siti
Well-Known Member
So you're in good company - Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Pope Urban II (whose call to arms initiated the Crusades) would all agree with you. Essentially, the reasoning was that a just war avenges injury - iusta bella ulciscuntur iniuria - and restores divine moral order - in the case of the Crusades, the wrongs of Muslim expansion into Christian lands and the cruel oppression of Christians by the conquering Turks in the shrinking and fragmenting Byzantine Empire and the Muslim desecration of sacred sites in the Holy Land (although it is not clear that this latter issue was even mentioned in Urban's sermon at Clermont that marked the start of the First Crusade). The campaign was packaged by Urban as a Christian pilgrimage to right these wrongs that were, he convinced everyone, attacks on Christ himself and not just Christians.Nowhere does he tell soldiers to stop being soldiers. As the scriptures say we serve not by a written code but by the spirit. So the spirit of the law, and any manner of common sense tells me Jesus did not forbid Christians from being soldiers.
Anyway, the point is that the enthusiastic engagement of Christians in the Crusades was definitely prompted by an interpretation of scripture that differed both from the "actual" teachings of Christ (as recorded in the four canonical Gospels) and the apparently common pacifist interpretation of a number of early Church Fathers, e.g:
"If a believer seeks to become a soldier, he must be rejected, for he has despised God" - Hippolytus of Rome (3rd century)
"Whatever Christians would not wish others to do to them, they do not to others. And they comfort their oppressors and make them their friends; they do good to their enemies…. Through love towards their oppressors, they persuade them to become Christians." - Aristides (2nd century)
"But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier." - Tertullian (3rd century)
"For since we, a numerous band of men as we are, have learned from His teaching and His laws that evil ought not to be requited with evil, that it is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, that we should rather shed our own blood than stain our hands and our conscience with that of another, an ungrateful world is now for a long period enjoying a benefit from Christ, inasmuch as by His means the rage of savage ferocity has been softened, and has begun to withhold hostile hands from the blood of a fellow-creature." - Arnobius (4th century)
So who was responsible for the Crusades? Christians were - when they abandoned Christ-like pacifism in favour of armed "pilgrimage". Were they wrong to do so? Well, that's a different question altogether."Whatever Christians would not wish others to do to them, they do not to others. And they comfort their oppressors and make them their friends; they do good to their enemies…. Through love towards their oppressors, they persuade them to become Christians." - Aristides (2nd century)
"But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier." - Tertullian (3rd century)
"For since we, a numerous band of men as we are, have learned from His teaching and His laws that evil ought not to be requited with evil, that it is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, that we should rather shed our own blood than stain our hands and our conscience with that of another, an ungrateful world is now for a long period enjoying a benefit from Christ, inasmuch as by His means the rage of savage ferocity has been softened, and has begun to withhold hostile hands from the blood of a fellow-creature." - Arnobius (4th century)
Last edited: