Christian Peace Principles: War, Capital Punishment, Property Disputes between Christians, Abortion, Euthanasia, Violence in Sports, and Turning the Other Cheek Before the Middle of the Third Century AD

By David Brattston

What were the “peace principles” of the early Christian Church?  What did believers view as the proper response to unprovoked personal attacks and disputes among themselves?  How did Christians view violence in sports, capital punishment, war, abortion, and euthanasia?  

Dr. Brattston examines these topics using

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Polycarp Publishing House
• Release date: Oct 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781947707146

Book preview

Dedication

Dedicated

in gratitude to the

Reference Department

of the

Atlantic School of Theology Library

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Contents

Dedication

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Turning the Other Cheek

Chapter 2 - Violence in Sports

Chapter 3 - Capital Punishment

Chapter 4 - War

Chapter 5 - Disputes Among Christians

Chapter 6 - Abortion

Chapter 7 - Euthanasia

Sketches of Early Sources Cited

About The Author

Introduction

This book demonstrates that the peace principles, non-resistance, and non-violence advocated by some Christians in the twenty-first century were standard among Christians at the very beginnings of the Faith, before the devastating persecution and mass apostasy of AD 249-251. Our evidence for this is drawn from the New Testament and other Christian sources dating from before the middle of the third century.

Anabaptists and Quakers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not the first people to recognize that knowing and following the directions of God and His Christ is interwoven with respect for the lives and well-being of His Children. Many dissenters in the Middle Ages and before also connected spiritual insight with respect and reverence for life. Christian literature in the first two and a half centuries of the church reveals that it was not only an aberrant minority who shared the beliefs that disciples of Christ do not participate in or prepare for violence in any of its forms, such as war, revenge, capital punishment, abortion, etc. Rather, very early Christian writers indicate that it was the majority of the Christian community who held to peace principles that were the same as or identical to those regarded as distinctive of many Christians in our own time. These authors reveal that before the mass apostasy and upheaval of AD 249-251, the church as a whole accepted as standard the principles of peace, reconciliation, love of enemies, forgiveness instead of seeking revenge, practice of right relationships, reliance on the community of faith to settle disputes, and non-violent resistance to evil that were once regarded as distinctively Quaker or Anabaptist, but have become more and more adopted by the wider Christian community.

The Christian pacifist positions on these topics are not just one possible interpretation of the Bible among many, one view among dozens using the same Scriptures, but represent the understanding of Christ’s original teaching as recorded by His early hearers, who shared His language, mindset, and culture, and the nuances of these that are lost when reading the Bible at a distance of sixteen or twenty-one centuries. The church fathers and early believers whose writings are quoted or paraphrased in the present book undoubtedly benefited from recent memory of Jesus’ and the apostles’ unwritten teachings and Bible interpretations handed on by elders from apostolic times. This gave them an additional guide to New Testament interpretation that Christendom has lacked since the mass apostasy and upheaval of AD 249-251.

The following book begins with a discussion of interpersonal unilateral, unprovoked attacks (turning the other cheek); it next considers interpersonal consensual, mutual violence (such as fistfights in sports). The next two chapters report ancient Christian teaching about whether the state has the right to exert deadly violence against people, first within a country (capital punishment) and internationally (war). The fifth chapter informs readers of practical Christian alternatives to lawsuits and similar unfriendly resolutions of disputes, alternatives that accord with reliance on faithful individuals to settle disputes. The final chapters summarize ancient Christian opposition to abortion, and other unilateral destruction of the life of a person who is unable to consent or defend him/herself.

The contents of this book are adaptations of some of my periodical articles:

Chapter one is a version of the website article Non-Violence, Patience and Turning the Other Cheek" Columban eConnections 1 December 2015 (St. Columbans Mission Society, Australia).

The second chapter is a reworking of an article that was originally published in the September 2010 issue of Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart and reproduced on Pemptousia, a Greek Orthodox website, in March 2012.

The third chapter first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Christian Ethics Today; reprinted in Catholic Insight June 2009, lifeissues.net (Japan) 23 December 2009, The Southern Cross (South Africa), The Mennonite May 2011, and Pemptousia a few months later. Evangelization Station reprinted it as a pamphlet in 2010.

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