No Jew could be compelled to serve in the Roman legions and there was scarcely the remotest likelihood that any disciple of Jesus would be pressed into the army of Herodes Antipas or his brother Philippos or into the small body of Temple police at Jerusalem.
Jesus was living and working among Palestinian Jews, among whom the proportion of soldiers and policemen to civilians must have been infinitesimal. The circumstances of the time suffice to explain why an absolutely definite ruling was not given. It does not however follow that no definite conclusion on the point is to be derived from the Gospels. Whatever be the bearing of his precepts and his example on the subject, the fact remains that, as far as we know, no occasion presented itself to him for any explicit pronouncement on the question as to whether or not his disciples might serve as soldiers. And what is true of slavery is also true-though to a much more limited extent-of war. A familiar instance of this silence of Jesus on a matter on which we none the less have little doubt as to the import of his teaching, is the absence from the Gospels of any explict prohibition of slavery. Upon large tracts of human conduct he rarely or never had occasion to enter, and hence little or no specific teaching of his is recorded concerning them. The application of his ethical principles to the concrete affairs of life was not something which could be seen and taught in its entirety from the very first, but was bound to involve a long series of more or less complex problems and the short lapse and other special conditions of his earthly life rendered it impossible for him to pronounce decisions on more than a very few of these. The Range of Jesus’ Teaching on the Subject of War.-There is a sense in which it is true to say that Jesus gave his disciples no explicit teaching on the subject of war. THE TEACHING OF JESUS ON THE SUBJECT OF WAR Source: Chapter in Cadoux's The Early Christian Attitude to War: A Contribution to the History of Christian Ethics, with a Foreword by the Rev.
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