Chapter 17: THE JEWISH WAR; WAR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF DIVINE JUSTICE

1. Mk xiii (see above, pp. 35, 179).

2. See above, pp. 98 f.

punishment inflicted on the Jewish nation for its sin in rejecting and crucifying Christ.

Luke and Matthew, in their versions of the apocalyptic discourses and other sayings of Jesus, represent the matter pretty clearly in this light. 'Barnabas' says that the Temple of the Jews was destroyed because they went to war with their enemies.⁽³⁾ A Christian interpolation in the Sibulline Oracles represents the destruction of the Temple as a punishment for the murders and ungodliness of which the Jews were guilty.⁽⁴⁾ The Gospel of Peter pictures the Jews, immediately after the burial of Jesus, as "knowing what evil they had done to themselves" and lamenting and saying: "Woe (to us) for our sins: for the judgment and the end of Jerusalem has drawn nigh."⁽⁵⁾ Justinus tells Truphon the Jew:

3. Barn xvi. 4.

4. Sibulline Oracles iv. 115-118, 125-127.

5. Robinson and James, p. 22.

6. Just Dial 110 (732): the prophecies are quoted in I Ap xlvii.

7. Just Dial 139 (796).

8. Orig Cels iv. 22.

9. Theoph iii. 11.

Christ"⁽¹⁰⁾; and in the course of his argument against the Markionites, he bids them

and more to the same effect.⁽¹¹⁾ Hippolutos has several allusions to the matter for instance, in his Commentary on Daniel he says:

The main burden of the surviving fragment of Hippolutos' 'Demonstration against the Jews' is the awful sufferings they had drawn on themselves from God in return for their treatment of Christ.⁽¹³⁾ Minucius Felix makes Octavius say to his pagan interlocutor about the Jews:

10. Tert Apol 26 fin (ii. 432).

11. Tert Marc iii. 23 (ii. 353 f), cf Jud 13.

12. Hipp Dan IV lviii. 3. In De Antichristo 30, he quotes Isaiah's prophecies about the desolation of Jerusalem as being now fulfilled, and mentions the martyrdom of Isaiah and the crucifixion of Christ in connection with them.

In the Pseudo-Cyprianic 'De Pascha Computus' it is said that the Temple at Jerusalem, "with the state itself, was again in the time of Vespasianus destroyed (exterminatum) by our Lord himself on account of the unbelief of the Jews."⁽¹⁵⁾

Origenes says repeatedly in the course of his reply to Celsus and elsewhere that the calamities which had overtaken the Jewish nation were a punishment for their sins in general and for their treatment of Christ in particular. I select three passages for translation.

etc.⁽¹⁶⁾

14. Minuc xxxiii. 4.

15. Ps-Cypr Pasch 15.

16. Orig Cels iv. 22.

It is interesting to notice that Origenes says elsewhere that we must guard against interpreting scriptural references to the wrath of God and His punishment of offenders in a literal or materialistic way: we must seek, he says, for the spiritual meaning, that our feelings and thoughts about Him may be worthy.⁽¹⁹⁾ He explains on another occasion that God's wrath is not a human passion, but a stern disciplinary measure, and though He may make use of the wicked in His administration of the world, the wicked are no less censurable for that.⁽²⁰⁾

17. Orig Cels iv. 73.

18. Orig Cels viii. 42. Cf also op cit i. 47, ii. 8, 13 fin, 34, 78, iv. 32, v. 43, vii. 26, viii. 47, 69, Orat xxxi. 7.

19. Orig Princ II iv. 4.

martyr Pionios at Smyrna (250 A.D.) speaks of "the whole Judaean land . . . testifying up to the present day the wrath of God which came upon it on account of the sins which its inhabitants committed, killing (and) expelling foreigners (and) acting violently."⁽²¹⁾ The Pseudo-Cyprianic treatise, 'Quod Idola Dii non sint,' speaks in a general way of the calamities that had overtaken the Jews on account of their sins and in particular their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus.⁽²²⁾ Another Pseudo-Cyprianic work, 'Adversus Judaeos,' says: "Christ, being repudiated by the people, sent (them) the tyrant they wished for, who overthrew their cities and condemned their population to captivity and took plunder and reduced their country to the desolation of Sodom," depicts the exile, misery, and beggary of Israel, and adds: "This is the punishment in Israel('s case) and the situation in Jerusalem."⁽²³⁾

The Didaskalia says:

Lactantius mentions that it had been foretold

21. M Pionii iv. 18 (Gebhardt 99).

22. Ps-Cypr Quod Idola 10, cf 12 f.

23. Ps-Cypr Jud 6-8.

24. per Romanos operans; a variant reading gives inspirans for operans (cf Harnack C ii. 496 n 2).

