Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Leithart

Home
Evangelical
Pacifism

Pacifism

Last updated on: September 20, 2017 at 5:57 pm by Peter Leithart

Pacifism 2017-09-20T17:57:52+06:00 Peter Leithart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

No discussion of Yoder would be complete without yet another review of the question of pacifism. But this is no tangent from the present discussion. God calls kings to inhabit His city. He promises that they will respond. When they do, do they remain kings? Can they be disciples of Jesus while exercising worldly power? Here I pose again both of my questions: What if they ask? What if they listen? Must we, as Yoder claims, tell them to lay down the sword?

Once again, history first. Mark charges that I played a nasty and blatant rhetorical trick by loading Yoder and his followers with an unbearable burden of proof. This only appears to be a rhetorical ploy because Mark isolates the argument about pacifism and ignores the larger question I was examining. I spent several chapters of my book testing several of Yoder’s historical claims about the discontinuity between the early church and the Constantinian church. Everyone acknowledges that the church especially in her relation to the empire changed in the fourth century. I wanted to know if the change was of a magnitude to justify Yoder’s talk about a “fall,” about “apostasy,” about an all but universal embrace of “heresy,” the heresy of Constantinianism. I examined three issues: the church’s attitude toward the Roman empire, Christian views on war and violence, and the church’s understanding of Christian mission. The issue was not the pacifism of the early church per se , but the shape of the church’s first millennium of history.

Using a nuanced and sophisticated redaction of the Anabaptist historical script, Yoder makes strong claims about early church consensus. As he frequently does, he complicates the question in several useful ways. He notes that the term “pacifist” is equivocal, reminds his readers that there are multiple forms and sites of normativity in social groups like the church, and acknowledges that we have limited access to what Christians thought and taught about war and violence in the early centuries. Despite these qualifiers, he confidently claims to know that early church tradition is a tradition of non-violence. He regularly makes unqualified statements to this effect. Christian pacifism was not isolated but an expression of a worldview and lifestyle that “eschews Caesar’s wars.” [1] Yoder claims that one of the arguments against violence was this: “Caesar takes life. He sheds blood, and life is sacred.” Therefore Christians cannot fight for Caesar. Nonviolence was inherent in their total view of Rome and of the world: “Their rejection of the shedding of blood was one coherent part of the whole.” [2] He repeatedly makes the bald claim that “early Christians were pacifists.” [3] In the late second century, the “major voices from this period” – Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian – “were all pacifists” who “put their pacifism within a global rejection of the Caesar system.” They knew that Christians were in the army, but they universally believed that “It was wrong,” wrong because it violated the tradition. Tertullian’s arguments against Christians in the Roman military were “contradicted only by people who did not know the tradition or who were unfaithful to it.” [4] We find the first explicit evidence of Christians in the Roman army around 170, but even then “nobody approved of their staying in the army.” Yet they were not excommunicated because “the church was getting less rigorous about discipline.” [5]

Yoder, in short, claims to know the mind and practice of the earliest Christians in some depth and detail, and he makes stark claims about how later Christians renounced the early tradition. To make that story-line convincing, he must demonstrate a high degree of agreement among early Christians on the issue of war. To take the last point: To justify his claim that the church was becoming lax in its discipline in 170 (at the very time that we have the clearest “pacifist” voices raised), Yoder has to prove that Christians who fought in the military were excommunicated earlier. But he provides no evidence of this at all, only assertions. If Yoder is to justify his claim that the church began to “tolerate apostasy” – the apostasy of killing in war – he has to provide evidence of earlier intolerance. If he is going to tell a fall story, he needs a very clear and persuasive account of the “from which.”

