalf of the oppressed, first I have to recognize the oppression, the injustice of the oppression, right? Which means, on the one hand, I have to protect or guard the oppressed, the powerless, from the effect of the oppression or the injustice, and at the same time, hold those systems of injustice and oppression accountable.

That's politics. We have titrated the concept of politics into party politics. That's not what politics is. To claim Jesus as Lord is a political statement. I mean, why was Jesus killed? Like, literally, the tag above his head said, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. It's a political statement. It's not a, because he worshipped Yahweh.

Like, Romans don't care. They care that you set up a system of sovereignty different than theirs. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. So, in our world, when Christians think about poverty, right, and Christians are very good at providing for the poor, domestically, internationally, that's a political statement. But then we refrain from moving the next step and say, why are they poor? No, no, no, that's politics. How is that politics? And what you're doing by providing for them is not politics. Both are political. So the place of the church is to be a mirror to the state,

whatever state, whatever time. It is to be a counter and a mirror to every political, every economic, every social, every civic structure and say, you are not acting according to the will of God. God has placed you to enact justice, Romans 13, right? But who's justice? God's justice. Not whichever justice the system wants to, right? God's justice. So the place of the church is to look at the state and say, are you enacting God's justice? No. Well, look at us because we do.

If you want to know what justice is, look at us. Because in our relationships, we act justly. If you want to know what reconciliation and peace looks like, look at us. Because that's what our churches and communities are like.

And I think the hard thing is, is a lot of Christians, because we don't view the church as a political entity, we kind of bypass, we go to church and worship Jesus in our hearts. And then we think that it's through, you know, Rome's, Babylon's,

America's political channels, that that's where all the justice stuff should be happening. Or that's where, you know, the, the political stuff should be happening rather than I think Howard, Howard often says, you know, the best way we can reach the world is by being the church, by being that alternative policy, that alternative society, and embodying the values of God's kingdom that we think are the way the world

should be run, but isn't being run. That's exactly it. Yeah. Have you written on, just the last two minutes of what you're saying, have you written on this somewhere? Or can you recommend a book that really does a good job articulating this um a lot of book but since you mentioned stanley since you mentioned harrow as a book that is old but fantastically important for our time is his 1981 community of character towards a constructive christian social ethics notre dame press i think 1981, Community of Character, Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethics, Notre Dame Press, I think 1981.

Yeah, I've been looking at, yeah, I have not read that one. I've read several things by him. Yeah, that is old enough to be, you can see the trajectories of almost everything after that. Okay, okay. I would read that in parallel. Actually, I would read Alistair McIntyre's After Virtue first. Okay, that's a big one. That's a big one, but it's a very important critique of what you described as our religious practices, going to church, Jesus in my heart, all that.

And he wrote these at the stage of his life where he was an atheist. He doesn't have a dog in our religious life. The question he has is what has the enlightenment done to us? And what the enlightenment has done is it created the concept of the individual as autonomous. For Christianity, by definition, the relationship with God is personal. You have to say yes,

no, right. But it's never individual. And that's what makes it political. Yeah. Yeah. There's a new one out. I don't know if you've seen this yet.

This is, this is my new favorite book on this by Neal A. Sia, the global politics of Jesus. Have you seen this? Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. It's a very, very good book. Yeah. I'm going to have him on the podcast. I think next week. Wonderful. And yeah, I, yes, yes. It's a very, very good book. I'm going to have him on the podcast, I think, next week. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, the first two chapters here just really, I mean, put to words.

And he's coming at it from a kind of, you know, he's more of a global politics expert and stuff. So he's putting kind of a big framework on what I see as a biblical guy, you know, as an exegete. Yeah, really, really helpful. Yeah. Yeah, really, really helpful. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Scott McKnight has written on that and others,

but, but Stanley's book, Harwass's book, Community of Character, for me, continues to be one of those books that are pivotal in understanding who Jesus is.

I will order it right now. It's been, I've had my eye on it, except, you know, he's written so much. I'm like, I can't read everything. But yeah,

I'll check that out. Well, George, I've taken you, I've taken enough of your time, but thank you so much for this conversation. This is super helpful and enjoyable.

Where can people find you? I'm sure you're, if they just Google your name, we'll probably take you to your... Yep. To the Wheitten website. It has my email address, and we can work from there. Awesome.

Thank you so much, George. Okay. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.