25. Didask VI xix. 1.

After quoting this prophecy, Lactantius adds: "And so, after their death" (i.e. Peter's and Paul's), "when Nero had slain them, Vespasianus destroyed the name and nation of the Jews, and did everything that they had foretold would happen."⁽²⁶⁾ Eusebios says that the Hebrew Prophets foretold

26. Lact Inst IV xxi: the prophecy was contained in the so-called 'Preaching of Peter and Paul,' which may be as early as the first decade or so of the second century (see Kruger 61 f).

27. Eus PE 8d, 9a.

The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., while from the point of view of the Gospels at least it partook of the nature of an apocalyptic event, was perhaps even more accurately regarded as an instance of the divine use of war as a chastisement or punishment for human sin.⁽²⁹⁾ Besides the allusions, just quoted, to the special exemplification of this principle in the case of Jerusalem, we come across several allusions to the general theory.

Clemens of Rome speaks of God as the champion and defender (upermachos kai uperaspistes) of those who serve Him, and quotes the Isaianic threat: "If ye are unwilling and will not hear me, the sword shall devour you."⁽³⁰⁾ Theophilos quotes with tacit approval a Sibulline oracle, in which God is said to raise up against the wicked wrath and war and pestilence and other woes.⁽³¹⁾ Eirenaios, referring apparently to the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, says that the posterity of cursed Ham was mown down by God,⁽³²⁾ and, referring to the parable of the King's marriage-feast, says of God:

29. Dr. Forsyth makes great use of this argument, in his Christian Ethic of War (10, 30 f, 40, 87 f, 138, etc.).

30. 1 Clem xlv. 7, viii. 4.

31. Theoph ii. 36.

32. Eiren Demonstr 20 (11).

Markionites, and presses in opposition to them the saying that Christ had come to send a sword⁽³⁴⁾: he refers to a number of incidents in early Hebrew history in which those who had offended against God were punished with slaughter, and concludes:

Origenes says that Jesus "had no need of the use of whips and bonds and torture against men in the fashion of the former dispensation."⁽³⁶⁾ Cyprianus, in answer to the pagan complaint that the frequency of wars, famines, plagues, droughts, etc., was due to the Christians, urges that "those (calamities) happen, not because your gods are not worshipped by us, but because God is not worshipped by you."⁽³⁷⁾ When, early in the fourth century, the persecuting colleagues and successors of Diocletianus were overthrown in war by Licinius and Constantinus, the Christians regarded the defeat of the former as a divine chastisement for the sufferings they had inflicted on the Church.⁽³⁸⁾

34. Tert Marc i. 24 (ii. 275) (nec fulminibus tantum, aut bellis, et pestibus, aliisque plagis Creatoris, sed et scorpiis ejus objectus-- speaking of the Markionite's flesh), iv. 29 (ii. 435).

35. Tert Scorp 3 (ii. 129).

36. Orig Cels iv. 9.

37. Cypr Demetr 2, 5.

38. Lact Inst I i. 15, VII xxvi. 13 f, Mort Pers lii. 3; Eus HE IX xi. 9, X i. 1, 7, etc., Vit Const i. 3, etc.

it is right or permissible for him to take a part in inflicting such penalties. While Christians agreed that the fall of Jerusalem and its accompanying calamities were a divine chastisement, no one thought of inferring from that that the Roman army was blameless or virtuous in the bloodthirsty and savage cruelty it displayed in the siege.

And in regard to the more general view of war as a divine chastisement, if it could be inferred from the fact of its being so that a Christian might lawfully help to inflict it, it would follow that he might also under certain conditions help to cause and spread a plague or to inflict persecution on his fellow-Christians--for both plagues and persecutions were regarded as divine chastisements just as war was. The obvious absurdity of this conclusion ought to be enough to convince us that the Christian idea of war being used by God to punish sin certainly does not mean that the Christian may take part in it with an easy conscience: on the contrary, the analogy of pestilence, famine, persecution, etc., which are often coupled with war, strongly suggests that participation in it could not possibly be a Christian duty. And there can be no doubt that the vast majority of early Christians acted in conformity with that view, whether or not they theorized philosophically about it.

At the same time, just as to-day a superficial view prompts some people to leap at conclusions in this matter which their premises do not justify, so probably in those days there were some who allowed their conduct and thought to be unduly swayed by the fact that there were sundry departments of their minds in which war could be thought of without reproach.

and, we may add, the Old Testament, and the Christian philosophy of history generally, each