Yoder cannot demonstrate the kind of consensus he needs to make the story convincing, and the evidence he does cite is inadequate and often suspect. He explains the famous decree of the Council of Arles (“Concerning those who lay down their weapons in peacetime it is resolved that they be excluded from fellowship”) by distinguishing between making war and peacetime “social management” or police carried out by Roman soldiers. He is right that “soldiers were seldom warriors,” but he discretely obscures the violence of Roman “police work” with the anachronistically bureaucratic phrase “social management.” [6] He claims that the life of Martin of Tours illustrates the difference between policing and war since Martin was “ready to serve in peacetime but not in battle,” yet by the time Martin famously renounced military service he had been in the Roman army, as a baptized believer, for about two decades and was likely an officer. [7] Yoder cites three late second-century fathers who maintained the Christian “tradition” of non-violence, and dismisses their opponents with the comment that “We have no record that they ever argued their case.” [8] But in the preceding pages of Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace where he summarizes this tradition Yoder cites no patristic texts and names no representatives of what he claims is an all-but-universal tradition. He notes that no critic of pacifism can “bring to the surface a single text” from the first century and a half that supports Christian involvement in war, but Yoder provides no texts from that period that articulate the “tradition” of pacifism Silence could indicate that there was a widespread approval of Christian involvement in the military as the opposite. Something apparently “went without saying,” but what went without saying?

Mark encourages me not to look to Yoder for detailed historical arguments about early Christian views on war. Many, however, do look to Yoder, which is why I spent so much time on what he says. I am happy to comply with Mark’s suggestion and look to experts, but when I review the evidence available to me again, I come to the same conclusion: While the early Christians were certainly not militarist like, say, American evangelicals, and while many Chris
tians were perhaps pacifists of one variety or another, Christian views on war and violence were not uniform. Against his intentions, Jean-Michel Hornus’s careful and honest book on early Christian attitudes to war demonstrates to me that there was no “tradition” of non-violence in the early centuries. For instance: While he finds only slight evidence from tomb inscriptions that Christians were in the military, Hornus concedes Roland Bainton’s point that “their presence in Christian burial grounds implies at least an implicit consent on the part of the believing community.” [9] So some churches apparently regarded military service as a vocation compatible with Christian faith. Cyprian is often cited as a committed pacifist, but the only passage Hornus cites is highly ambiguous. [10] Hornus cites Basil’s account of meeting a Christian solider: “We have come to know a man who proves that even in military life one may preserve the perfection of love for God.” [11] Leonard Swift’s conclusion seems sound to me: “in the period before Constantine . . . both pacifist and non-pacifist positions existed side by side and . . . neither was able to supplant the other.” [12]

To reiterate, my point here is not primarily about early Christian pacifism. What is at stake is the shape of the church’s history. To make that narrative persuasive, Yoder has to prove that the early church was unified in its views on war. He has not done that, and I know of no one who has. Yoder’s claims about early Christian consensus are overconfident, and that overconfidence is very damaging to his entire edifice. If there was no “tradition” of non-violence, then the evidence of Constantinian “apostasy” is seriously weakened.

History is one thing, but views on this question depend a great deal on how the Bible is read. If the Bible is uniformly, or almost uniformly, pacifist, then we might plot a pacifist trajectory into the following centuries. I am convinced, however, that the Bible is not pacifist. We can start with the soldier stories of the New Testament. Of course, as Mark notes, the passages that show John and Jesus and Peter and Paul interacting with soldiers are about John and Jesus and the kingdom, but in fact there are Roman soldiers present, in some cases high-raking ones. In no instance are the soldiers told to abandon their positions in the Roman military. I have heard the argument in response that they did not need to be told; the Roman army would eventually have weeded them out. Perhaps, but we cannot know. What we do know is that, for instance, Cornelius was a centurion and a Gentile God-fearer before he met Peter, that he and his household received the Spirit, and that Peter said nothing whatever to indicate that his calling was illegitimate for a believer. If non-violence was as near the heart of Jesus’ message and kingdom as Yoder suggests, this is a remarkable oversight. [13]

