Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, I want to discuss a question that a friend asked me the other week, which I think is extremely important to answer when discussing the issue of non violence with other Christians. The question is extremely important and it's one which I have asked myself, and it's one I'm sure that a lot of you guys have asked yourselves. So here's the question. My friend said that with science, we recognize that people in the past got it wrong because over time, we learn more about the world.

Why then do many pacifists and many Christians like the Orthodox, Catholics, and Reform denominations, why do they like to talk so much about the Church Fathers? Should the Church Fathers be influential on what we believe? And in pacifist circles, Christian nonviolent circles, this is extremely important because we tend to emphasize the early church a lot more, and a particular part of the early church, so the Anti Nicene church, which means the church before the Nicene Creed, so like 03/25, the church before that, before Constantine. And the idea is that when we have these early church fathers, that they're going to kind of show us more accurately the picture of what Jesus taught and what the early early church believed. So for Christians who wanna get a snapshot of early beliefs, the early church fathers are really good, and obviously the further back you go, closer they are to Christ or the apostles of Christ.

So you think that you'd get a more accurate picture of the way that the church is supposed to be and the beliefs that the church is supposed to have. But what my friend was saying is that, well, with science and other things, we recognize that we develop over time, and even in the church, the church develops over time. And so why do we not view that as progress? Why are we trying to get back to something? Or compare ourselves with something from so, so much longer ago.

So, let's go ahead and dive in and answer the question. First, I think it's important to understand that there's a distinction with those who tend to be nonviolent, and the Catholic Orthodox churches, and especially the Reformed church. So what these other churches tend to do, in my opinion, is that they tend to cherry pick the fathers that they want to ignore, and the fathers that they want to listen to. And secondly, they like to start later in the game. So not anti Nicene fathers, but after that.

So let's talk about the first issue there. The Catholics and Reformed individuals tend to cherry pick the same people, and they especially love Augustine, whereas in the Orthodox Church, you don't find that they like them as much, or Augustine as much. And they kind of have a different group of people like John of Damascus, and they like Chrysostom a lot, whereas you don't hear those people as much in the West. So the Catholic and Reformed churches, and especially the Reformed church, they like to start around Augustine. You're talking like the mid three hundreds, late '3 hundreds here.

So we're starting three hundred years into church history with Augustine, with at least an emphasis there. And then for the Reformed crowd, which is my crowd, what happens is time goes by and we stop liking our church history because we start to associate it with Roman Catholicism. And we're like, Oh, the church starts to look a little bit more Catholic, like they approve icons and other sorts of things. So we'll stop listening to the church fathers, we'll cherry pick somebody like Aquinas, but by and large, we were kind of the first from like March to, I don't know, maybe May, whatever the seventh council I think it was, where icons come back in and stay. But whatever it is, we really just cherry pick.

So we don't use church tradition and the early church to do anything but bolster the beliefs that we have. We don't use them to enlighten us on anything, we use them to support the things that we like. And if they don't support us, then they must be wrong and we must be right. So the cherry picking is really problematic, probably most of all for Protestants, And honestly, the Reformed crowd and Anglicans, and you've got a few groups that really care too much about church history, whereas you get into more of the, I know I'm stereotyping here, but Baptist culture and they're not too concerned. Pentecostals, they don't care too much about church history, except maybe like in their seminaries and stuff, but by and large, people just don't care that much.

But beyond the cherry picking, I find the late emphasis of church fathers problematic. Now I'm not even gonna get into the different views on Constantine and the marriage of the church and the state, but it is pretty apparent that with Constantine, the church had a pretty significant shift. Now, you can say that that was a good thing, a bad thing, a necessary thing, whatever, we're not gonna really get into that. But the point is that there definitely is a shift in what goes on, and so only selecting Church Fathers post Constantine or significantly emphasizing those Church Fathers is going to produce a different picture than if you include and emphasize the anti Nicene fathers. So with Constantine, there definitely was a shift in the church.

You can read some testimonies of priests talking about the way that the dress of the priests changed, and as Christianity gained preference and other sorts of things, you just you saw corruption and decadence and other sorts of things start to come in, syncretism with some of the like dead festivals for the dead and other sorts of things. And anyway, there are plenty of early Church observations as to this shift that went on. And there are some other things that you can look at, like it's super surprising to me that you get the Edict of Milan legalizing Christianity in 03/13, and then you've got the first monastery that, as far as we know, that pops up alongside Constantine's destroying of pagan symbols in 03/18. '1 of the arguments is that the monastic movement begins to become a major way that Christians see themselves as coming out from the world. And you see this bifurcation of sacred and secular with Constantine in some ways.

