A01=Gordon L. Heath
Author_Gordon L. Heath
Category=QRAM2
Category=QRAX
Category=QRM
Category=QRVG
christianity
constantine
early church
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
just war
pacifism
peace
war
Product details
- ISBN 9781978712904
- Weight: 621g
- Dimensions: 161 x 237mm
- Publication Date: 14 Mar 2022
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Christians, the State, and War: An Ancient Tradition for the Modern World, Gordon Heath argues that the pre-Constantinian Christian testimony regarding the state’s just use of violence was remarkably uniform and that it was arguably a catholic, or universal, tradition. More specifically, that tradition had five interrelated and intertwined constitutive areas of consensus that can best be understood as parts of one collective tradition. Heath further argues that those five related areas of an early church tradition shaped all subsequent theological developments on views of the state, its use of violence, and the conditions of Christian participation in said violence. Whereas the sorry and sordid instances in the church’s history related to violence were times when the church drifted from those convictions of consensus, the cases when Christians had a more stellar record of responding to the horrors of the world were times when they lived up to them. Consequently, the way forward today is for Christians to forgo beginning with the just war-pacifist debate, and, instead, to begin by letting their views on war and peace be shaped by that ancient tradition.
Gordon L. Heath, FRHistS, is professor of Christian History as well as Centenary Chair in World Christianity at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario.