Mark says that the burden of proof lies with me, as far as “biblical scholarship” is concerned, but the only biblical scholarship he cites is New Testament scholarship. That is only half the story. We have two trajectories to deal with, not just one – the trajectory from Old to New Testaments as well as from apostolic to post-apostolic. Through John Nugent’s work, I have become aware of Yoder’s work on what Nugent calls the “politics of Yahweh.” Yoder’s telling of the Old Testament has a certain power, but I am unconvinced. Though controversial, I believe Yoder’s notion of a “Jeremiah” politics in the exilic and post-exilic period is sound, but he simplifies by characterizing post-exilic Judaism as predominantly pacifist. Nehemiah had no army, but he stationed armed men at the wall of Jerusalem. With the permission of the Persian king, Mordecai organized the Jews militarily to resist and slaughter their enemies. Further, we gain insight into the apostolic view of war and violence from apostolic evaluations of Old Testament warriors. Stephen, the first martyr, describes Moses’ killing of the Egyptian as an act of defense and “vengeance for the oppressed” (Acts 7:24). Hebrews 11 is a neglected passage in this regard. The writer commends a faith that is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” a faith manifest in Noah’s construction of the ark, Abram and Sarah’s patient waiting for a son, Moses’ identification with Israel instead of Pharaoh’s house. By the same faith, he says, “the walls of Jericho fell down” (v. 30); the same faith animated the warrior-judges Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah, and David (v. 32) who exercised faith in the conquest of kingdoms, by becoming mighty in war, by putting foreign armies to flight (vv. 33, 35). If chasing away foreign armies can be an act of faith, then it would seem to follow that those who chase foreign armies can be among the faithful.

Like Yoder, I am hostile to any reduction of the church to cheerleader or chaplain. Like Yoder, I believe that the church exists to bear witness to power, to declare that kings must kiss the King, even to the shedding of blood. The church is called to witness against the idols in every form and forum, no matter how well-settled those idols may be, no matter how powerful their patrons. I believe what I say I believe when I say I believe that the church is a city, regardless of who is on the throne or in the White House.

What if they ask? What if they listen? I posed my questions to someone recently, and his answer was, “We’ll find out when it happens.” The burden of my book is that it has happened. If it happens again, and we have every reason to believe it will, will we have anything to tell them?

[1] “War as a Moral Problem in the Early Church, Harvey Leonard Dyck and Peter Brooks, eds., The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective , p. 98.

[2] Christian Attitudes , p. 45.

[3] Christian Attitudes , p. 47. Also, “There is wide agreement that the Christians of the first two centuries were pacifist, at least their most articulate spokesmen” ( Jewish-Christian Schism ). And, while there are various senses in which early Christians did not fit the description “pacifist,” “they were nonviolent” ( War of the Lamb , p. 29). And, “the pre-Constantinian Christians had been pacifists, rejecting the violence of army and empire” ( Priestly Kingdom ). And “Christians were by and large pacifist in the first three centuries” ( Priestly Kingdom ).

[4] Christian Attitudes , p. 49.

[5] Christian Attitudes , p. 53.

[6] In my book, I cite Ramsay MacMullen’s description of the violence carried out in “peacetime” by Roman soldiers. Elsewhere, Yoder explains the decree of Arles by saying that the sword in question was merely “ceremonial” ( Christian Attitudes , pp. 50-51).

[7] “War as a Moral Problem,” p. 100. For discussion of Martin, see Jean-Michel Hornus, It Is Not Lawful for me to Fight , pp. 142-148.

[8] Christian Attitudes , p. 49.

[9] It is Not Lawful , p. 122.

[10] “his paternal and maternal uncles, Laurentius and Ignatius, who themselves also were once warring in the camps of the world, but were true and spiritual soldiers of God, casting down the devil by the confession of Christ, merited palms and crowns from the Lord by their illustrious passion.” Hornus understands this to mean that “so long as a Celerinus and his companions were ‘warring in the world,’ they were serving the devil; it was only by refusing to remain under arms that they overthrew him and brought about their martyrdom” ( It is Not Lawful , p. 126). It seems to me we can draw next to nothing from this passage concerning Cyprian’s views on war.

[11] Quoted in It Is Not Lawful , p. 127.

[12] The Early Fathers on War and Military Service , p. 79.

[13] A point made by Nigel Biggar.

History

Politics

Theology - Ecclesiology

Previous Post

November 24, 2011

What if they ask? What if they listen?

Next Post

November 26, 2011 By Faith Abraham

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman

Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

According to 1 Peter, what covers over a multitude of sins?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Repentance Prayer Love Faith