First Three Centuries: Pro-Life Stance, Even Toward Heretics
The Inquisition & the Church
Repudiating the punishment of stoning as dictated for defilers of faith in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 13:6-9 and 17:1-6, the Apostles and their more immediate successors adopted an entirely pro-life stance:
SAINT PAUL - (Utilizing a spirit punishment) "By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith, among them Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Timothy 1:19-20). (Cutting heretics off from the Church) "As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned" (Titus 3:10-11).
LACTANTIUS - (Along with Origen, he repudiated the very notion of the death penalty for heresy) "Religion, being a matter of the will, it cannot be forced on anyone; in this matter it is better to employ words than blows. Of what use is cruelty? What has the rack to do with piety? Surely there is no connection between truth and violence, between justice and cruelty . . . It is true that nothing is so important as religion and one must defend it at any cost. It is true that it must be protected, but by dying for it, not by killing others; by long-suffering, not by violence; by faith, not by crime. If you attempt to defend religion with bloodshed and torture, what you do is not defense, but desecration and insult. For nothing is so intrinsically a matter of free will as religion" (De Divinis Institutionibus, 5:10).
TERTULLIAN - (Derived from natural law, religious affiliation is a matter of free will and not compulsion) "However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion-- to which free-will and not force should lead us-- the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind" (Ad. Scapulam, chap. 2).
Repudiating the punishment of stoning as dictated for defilers of faith in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 13:6-9 and 17:1-6, the Apostles and their more immediate successors adopted an entirely pro-life stance:
SAINT PAUL - (Utilizing a spirit punishment) "By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith, among them Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Timothy 1:19-20). (Cutting heretics off from the Church) "As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned" (Titus 3:10-11).
LACTANTIUS - (Along with Origen, he repudiated the very notion of the death penalty for heresy) "Religion, being a matter of the will, it cannot be forced on anyone; in this matter it is better to employ words than blows. Of what use is cruelty? What has the rack to do with piety? Surely there is no connection between truth and violence, between justice and cruelty . . . It is true that nothing is so important as religion and one must defend it at any cost. It is true that it must be protected, but by dying for it, not by killing others; by long-suffering, not by violence; by faith, not by crime. If you attempt to defend religion with bloodshed and torture, what you do is not defense, but desecration and insult. For nothing is so intrinsically a matter of free will as religion" (De Divinis Institutionibus, 5:10).
TERTULLIAN - (Derived from natural law, religious affiliation is a matter of free will and not compulsion) "However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion-- to which free-will and not force should lead us-- the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind" (Ad. Scapulam, chap. 2).
posted by Father Joe Jenkins at 1:18 PM
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