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must act only by words, fight only by David Nirenberg arguments, and prevail by force of rea- son.... But this opinion of mine was overcome [by the example of] my own Truth and Consequences town, which . . . was brought over to the Catholic unity by fear of the imperial edicts.” Who stands, in this exchange, for reason, and who for the fear of law? The There Is No Crime For the persecuting; with the powerless, not letter’s obscure recipient, the advocate of Those Who Have Christ: the powerful. Hence the rhetorical effect tolerance in this exchange, was one Vin- Religious Violence in the of the anti-war bumper sticker “Who centius of Cartenna, a bishop in an in- Christian Roman Empire Would Jesus Bomb?” fluential North African Christian move- By Michael Gaddis Of course we all know that there have ment known as the Donatists, which was (University of California Press, been many periods of Christian coercion: fast on its way to being suppressed by 396 pp., $49.95) crusades, inquisitions, forced conversions, episcopal styluses and imperial swords as to name only some of the more infamous. heretical. The author of the letter, now he words “religion” and So how should we incorporate these his- convinced of the utility of fear, was none “violence” very often ac- tories into our debates about what Chris- other than Augustine of Hippo, whose company each other these tianity is, or should be? This question writings have arguably had more influ- days, but in predominantly has occupied minds great and small for ence on the Christian cultures of western Christian Europe or the many centuries. Often the temptation is Europe than any except scripture. TAmericas they are rarely associated toward polemics: either these moments It is worth lingering a bit with the pro- with the words “Christ” or “Christian- of violence prove the essential hypocrisy tagonists in this debate, lest gray polarize ity.” On the contrary, a rough caricature of Christian claims to love and non- into black and white. The Donatists pre- of our common knowledge on the sub- violence, or they are merely deviations, sented themselves as a church of mar- ject might look something like this: the errors that may tell us something about, tyrs, and they did indeed suffer severe re- God of the Hebrew Bible was a venge- say, the darkness of the Middle Ages or pression; but they were not themselves ful enforcer of law, and the God of the the cruelty of Catholics, but have nothing known as pacifists.Their zealots, a wreck- Koran sent prophets with swords, but to do with the teachings of Christ, and ing crew known as the Circumcellions, the Christian God demands only love. bring no stain upon them. stalked North Africa wielding cudgels “God is love,” Pope Benedict XVI de- Michael Gaddis’s fascinating book fo- called “Israels,” the better to crack the clared in his first encyclical. In this ac- cuses on one of the most foundational heads of their competition. Over the count, suasion and gentle reason, not co- of these moments: the conversion of the course of the fourth century, as that com- ercion or authoritarian force, are now Emperor Constantine circa 315, and the petition succeeded in defining itself as and have always been the appropriate subsequent integration of Christian “Catholic”—from katholicos, or “univer- paths to faith in this God, as the same churches into the power structures of em- sal”—and enlisting the help of imperial pontiff reminded the world in his con- pire and state. If this was a deviation, it armies against the now officially “hereti- troversial speech at Regensburg a short was certainly a very long one: the partner- cal” Donatists, the actions of the Circum- while ago. That speech aroused Muslim ship between Christianity and state pow- cellions grew more desperate. We hear protest because of the way it seemed to er that was then established remained of Catholic priests blinded by having lime associate the history of Islam with un- firm for nearly a millennium and a half. and vinegar rubbed into their eyes, of reason and the violent coercion of faith. And because so many of the fathers of others dragged from their altars and But the pope’s association of Christ and the church worked and wrote within this beaten. One of these, stabbed in the groin Christian history with love, reasoned partnership, its consequences for reli- and left for dead, managed to make his persuasion, and uncoerced faith proved gious and political thought have been way to Italy and to display his scandalous thoroughly uncontroversial. enormous. For this reason, the topic of wounds in the emperor’s court. That silence tells us a great deal about Christian violence and religious coercion If Vincentius advocated tolerance, the place and the meaning of religion— in this early and formative period has at- said Augustine, it was only because his and particularly of Christianity in its tracted many fine students of the past, church, after being crushed by the Ro- myriad forms—in much of the devel- among them Erasmus, Gibbon, and in our man legions, was now powerless. “No oped world today. No doubt there are day Peter Brown. It is high praise, there- wild beast is said to be gentle if, be- still