“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

—Jesus, Matthew 15:24

“For I say that the Messiah became a servant of the Jewish people in order to show God’s truthfulness by making good his promises to the Patriarchs, and in order to show his mercy by causing the Gentiles to glorify God.”

—Paul the Pharisee, Romans 15:8–9

“Let us, then, speak reverently of the Jew…I mean the whole Jewish nation. There are indelible memories connected with them, which will ever, to anyone who believes in the Bible, prevent them from being contemned [treated with scorn]; nay, will cast around them a nobility and a dignity which no other nation has possessed or can attain to. To Him in whose purposes they occupy so large a space, they are still ‘beloved for their fathers’ sake’” [Rom. 11:28].

—Nineteenth Century Presbyterian Minister Horatius Bonar^[1]

“We are the most challenged people under the sun. Our existence is either superfluous or indispensable to the world; it is either tragic or holy to be a Jew.”

—Abraham Heschel^[2]

Built in 2005, Yad Vashem is Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum commemorating the deaths of millions of Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. The museum’s narrow corridor descends lower and lower as the exhibits depict the descent of the Jewish people into greater and greater peril. Video testimonies of survivors punctuate a harrowing experience that forces the visitor to come face-to-face with innocent victims and unmitigated human evil.

At the beginning of this important memorial stands a significant series of museum panels: quotes by centuries of church leaders advocating the oppression of Jews. These panels make it clear that the Holocaust was not an isolated phenomenon in Western history. Although the Third Reich may have been the worst such example by several degrees, the Nazis’ antisemitism^[3] was a close cousin and likely inspired by the scorn preached in churches in prior centuries.

A Rabbi’s Opinion: Christianity is Fundamentally Antisemitic

In The Jewish History Podcast, Rabbi Yaakov Wolbe surveys the history of Christian antisemitism over the course of ninety minutes.^[4] Rabbi Wolbe recalls centuries of horror, noting that he would need tens of hours more to do the topic justice. He gives an extensive narrative of events concerning Christian acts against Jews as well as his diagnosis for the reason and motive behind Christian antisemitism. He declares,

Jew-hatred is a fundamental theological principle of the Christian faith. The idea behind Christianity is that Judaism and the Jews being the Chosen People, and the divinity of the Torah is now being questioned. They are willing to accept that the Jewish people had a Torah, and we had a mandate to change the world, but we messed up, we didn’t accept JC, and we lost it. And the Old Testament was scrapped away, and we have a new one. It’s been upgraded, and the last one has been thrown away. But they faced a massive problem with their theology because the Jews are enduring! The continued endurance and existence of the Jews even after they’re supposed to be discarded from their role in history presented a major problem… Thus the more Jews are marginalized, the more evidence they have that [Christians] are right. And thus us being punished is proof and evidence for the veracity of their religion. It is ironic that a religion that claims to be one of love actually depends on the hatred of others to be evidence for the truth of their religion.^[5]

Rabbi Wolbe concludes: “Jew-hatred is a fundamental, necessary, inextricable tenet of Christian theology from the very beginning.” The rabbi’s explanation is clear, concise, passionate, and may seem accurate to what may be known of Jewish-Christian relations in history. But is his explanation true?

If Rabbi Wolbe’s thesis is right:

In short, if Rabbi Wolbe is right, there is no need for Jewish people to investigate Jesus or Messianic Judaism whatsoever. It is a false religion with a vindictive, divorcing god who turns his back on His covenant Israel and advocates sin through the violent teachings of an angry, false messiah.

A Shameful History of Coerced “Dialogue”

Chosen People Answers exists to provide an open dialogue about the reasons for and against Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel. We write our arguments in favor of his Messiahship, and we allow our audience to agree and/or disagree from the comfort of their devices, fully anonymous, without pressure or shame. This is a modern, innovative, and cutting-edge method of dialoguing about these issues.

Despite our desire for consensual conversation, we are quite aware of the tragic and despicable ways these “dialogues” have been conducted in history.^[6] Previous generations of Jewish people were forced into debates about Jesus. We shudder with shame at how believers in Jesus have so tarnished the name of the Jewish Messiah through their hatred, pressure, and violent persecution of Jewish people in supposed service of the Christian God. While Christians today often share the message of Jesus in a loving way, few recognize how much church history has shattered the plausibility of that love before a watching Jewish world. The memory of the people of Israel is measured in centuries, and the centuries provide an overwhelming supply of tears at the hands of Christians.

Most Gentile Christians have no idea about the legacy of antisemitism in church history. Many post-Holocaust Protestants are mortified to hear what Luther wrote about the Jewish people^[7] and are dumbfounded when confronted with the explicit connection between Luther’s rhetoric and the Nazis’ engine of Jewish genocide. Many post-Holocaust Catholics are horrified at the antisemitism advocated by their own church fathers, such as Augustine or Chrysostom, the antisemitic laws of Catholic kings, the shameful innovation of the yellow patch on clothing, and the institution of ghettos.^[8] This is truly the underside of church history—a dark, untold history of which Christians are usually ignorant.^[9] Yet this history is by no means forgotten by the Jewish community. Instead, it is front and center.

Perish the thought of God turning his back on Israel, his chosen people! However, we acknowledge with tears that the following points are true:

After being exposed to the depth and breadth of antisemitism in church history, it may be tempting to think that most Christians were not true Christians because of their antisemitic words and acts. However, it is an insincere notion to think that true Christians would never persecute Jews. If those who harbored animosity and advocated persecution against Jews were not true Christians, then one must be prepared to admit that many fathers of the church such as Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, and countless other Christians in history were not actually Christians at all. We cannot accept this, for this is an unfortunate example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.

We at Chosen People Answers try to approach this issue with more nuance; we assess that these church fathers were Christians, but they had a tragic, sinful, Israel-shaped blind spot in the center of their theology, leading to catastrophic results for the Jewish people. Because of their accurate teachings about grace and forgiveness, the identity of Jesus, and their love of the Scriptures, we call these men our brothers; however, because of their errant teachings about the Jewish people, at times we may need to keep our brothers at a distance.

In this article, we would like to propose a different way. It is not necessary for Christians to reject the Jewish people as God’s chosen people. The very name of this website implies that there is another way. There is also no need for believers in Jesus to align themselves with antisemitism because, on this subject, Jesus and the apostles themselves are not aligned with antisemitism. As Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus ourselves, we reject the connection.

Rabbi Wolbe’s diagnosis of Christianity has not been the only perspective of Christianity within Jewish circles. As Orthodox Rabbi Harvey Belovski considers the roots of antisemitism, he notices that history does not allow for a single-faceted approach to explaining Jew-hatred. For how could an unending Christian hatred explain Christians who are friends and admirers? He writes,

In analyzing this phenomenon, some Jewish thinkers turn to a pessimistic statement cited by Rashi: “Said Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: ‘halachah hi b’yadua she’Eisav sonei leYa’akov, according to the law, it is well-known that Esau hates Jacob.’” This appears to extrapolate from a specific narrative—that of Esau and Jacob—the shocking axiom that non-Jews^[10] permanently and eternally hate Jews. There are those who have understood this statement maximally and assume it to innately regulate all interactions between non-Jews and Jews. Yet the uncountable positive and even lifesaving encounters between non-Jews and Jews throughout history negate this approach,^[11] and while there clearly remain individuals and even nations who still harbor primitive hatreds toward us, we have many friends and admirers.^[12]

Rabbi Wolbe’s Argument Neglects Three Hundred Crucial Years

What is fascinating about Rabbi Wolbe’s podcast analysis is that it neglects mentioning the teachings of Yeshua and the New Testament, or any Christians living before the Roman emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity in the early fourth century CE. Instead, he defines “Christianity” through the pronouncements of post-Constantinian church fathers and especially through the practices of the Crusaders and medieval antisemites. We do not fully fault Rabbi Wolbe for this, since most Orthodox Jews would never read the New Testament in the first place. He is reporting what later history tells him and conjecturing a cause. However, the New Testament and early philo-Semitism (warmness to Jews and Judaism) should not be left out of this discussion.