Like in some ways, you get the marriage of the church and the state, but then in other ways you get these people who are like, Man, we have to come out from the world because now there's no way to be distinct. We're all syncretistic, and we start baptizing all the babies, and now everybody is basically automatically a Christian, like we're not a distinct community. So when you have Christendom, this Christian society, you have this sacral society, one in which ritual binds everyone to religion or begins to do so at least, then Christian distinctiveness is largely lost. And we should be able to see this pretty clearly in The United States because our Christian nation, quote, it's really hard to see Christian distinctiveness. In fact, it's really easy to associate Christianity with a lot of terrible things because a lot of people are nominal Christians.

So a heritage of Christianity, being born into Christianity and kind of taking that name on ourselves, can create a big problem if we're not really a distinct culture, but we've kind of married ourselves to the state. So it's really for this reason, or these are some reasons, that the anti Nicene Fathers are important to the nonviolent movement. It seems like to pick and choose later church fathers is cherry picking out of convenience. And it also seems like we know that there is this action that significantly changes the landscape of Christianity when Constantine comes to power. We know that there's a huge shift, a significant shift.

If not in terms of beliefs, though that's demonstrable, but at least in terms of potential motivations. So even if you want to say that the church under Constantine and after wasn't marred by self interest and didn't kind of take the bait that the state gave it and didn't have these ulterior motives, those motives are at least present when they weren't present before. So if you're going to take a look at somebody's actions, at a church's actions, I would take it when you're more certain that there aren't these competing motives like grasping at power. So you take the church after Constantine, and they want to keep power, they want to gain power, all of these things. That motivation is there, it's present, it's available to them.

Before you get into that, before you get into Constantine, they're not courted by the state, and so you know that their actions are free from that grasp of power at least. They might have other bad ideas and motives somewhere, but in terms of state actions, you know that they're going to be honest about it because they have nothing to lose there. So because the anti Nicene church predated Constantine in the marriage of the state with the church, I think that's an important positive to hear them out. This is especially true considering that right before Constantine, you've got a church that's coming fresh out of a terrible persecution by Diocletian, and to have this promise of power and comfort and acceptance was a huge motivation. So we like to look back before Constantine.

And when we do, we see that the Church is univocal on non violence and government participation prior to Constantine. They say, Hey, cast aside your purple robes, don't join the army if you're in it, go ahead and stay in it, but if you have to kill somebody, you better not. If you got out of the army and then you choose to go back in, so you're not saved in the army but you choose to go into it after you are, you commit your life to Christ, that's a problem and you experience Church discipline for that. Then Constantine comes along and within a very short period, you have killing being okay, capital punishment, which was never okay before, self defense, which wasn't okay before, all those kinds of things. And now all of a sudden, things that the Church was univocal about, you start to see a change.

Augustine waters this down, but he's still actually pretty rigid. He doesn't think that individual actors can kill in love, and so it's not good for them to kill only actors of the state, really should be able to kill in terms of Christian perspective even though from a legal perspective self defense might be justifiable. Aquinas waters that down even more, you get the double effect to justify killing in self defense provided that you're not seeking to take the attacker's life. And now in The US, many theologians take our modern interpretation of a secular document and the Second Amendment, and we're fine with you blasting an intruder who comes into your home because they're on your property and we should be able to stand our ground. So the Anti Nicene Church lacks the bias that the post Constantinian church has.

The Anti Nicene Church also lacks the inconsistency of the post Constantinian church has. And the Anti Nicenes were univocal, whereas we see a broad range of views on justified violence once Constantine comes on the scene. So besides the questionable motivations of the church after Constantine, another important reason to weigh the Anti Nicene church more heavily is because of their proximity to Jesus. Now it's true that science, like my friend observed, changes over time as things are revealed. However, there are two things which makes science different than our view of the early church.

First, when we're talking about non violence, that is a moral question, and we believe that morality is objective. Now God did reveal over time, He revealed morality. So for instance, to the ancient Israelites, there are some things in there about slaves and you know, what to do with enemies and things which we would find atrocious today, putting heads on pikes and things. You also see like corporal punishment and spanking and things, which we did an episode on. You find some big problems with the way that the Bible tells you to spank, like we're talking about beating kids and leaving bruises and all that kind of stuff.

