Within the New Testament itself, a number of passages echo the summons to enemy love in a variety of ways. The Sermon on the Mount situates the prohibition within the series of antitheses[2] in which Jesus contrasts the discipleship lifestyle to which he calls his followers with the conventional wisdom of the day (Matthew 5:38-48). Paul exhorts the Roman Christians to love their enemies by doing good to those who persecute them, forbidding his readers from taking revenge or repaying “evil for evil.” Significantly Paul’s prohibition of revenge for the church is grounded in the theological conviction that vengeance belongs to the Lord alone (Romans 12:17-21). Peter (or, the pseudonymous author of 1 Peter, depending on your view) lifts up the example of Christ himself, who did not retaliate to the taunts and blows with which he was showered, as a path for Christians to emulate, following “in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21-23). Likewise he echoes Paul’s command to repay insults, evil, and violence not in kind, but with a blessing (1 Peter 3:9). All of these precepts, principles, and paradigms, though they vary slightly in wording, context, and circumstance, bear remarkable verbal and ideological parallels[3] indicating their origin in the common Christian kerygma of the first century. Though we have no way of knowing to what extent converts to the Way of Jesus actually practiced the enemy love in which they were formed, the first century of the church’s existence is marked by continual reaffirmations of the centrality of the love of enemies for the cruciform lives Christian disciples were supposed to live.
The enemy love command seems to have continued to be near the center of the moral catechesis of the church during its first three centuries of existence. The writings of the pre-Constantinian bishops, presbyters, apologists, and martyrs exhibit a startling emphasis on loving those who would hate, harm, and kill the early saints. Witness, for example, the “Two Ways” section of the late first-century Didache[4]:
There are two ways, one of life and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways. The way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you. And of these sayings the teaching is this: Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. For what reward is there for loving those who love you? Do not the Gentiles do the same? But love those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy. Abstain from fleshly and worldly lusts. If someone strikes your right cheek, turn to him the other also, and you shall be perfect. If someone impresses you for one mile, go with him two. If someone takes your cloak, give him also your coat. If someone takes from you what is yours, ask it not back, for indeed you are not able. Give to every one who asks you, and ask it not back; for the Father wills that to all should be given of our own blessings (free gifts). (Didache 1)
The “Way of Life” is nothing short of complete love of God and neighbor, most notably of one’s enemies. In addition to the explicit injunction to “love those who hate you,” the Didachist also cites Jesus’ commandments on nonviolence and limitless charity. Clearly, the love of enemies typified on the Sermon on the Mount is at the heart of the gospel for this particular Christian community- otherwise it would not have been afforded so prominent a place in the Way of Life.
Athenagoras of Athens offers another exemplary embrace of the enemy love command as an indispensable component of Christian ethical standards. His Plea for Christians, an apology addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, offers a glimpse into the lived reality of the Christian community as well as a chance to see how the love command was employed for rhetorical apologetic effect. Responding to the charge of “atheism” which was leveled against the Christians for their rejection of the pagan pantheon, Athenagoras points to the “other-worldliness” of the peculiar Christian ethic:
Moreover, by showing that the teachings themselves, to which we are attached, are not human, but were declared and taught by God, we can persuade you not to hold us for atheists. What then are these teachings in which we are reared? “I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of the Father in heaven, who makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends his rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Plea, 11)
For Athenagoras, the fact that Christians are taught to love their enemies rather than fight against or kill them is the singularly most important proof that the Christian faith is divine in origin rather than human— and therefore, that the Christians are not in fact “atheists.” It is this facet of the Christian ethic which distinguishes them from the pagan society around them:
Although what I have said has raised a loud clamor,[5] permit me here to proceed freely, since I am making my defense to emperors who are philosophers. Who of those who analyze syllogisms, resolve ambiguities, predicates axioms, and what the subject is and what the predicate- who of them do not promise to make their disciples happy through these and similar disciplines? And yet who of them have so purified their own hearts as to love their enemies instead of hating them; instead of upbraiding those who first insult them (which is certainly more usual), to bless them; and to pray for those who plot against them? On the contrary, they ever persist in delving into the evil mysteries of their sophistry, ever desirous of working some harm, making skill in oratory rather than proof by deeds their business. With us on the contrary, you will find unlettered people, tradesmen and old women, who, though unable to express in words the advantages of our teaching, demonstrate by acts the value of their principles. For they do not rehearse speeches, but evidence good deeds. When struck, they do not strike back; when robbed, they do not sue; to those who ask, they give, and they love their neighbors as themselves. (Plea, 11).