By omitting the first through the third centuries, Rabbi Wolbe’s thesis is narrow in scope, and because he defines “Christianity” as the positions held by fourth-century and later Christian antisemites, the argument appears self-evident. In philosophical terms, Rabbi Wolbe is asserting that antisemitism is a necessary feature of Christianity, just like roundness is a necessary feature of circles. However, we contend that the antisemitism of Christian belief is a contingent feature, meaning that it can be otherwise, and, in fact, should be otherwise. We believe the antisemitism of church history was not the inevitable byproduct of Christianity, but rather an unfortunate and unnecessary feature resulting from forces outside of the essence of New Testament faith. Likewise, it is not a necessary feature of Judaism that Jews are innocent of committing anti-Christian persecution. Rather, it is a contingent feature of Judaism, which was otherwise in centuries past. We will substantiate these claims below.

When we survey the whole history, we find that it is not necessary for a Christian to be antisemitic, and it is consistent for a Christian to love Jewish people. If one thinks that Christianity is by its very nature antisemitic, then one can easily discount believing in Yeshua without a second thought. But once one is exposed to streams of Yeshua-belief that repudiate antisemitism and are friendly to Jewish people—even showing self-sacrificial love for Jews—following Yeshua becomes an option to consider.

When considering a wider amount of evidence, we believe that antisemitic Christians have deviated from the teaching of the New Testament, ultimately meaning that antisemitic Christians in history believed errors and lies in order to justify their oppression of Jews. All streams of Christianity that harbor antisemitic views have in some way misinterpreted New Testament texts by taking them out of their Jewish context. In the process, Gentile Christians entered a Jewish family argument between the Jewish Messiah and the Jewish leadership of his day, and they misappropriated those words for harm against the Jewish people. We address this unfortunate misuse of the New Testament in our article, “Does the New Testament Endorse Antisemitism?”

A Recipe for Christian Antisemitism

Christian antisemitism has indisputably flourished in many places and many eras in the past 2,000 years, but this has not been a universal phenomenon. Christians are not uniformly antisemitic, because Christian theology and political theory must have a particular recipe before it combusts into antisemitism. Simply put, not all Christians, and not all forms of Christianity, have had the required recipe. A key factor that motivates antisemitism is a theological teaching called “supersessionism,” sometimes called “replacement theology.” In his book on anti-Judaism, Terence Donaldson defines the concept as follows:

With respect to Jewish–Christian relations, ‘supersessionism’ refers to the idea that the Christian Church has superseded the Israel of the ‘Old Testament’—in other words, that the Church has succeeded and replaced Israel as the people of God and has inherited everything of value in Israel’s tradition; that only the Christian movement has any legitimate claim to the Old Testament and the revelation it represents; that pre-Christian Israel has been rendered obsolete and that ongoing non-Christian Judaism is thus illegitimate; that Judaism has been cut off from the Scriptures and has no claim to it.^[13]

With this definition in mind, here are some of the ingredients that combine into the persecution of the Jewish people. Christian antisemitism requires the following:

The Obvious Prerequisite: Disagreement Over Jesus as Messiah

As should be abundantly clear, Jewish people and Christians often believe and practice different things. Messianic Jews straddle many of the differences, but there are still many features of traditional Judaism that Messianic Jews cannot possibly accept while remaining followers of Yeshua. The Messiahship of Yeshua is a non-negotiable tenet of faith that makes Messianic Jews who they are. Likewise, traditional Jews have non-negotiable tenets that make them who they are. So before we go any further, we need to state the obvious: There are disagreements amongst our religious traditions.

Sometimes the disagreements are minor and can be reconciled. But often, the disagreements are deep and irreconcilable. Many of these disagreements showed themselves as early as the first century, during the first years of conflict between Yeshua’s Jewish followers and their Jewish brothers and sisters. When the leadership of the churches fell to Gentiles in the subsequent generations, the disagreements only grew sharper when they entered what was originally a family conversation or dispute.

Disagreement is part of the human condition. We cannot help but analyze each other’s statements for whether they align with the truth as we understand it. If we think another person is wrong, and he continues in his opinion after we tell him, then it is not a one-sided disagreement: both sides equally disagree with the other. In fact, no one-sided disagreement exists.

Disagreements should not be seen as the main problem. Disagreeing with Jewish people is not antisemitism. Likewise, disagreeing with Christians is not anti-Christian. Disagreements should not be hyper-sensitized into offenses in and of themselves.

If I think that Fiddler on the Roof is the best Jewish movie ever made, but you think the top spot belongs to Schindler’s List, that does not mean (and should not mean) that we hate each other. Likewise, if Rabbi Eliezer disagrees with Rabbi Akiva (which happens often in the Mishnah), it does not mean they hate each other. If the Prophet Isaiah speaks against his own people to implore them to change their ways (Isaiah 1:4–15), it does not mean that Isaiah hates his fellow Jews—actually his words usually mean that he deeply cares for them.

The root of the disagreement between traditional Jews (on one side) and Messianic Jews and Christians (on the other) is the assertion that Jesus of Nazareth inaugurated the World to Come with his death and resurrection and authorized his disciples, as emissaries (or shlichim), to write authoritatively about how to live in this new age of Messiah. This entails new information claimed as new divine revelation—bringing together what was written in the Tanakh as well as offering new teachings. It involves believing that Jesus is Messiah and that God desired to dwell personally with his people as he had done in the cloud, the tabernacle, and the Temple. It involves affirming the prophet Jeremiah’s New Covenant (Jer. 31:31–34), where the Spirit of God helps people live out God’s law from the heart.

As a result of these dynamics, believers and non-believers in Jesus have disagreements over truth, revelation, history, theology, practice, Christology,^[14] and a multitude of other things. However, there is nothing about these differences that demand an antisemitic or anti-Christian disposition.

The discussion escalates only when one or both sides cross a gap from opposing ideas to hating people. Sometimes it never comes to that. All of us have varying predispositions to handle conflict: some of us cannot entertain an opposing idea without getting enraged, but some of us can sit in idle tranquility (perhaps while puffing a pipe) as we contemplate the repugnant ruminations of our rivals.

Even so, emotional hostility to an idea is not equivalent to emotional hostility toward people. If we are automatically hostile to others who have different ideas, then we may be guilty of intellectual vices. On the other hand, it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, and it should be our goal to disagree without crossing over into hatred. Thus, when two parties disagree, it is not the act of disagreeing that is the source of dangerous conflict, but rather when one or both sides decide to escalate the conflict into the personal realm. In other words, injustice occurs when opposition toward ideas morphs into hatred of people.^[15]

Now that we have established the difference between disagreement and hatred, we can continue with our survey of what motivates and enables Christian antisemitism. For this article, we are defining antisemitism as follows: A hostility against Jews that has morphed from disagreements over ideas to hatred of Jews themselves and the desire to act upon one’s hatred.^[16]

Theological and Ethical Ingredients for Christian Antisemitism

“Even the most intelligent people can go wrong if they start from false first principles.”

—Philosopher Anthony Kenny^[17]

“The wrong perception of Israel and the Jews by Christians, biblically speaking, has produced consequences of horrific proportions during the history of the Christian Church in all its strands. Such a shameful legacy, perpetuated during the illustrious Reformation and onwards, is still prevalent in substantial degrees.”

—Christian pastor Dr. Barry Horner^[18]

We have now left the realm of mere disagreement behind us, and now we will break down the development of Christian antisemitism into its constituent parts. Central to any discussion of Christian antisemitism must be the theological worldview that accompanies it, so we begin here. In a religion that is supposedly built upon the love of God, something odd must happen in the minds of Christians for them to feel justified in hating Jewish people.

In this section and those following, we will be listing tables of “ingredients” that must come about before antisemitism may truly take root within a Christian community. The ingredients will be labeled with abbreviations, such as T1 and E5. In addition, the tables will indicate Christian groups and New Testament passages that explicitly deny the ingredient in question. In addition, eras in which the ingredient was not present (check the footnotes) will be mentioned. These examples of New Testament authors or later Christians rejecting these ingredients testify that the ingredient is not pervasive or necessary for belief in Yeshua as Messiah.