So we know that morality is revealed over time. Jesus says this explicitly. He says, hey, look, divorce, I know you guys had a law for it and I know God allowed that, but really that's not that's not a good thing, right? You shouldn't divorce, like that's no good. So Jesus clarifies and this is just this idea of revelation over time.

Divorce really was always a bad thing, but God was patient in the hardness of our hearts and in our learning in the cultures that we were in. So, when we're talking about non violence, that was the progressive revelation. Now the question is, did is there is now our enemies, is that progressive revelation? Like, so Jesus' teaching on loving our enemies can actually be superseded by now killing our enemies. Like, so the pinnacle of the revelation is killing our enemies, not loving them?

No, it doesn't seem that way because if if not killing was revealed in Christ, that seems like a pinnacle and to now kill them is regression, not progression. It's not a progression of revelation, it's a regression to something more barbaric and earlier than. So to go from not killing anyone to killing enemies is not a step forward in moral revelation, it's a step backwards. But another thing is that if morality is objective and the Anti Nicene Church identifies killing, including abortions, capital punishment, war, self defense, revenge, and murder, then that doesn't change with time. Like those are objectively immoral.

If they were then, they are now. You might say that they were wrong about this for three hundred years, but because of morality's objective, if they were ever right, then they're always right. And finally, most importantly, Jesus is quite a bit different than science because in science, we are moving towards a pinnacle of understanding, towards more knowledge, towards more certainty. We're moving towards a pinnacle. But on the Christian worldview, it's vital to understand that Jesus is the pinnacle.

So whereas in science we progress forward to some end goal, Jesus, who is in our past two thousand years and depicted to us through God's revealed Word, Jesus is the pinnacle. So we are moving away from the pinnacle and our goal is to center back on what was the pinnacle, we're not focused on advancing morality because, know, the things that were at least revealed have been advanced as far as they can be. Obviously, are different applications today. So in vitro fertilization, birth control, like different sorts of things that we can talk about and figure out how to apply. But as far as the morality of not killing non violence, what the early church held, that's something that we should look at as objective and if it's the pinnacle, if it represents the pinnacle of Christ, then that's the pinnacle that we center on.

We don't try to advance that any further because it can't be. So that means for me, I trust that which is closer to Jesus more than I trust that which is farther away. The greater distance from the pinnacle, the less I trust it, just like we do with science. I trust modern science more than I trust something written two thousand years ago about a scientific statement. Maybe that's a little bit different in certain math formulations, but, you know, in physics, I'm gonna trust today's physics as opposed to that 2,000 ago.

And that's why the Anti Nicene church is so important to me because you think about this, some in the early church that we have spoke with those who walked with Jesus, like Polycarp. Polycarp, disciple of John, who's a disciple of Jesus. So when Aquinas is twelve hundred years removed from Jesus and tells me that I can kill people, but Tertullian, one hundred years from Jesus and maybe two disciples removed from Jesus, tells me that I can't kill for any reason, I'm gonna go with Tertullian to enlighten what's right. Particularly because it's not just Tertullian that says that, but it's everybody else around Tertullian before and after him until Constantine. Tertullian is closer to the pinnacle while Aquinas is much, much farther from it.

Even Augustine is much farther from it. Tertullian is maybe two disciples removed and what, fifty ish years, whereas maybe a hundred whatever, fifty to a hundred years. And then you've got somebody like Augustine who's three hundred years removed and who knows how many disciples. Tertullian and the Anti Nicene Fathers are closer to the pinnacle that we're shooting for. Now, there are two big rebuttals that people might try to give here, and will address the shorter one first.

Some people say that the Anti Nicene Church doesn't have many voices, and that's largely because they were under persecution, their works were burned, and they're just further back in time, and that means that it's harder to preserve things over longer periods of time, not just because of decay, but because when you're an oppressed group that's trying to preserve writings and people are trying to burn them, that's difficult. So we do have a relatively small number of writings in existence from the very early church, and even then from a relatively small number of authors. There's not that much and in that lacunae, there is there could be more that we just we don't see because it's lost to time. Now I can agree that there is a relatively small sample from the Anti Nicene Church, but I think that sample is a lot bigger than some people realize. I mean, I was shocked with how much I was able to find, spoken about different forms of killing from abortion to self defense.

