How Did the Early Church Fathers View Military Service?
December 14th, 2009 David Bercot has written a few books on early Christianity, the early church, and the early church fathers. I have real issues with Mr. Bercot and his methodology of research and presentation – you can read my review of his text Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up to get a full presentation of how he misrepresents the early fathers. This is an excerpt of that review where Bercot basically states that the early church did not support the Roman military. There is also a comment submitted by a CH101 reader with my response. One must remember that Bercot’s main objective is to offer a critique of modern Protestant Christianity – and I agree with much of what he says. I want to give an overview of his mistake. David Bercot does admit that “the early church made no law that Christians could not serve in the army…Neither Jesus nor the apostles ever strictly forbade Christians to serve in the military,” but he goes on to say that the empire was experiencing peace during