The replacement of the chosen people (T1) is the root idea behind theological antisemitism, as Rabbi Wolbe correctly pointed out. However, there are many theological steps that a Christian must take before denying the chosenness of the Jewish people. They include denying the literal meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament (Jer. 31:35–37, Hosea 3:4–5, Deut. 30:1–10, Rom. 11), which describe the continued relationship between God and Jewish people. A common method for reinterpreting these passages is the use of allegory to disinherit Jews from their promises, and ignoring or misapplying Paul’s use of the words “elect” and “irrevocable” in Romans 11:28–29.

In many eras of church history, Christians believed in T1–T3 (replacement of Jews, Jewishness as obsolete, irreversible divine rejection of Jews), which form the basis of what is now called “replacement theology” or “supersessionism.” The basic idea is that the church replaces Israel in the plan of God (or that Israel was really the church all along), so Jewish people who do not believe in Jesus are orphaned impostors. This supersessionist theology has come under sustained attack by Christian theologians since the Holocaust,^[27] but some Christians protested the theology even before the horrors of Nazi antisemitism.^[28]

Christian theologian Michael Vlach explains how this turn towards replacement theology developed:

Three factors contributed to the acceptance of supersessionism in the early church: (1) the increasing Gentile composition of the early church, (2) the church’s perception of the destructions of Jerusalem in AD 70 and 135, and (3) a hermeneutical approach that allowed the church to appropriate Israel’s promises to itself. Together these factors contributed to the belief that the church had permanently replaced Israel as God’s people.^[29]

With replacement theology on the rise within churches in these early centuries, the animosity between Christians and Jews only grew deeper. Commenting on the Jewish perspective of this development, Anglican clergyman and scholar James Parkes stated, “To find the foundation for survival, with the loss of any national centre, was not easy. The bitterness of the Jew against the Christian was based on his adoption of the promises of the Scriptures, which are all that the Jew had left for his own comfort.”^[30] From our perspective, replacement theology is theological theft.

In addition to an adherence to replacement theology, something more is needed for antisemitism to truly accomplish its goal. An internal, theological opposition to Jewish people would be confined to private opinion if the Christian did not also hold to a belief that he or she is required to coerce others toward faith, which is the content of T4 and the prerequisite for T5 & T6. Both belief in the replacement/rejection/devaluation of Jews and a belief in the morality of coercion is required in the thought-life of any Christian before antisemitism can go anywhere.^[31] The Christian belief in coercion did not come about until Christians gained political power in the Constantinian era (fourth century CE), so we will discuss the rise of coercion in the section on political factors below.

We believe that factors T1 through T6 are key theological motivators for antisemitism. However, in the same way, the denial of these factors provides a powerful cure for antisemitic tendencies. For example,

If T1 is denied: If a Christian believes that the Jews are God’s chosen people, then would not persecuting Jews be the same as opposing God himself? Why would a God-fearing Christian persecute a people that God has pledged to protect? Would that not invite God’s judgment? As the famous American evangelist Billy Graham once said, “The Jews are God’s chosen people. We cannot place ourselves in opposition to Israel without detriment to ourselves.”^[32] The late Dr. Graham recognized the error of T1.

If T2 is denied: If a Christian believes that a Jewish person’s Jewishness has inherent God-given value and dignity both before and after believing in Yeshua, what motivation would that Christian have in de-Judaizing that person, since it would strip away that God-given value and dignity?

If T3 is denied: If a Christian denies that God permanently cut off Israel in 70 CE, then how can that Christian justify permanently cutting off Jews in his own mind? Does he know better than God?

If T4–T6 are denied: If a Christian denies the morality of coercion in religious matters, then that Christian would have to sin consciously in order to forcibly coerce Jewish people. He could choose to sin and persecute Jews, but why would he or she think that God would look kindly on that sinful decision?

None of these make sense. If a Christian denies T1 through T6, then it is hard to see how he or she could support the antisemitic coercion of Jewish people. Antisemitism would be completely out of line with the person’s beliefs. However, if a Christian embraces these poorly derived theological and ethical doctrines without question, he or she may not identify antisemitism as sinful, but rather may feel that it is sanctioned by his or her theology.

Ecclesiastical Ingredients for Christian Antisemitism

Those who followed Jesus in the earliest years expressed their faith as a Jewish sect with Jewish leaders and Jewish writers and a Jewish Messiah. Only later did Gentile Christians seek to distance themselves from Christianity’s inherent Jewishness. The earliest churches (congregations of Jesus-followers) looked to Jerusalem as their mother congregation, which was led by Jewish-Christian bishops until 135 CE.^[33] They celebrated the resurrection of Jesus on the fourteenth of Nisan (Passover), calculating the date according to the Hebrew, and not the Roman, calendar.^[34] Jewish followers of Jesus interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures in ways that endorsed and supported their views of Messiah (not unlike those at Qumran who also had particular scriptural interpretation methods). They preserved and adapted Jewish works and promoted a Jewish flavor of following Jesus.^[35] They continued to have a distinctly Jewish way of interpreting biblical prophecy and the coming of the Messianic kingdom.^[36]

As the first century ended, these Jewish influences and Jewish communal spaces where Gentiles came to learn started to dry up. Gentile Christians, and not Jewish believers, came into places of church leadership due to sheer numbers. Jerusalem was lost as a mother church in 135 CE due to the Roman destruction of the city and the emperor’s decree that no Jew be allowed to live there again.^[37] During this period, Gentile Christians started arrogantly asserting their dominance over Jews in violation of the New Testament’s teaching in Romans 11:19–25. In the second century, the rift represented by E1–E3 in the chart below was growing by the day. This rift widened at different speeds in different places. While Western Christians were deepening their negative rhetoric against Jews, Eastern Christians were fasting and praying for Jews,^[38] calling Jews brothers,^[39] producing literature with pro-Jewish themes,^[40] and enjoying the presence of Jewish followers of Jesus in their midst.^[41]

Thus, there was a historical process by which the church became more and more dissociated with its Jewish background over time. Outside of theological factors, the leadership of the churches accelerated this dissociation. Just as with theological positions, several preconditions for antisemitism must exist in church leadership before Christians can implement their antisemitic policies on an official ecclesiastical (church) level. These include:

The closer one gets to the first century CE, the more evidence may be found for Jewish voices within the congregations of Jesus’ followers. When we focus on Eastern churches, the evidence is even easier to find. However, after about the sixth century, we hear very little from Jewish voices within the churches. Parkes commented on how much these Jewish followers of Jesus became ostracized:

There is no more tragic group in Christian history than these unhappy people [Jewish-Christians]. They, who might have been the bridge between the Jewish and the Gentile world, must have suffered intensely at the developments on both sides which they were powerless to arrest. Rejected, first by the Church, in spite of their genuine belief in Jesus as the Messiah, and then by the Jews in spite of their loyalty to the Law, they ceased to be a factor of any importance in the development of either Christianity or Judaism.^[42]

Tragic indeed: The bridge-builders were cast out. In the wake of losing Jewish believers from within the churches, both Eastern and Western churches eventually lost their positive attitude toward Jews in general.

Scholars have coined a term for this dynamic: “The Parting of the Ways.” An extensive body of literature has been developed on this subject in recent decades.^[43] Most scholars agree that the initial stage of parting began in the first century but accelerated between 70–135 CE, and was not fully complete in Eastern churches until as late as the sixth century.^[44] However, this was not a one-sided affair: the growing religious consensus within post-Temple Judaism was also attempting to disavow any connection with what came to be called Christianity.