I thought maybe there'd be four to five quotes from the Anti Nicene Church, but there are a ton and I'll link to a source below. But it's also important to realize that the texts which were preserved were almost certainly the texts which represented the vast majority of the church. Those were the sources that probably were copied the most and they'd probably be copied the most because that's what the Churches believed. If there were any writings on killing others, the question is, would that have accurately represented the view of the Orthodox Church? And I would say, probably not or else it would have been preserved.

It's not a coincidence that every single piece we have preserved is univocal on this issue. It's because it so clear to the early church. So the fact that we have as much as we do from the early church in a time when many documents were either destroyed under persecution or lost to time, and they're univocal, this says a lot about the amount that we do have and that all the documents are just on the same page. I don't find the lack of source argument compelling because we actually do have a bit, and the fact that the univocal is just, it's so weighty in my opinion. So the first rebuttal to the Anti Nicene church's view on nonviolence was a lack of diversity.

The second is a little bit more complex. Some are going to argue that theological ideas change over time. A great example of this would be the doctrine of the Trinity. We didn't have an agreed upon doctrine of the Trinity until the mid to early three hundreds. So if the early church could be wrong about the Trinity for hundreds of years or not understand it, why couldn't they have been wrong about violence?

Now, I do think that the Church could have been wrong about non violence, but I don't think that they are. And I think that an important distinction needs to be made between theological and moral developments. So I'm gonna pull something from Roland Allen here, which isn't it doesn't have anything to do with the early church, but I think it's gonna be helpful for us to understand what I'm talking about. Allen has a fantastic book called The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. Now Alan, I believe, an Anglican in the maybe early 1900s.

He was a missionary and he was really frustrated with the institutionalized aspect of missions in the church. And just, it was so cumbersome. Like they'd go and they required all of these trained priests and there were places that were just begging for pastors that they had to wait for somebody to be trained. It was kind of like, maybe not quite a white savior complex because I don't think that they were opposed to nationals getting trained to become pastors, but it's like they had to go through all of these seminaries and all, it's like you imported all of these Western credentials requirements for these people. And ministry was foundering in the wake of just those requirements.

So Alan talks about a need to rely on the Holy Spirit and a need to allow people to lead, lead their own people and to trust God that people who aren't as educated as you might actually be better than you. Because if they've got the Spirit of God and you're just trying to do all of these procedural sorts of things because you think that that's what God needs to protect them, that's a problem. It's a really great book if you're gonna do ministry, missions, whatever, it's a good slap in the face. It's a good slap in the face for any American who spends zero time relying on the Spirit like most of us do. But in that book, Alan talks about what theology is, and it was so helpful to me.

So let me explain a little bit. He describes Peter's experience with Jesus, and he says, look, when Peter experienced Jesus, he saw Jesus, he experienced the calming of a storm. He saw bread multiplied. He himself walked on water. He saw a resurrected Jesus.

He saw the transfiguration. Peter had zero doubt in his mind. He experienced Jesus as divine. But Peter also felt Jesus physically. He touched his feet where the nails were, he ate with Him, he walked with Him, he touched his hand and his side, He heard His voice when Jesus prayed, He felt the towel rub His feet.

Peter experienced Jesus as human. Alan argues that theology is exactly this, it's the outworking of experience. Theology which is not tied to real experience is dead and meaningless. So when we go to the Trinity, if we just have some esoteric concept of God as divine, we're missing it. If we don't tie this mystical divinity of this being who is beyond us, if we don't tie that to Peter's experience of Jesus eating with him, then we're missing it, we're not doing theology because theology is tied to an experience.

It might not be our direct experience, but it's the testimony of experience with God. And I think Alan's right on here. His argument is so beautiful and he uses it to tear down a stale hierarchy that he experienced in missions through the Anglican Church where native leaders were prevented from leading because they didn't know enough. Alan goes on to argue that, you know, a lot of people are worried about theology kind of going off the rails. He says, Look, theology is gonna be self correcting as God has experienced and revealed, and we need to trust that the Holy Spirit is strong enough to take care of that process.

And I know that that sounds really scary, especially to my Reformed brothers and sisters cause we like to guard God and theology very much so, to the extent that we don't allow people to have real experiences of Him sometimes, oftentimes, which is why my denomination is called the frozen chosen. We've got lots in our head and little experience, and that's not real theology according to Alan. By the way, for anybody who's listening to this from my denomination, PCA, recognize that a PCA person I won't name, a leader, told me to read Ronald Allen's book. So Roland Allen's book. So that's a little caveat that's important.

