who professes Christianity is to he excluded from the sacrament, until such time as he has done penance for the blood he has shed. In the early part of the fourth century Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The cross was used as a military standard and the pious Constantine had the nails with which Jesus had been crucified converted into a helmet for himself and bits for his war-horse. The act was profoundly symbolical. In the words of Dean Milman, "the meek and peaceful Jesus had become a God of battle." The new political situation soon found reflection in Christian theory. Already in the middle years of the fourth century, Athanasius, the father of orthodoxy, is saying that "to destroy opponents in war is lawful and worthy of praise." St. Ambrose thirty years later and St. Augustine at the beginning of the fifth century repeat and elaborate this argument. We find Augustine saying that "many things have to he done in which we have to pay regard, not to our own kindly inclinations, hut to the real interests of others, and their interests may require that they should he treated, much as they may dislike it, with a certain benignant asperity." It is a justification in advance of the Inquisition and the wars of religion-indeed of war of every kind; for now that infallibility has been claimed by sovereign states, the rulers of each nation know exactly what is best for all other nations and feel it their duty, merely in the highest interests of their neighbours, to use a "certain benignant asperity" towards them. Modem Christians have used a number of arguments to justify their complete disregard of the precepts of Jesus in regard to war. Of the two most commonly employed, the first is the argument which asserts that Jesus meant his followers to accept the "spirit" of his teachings, without being bound by the "letter." In other words, that he meant them to ignore his words completely and go on behaving, in all the practical details of life, as though they had never been uttered. The Pauline distinction between "letter" and "spirit" has been made the justification for every kind of iniquity. 19 Biblioteca Gino Bianco ·
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==