The answer
First: Christianity is an invitation to love even enemies. St. Ambrose says, “The Law commands us to avenge one injury with another (cf. Ex. 21:23f). The Gospel invites us to return love in place of enmity, to repay hatred by good will, curses by blessings. It tells us to give assistance to our persecutors.”917
Second: The New Testament is concerned with the inner life. Without ignoring the external reality in which the believer lives, the New Testament focuses on the inner person or the inner life, because inner transformation is what transforms not only the individual, but also his society. The Lord Christ declared to his disciples, “For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), and the Christian is able to grant peace (Matt. 10:13) because the peace of God guards his heart (Phil. 4:7). The victorious Christ appears as a lamb (Rev. 5) as an example of victory with the spirit of inner meekness.
As the scholar Origen says, “If, therefore, we ought to be peacemakers with those who hate peace, we ought not use the sword against anyone.”918 And St. Ambrose says, “This peace that shuts out the enticements of the bodily passions and calms the disturbances arising from them is nobler than the peace that checks the attacks of barbarians; it is a greater thing to withstand the enemy shut up within oneself than the one that is far off.”919
Third: Military service was not mandatory. Until the year 170, this was not a problem for Christians, for the Roman state had not yet become a military state in the modern sense. The army represented a small percentage of the population, so there was no need to conscript Christians into the Roman army. Edward A. Ryan argues that in the early Church, there was no problem of military service for Christians since the Romans considered them to be a Jewish sect and the exemption from military service for Jews applied also to Christians.920
On the other hand, when the Jews raised a major rebellion against the Romans between 66 and 70 A. D., Vespasian and Titus responded violently, and the Christians crossed the Jordan to Pella and did not participate in the armed resistance defending Jerusalem due to their loyalty to the ruler; for the apostles emphasized the importance of obedience to rulers (1 Pet. 2:13; Rom. 13:1–7). Also, the Lord Christ had already forewarned them of these events and commanded them to flee.
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
917 St. Ambrose of Milan, Commentary of St. Ambrose on the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Trans., Ide M. Ni Riain. Dublin: Halcyon Press. 2001) 5.73: p. 141.
918 Origen of Alexandria, The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of St Matthew. Vol. 2, trans., Ronald E. Heine (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018) Series 102: p. 710.
919 St. Ambrose of Milan, Jacob and the Happy Life 2.6.29 (FOTC 65:163).
920 Everett Ferguson (ed.), Christian Life: Ethics, Morality, and Discipline in the Early Church (Studies in Early Christianity: Vol. 16) (Garland Publishing Inc., 1993): pp. 217ff.