So check out his book, Alan explains how that works out and I think he does a good job because I was a little bit nervous about that when I first read it, but I think he's spot on in a lot of the things that he's saying. And quite honestly, the ways that we think we're protecting God are often really just ways that we want to maintain control and not allow God and His Spirit to have control. But that's kind of another conversation for another time. Let's get back on track. How does this play into our discussion of the Trinity and non violence?

Well, Peter experienced Jesus as human and divide, and he conveyed this to his disciples, and they conveyed it to their disciples, and so on. It took three hundred years to formulate an explanation for this complex experience as believers grappled with it over time. But notice how this idea of theological description is different than moral practice. The theological concept of communion and what goes on with the elements is still being argued over today, but the Church has done communion since it was instituted on the night of Jesus' betrayal. The theological concept of Atonement and how that works is still being discussed today.

But from the beginning of the Church, people have been called to repent, believe and be baptized in order to receive the remission of sins. Likewise, I would argue that the theological concept of how self sacrifice can advance a kingdom is still being discussed today, even in secular circles as they realize that non violent means are powerful. That's a great discussion to have, but the practice and action of living a non violent life of self sacrifice and enemy love is non negotiable. It was practiced from the beginning. So even though the Trinity and the Eucharist and all of those things developed in their explanations over time, the experience and the act were always there.

Peter's experience of Jesus as divine and human, he knew and he conveyed to his disciples that experience was immutable, it was unchangeable, it was what it was. The fact that we are atoned for is immutable, it's true. And the Eucharist and what goes on, that has been practiced from the beginning and its explanation has just been expounded on. And that's what I think a lot of people miss with this argument that, well look, things develop over time. The explanations develop over time, but the practices shouldn't.

Where the practices or the experiences change, that's where we come into a problem. It's one thing to argue whether or not real presence or transubstantiation or any of that is true. Those are just explanations of the Eucharist. But it's a different thing to say, Nah, let's get rid of the Eucharist. It's not that important.

It's one thing to argue whether or not baptism is good for the remission of sins or not, but it's another thing to say, Hey, we don't need to get baptized because it doesn't have any connection with our faith. It's one thing to say that the Trinity is like a three in one shampoo or it's like an egg, for as imperfect as those analogies might be, we can discuss what the Trinity is like to a certain degree. But to say that, no, God was or Jesus was only human or Jesus was only divine and have kind of more Gnostic answers, that discounts the experience of Peter and what we know is true of Jesus. Figuring out how to explain things is different than, you know, denying the experiences. Now eventually, over time, as we come up with good explanations for those experiences, things do become orthodox, right?

So, Arianism is a heresy. And for Arius, I would argue that, you know, at that time, he was trying to figure things out, right? And people, as they're trying to figure things out, that's not a problem, but when the consensus of the Church comes around and everybody's like, Oh, no, we recognize that this is what the truth is, at that point for Arius not to correct himself, it becomes a problem. So for us today to be Arians, yeah, that's a knowledge thing but that's already been developed and that becomes a problem to go against at this point. But at the core of all of these things, it's the experiences that we can never ever ever even challenge.

It's it's it's the thing that is the core, that is the kernel, that is the seed of the explanation. Theology isn't just a bunch of explanations, it is a bunch of experiences explained. So in terms of non violence then, you look at the early church, and we could argue an explanation for enemy love. Why? What does that mean?

I mean, one seems pretty easy. You can kinda just point to the example of our savior and the cross and all that stuff, which which should be pretty central to Christianity it seems, but we can discuss the meaning of all of that stuff. What we shouldn't throw to the side is the fact that the early church laid down their lives under every circumstance whether self defense, war, martyrdom, they were willing to lay down their lives for those things, instead of taking up a sword against somebody else. Objective morality doesn't develop, it's revealed. And nonviolence is a pinnacle, you can't get any better than that.

To start killing people again is regression, but then on top of that, it's clear regression because it moves away from the practices, from the experience that the early church had with Christ. It doesn't just move away from the it doesn't progress in any explanation. So, those are my thoughts on Church history and why it's so important for Christianity, especially the Anti Nicene Church, and especially for nonviolence. I think you can pull out a lot good observations from the early church and you can make a great case for non violence just by looking at the transformation of the church, looking at what theology and experience and all that stuff is. It's a vital question.

There's a lot to think through on this one, but hopefully it does get you thinking about this issue more, and I'll recommend some good resources in the show notes. That's all for now, so peace. And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.