In trying to evaluate the significance of the shift from third-century pacifism to fourth-century concern with the just-war theory, it may be helpful to give more attention to Lactantius, a man who lived through the Constantinian revolution and wrote seriously about the problem of military service for Christians both before and after Constantine. According to his Divine Institutes there is absolutely no place for Christians in the army. He says in so many words, * ‘It is not right for... Read more

Hunter summarizes a 1983 article by RA Markus on Augustine and just war.  By examining Augustine’s statements on war and Christian society in the context of his intellectual biography, Markus comes up with “a highly nuanced account that stresses Augustine’s deepening pessimism regarding the rationality of human actions and, simultaneously, the collapse within Augustine’s own mind of the ‘rational myth of the state.’” Markus discovers “two major shifts in the context of Augustine’s thinking about the ‘justice’ of warfare. In... Read more

In a 1992 survey of recent work on the early church’s views on Christian participation in the military (in Religious Studies Review ), David G. Hunter sums up with this: “the ‘new consensus’ would maintain: 1) that the most vocal opponents of military service in the early church (e.g., Tertullian and Origen) based their objections on a variety of factors, which included an abhorence of Roman army religion as well as an aversion to the shedding of blood; 2) that... Read more