This powerful appeal points to the reality of how this ethic is practiced in Christian community as evidence of the superiority of poor, uneducated Christian peasants to the most prestigious of pagan philosophers.
To sum up what we have observed to this point, in both the Didache and Athenagoras, the gospel call to love enemies is not an optional or peripheral component of following Jesus. It composed one of the most central aspects to the life of a Christian disciple. For the Didache, it was “the way of life”; in Athenagoras’ Plea, it is the evidence of the gospel’s origin beyond human ingenuity, and these two writers are far from alone in this conviction.[6] The calls to love enemies, to turn the other cheek when struck, to never respond to evil in kind, etc. were taken with the utmost seriousness. They were the normative teachings on Christlike suffering servanthood, relevant if not essential in all facets of the Christian life.
When the socio-political conditions began to shift, the church’s theology shifted to accommodate its new circumstances. Within a few short decades in the 4th century, the church was transformed from a hunted and persecuted minority into the official religion of imperial Rome. Of course, the new establishment faith required a new establishment theological ethic to substantiate it. How could the new faith of the empire hold to the nonresistant enemy love of previous generations? Something had to transform for the ethic of the imperial church to attain theological legitimacy, and a reassessment of the traditional hermeneutic was required.
That reassessment found its champion in the writings of Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, following the example set before him by Ambrose of Milan, posited the now famous distinction between a Christian acting as a private citizen and a Christian acting as a public official. The former must continue to be free of bloodshed in loving his or her enemies, but the latter must at times disregard the love of enemies for the sake of peace:
As to killing others in order to defend one’s own life, I do not approve of this, unless one happen to be a soldier or public functionary acting, not for himself, but in defense of others or of the city in which he resides, if he act according to the commission lawfully given him, and in the manner becoming his office. (Letter 47, to Publicola).
This disjuncture between the “public” and “private” roles of the Christian is a thoroughly Constantinian distinction that would not have been imaginable prior to Christians attaining the heights of imperial power in the 4th century, yet it has persisted to the present day, anywhere Christians have maintained positions of power. As to the Sermon on the Mount itself, Augustine was even freer with the hermeneutical tradition. Augustine suggests that the injunctions to turn the other cheek when struck, to give to those who demand of us, to go the second mile, all refer not to actual responses to evil, but only “rather to the inward disposition of the heart than to the actions which are done in the sight of [people]” (Letter 138, to Marcellinus). Thus, the Christian need not actually respond to evil with blessing as was the case only a generation before Augustine’s time; rather all that is required is an “inner disposition of the heart” that is willing to do so. He “creates a space between preparedness to act on the Lord’s commands and the actual embodiment of their literal meaning.”[7] Hence, a Christian may even kill his enemies in warfare if it is done so with love in the inner disposition of the heart. In fairness, Augustine did not wish to discount entirely Christ’s command to love enemies, he only sought an interpretation of it that would permit Christians to do their civic duty to the Christianized Roman Empire and to violently repel the barbarian hordes that swarmed the lands and threatened its peace. In any case, his analysis would have a profound impact on the centuries that followed, as Christians continued to interpret the enemy love command from places of social power and authority.