The parting of the ways between church and synagogue would have remained merely an academic dispute had not one of the sides gained the upper hand through political alliance. Believe it or not, Jews were the first to benefit from political alliance with Rome^[45] since Judaism was accorded the right of a “legal religion” (religio licita) by pagan Rome on the condition that Jews paid an annual tax, Fiscus Judaicus.^[46] The animosity was brewing on both sides, but non-Christian Jews initially had the political advantage. Within a century of the fall of Jerusalem, some Jewish leaders established prayers against Jewish followers of Jesus, illustrating their willingness to take action within their own ranks.^[47] However, Jews’ legal status with Rome enabled them to call for and participate in actual persecution of Christians beyond the walls of the synagogues.^[48] The New Testament refers to Jewish opponents of Yeshua-belief using political means to persecute Yeshua’s followers (who were Jewish themselves).^[49] Additionally, there are multiple second-century sources that claim that Jews used their influence to support the execution of Christians by pagan Roman authorities.^[50] Opportunistic coercion and persecution of rival religious groups is not a Christian phenomenon or a Jewish phenomenon, but rather a human phenomenon.

However, with the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in the early fourth century, the tables turned. With the singular exception of the reign of Julian the Apostate (360–363 CE), Jewish people would never again have political advantage in the Western or Eastern Roman Empires. By declaring Christianity as a religio licita with the Edict of Milan (313 CE), Constantine initiated a courtship between church and state that culminated in a full marriage in the Edict of Thessalonica (380 CE), which established Nicene Christianity as the only legal religion. This firmly solidified the church leadership’s power and influence over non-Christians (E5). Even so, Jewish people were given an exception to the rule: they were “grandfathered in,” in a way that pagans were never allowed. Saint Augustine was decisive in securing this exception for Jewish people, as we will discuss below.

Political Ingredients for Christian Antisemitism

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

—Lord Acton^[52]

We have already mentioned some of the political currents that enabled Christians to persecute Jews beginning in the fourth century. Now, let us break down some of the preconditions that must take place within a political ideology before Christian antisemitism can be a legal policy of the state and society.

The Roman Empire was a pagan, idolatrous, polytheistic society that demanded absolute devotion to the state, except for the providential exception (religio licita) given to the Jewish people by Julius Caesar from 47 BCE onward.^[54] When Jewish followers of Yeshua started preaching about his life and teachings, they looked and sounded just like typical Jews to the pagan Romans. However, soon non-“Messianic” Jews started asserting their distinction from Yeshua-belief, and the Romans stopped giving Yeshua’s followers the exception granted by Caesar. From the time of Emperor Nero (60s CE) until 313 CE, Christians were enemies of the Roman state. They could not exert influence on governmental policies (P1). As illegal enemies of the state, Christians could not serve as employees of the state (P2). The feeling was mutual: a third-century church manual states that a potential Christian convert “who is a civil magistrate wearing the purple, should desist [from his governmental service], or he should be rejected.”^[55] Although it may be hard to imagine today, but there was a time where Christians did not allow themselves to enter politics.

From the first through the third centuries, Christians were an oppressed minority with no legal rights or protection under the law. Many Romans believed appalling hearsay and conspiracy theories about Christians that sound curiously similar to Christian blood libels against Jews a thousand years later.^[56] Christians’ ability to live openly as members of their faith waxed and waned with the shifting attitudes of whichever Roman emperor was in charge. Emperor Nero (60s CE) was brutal to the Christians, setting them ablaze as human torches in his gardens.^[57] Domitian exiled the apostle John (90s CE), a Jewish follower of Jesus. Antoninus Pius (138–161) was relatively friendly to Christians. Marcus Aurelius cracked down with persecutions (161–180). Philip the Arab was friendly (244–249). Emperor Decius issued an edict in 250 CE that compelled Christians to participate in pagan sacrifices, leading to great persecution and many martyrs. Some of the worst state-sponsored oppression of Christians from this period came during the “Great Persecution” of Diocletian (303–313). Thus, from the 60s until 313 CE, the number of Christians throughout the Roman Empire continued to grow, but they were at the mercy of the state at all times.

Everything changed when Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan (313 CE),^[58] which gave Christianity the religio licita status that Judaism had long enjoyed. Soon after the edict, Constantine started associating himself with Christianity in increasing measure. He built church buildings, donated money to churches, exempted Christian clergy from taxes, and returned confiscated property taken during Diocletian’s persecutions of Christians.^[59] Instantaneously, Christians were allowed to practice their faith without persecution. In addition, they celebrated that the highest power in the land, the Roman emperor himself, had begun supporting, rather than opposing, their faith. Eusebius of Caesarea, a contemporary of these events, could hardly contain his overflowing and hyperbolic praise of Constantine, the man he considered to be chosen by God to overturn evil.^[60]

The political victories of the Christians in the fourth century ended up being a turning point for all that followed. Jews and Christians were in a battle for hearts and minds before the fourth century, with Jewish people having more ability to apply coercive pressure on Christians than vice versa. But that fact was lost to history after the political ascendancy of Christians after 313.

The Justification for Religious Coercion: A Deadly Innovation

As we have argued above, Christian antisemitism cannot go anywhere without a preconceived belief in the rightness of religious coercion. Antisemitism may make a lot of sense to a crusader with a sword in his hand, on a mission to kill the infidels. But what if you are from the peace-loving Amish community?

The Amish are a group of Protestant Christians who live using pre-modern dress and technology in their own closed communities. In many sociological and religious ways, they are comparable with ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Amish do not serve in the military for the same reason they disavow religious coercion: They are doctrinally pacifists. A Jewish person should have nothing to fear from this kind of Christian.

The belief that religious coercion is virtuous was never a part of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Neither was it taught by the earliest Gentile Christian writers. The belief in the virtue of religious coercion only came about in the fourth century when Christians achieved political power and misused it. As Christian author Os Guinness writes, “Christians have at times talked of the Prince of Peace but flagrantly betrayed him with their dark record of state-sponsored coercion and violence from Constantine to the eighteenth century.”^[61] Thankfully, modern Christianity rejects coercion, as noticed by Rabbi Dr. David Berger of Yeshiva University:

Christians in the modern world, including those with exclusivist views of salvation, definitively reject coercive methods, whether physical or economic, to enforce conformity to Christian belief and practice, and they do this not only because such methods would be ineffective but because they abhor them in principle.^[62]

The New Testament Teaching: Peter, Sheathe Your Sword

A Muslim man once wrote to Philip Yancey, an evangelical Christian author, saying, “I find no guidance in the Qur’an on how Muslims should live as a minority in a society and no guidance in the New Testament on how Christians should live as a majority.”^[63] This is a profound observation. Whereas Islam presumes a situation in which religion and state are united as one (and nonbelievers are coerced, expelled, or killed),^[64] the New Testament was written in a minority context in which Yeshua’s followers were persecuted, spread out, and devoid of political power. There is no guidance in the New Testament on how to use political power against unbelievers because no such power existed for Yeshua’s followers at the time. Neither were they encouraged to seek such power.

Missing from the book is any exhortation or example for Yeshua’s followers to commit any violence themselves; they simply do not have the moral authority to do so.^[65]

Pre-Constantinian Christians Who Advocated Religious Liberty and Non-Coercion

The New Testament is unanimous that Yeshua’s followers should not coerce others, act in violence, or even harbor anger against others. In light of this, it would make sense that Jesus’ earliest followers would advocate religious liberty and disavow religious coercion. How could they argue for anything else? The church fathers of the second to third centuries often spoke of the general need to love all people,^[66] in which Jews would be included, and early Christians explicitly denied religious coercion.

The earliest example of the nonpractice of coercion with Jews (outside the New Testament) is in the famous Dialogue with Trypho by Justin Martyr. This is the earliest record of a debate between a Christian and a Jew that is not contained within the New Testament itself. It dates from soon after 135 CE, and it consists of Justin attempting to convince the Jewish man Trypho that Jesus is the Messiah. Scholars debate whether the debate ever took place, but many of Trypho’s positions sound authentically Jewish. In any case, how does the debate end? With Trypho converting to Christianity? No. With Justin heaping insults upon Trypho for his unbelief? No. With Justin fetching the holy water to baptize Trypho by force? No.

Instead, Justin sails off into the sunset, waving at Trypho from the ship, and praying for Trypho’s salvation, with Trypho calling Justin his friend in return.^[67] What a friendly and heartfelt ending! If only all future dialogues between Christians and Jews could have been so cordial.

