From the O’Donovans’ From Irenaeus to Grotius. These are summary points of the introductions to each section.
Outline on Irenaeus to Grotius
- Baptismal rules treated military as a problematic profession.
- There were Christians in the armed forces.
- The difficulty explained
- The military oath had quasi-religious connotations.
- Then there was the responsibility of bloodshed.
- Christian opinion changed imperceptibly between Tertullian and Basil.
There was a subtle difference in how West and East approached rule. The former was a res publica and the latter a Basileus.
East
Moses as law-giver
Nomos subsumed under Logos
West
- The line b/t political imagination and Christology was formed by the narratives of Christ’s confrontations with power and the reality of future judgment.
