How could the crusaders be motivated by love and piety, considering all the brutal violence and bloodshed they committed? Not only is such a question anachronistic-violence was part and parcel of the medieval world-but centuries before Islam, Christian theologians had concluded that "the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person" and not the state, explains historian Christopher Tyerman. Christ himself distinguished between political and spiritual obligations {Matt. 22:21}. He praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to "repent" by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries of history {Matt. 8: 5–13}. When a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages {Luke 3:14}. Paul urged Christians to pray for "kings and all that are in authority" {1 Tim. 2:2}. In short, "there was no intrinsic contradiction in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul's phrase, Christians 'may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty' {1 Tim. 2:2}."27 Or as that chief articulator of "Just War" theory, Saint Augustine {d. 430}, concluded, "It is the injustice of the opposing side, that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.
( Raymond Ibrahim )
[ Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen ]
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