skeptics among us, scions of the fore, to say that this book by Gaddis (who cause of its not having teeth and claws, more radical wings of Enlightenment, was Brown’s student) helps us to under- it wounds no one.” But Augustine can who insist that violence and tyranny lurk stand the old problem in a new way. scarcely be called an apostle of violence. within every universalizing monotheism. His dedication to persuasion by means But by and large, those of us who are ou are of the opinion heirs of the Christian cultures of Europe, that no one should be com- David Nirenberg is a professor in the whether in their explicitly religious or pelled to follow righteous- Committee on Social Thought at the their secularized ethical forms, look for ‘ ness,” wrote one Christian University of Chicago, and the author of violence elsewhere. We associate Chris- bishopY to another in 408. “Originally my Communities of Violence: Persecution tianity with the turning of the cheek, not opinion was that no one should be co- of Minorities in the Middle Ages with retaliation; with the persecuted, not erced into the unity of Christ, that we (Princeton University Press). the new republic december 11, 2006 35 of the word is unusual even among the Psalm 138, Jerome argued not for love, contrasts, evil and good, and nothing in saints, as the vast record of his letters, ser- but for hating with a “perfect hatred” between.” “The dangers to the sectarian mons, disputations, and treatises attests. those who “hate God.” John Chrysostom, ideal are worldliness and conspiracy.... And although he was, like any successful whose writings acquired an importance The remedies most easily proposed in bishop, a master of both secular and ec- in the Greek East roughly comparable such organizations are to refuse to com- clesiastical power politics, he was in no to that of Augustine in the Latin West, promise with evil and to root it out, sense an apologist for governmental vio- produced a more pugilistic prose, but his accompanied by a tendency toward intol- lence carried out in the name of Christ. point was the same: “should you hear erance and drastic solutions.” The defini- His writings on the subject, like those of anyone . . . blaspheming God; go up to tion is perhaps not very helpful: Gaddis any subtle thinker confronted by chang- him and rebuke him; and should it be sometimes cloaks his arguments in prêt- ing circumstances over the course of a necessary to inflict blows, spare not to à-porter generalizations (returning too long life, contain many views. Some of do so. Smite him on the face; strike his often to the same line by Hannah Arendt, them, such as his letter to Vincentius, are mouth; sanctify thy hand with the blow.” about violence beginning as means but optimistic about the role of secular coer- Chrysostom himself was charged by a ending as ends). But the occasional bag- cion in bringing souls toward Christian synod of bishops with punching a certain giness does not conceal the underlying truth. Others, most notably The City of Memnon in the face, then forcing him to elegance of the history that he tells. God, are exquisitely aware of the difficul- take communion while bleeding from the ties involved in any alignment of worldly mouth. Had he known the words of the addis begins that history power with divine love. But regardless of early fifth-century Egyptian monk She- with the conflict that broke the place they assign to physical correc- noute, he might have quoted them in his out in the aftermath of the tion in the shepherding of souls, Augus- own defense:“There is no crime for those persecutions in the late third tine’s writings always seek to balance the who have Christ.” Gcentury, as the last pagan emperors con- rival risks posed by, on the one hand, the fronted the rapidly growing Christian toleration of doctrinal diversity, dissen- do not mean to suggest that movement. The Donatists refused to sion, and error among Christians, and, on Christians (or anyone else) found recognize clerics who had denied out of the other hand, the deployment of coer- the use of physical violence in fear their allegiance to Christ, however cive power to discipline that error and to religious disputes unproblematic. temporary that denial. The Catholics, on establish Christian unity. IThere were doubtless many who would the other hand, insisted on the ongoing have agreed that Chrysostom went too authority of priests and bishops who he bishop Optatus, writing far. Did not the Apostolic Canons— had bowed under compulsion but then a generation before Augus- produced in Chrysostom’s Antioch in returned to the church. The resulting tine’s birth, expressed one ver- the mid to late fourth century—forbid struggle would last nearly a century, dur- sion of that difficult balance in clerics to strike an errant believer? “In ing which both sides wrestled for the Tthe justification that he produced for the no way did our Lord teach this—indeed mantle of martyrdom and the title of bloody repression carried out against the he was struck and did not strike back.” persecuted church. This title was impor- Circumcellions by the imperial commis- We will return to the question of whether tant, because from its earliest days the sioner Macarius