Usually, the Christian call for religious liberty came under the shadow of religious persecutions by pagan Romans. The Roman emperor would command Christians throughout the empire to sacrifice to Caesar, as to a god, and the Christian communities were forced to decide between self-preservation, resulting in betraying Jesus, or fidelity to Jesus, resulting in martyrdom.

Some second- and third-century Christians rejected coercion in religion on the theological grounds that God likewise coerces no one.^[68] If God refuses to coerce people into believing in him against their wills, then it would be sin for human beings to coerce one another.

The North African Christian writer Tertullian (155–240 CE) was one of the strongest voices in support of religious liberty in the pre-Constantinian era, but there are many others like him. Around 211 CE, Tertullian pleaded with the proconsul of Africa to cease persecution of Christians. Why? Because, he said,

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…. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice.^[69]

This is a remarkable statement in favor of religious liberty—so remarkable, that if one removes the remarks about polytheism and sacrifices, it could be mistaken as a statement from John Locke or Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, from the time of Constantine on, such advocacy for religious freedom would be mostly absent in Christian thought until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But here, in the pre-Constantinian third century, we find strong Christian advocacy of religious liberty.

Tertullian also wrote in favor of not coercing pagan persecutors:

Let one man worship God, another Jupiter; let one lift suppliant hands to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides; let one—if you choose to take this view of it—count in prayer the clouds, and another the ceiling panels; let one consecrate his own life to his God, and another that of a goat. For see that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion, by taking away religious liberty, and forbidding free choice of deity, so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it.^[70]

Other variations of the same theme may be found elsewhere in Tertullian’s works, including the denial that Christians may “plot the vengeance at our own hands, which we expect to come from God.”^[71]

Clement of Alexandria (150–215 CE) preached against the use of violence and coercion on the grounds that a person’s goodness may only come about through his free choice:

Above all, Christians are not allowed to correct with violence the delinquencies of sins…. It is impossible for a man to be steadily good except by his own choice. For he that is made good by compulsion of another is not good; for he is not what he is by his own choice. For it is the freedom of each one that makes true goodness and reveals real wickedness.^[72]

Cyprian (200–258 CE) preached, “The Christian has departed from rage and carnal contention as if from the hurricanes of the sea. He has already begun to be tranquil and meek in the harbor of Christ. Therefore, he should allow neither anger nor discord within his breath. For he must neither return evil for evil, nor bear hatred.”^[73] In the mid-third century, Commodianus wrote, “Do not willingly use force and do not return force when it is used against you.”^[74] Around the same time, Origen (185–253 CE) wrote:

[W]e believe that “revilers will not inherit the kingdom of God.” And we read, “Bless them that curse you; bless, and curse not;” also, “Being reviled, we bless.” And even although the abuse which we pour upon another may seem to have some excuse in the wrong which we have received from him, yet such abuse is not allowed by the word of God. And how much more ought we to abstain from reviling others, when we consider what a great folly it is!^[75]

Lactantius (260–330 CE) wrote during the overwhelming persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, and his style of approaching his persecutors was nothing short of remarkable. He reported on his arguments with pagans, in which the pagans refused to give reason for their beliefs, but rather appealed to the traditions of their ancestors. Lactantius then proceeded to conclude that the pagans, devoid of any reason for their faith, must prove their faith “by force and tortures” against Christians. With a hint of sarcasm, he basically told the pagans to “bring it on”:

It is befitting that they should undertake the defence of their gods, lest, if our affairs should increase (as they do increase daily), theirs should be deserted, together with their shrines and their vain mockeries; and since they can effect nothing by violence (for the religion of God is increased the more it is oppressed), let them rather act by the use of reason and exhortations.^[76]

In other words, the pagans have no reasons for their actions, and their coercive violence is proving ineffective at stopping the Christians, so let the pagans return to the use of reason (of which they have none). Then Lactantius gives a stirring argument against religious coercion:

For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith: for the former belong to evils, but the latter to goods; and it is necessary for that which is good to have place in religion, and not that which is evil. For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free-will as religion; in which, if the mind of the worshipper is disinclined to it, religion is at once taken away, and ceases to exist. The right method therefore is, that you defend religion by patient endurance or by death; in which the preservation of the faith is both pleasing to God Himself, and adds authority to religion.^[77]

But we, on the contrary, do not require that any one should be compelled, whether he is willing or unwilling, to worship our God, who is the God of all men; nor are we angry if any one does not worship Him. For we trust in the majesty of Him who has power to avenge contempt shown towards Himself, as also He has power to avenge the calamities and injuries inflicted on His servants. And therefore, when we suffer such impious things, we do not resist even in word; but we remit vengeance to God, not as they act who would have it appear that they are defenders of their gods, and rage without restraint against those who do not worship them.^[78]

How different Jewish-Christian relations would have been if Lactantius’ heart had been the heart of all Christians at all times!

Finally, we find evidence in a church council, the Council of Elvira (306 CE), that church leadership denied the use of force, even if that force was against inanimate idols:

Elvira, Canon 60: “If someone smashes an idol and is then punished by death, he or she may not be placed in the list of martyrs, since such action is not sanctioned by the Scriptures or by the apostles.”^[79]

The idols are not to be put away by violence, but through the progression of the message of the gospel via words. Then the pagans, who will become former pagans, will put away their idols on their own accord and worship the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In light of all of these early Christian quotations concerning the use of force, it should be no surprise that the earliest Christian communities were pacifist in nature.^[80] This position was an outworking of the teachings of the New Testament, combined with the practical reality that Christians had no political power and their oppressors outnumbered them.^[81] In the face of overwhelming pagan persecutors, pre-Constantinian Christians could choose (1) religious surrender (by making pagan sacrifices and renouncing Jesus), (2) violent insurrection, or (3) nonviolent resistance. While some chose religious surrender, we have no reports of Christians choosing violent insurrection. Instead, historical records show an overwhelming number of voices saying that Christians chose nonviolent resistance, often becoming martyrs for their faith.

However, the persecutions by the state were lifted at the same time that Christians gained the allegiance of the most powerful man in the world—the Roman emperor. In a matter of years, Christians went from enemies of the state to becoming the leaders of it. As an emperor, Constantine only knew how to legislate and conquer his enemies, and he brought that attitude to his Christianity. With the rise of Constantine, Christians tasted political power for the first time.

The Power Tastes Too Good: Constantine, Augustine, and the Pro-Coercion Consensus

“Let the kings of the earth serve Christ by making laws for Him and for His cause.”

—Saint Augustine, 408 CE^[82]

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

—The United States Bill of Rights, 1789

Few statements of political theory could be as far apart as those of Saint Augustine and the United States Bill of Rights. Both statements were revolutionary in their time, and both statements signaled a change of eras. Augustine represented a shift from non-coercion to coercion, and the Bill of Rights represented a shift back to non-coercion. The time between these declarations—more than 1,300 years—were the dark years where Christians used coercive tactics motivated by cancerous antisemitism. The Bill of Rights came about through the Protestant recovery of religious liberty, but unfortunately, 1789 did not mark the end of support for religious coercion in the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine’s advice concerning coercion continued to influence Catholicism until the Second Vatican Council of 1965.^[83]

Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) was like the Rashi or Rambam of Christianity in late antiquity. His mastery of theology, philosophy, exegesis, and argument made Augustine the prince of the Western church fathers, the definitive source for answering questions for more than a millennium. Many areas of Christian thought may be segmented into pre-Augustinian and post-Augustinian eras because he was so influential in changing the terms of debate. Many of his stances continue to be taught by Christians worldwide, yet his influence and outspoken opinions also provide fodder for his many critics.

At Chosen People Answers, we applaud Augustine for many of his positions. The man was an eloquent, prolific genius who loved Jesus and defended the truth of the gospel. His autobiographical work Confessions has stood the test of time as a classic of the spiritual genre. But on the issue of religious coercion and the Jewish people, Augustine has earned our full repudiation. He deserves his sometimes-mentioned title, “The Father of the Inquisition.”

