Ep. 452 Early Christianity on War and the Military: Mike Huckabee Would Not Have Fit In
The Tom Woods Show
Tom Woods
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2015
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We know early Christians avoided service in the Roman army, but was that because of its pagan religious overtones or out of a moral opposition to violence and bloodshed -- or both? And what happened to make military service acceptable for Christians centuries later? I explore these and other important questions with Professor George Kalantzis.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Tom Woods Show, episode 452. |
| 0:03.8 | Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion. |
| 0:08.3 | Your daily dose of Liberty Education starts here, the Tom Woods Show. |
| 0:14.5 | Want to learn a highly marketable skill in your spare time in a way that's rigorous and yet fun and engaging and inexpensive, |
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| 0:30.2 | slash code. Hey everybody, Tom Woods here. Very interesting topic today. We're talking to George Calancis, who is director of the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies at Wheaton College. |
| 0:44.1 | He's an associate professor in the biblical and theological studies department there, and he has a book. It actually came out several years ago, but I only became familiar with it very recently, called Caesar and the Lamb, early Christian attitudes on war and military service. |
| 1:01.7 | Now, he wrote this book from a purely scholarly standpoint, but to my mind, it has a lot of resonance or ought to have a lot of resonance for us today. |
| 1:10.5 | This book says |
| 1:12.7 | something pretty much exactly the opposite of what you would think would be the connection |
| 1:17.8 | between Christianity and the military that you would get in neoconservative and a great |
| 1:23.0 | many evangelical circles today. So it's a very challenging and very important book for us to |
| 1:29.3 | grapple with. I'm linking to it on today's show notes page, which is tomwoods.com |
| 1:34.1 | slash 452. Remember to check out my free e-book on how to start your new blog or website, |
| 1:41.8 | even if you know nothing about programming or design, like me. |
| 1:46.4 | You can find that book, plus find out how you can get me to give you free publicity for that |
| 1:52.2 | blog you have not yet started. |
| 1:54.2 | So check it out before you start that blog over at tomwoods.com slash publicity. |
| 2:00.7 | All right, let's turn now to our guest today. Professor |
| 2:03.4 | George Kalances, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. |
| 2:08.3 | I've just now been reading your book, Caesar and the Lamb, which I just introduced to the audience. |
| 2:13.9 | And I have an interest in it for two reasons. I'm interested in it from a scholarly point of view the way you are. But even though in your book you disclaim any concern about trying to connect your research in this book to current events, well, I have no such scruples. I do find it quite interesting that today, |
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