and his army in 347: the Lord did or did not strike back, since Jesus movement had understood its per- it was a question much debated in the secution (by Jews, by pagans, by Satan For this is the voice of God,“Thou day. My point here is that Christians and his principalities) as evidence of its shalt not kill,” and this is the same did not speak with one voice, that those righteousness. With Christians in power, God’s voice,“If a man is found sleep- supporting religious coercion were not the language of persecution changed its ing with a woman who has a husband, marginal, and that the violence they targets but did not lose its force. Rival you shall kill both.” One God and two threatened was widely felt, not only by churches were now the enemy, and the contending voices.When Phinehas, non-Christians (pagans, Jews, Manichees, Christian governors that favored them son of a priest, found an adulterer and so on) but also by many a believer were the persecuting tyrants. But our with an adulteress, he raised his hand in Christ. church, the true church, no matter how with his weapon, and stood uncertain It is this last category that most inter- powerful or politically dominant, re- between the two voices of God. If he ests Gaddis. He does not skip over the mained persecuted and martyred. struck, he would sin; if he did not destruction of temples or the burning of strike, he would fail in duty. He chose synagogues, but the bulk of his pages is the better sin, to strike the blow. intended as a disheartening chronicle of the destruction that Christian sectarians In sum, when confronted with errors armed with weapons of state could wreak of sufficient gravity, tolerance was a upon one another. The word “sectarian- greater sin than violence. Many Church ism” is Gaddis’s. He uses it to imply a Fathers agreed. Jerome, whose edition comparison with modern religious vio- and translation of the Bible into Latin es- lence (a parallel with contemporary Is- tablished the standard text for more than lamic extremism is occasionally adum- a millennium, was quite clear that normal brated in the footnotes), and he defines it restraints did not apply when punishing in terms borrowed from Mary Douglas: an offense against God: “There is no cru- “sectarian bias” means “polarized argu- elty in regard for God’s honor.” Quoting ments, persons shown in black and white 36 december 11, 2006 the new republic

Because the title of persecuted church about the problem a good deal. As usual, ologians and crusaders considered the was so powerful, there were plenty of one of the most constructive of these killing of Muslims an “act of love,” candidates for it. Gaddis begins with the worriers was Augustine, and the solu- because the victims were thereby pre- Donatists, but goes on to chronicle the tion that he proposed in (among other vented from living to commit more mor- numerous confrontations, whether Chris- places) his Epistle 185 proved enduring: tal sins. The difference between “sharp tological, ecclesiological, or political, that mercy” and “utter mercilessness” was so produced the fractured religious land- It is indeed better, as no one ever small for Martin Luther that he used the scape of the late Roman Empire. Ano- could deny, that men should be led to two as synonyms in 1543 in his treatise moians versus Homoians versus Homo- worship God by teaching, than that On the Jews and Their Lies. ousians; monks versus bishops; Alexan- they should be driven to it by fear of Moreover, the paternalistic claim here dria,Antioch, Rome, and Constantinople punishment or pain; but it does not is not limited to children, to Jews, or to against one another.... The violent con- follow that because the former course others commonly agreed to be especially flicts and scandals of this era of “robber produces the better men, therefore deficient in reason. It is extended to all councils” and militarized monks are the those who do not yield to it should be humanity. No matter their age or reli- caffeine that carries Gibbon through neglected. For many have found ad- gion, no one may be allowed total free- many pages of his great work, and they vantage, as we have proved, and are dom to follow their will or their reason energize Gaddis as well. proving daily by actual experiment, if it leads them into error. This view was He demonstrates nicely how the re- in being first compelled by fear or by no means confined to the Catholicism sulting spiral of inter-ecclesiastical vio- pain, so that they might afterwards of late antiquity, the Middle Ages, or lence led many an exhausted bishop to be influenced by teaching....While the Counter-Reformation. It provided a conclude that imperial officials were a those are certainly better who are powerful strand also in the church’s necessary counterbalance to righteous guided aright by love, those are modern critique of liberalism. To grant patriarchs: hence the deliberate inclu- certainly more numerous who are humanity the right of freedom of con- sion of generals, governors, and senators corrected by fear....