Christians as Levites: Rethinking Early Christian Attitudes toward War and Bloodshed via Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine
This article seeks to break the scholarly deadlock regarding attitudes toward war and bloodshed held by early Christian thinkers. I argue that, whereas previous studies have attempted to fit early Christian stances into one or another "unitary-ethic" framework, the historical-textual data...
| Publicado no: | Harvard theological review |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Tipo de documento: | Recurso Electrónico Artigo |
| Idioma: | Inglês |
| Verificar disponibilidade: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Carregar...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publicado em: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[2019]
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| Em: |
Harvard theological review
Ano: 2019, Volume: 112, Número: 4, Páginas: 491-516 |
| (Cadeias de) Palavra- chave padrão: | B
Origenes 185-254
/ Guerra justa
/ Bibel. Altes Testament
/ Levitas
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| Classificações IxTheo: | HB Antigo Testamento KAB Cristianismo primitivo NCD Ética política |
| Outras palavras-chave: | B
Augustine
B Levites B Pacifism B Tertullian B Just War B Origen |
| Acesso em linha: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Resumo: | This article seeks to break the scholarly deadlock regarding attitudes toward war and bloodshed held by early Christian thinkers. I argue that, whereas previous studies have attempted to fit early Christian stances into one or another "unitary-ethic" framework, the historical-textual data can be best accounted for by positing that many early Christian writers held to a "dual-ethic" orientation. In the latter, certain actions would be viewed as forbidden for Christians but as legitimate for non-Christians in the Roman Empire. Moreover, this dual-ethic stance can be further illuminated by viewing it in connection with the portrayal in the Hebrew Bible of the relation between Levites and the other Israelite tribes. This framing enables us to gain a clearer understanding not only of writers like Origen and Tertullian, who upheld Christian nonviolence while simultaneously praising Roman imperial military activities, but also of writers such as Augustine, whose theological-ethical framework indicates a strong assumption of a dual-ethic stance in his patristic predecessors. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Obras secundárias: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816019000257 |