Initially, Augustine did not believe in the morality of religious coercion. Augustine shared his reasons for his change of opinion in Letter 93, written to a recipient who opposed religious coercion like pre-Constantinian Christians. He wrote,

For originally my opinion was, that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ, that we must act only by words, fight only by arguments, and prevail by force of reason, lest we should have those whom we knew as avowed heretics feigning themselves to be Catholics. But this opinion of mine was overcome not by the words of those who controverted it, but by the conclusive instances to which they could point.^[84]

What changed his mind? Augustine’s reason was simple: Constantine used his political power to quash heretics, and it worked, so he concluded that Christians should encourage more coercion for the unity of the Catholic Church.

Augustine pointed to Constantine’s battle with a group of Christians called the Donatists. This group refused to readmit Christians to the church if they sacrificed to Caesar during the Diocletianic persecutions at the turn of the fourth century. Constantine and the majority of Christian bishops opposed the ungracious stance of the Donatists, but the Donatists would not back down. In response, Constantine issued imperial edicts to force the Donatists to renounce their position, or else have their property and possessions confiscated.

This was the first-ever use of religious coercion by a Western Christian politician.^[85] Writing nearly a century later, Augustine looked back at the effects of Constantine’s edict, remarking on the success of state-sponsored coercion. He wrote with happiness how the Donatists had faded away. His own hometown in North Africa was once a Donatist stronghold, but due to the emperor outlawing the sect, his hometown became a bastion of Catholicism that hated Donatism.

With this evidence before his eyes, Augustine searched for ways to justify his approval of what Constantine did, thereby becoming a theological pragmatist. He recognized that he was advocating for persecutions and coercions that the pagan Roman state had previously used against Christians. How could he escape the charge of being a hypocrite for advocating the same persecutory actions that Christians previously called a sin?

Augustine attempted to get himself out of hypocrisy by saying that coercion is not wrong in-and-of-itself—what matters is the intention behind the coercion. In this case, Augustine essentially taught, “The ends justify the means.” The same coercive action taken by pagans and Christians can be sin for the former, and righteous for the latter. Why? Because the Christian coerces others for the others’ benefit, disciplining them like a mother. Since the Catholic Church is the “Mother of all Christians,” whatever she does is good:

Whatever therefore the true and rightful Mother does, even when something severe and bitter is felt by her children at her hands, she is not rendering evil for evil, but is applying the benefit of discipline to counteract the evil of sin, not with the hatred which seeks to harm, but with the love which seeks to heal.^[86]

The Mother Church punishes heretics so they learn their lesson: she loves them as she persecutes them. Her loving embrace sometimes justifiably suffocates.

Thus, Augustine concluded that the Christian emperor should do everything possible, including using severe force, to save people from their own errors. Eventually, the heretics would come around, just like the Donatists, and eventually everyone would thank the emperor for his coercion, just as a son later comes to appreciate the discipline of his mother.

Besides Augustine’s disagreement with everything written above about the New Testament and the church fathers’ advocacy of noncoercion, we notice at least two fatal flaws in Augustine’s argument for religious coercion:

First, Augustine made a series of poor assumptions. He assumed at least two things: (1) The Catholic Church will always know what is good, and (2) The Catholic Church will always be benevolent towards heretics and outsiders. This is very self-serving. Do not the Donatists also believe they are doing good, and acting benevolently? Do not most people, even the most evil of people, think they are doing good when they harm others? What if church leaders define ghettos or concentration camps as good, since the isolation and hard work will produce conversions?

Augustine’s position inevitably leads to a corrupt and power-hungry Catholic Church that accepts no dissent because whatever it says is true, and whatever violence it decrees is good. “The ends justify the means” is a recipe for tyranny by the person with the most power to define which ends are good, and Augustine crowned the Catholic Church with this authority.

Second, Augustine’s argument is fatally flawed because it only works in retrospect, not in the moment, and Jewish people provide counterevidence to the whole theory. His argument may be classified as a form of ethical consequentialism, which states that the ethics of an action may only be judged by its consequences.^[87] Augustine appealed to Constantine’s persecution of heretics ninety years prior and gave it a seal of approval, believing it to have worked for Constantine’s “good” ends.

However, while Augustine may have found reason to justify coercion in retrospect when it came to the Donatists, he was forced to modify his ethical theory when it came to Jewish people. Unlike with the Donatists, Augustine could not point to Jews ceasing to exist through force of imperial edict! Although anti-Jewish persecution in the fourth century was mostly restrained, there were instances of anti-Jewish violence, such as Saint Ambrose pressuring Emperor Theodosius to allow the burning of synagogues.^[88] So there were examples of Christians coercing and persecuting Jews at Augustine’s fingertips, but the examples did not provide Augustine with any evidence of a positive outcome. Jews were not flocking to the churches, despite the pressure applied by the state. This should have given him pause.

Instead, Augustine adopted the pro-coercion policy given above for Gentile heretics only, and a completely different pro-coercion policy for Jews. Infamously, on the spurious basis of Psalm 59:11, Augustine taught that the exile of the Jewish people should be seen as a good thing to prove Christianity and preserve an external witness to the Law.^[89] Thus, the Jewish people’s subjugation and persecution should be forcibly maintained in all her exiled regions, but they should not be killed or forcibly converted, because otherwise Christianity would lose Jews as adverse witnesses. With this infamous teaching, Augustine protected Jewish lives and their freedom to practice Judaism on the one hand, but debased them with a utilitarian purpose as permanent, persecuted wanderers on the other. Many Christian kings agreed to enforce the Jewish people’s subjugated status, as we all know too well.

Thus Augustine proved himself to be both the subjugator and the protector of the Jewish people. Jews were not to be treated like pagans or heretics, but as their own protected class. Parkes commented:

The heretic was forbidden to hold meetings or to possess property. The Jew enjoyed the right to both. The heretic was frequently exiled. He was forbidden to make a will or to receive a legacy. These were penalties which could only affect the apostate to Judaism. The heretic could be put to death for being a heretic. The Jew could only be executed for some crime in relation to the non-Jewish community. The books of the heretics were burnt. The Torah of the Jew was a sacred book to the Church. In a word, the heretic could be forbidden to exist. The Jew could not.^[90]

Writing these words in 1934, Parkes could not have possibly realized how ironic his final line would prove within a matter of years.

In sum, Augustine was primarily responsible for quelling the pro-coercion and anti-coercion factions within the Catholic Church through his consequentialist ethics (for heretics) and through his subjugating, replacement-theology-based policies toward Jews. The Catholic Church now had power to coerce the heretics and to make Jews feel subjugated, all enforced through the Roman state’s unification with the church. The next thousand years would go by this playbook, earning Christianity its reputation as the chief enemy and persecutor of the Jewish people.

The Unnecessary Poison of Christian Antisemitism

We opened this article with Rabbi Wolbe’s opinion that Christian antisemitism in history is the result of the necessary, inextricable, antisemitic nature of Christianity itself. Although one might look at the history of Christianity and be convinced of the rabbi’s theory, a closer look at the historical currents reveals that antisemitism was an added ingredient—a poison in fact—that was not present in the teachings of Jesus’ earliest followers, including both Jewish and Gentile followers. Neither Jesus, nor his disciples, nor Paul, nor the early church fathers advocated the persecution or religious coercion of the Jewish people, or anyone. It was only after the rise of replacement theology, the ethics of coercion, and the rise of Constantine that the Catholic Church set the stage for millennia of Jew-hatred.

As Messianic Jewish scholar Michael Brown writes,

Christian acts of violence and hate against the Jews were virtually nonexistent for more than three hundred years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. After that, they were quite sparse and sporadic for the next eight hundred years until the Crusades at the end of the eleventh century—and that murderous, destructive representation of Christianity bore no resemblance to the real Christian faith. We also need to remember that even though Christendom ruled in Europe, influential leaders from Augustine to Aquinas did not advocate violent persecution of Jews or forcible conversion of the Jews, in spite of the church’s political power. In fact, the church at times offered the Jewish people protection. As a result, the story of “Christian” anti-Semitism is not as simple as many assume.^[93]

No, it is not as simple as “Esau hates Jacob.” Otherwise, we could not explain the many examples of Esau loving Jacob. There have been many Christians in history who stood up to the antisemitism of their times and blessed the Jewish people. Here are a few examples:

Concluding Thoughts

Finally, we implore you to consider that the problem of antisemitism is not a merely Christian phenomenon, or a Muslim phenomenon; it is not even about antisemitism itself. The problem is the hatred that thrives within the human heart. Antisemitism is “the oldest hatred,” but other forms of hatred are not lesser. We all are guilty of hating others, acting maliciously, and harboring grudges. Each of us, Jew and Gentile, Yeshua-follower or not, needs to acknowledge our brokenness before God and confess our failure to keep the commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).

