When we read of conflicts and wrangles in Ja 4"-, the writer t is referring to the private ani- mosities of Christians ; he is not laying down any philosophy of war and its causes in the outside world, but simply denouncing (cf. Ps 120', Mic S') the passions of greed, envy, and selfishness which stir up feuds in small religious communities. His
•Clement of Alexandria has an admiring account (5(rom. I. 24) of Ihe stratog.v of Moses as a military commander. Vet Clement is no panegyrist of war. One of his sumptuary rules is that Christians must not wear seals which have a sword or a bow enf,^ravcd upon them, since these emblems are unsuitable to lo^ eis of peace {Pi£d. iii. 11. 59).
t W. K. Gladstone, Later Gleanings, London, 1S97, viii. 126 f.
X In the epistle of James the brevity and uncertainty of life (41^) are not compared, as in Wis 51'-^, to the ftight of an arrow ('as when an arrow is shot at a mark, the air is parted and closes up again at once, so that men know not where il passed through ; so, as soon as we were born, we ceased to be, we had no sign of virtue to exhibit').
words have not the .scope of the simitar ]>as.sage in Cicero's i/c Fin. i. !.'{ (' Ihe passions are insatiahlu ; they ruin nut merely individuals but entire families, anil olieii actually undermine the fabric of the State; from them come hatred, discord, quarrels, seiiilioiis, wars'); they belong rather to the diatribO cla.ss of sayings about so. called 'peace' being really a state of bitter warfare, thanks to the strife and aggressiveness of men (cf. the quo- tations in P. AVenilland, I'/iilo uiul die Ici/nisch- stoisr/ic DidtriU-, lierlin, IS'J.'i, p. 39 f.). On the whole, we are justified in regarding Justin Martyr's allusions in Ajml. i. 39 anil Dial. IIU as no more than an expression of Christian antipathy to such aggressiveness in public and private.
The former passage runs : ' When the propheUc Spirit is prophesying wliat is to happen, it s|>eak8 thus : " For out of Sif<n shall iio Jarth the law, and the irord of tfis Lord /roin Jerusalem, and he shall indite amotip the nations and rrttuke many jhnpte ; aitd they shall beat their swords into ptonijhs and their spears into sickles, and nation shall 7wt lijt the sword against nation, neither shall thep learn \car any Unojer." You can he coii\inced that it hap|>ened thus. For men, to liie number of twelve, did go forth from Jerusalem into the worlii, and, although they were untrained and unable to make speei-hes, b.v the power of God they made it known to ever.v race of man- kind that lliey were sent hy Christ to teach all men the Word of God ; and we, who fonnerly nmrdered each other, not only do not make war on our enemies but die confessing Christ glailly, so as not to lie or lo deceive those who examine us — though we might indeed have pracliseii the saying,
"My tongue has sworn, my mind has sworn no oath." It would be absurd if the soldiers you muster and enlist were to put life itself, their parents, fatherland, and all their kindred second to their confession of loyalty to you, to people who can- not give them any incorruptible reward, while we, who long for incorruption, could not endure all things in order to gain our heart's desire from Him who is able lo bestow it.' "*
Here we are in the middle of the 2nd cent., with an author who had mingled in the great world, a man who had grown up in the age when Trajan had extended tlie Konian Empire to its limits, and when Tacitus had rcgrelfully compared his period with the older military op|iortiinities which his predecessors enjoyed {Ann. IV. xxxii. 2f. ). His- torians and politicians alike saw that a military imjierialism was the jiolicy of Kome. But Justin's holy empire is not Human. The issue of martyr- dom has been also raised sharj^ily ; there is to he no holy war even of a defensive character, and Christians are to die cheerfully rather than retaliate on their persecutors or abandon their convictions.* But there is no more than this, even when Christians are thus descrihed in the Dialnc/tic (110) : ' \\'e who were tilled with war and mutual slaughter and every wiikedncss have each of us throughout all the world altered our weapons of war, turning our swords into ploughs and our spears into agricultural instruments, and cultivating piety, righteousness, human kindness, faith, and hope, wliicli we have from the Father Himself through the Crucified.' The spirit of Jesus still controlled the church in which and for which words like the.se were written. The ideal was that of the Beatitudes, and Justin sought to have that ideal realized. Home was at war with Parthia when he wrote, and fighting her w.ay up into Scotland ; the ili.saHection in Palestine was to blaze ui) in the revolution of A. I). Hil ; on almost every frontier the empire had to hold its own by force of arms. But Justin steadily set his eyes uiion the peaceful advance of Ciiristianity, unarmed and non-re.sisting. Even yet, however, the question of the Christian as citizen had not fully presented itself to the Christian consciousness. The political horizon had altered and broadened since the days of Jesus, but the Church was still unconscious that its very develii|imeiit must, in the providence of God, bring it face to face with the problem of its relation lo the Empire in more than a merely antagonistic or aloof spirit.