# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1864_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

48 Church Service and Military Service.

... also to the enemies of our faith, who demand of us that we take up arms for the common good and kill men, thus answer: Your own priests, who tend the idols and perform service in the temples of the gods, keep their hands, for the sake of the sacrifices, pure and unstained, and take care not to offer the sacrifices dedicated to your so-called gods with hands defiled by blood and murder. For this reason it is also never the custom, when a war arises, to make the priests into soldiers. If this is reasonable, how much more reasonable will it then be that those whom Celsus exhorts to combat should, as priests and servants of the most high God, not take up arms when they are attacked by others, and, keeping their hands pure and unstained by blood, fight by their prayer for those who wage lawful wars, and entreat God on behalf of him who rules lawfully, that He may destroy and overcome all enemies and whatever opposes those who love justice. We render greater service to emperors and kings than do their armies and soldiers, when by our prayer we put to flight the evil spirits who labor to stir up wars and to incite men to break treaties and thereby disturb the peace. We take upon ourselves a part of the labors that the common good requires, when, in addition to our prayer, which we owe to God, we set all manner of devotions and exercises that teach us to despise pleasures and not to surrender our soul to them. In the end, no one fights more for the emperor than we do. We do not indeed march into the field under him, and would not do so even if he wished to compel us to it; but we nevertheless carry weapons for him when, by our prayer to God, we pitch a special camp of godliness." (Origen, eight books on the Truth of the Christian Religion against the Philosopher Celsus. Translated by J. Lorenz Mosheim. Hamburg, 1745. Quarto. p. 892 f.) To be sure, Origen here evidently goes too far when he, as it seems, makes it a sin for all Christians to render military service, and even declares that they should not, and would not, obey even the emperor's call into the field; in this he also contradicts himself, since he does not deny that there can be lawful wars which the Christian must support with his prayer; nevertheless this testimony remains evidence that the Christians of the first centuries at any rate regarded church service and military service as incompatible with one another.

From the fourth century onward, most councils passed resolutions that no cleric might voluntarily render military service, in part on pain of losing his clerical character, in part also on pain of the ban. To cite only a few of these: the 8th canon of the Council of Toledo, of the year 400, states: "Whoever has taken up military service after baptism, and has afterward been received among the clergy, shall never attain the dignity of the diaconate, even if he has already