We also implore you to consider how much history could have gone the other way. Jews and Christians were in an intense theological debate for 300 years before the decisive upper hand was awarded to the Christians through Constantine. But could it not have gone the other way? Jewish history is not without examples of anti-Christian state-sponsored violence: the Yemenite King Dhu Newas, a Jewish king, violently persecuted and executed Christians in the sixth century, foreshadowing Mohammed’s reign of terror a century later. What if a Dhu Newas had overtaken the Roman Empire? What about an alternate-reality scenario where Constantine converted to Judaism and burned down churches? What if Theodosius had declared Judaism as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE? How would his gift of power to Jewish religious leaders have changed Jewish theology and practice for centuries to come?

These are all theoretical and we will never know, but the possibilities of history should give us all pause. Each of us, as human beings with evil dispositions, can persecute and hate. Each of us, Jew and Gentile, need the power of God to love one another.

At Chosen People Answers, we reject all forms of antisemitism and deny the ethics of coercion or persecution. We exclaim with joy that Israel is still God’s chosen people. We are thrilled to see the return of the Jewish people to her covenantal homeland after centuries of exile, a land given to her through the promises made to the patriarchs (Genesis 15, 17, Ezekiel 36–37). We reject the theological root of Christian antisemitism: the replacement theology that supplants the Jewish people with the church.

We are a different kind of Yeshua-followers, and millions of Gentile Christians and Messianic Jews today approach things differently as well. Many Christians have repented and turned from the evils of the past. For us, to believe in Jesus is not to become antisemitic but rather to see a Jewish man as the redemption of the entire world. In our eyes, that is a magnificent and beautiful honor that God has bestowed upon humanity through his chosen people. As the Apostle Paul wrote in the New Testament,

Recommended Reading

Examples of Christian Philo-Semitism

David Brog, Standing with Israel (Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2006).

The works of Horatius Bonar, especially Chapter 13, “Israel,” in Prophetical Landmarks, 1876. Available here.

William Blackstone, The Blackstone Memorial, 1891, available here.

Jonathan Moorehead, “The Father of Zionism: William E. Blackstone?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54, vol. 4 (December 2010). Available here.

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 2006).

Histories of Christian Antisemitism

Michael Brown, Our Hands are Stained with Blood, Revised (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2019).

James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2008).

Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI; Dayton, OH: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989).

The Church’s Unholy History of Anti-Semitism, Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries

Replacement Theology as the Root of Christian Antisemitism

Michael Vlach, Has the Church Replaced Israel? (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2010).

Barry E. Horner, Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must be Challenged (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2007).

The Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity

Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70 to 135, Edited by James D.G. Dunn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).

Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, Edited by Herschel Shanks (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 2013).

Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).

Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

Saint Augustine and the Jews

Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

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———, eds. Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies. Translated by William Fletcher. The Ante-Nicene Fathers 7. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886.

———, eds. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second. Translated by Frederick Crombie. The Ante-Nicene Fathers 4. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885.

Skarsaune, Oskar, and Reidar Hvalvik, eds. Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007.

St. Augustine. The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin with a Sketch of His Life and Work. Edited by Philip Schaff. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886.

Stewart-Sykes, Alistair. “Quartodecimans.” Edited by Angelo Di Berardino and James Hoover. Translated by Joseph T. Papa, Erik A. Koenke, and Eric E. Hewett. Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014.

Streett, Matthew J. Here Comes the Judge: Violent Pacifism in the Book of Revelation. Library of New Testament studies. New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2012.

Tertullian. Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885.

Vlach, Michael J. Has the Church Replaced Israel?: A Theological Evaluation. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2010.

Williams, A. Lukyn. Adversus Judaeos: A Bird’s-Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Wolbe, Yaakov. “A History of Christian Antisemitism Part 1.” The Jewish History Podcast, n.d. https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-jewish-history-podcast-with-rabbi-yaakov-wolbe/episode/ep-25-a-history-of-christian-anti-semitism-part-1-51923899.

Yancey, Philip. “The Lure of Theocracy.” Christianity Today, July 1, 2006. Accessed April 7, 2022. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/july/24.64.html.

1. Horatius Bonar, “The Jew,” in The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, ed. Horatius Bonar, vol. 22 (London, UK: J. Nisbet, 1870), 209–19. Also available here: http://bunyanministries.org/books/israel_and_millennialism/19_app_i_the_jew_bonar.pdf. ↑

2. Abraham Joshua Heschel, “To Be a Jew: What Is It?,” in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), Kindle, chap. 1, sec. 1. ↑

3. In this article, we follow the convention of using the term “antisemitism” rather than “anti-Semitism.” Jewish publication authorities differ on whether there should be a hyphen or not. We follow the trend in modern scholarship of dropping the hyphen, on the basis that there is no such thing as “Semitism” that can be opposed. ↑

4. Yaakov Wolbe, “A History of Christian Antisemitism Part 1,” The Jewish History Podcast, Mar. 22, 2017, https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-jewish-history-podcast-with-rabbi-yaakov-wolbe/episode/ep-25-a-history-of-christian-anti-semitism-part-1-51923899. ↑

5. Yaakov Wolbe, “A History of Christian Antisemitism Part 1,” The Jewish History Podcast, Mar. 22, 2017, 11:20, https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-jewish-history-podcast-with-rabbi-yaakov-wolbe/episode/ep-25-a-history-of-christian-anti-semitism-part-1-51923899. ↑

6. I.e. the Barcelona Disputation, the Tortosa Disputation, etc. For a survey of Christian-Jewish dialogues, see A. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos: A Bird’s-Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012). ↑

7. Jewish-Christian pastor Bernard Howard has written to a Gentile Christian audience to dispel the possible hero-worship of Martin Luther for the 500^th year anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. Bernard N. Howard, “Luther’s Jewish Problem,” The Gospel Coalition, last modified October 18, 2017, accessed April 7, 2022, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/luthers-jewish-problem/. ↑

8. Consider two books written by Catholic historians who want to call Catholics to repent of their legacy of antisemitism: James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1988). ↑

9. Thankfully, many Christians have been repenting of their Jew-hatred, and today, evangelical Christians are consistently Israel’s strongest supporters outside the Jewish community. ↑

10. The rabbi is polite here in not explicitly naming Christians, but Esau/Edom is the nickname given to Christians in Talmudic works, so the statement is referring to Christian hatred of Jews. ↑

11. A representative example of this would be Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian woman who risked her life to save Jews because of her faith, not in spite of it. Ten Boom and her family hid Jews in a hidden room in their home and were eventually arrested by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. She lost her family members in the camps, but she survived. She was a tireless advocate for the Jewish people for decades after her release, speaking in churches around the globe. She was honored by Israel as Righteous among the Nations. ↑

12. Harvey Belovski, “Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred,” Jewish Action, last modified March 9, 2015, accessed April 7, 2022, https://jewishaction.com/religion/jewish-thought/anti-semitism-longest-hatred/. ↑

13. Terence L. Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Interpretations (London; Waco, TX: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; Baylor University Press, 2010), 20. ↑

14. The theology about the person and nature of “the Christ”—ie, the Messiah. Both sides have a Christology. The Christology of traditional Judaism (if you will forgive the term) denies the divinity of the Messiah. ↑

