Curious Christian

It’s tempting to imagine the early church as unanimously pacifist, as a pure, unbroken line of peace teaching from the Sermon on the Mount to the Edict of Milan. The truth, as always, is more nuanced. Yet what emerges from the writings of the ante-Nicene fathers is a striking moral posture: a deep unease with violence, coercion, and divided allegiance.

Tertullian, writing at the turn of the third century, was one of the first to give that unease a sharp theological edge. In On Idolatry, he condemns military service not only because it involves bloodshed, but because it requires participation in pagan rituals: the oaths, the banners, the sacrifices. “Shall he who is not permitted to kill be in preparation for killing?” he asks in The Crown. For Tertullian, the question wasn’t merely ethical,it was about worship. To serve under another lord was to betray the confession that Christ alone is King.

Origen, a few decades later, strikes a more philosophical tone in Contra Celsum. Responding to the pagan charge that Christians weakened the empire by refusing military service, he argues that Christians fight in a different way, through prayer. “We do not go forth as soldiers with the emperor, even if he demands it,” Origen writes, “yet we fight on his behalf, praying to God for him and for the armies.” For Origen, the church’s warfare was spiritual, its battlefield the realm of the powers and principalities. The sword of the Spirit was enough.

Hippolytus, writing around the same time, offers a more practical glimpse of how this conviction shaped church life. In his Apostolic Tradition, a sort of early church manual for ordination and baptism, he sets clear boundaries for converts:

“A soldier of the civil authority must be taught not to kill men, and to refuse to do so if he is commanded, and to refuse to take an oath. If he is unwilling to comply, he must be rejected for baptism.”

The line is even firmer for those who sought to become soldiers after baptism:

“A catechumen or a believer who wants to become a soldier is to be rejected, for he has despised God.”

These instructions reflect a world where Christians still expected to live as resident aliens within the empire, as “in the world but not of it.” To swear an oath to Caesar, to kill on command, or to enforce imperial power all implied a divided loyalty.

Still, the early church did not apply these convictions with legalistic rigidity. There was an important distinction between baptized Christians seeking to join the military, and soldiers or officials who converted to Christianity. The latter were often permitted to remain in their posts, so long as they refused to kill or engage in idolatrous acts. This pastoral realism echoes John the Baptist’s response to soldiers in Luke 3:14. When they ask what repentance requires, he does not tell them to leave the army but to act justly—to avoid extortion, to speak truthfully, and to be content with their wages.

From the close of the New Testament era until roughly 174 CE, there is no record of Christians serving in the army or in coercive government roles. When that began to change, the church’s instinct was not to celebrate integration but to question it. Beneath this suspicion lay a theological conviction: that the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world were fundamentally at odds. Jesus’ followers already had a commander, and his command was love. To enlist under another was not merely to shift occupations—it was to risk treason against heaven.

Before Constantine, before Christendom, before cross and sword were fused, the early Christians saw military service as a test of allegiance. Their stance was not born of political naivety but of radical discipleship. They believed the Messiah’s victory had already come through the cross, and so no Christian could take up the sword without denying the very means by which salvation had been won.

Their question still echoes across the centuries:
If Jesus is Lord, under whose orders do we march?