This hermeneutical project remained largely unchanged through the centuries, (though it received certain nuances and intensifications from Thomas Aquinas[8]) and Augustine’s distinctions between “public” and “private” morality were largely taken up by Martin Luther, himself an Augustinian monk. Luther addressed an entire tract to the question of whether soldiering were compatible with the gospel, entitled That Soldiers Too, May Be Saved. Based heavily in his well-known “two kingdoms” theory describing the distinction and relationship between God’s reign and the political kingdoms of earthly rulers, one of the aims of this work was to establish that there is no conflict whatsoever between loving one’s enemies and killing them (as long as one did so from within one’s role as a soldier or magistrate of the worldly kingdom). In fact the Christian soldier, properly motivated, may perform his duties with no tension at all. Luther even argues (with a straight face, apparently) that “although slaying and robbing do not seem to be a work of love, and therefore a simple man thinks it not a Christian thing to do, yet in truth even this is a work of love.”[9]
John Calvin, despite the significant differences between himself and the developing Lutheran tradition as well as the considerable impact of Erasmian humanism on his theology, nonetheless followed Augustine and Luther in his understanding of the two societies at stake when discussing the social order. Unlike Luther however (who sought to maintain the separation between the two kingdoms and prevent the influence of one over the other), Calvin saw the duty of the magistrate as overwhelming both spheres such that the government’s authority “extends to both sides of the law,”[10] i.e. to both religious and civil affairs, and sought to unite the entirety of the Christian life into one harmonious whole. Concerning the explicit enemy love commands of the New Testament, Calvin was not entirely unaware of the potential conflict between loving one’s enemies and being forced to kill them. He held that while “resist not evil” meant that one must prepare for the possibility of receiving more injury, it did not exclude “nonviolently deflecting” the injury. Cahill comments, “The persuasiveness of the argument is hardly enhanced by Calvin’s interpretation of ‘love your enemies’ as meaning that while ‘the faithful should have no dealings with vengeance,’ they at the same time do not cease to pray that God ‘takes vengeance on the reprobate.’”[11]
This brief survey has left out far too many elements to even attempt a complete hermeneutical history of the enemy love command. We are, however, able to discern a fundamental pattern- positions of social power drastically affect the hermeneutical assumptions which one brings to the biblical texts, not the least of which is the summons to love our enemies. The precarious social position and powerlessness of the early church gave rise to a very serious, very literal take on turning the other cheek and loving one’s enemies. It is no exaggeration to say that it was at the very core of early Christian discipleship. The same holds true for the marginalized and persecuted Anabaptist sect during the 16th century. Yet beginning with Augustine, and continuing in an unbroken tradition through the cuius regio, eius religio era of Luther and Calvin to the present day, where the church exists in positions of power and social privilege, she has sought to mitigate, to various degrees, the scope and effects of the enemy love command. If nothing else, this study should raise our awareness of how our privileged social status (or lack thereof) impacts concretely on our biblical hermeneutics and the concrete reality the biblical text takes on in our lives.
Modern Works Consulted
Bruce, F. F. The Hard Sayings of Jesus, Jesus Library. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1983.
Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.
Piper, John. "Love Your Enemies": Jesus' Love Command in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Early Christian Paraenesis: A History of the Tradition and Interpretation of Its Uses. Cambridge [Eng.]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Richardson, Cyril Charles. Early Christian Fathers. 1st pbk. ed, The Library of Christian Classics; V. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Stassen, Glen Harold, and David P. Gushee. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003.
[1] See F.F. Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983).
[2] Contesting the traditional interpretation of the “You have heard it said… but I say to you” passages as simple, two-part antitheses is the intriguing proposal of Glenn Stassen and David Gushee in Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003) 132-136. Stassen and Gushee posit a triadic structure undergirding the entire Sermon, in which Jesus (1.) recites the “traditional righteousness,” (2.) Exposes the “vicious cycle” that traps us in a morass of sin, and (3.) offers “transforming initiatives” as ways to break the cycle and redeem what has been lost. This explanation more adequately accounts for the data of the Sermon itself than does the old “antitheses” understanding, maintaining Jesus’ continuity with the traditions of the Law while at the same time demonstrating that something radically new is at play in his teachings.