“He that spareth science would be, in the view of Pope at the great church council of Chal- the rod hateth the son.” Pius IX in 1864,“delirium.” cedon, which sought to establish consen- sus about the human and divine nature In other words, the violence of the addis calls the Constan- of Jesus Christ. But secular force, how- true church was justified because it was tinian period of the union ever stabilizing, did not eliminate the motivated by love, and in the best spiri- between Christianity and feeling (or the reality) of persecution in tual interest of the victim: “she perse- Roman Empire a “time of those provinces, such as Egypt, whose cutes in the spirit of love; they [the impi- Gunique importance.” Certainly no one populations held views that came to be ous] in the spirit of wrath; she that she who reads this book will fail to appreci- labeled heterodox. For many in these re- might correct, they that they might over- ate the double bind in which the sectar- gions, the Christian emperor was a per- throw.” The metaphors that apply to this ian monks and bishops of Gaddis’s world secuting tyrant, and they may well have Christian violence are those of child- found themselves: struggling with new welcomed the armies of Islam—whose rearing, shepherding, and medicine. We weapons of state for the universal valid- dust clouds loom just over the horizons pull the hair of children who are about ity of each of their various particular of this book—as harbingers of religious to play with serpents, and we cut gan- truths, but subject to the rule of emper- freedom. grene from the sick no matter how much ors who prized unity, stability, and con- they cry. If children were never disci- sensus above all. It may well be, as Ar- eligious coercion and vio- plined, would they not grow up to be naldo Momigliano once suggested, that lence of this type will strike intolerable? Through such “disciplinary the resulting mess is evidence that some modern readers as in- violence”—the phrase is Gaddis’s, not monotheism was not well suited to the compatible with a Christian Augustine’s—God corrects creation, task of managing diversity in ancient em- Rfaith that teaches that “God is love.” parents and teachers correct children, pires. Still, it would be useful to know This “incompatibility” was perhaps less and the church of Christ corrects those just how “unique” these difficulties were. sharp for ancient Christians, who did not who do not believe in her truth. Is the Christian problem with violence think that God’s love excluded his anger We need not adhere to the parenting entirely the contingent product of a spir- or his jealousy; but still they worried techniques of Augustine’s age (in the itual faith’s necessary compromises as Confessions he compares learning gram- it assumed imperial power? If so, then mar in school to martyrdom, so often it should be possible to return, through were the students beaten) in order to Christian reform, to the pristine love of a Join the recognize that there is nothing trivial more primitive church. Or is the poten- Historical Society about his claim that compulsion can be tial for violence in some way embedded an act of love. From a parent’s perspec- within the fundamental beliefs of Chris- A guide to more than 90 years of tive, Augustine’s view probably makes tianity itself? The New Republic, hand-picked by our staff. far more sense than Kant’s enlightened The question has for centuries been tnr.com/archives argument against any coercion of chil- a loaded one. Gibbon, in the fifteenth dren. In less careful hands than Au- chapter of The Decline and Fall of the v gustine’s, however, it becomes difficult Roman Empire, suggested that the ori- to know where “tough love” ends and gins of the problem lay not with empire, righteous abuse begins. Medieval the- but within the institutional structures the new republic december 11, 2006 37 of the church, and above all in the ambi- an essential part of Christianity’s mother incurred at an unknown hand in battle tions of its bishops. Primitive Christians religion, Judaism, and it was only natural against Persia in 363.Although Julian did would have nothing to do with power, that the young daughter-church could not persecute Christians, his attempt to Gibbon declared. They “refused to take not quite shake this inheritance. re-orient the empire toward pagan wor- any active part in the civil administration Much as we might want to know the ship had made him, from the church’s or the military defense of the empire . . . answers to these questions about earlier point of view, a persecutor and tyrant. [and were] dead to the business and Christianity, it was perhaps prudent of Not surprisingly, a “revenge” legend pleasures of the world; but their love of Gaddis not to engage them, given the about his death became widespread: action . . . soon revived, and found a new polemics that they seem to provoke. He occupation in the government of the does dedicate two pages of his introduc- Basil, the most holy bishop of Cae- Church.” Coercion and compulsion were tion to Christian violence before Con- sarea in Cappadocia, saw in a dream the result. Echoing Locke’s essay on tol- stantine, and in these he alludes to the the heavens opened and the Savior eration, Gibbon granted that “it is the tendency of early Christianity to postu- Christ seated on a throne and saying undoubted right of every society to ex- late “a world sharply