[3] See John Piper’s dissertation Love Your Enemies: Jesus love command in the synoptic gospels and in the early Christian paraensis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Piper’s study carefully compares the forms and traditions of the enemy love command, ultimately concluding that they belong to the common treasury of Christian moral instruction that traces directly back to Jesus himself via the nascent Jesus movement’s rich oral tradition.
[4] Compare how the “Two Ways” portion of the Didache (1-5) is repeated in the Epistle of Barnabus, 19-21.
[5] Following a common rhetorical device, Athenagoras imagines here that his speech on Christian love of enemies has been met by hostile jibes (Richardson, 310).
[6] Indeed, brevity’s sake forbids a fuller cataloguing of the centrality the call to love enemies was afforded in the life of the early church. Some other examples can be observed in Ignatius of Antioch’s epistle to the Ephesians (10), Polycarp’s epistle to the Philippians (2:2-3), Justin Martyr’s First Apology (15, 16), Irenaeus’ Against Heresies (III, 18, 5-6), Tertullian’s Apology (37, 46), Cyprian’s letter to Demetrianus (25), Cyprian’s Three Books of Testimony (22, 23, 49, 106), Lactantius’ Divine Institutes (VI, 18), and many more.
[7] Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 71.
[8] See Cahill, 84-92.
[9] That Soldiers Too, May Be Saved.
[10] Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.9.
[11] Cahill, 116.
Bruce, F. F. The Hard Sayings of Jesus, Jesus Library. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1983.
Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.
Piper, John. "Love Your Enemies": Jesus' Love Command in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Early Christian Paraenesis: A History of the Tradition and Interpretation of Its Uses. Cambridge [Eng.]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Richardson, Cyril Charles. Early Christian Fathers. 1st pbk. ed, The Library of Christian Classics; V. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Stassen, Glen Harold, and David P. Gushee. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003.
[1] See F.F. Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983).
[2] Contesting the traditional interpretation of the “You have heard it said… but I say to you” passages as simple, two-part antitheses is the intriguing proposal of Glenn Stassen and David Gushee in Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003) 132-136. Stassen and Gushee posit a triadic structure undergirding the entire Sermon, in which Jesus (1.) recites the “traditional righteousness,” (2.) Exposes the “vicious cycle” that traps us in a morass of sin, and (3.) offers “transforming initiatives” as ways to break the cycle and redeem what has been lost. This explanation more adequately accounts for the data of the Sermon itself than does the old “antitheses” understanding, maintaining Jesus’ continuity with the traditions of the Law while at the same time demonstrating that something radically new is at play in his teachings.
[3] See John Piper’s dissertation Love Your Enemies: Jesus love command in the synoptic gospels and in the early Christian paraensis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Piper’s study carefully compares the forms and traditions of the enemy love command, ultimately concluding that they belong to the common treasury of Christian moral instruction that traces directly back to Jesus himself via the nascent Jesus movement’s rich oral tradition.
[4] Compare how the “Two Ways” portion of the Didache (1-5) is repeated in the Epistle of Barnabus, 19-21.
[5] Following a common rhetorical device, Athenagoras imagines here that his speech on Christian love of enemies has been met by hostile jibes (Richardson, 310).
[6] Indeed, brevity’s sake forbids a fuller cataloguing of the centrality the call to love enemies was afforded in the life of the early church. Some other examples can be observed in Ignatius of Antioch’s epistle to the Ephesians (10), Polycarp’s epistle to the Philippians (2:2-3), Justin Martyr’s First Apology (15, 16), Irenaeus’ Against Heresies (III, 18, 5-6), Tertullian’s Apology (37, 46), Cyprian’s letter to Demetrianus (25), Cyprian’s Three Books of Testimony (22, 23, 49, 106), Lactantius’ Divine Institutes (VI, 18), and many more.
[7] Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 71.
[8] See Cahill, 84-92.
[9] That Soldiers Too, May Be Saved.
[10] Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.9.
[11] Cahill, 116.
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