divided between loudly,“Mercurius, go and kill the clude from its communion and benefits truth and falsehood, beset by perceived emperor Julian, who is against the such among its members as reject or vio- enemies both outside and within.” He Christians.” Saint Mercurius, standing late those regulations which have been goes no further, beyond a gesture to before the Lord, wore a gleaming established by general consent.” But Elaine Pagels’s work on how first- and iron breast-plate. Hearing the com- many bishops (Cyprian of Carthage is a second-century theologians “demo- mand, he disappeared, and then he favorite culprit) became “rigid and in- nized” their enemies. But his book con- reappeared, standing before the flexible casuists,” abandoning the “milder tains plenty of evidence that when his Lord, and cried out,“The emperor sentiments” of the “purest and most re- angry fourth- and fifth-century clerics Julian has been fatally wounded and spectable of the Christian Churches,” and asked themselves, as they frequently did, has died, as you commanded, Lord.” “covering their ambition with the fair “What would Jesus do?” they found suf- pretense of the love of order.” And ficient justification for their actions in To those raised in more modern ver- more:“Sometimes we might imagine that the records they had of his words and sions of Christianity, these ancient sto- we were listening to the voice of Moses, deeds. In this sense, their arguments are ries may sound more like The Godfather when he commanded the earth to open, themselves an early inquiry into the po- than like the God of love. This is not be- and to swallow up, in consuming flames, tential for violence and compulsion in cause our ears are better than theirs, but the rebellious race which refused obedi- the teachings of Jesus Christ. because theirs were attuned to a register ence to the priesthood of Aaron; and The trial by synod of Bishop Rabbula of Jesus’ voice that many today can no we should sometimes suppose that we on charges of beating clerics provides longer hear:“As for my enemies who did heard a Roman consul asserting the a case in point. The bishop defended not want me for their king, bring them majesty of the republic, and declaring his himself by invoking the example of Je- here and execute them in my presence.” inflexible resolution to enforce the rigor sus, who chased the money changers out The point of Michael Gaddis’s book of the laws.” According to the Protestant of the temple. His colleague Theodore is surely not that Christianity has a Gibbon, then, the bishops of the early of Mopsuestia contradicted him, citing propensity for violence, or that its pro- church displayed “Mosaic” tendencies to- Matthew 21:12: Jesus overturned the fessions of love are hypocritical. Its point ward love of power, compulsion, and tables, and “drove out” (exebalen) the is simpler, more banal, and, although it is theocracy long before they were ushered money changers, but he never hit any- mentioned almost in passing, much more into the halls of imperial palaces. one. Yet according to John 2:14-16, Je- important: that “Christian scripture and Writing roughly a century later, sus had wielded a whip of cords (phrag- doctrine contained the basis both for vi- around 1900, the great German theolo- ellion ek skhoinion). Did he use it against olence and for the condemnation of vio- gian Adolph Harnack pushed the prob- people, as Bishop Rabbula insisted, lence.” The same could be said of every lem even further back. Beginning with or only against livestock, as Theodore rich scriptural tradition in the world.The Paul if not already before, he argued, claimed? All the scriptural passages that great Christian theologians of late antiq- early Christian thought drew heavily on suggest a Jesus willing to use force were uity seem not to have forgotten this am- metaphors of war and violent combat. subjected to this kind of scrutiny in late bivalence; and neither, at a time when re- Early Christians were the militia Christi, antiquity. The same is true of those pas- ligions are again beginning to test their the “army of Christ,” locked in combat sages that could endorse compulsion in moral muscles against one another, with demons, and bound to God their religion. Did Jesus not say, in his parable should we. general and to each other through the of the banquet, “Go to the open roads “sacramentum,” the soldier’s loyalty and the hedgerows and force people to oath. Non-Christians were at best pagani, come in to make sure my house is full?” “civilians” in this struggle. At worst they This, for Augustine, was evidence that More Than were, like Jews and persecuting emper- people should be “compelled to follow A Magazine ors, the enemies of Christ’s militia, sol- righteousness.” Daily political insight about diers of Satan and his Principalities. Ac- We can see these exegetical sensitiv- controversial topics. Only at www.tnr.com cording to Harnack, such sentiments, and ities at work in many of the stories that the potential for violent action that they Christians told about violence, even v might facilitate, were alien to the teach- when they cite no scripture. Julian the ings of Jesus himself. But they had been Apostate, for example, died of wounds