15. However, even this must be given some qualification to fit with the biblical text. A person’s hatred of others is most likely a sin because there is significant ambiguity concerning when hatred of others is justified in Scripture. There are times where God encourages individual Israelites to take action—even violent action—against those with rival ideas. This stems from God’s hatred of sinners (Psa. 11:5). David sees his own hatred of God’s enemies as a virtue (Psa. 139:21–22). It is a mitzvah to destroy the seven nations (Deut. 20:17). God approved of Elijah executing the false priests of Ba’al (1 Kings 18:40). But it would not be wise to assume that those of us alive today have the same prophetic authority as the prophets of Scripture. What if we hate people whom God has not authorized us to hate? It would be a sin when one presumes that God wants him to hate and persecute someone when in fact God has approved of no such thing—one’s hatred is one’s own. And of course, when we come to the teachings of Yeshua, he teaches an ethic of love extending even to one’s enemies (Matt. 5:44), the Samaritans (Luke 10:25-37), tax-collectors (Matt. 11:19), adulteresses (John 8), and sinners (Matt. 9:11). He gives an example of patience, love, and non-coercion against religious opponents. While it may be a virtue to hate those who hate God, it is an even higher virtue to love those who hate God, so they may be redeemed. This is what Yeshua has done for us: while we were enemies of God and sinners, Messiah died for us (Romans 5:8). ↑

16. Some modern scholars see a difference between antisemitism (race-based opposition to Jews that emerged in the nineteenth century) and anti-Judaism (practice- and idea-based opposition that thrived in Christendom in much earlier times). This may be a helpful distinction, but in practice the felt effects upon Jewish people are often the same under both: stereotypes, personal hostility, social distancing, coercion, and violence. Thus, in this article, we are retaining the more commonly known word, antisemitism, and defining it with a broad meaning that includes both race-based and ideological opposition that results in hatred and coercion. This kind of wider definition is employed by the Anti-Defamation League, which defines antisemitism as “the belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish. It may take the form of religious teachings that proclaim the inferiority of Jews, for instance, or political efforts to isolate, oppress, or otherwise injure them. It may also include prejudiced or stereotyped views about Jews.” For a helpful discussion on how to apply “antisemitism” and “anti-Judaism” to conversations about the New Testament, see Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament, 13–20. ↑

17. Anthony Kenny, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy, 3rd edition. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 263. ↑

18. Barry E. Horner, Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged, NAC Series in Bible & Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2007), xix. ↑

19. Romans 11:28–29 (ESV) “As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” ↑

20. Premillennialism is the name for the view that Jesus will return to earth before a 1000-year golden age. This was the earliest eschatological position in Christianity, because it stems from Judaism: in Judaism, the Messiah comes to earth before the Messianic era. Christians who are premillennialists often expect the restoration of the Jewish people during this golden era. An early example of this pro-Jewish hope is found in Justin Martyr, who lived in the mid-second century (Dialogue with Trypho 80). Beautiful nineteenth century examples of the denial of T1 are found in Horatius Bonar and William Blackstone. However, the most explicit repudiation of T1 comes from dispensationalism, a subset of premillennialism that denies that Israel and the church are the same thing. Chosen People Ministries and our associated seminary, Talbot Theological Seminary, have dispensational roots. This is a large reason why we affirm the chosenness of the Jewish people in our organization’s very name! ↑

21. John 4:22: “Salvation is from the Jews.” Romans 3:1–2a: “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way.” Romans 9:4–5: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” ↑

22. See especially Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007). In a chapter from that volume, Sten Hidal writes, “In the Greek speaking church and still more in the Western part of the Empire the Jewish heritage in the church gradually disappeared, as did knowledge of Hebrew. Justin Martyr is still acutely aware of Christianity’s Jewish roots, as is Origen, but later on the Jews mainly figure in the deplorable genre known as Adversus Iudaeos. The Old Testament of course is read, preached over, and commented upon, but contemporary Judaism tends to fade away or is reduced to a mere target of Christian hostility. East of Antioch this was not possible. The Jewish community was strong and the imperial decisions against the Jews were not always carried out with full efficiency. In Persia the Jews as a rule were favored over against the Christians. The majority view is that the Christian church in Syria has a Jewish background.” Sten Hidal, “Evidence for Jewish Believers in the Syriac Fathers,” in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 579. ↑

23. Romans 11, Matthew 23:39, Acts 3:21 ↑

24. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 80. Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 30, On Modesty 8, which states, “It will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel.” Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Romans 11:12. Theologian Michael Vlach cites many theologians through the twelfth century who expected a reversal of God’s judgment on Israel: Hilary, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, Prosper of Aquitaine, Cassiodorus, Preniasius, Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, Anselm, Damian, and Bernard. Michael J Vlach, Has the Church Replaced Israel?: A Theological Evaluation (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2010), 42–50. ↑

25. Tertullian and Lactantius are primary examples. These will be discussed further below. ↑

26. After the European Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, Christian thinkers started recovering the ancient Christian value of “tolerance,” especially in Great Britain and the Americas. This idea clearly did not take root in Protestant Germany. ↑

27. See the recommended works at the bottom of this article. Especially recommended (but written towards a Christian audience) are Brown, Vlach, and Horner. ↑

28. See the recommended works at the bottom of this article. Pre-Holocaust authors include Parkes, Bonar, Spurgeon, and Blackstone. ↑

29. Vlach, Has the Church Replaced Israel?, 28–29. ↑

30. James William Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (New York, NY: Atheneum, 1964), 156–57. ↑

31. With that said, we believe that a Christian who holds to T1–T3, yet refrains from acting on his beliefs, may be innocent of wrongdoing in a human court, but will be found as morally deficient before the God who reads hearts and intentions before actions are ever committed. ↑

32. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Billy Graham Voices Staunch Support for Israel, Concern for State’s Security,” Daily News Bulletin, December 26, 1967, accessed April 7, 2022, http://pdfs.jta.org/1967/1967-12-26_248.pdf. ↑

33. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.5.3, lists the names of the Jerusalem bishops, most having particularly Jewish names: “Since the bishops of the circumcision ceased at this time [135 CE], it might be necessary now to list these from the first. The first, then, was James who was called the brother of the Lord; and after him was the second, Symeon; the third, Justus, the fourth, Zacchaeus; the fifth, Tobias; the sixth, Benjamin; the seventh, John; the eighth, Matthias; the ninth, Philip; the tenth, Seneca; the eleventh, Justus; the twelfth, Leir; the thirteenth, Ephres; the fourteenth, Joseph; and last of all, the fifteenth, Judas. This many were the bishops in the city of Jerusalem from the Apostles to the time indicated, all of them belonging to the circumcision.”

    Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Books 1–5, trans. Roy Joseph Deferrari, vol. 19, Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 211–12. ↑

34. Supporters of this position were known as “Quartodecimans,” literally, “The Fourteeners” (of Nisan). When Gentile Christians became increasingly alienated from Jews and from the Hebrew calendar (second to third centuries), church leaders pushed to change the date to the Roman solar calendar, severing any link to Judaism. As is common in this discussion, the churches of the East (Asia Minor and Syria) were the last to succumb to this pressure, due to the Jewish believers in their ranks and their ancient connection with the Jewish apostles’ practice of celebrating Passover on the fourteenth. See Alistair Stewart-Sykes, “Quartodecimans,” ed. Angelo Di Berardino and James Hoover, trans. Joseph T. Papa, Erik A. Koenke, and Eric E. Hewett, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014); John Behr, ed., On Pascha: With the Fragments of Melito and Other Material Related to the Quartodecimans Melito of Sardis (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001). ↑

35. See Torleif Elgvin, “Jewish Christian Editing of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,” in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 278–304. ↑

36. The earliest Christians were literalists who used the p’shat to interpret biblical prophecy, often reaching the same conclusions as their Jewish counterparts both before and after them. This is most evident in the premillennialism that was dominant in both Western and Eastern churches until the third century, when it began a period of decline. One of the quickest ways opponents of premillennialism could embarrass adherents was by tarnishing premillennialism as too “Jewish.” Adherents of this Jewish approach to Scripture included Clement of Rome (1 Clement 23:4–5), Epistle of Barnabas 15:3–5, Papias (in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.33.3-4 and in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39 and in Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men), Justin Martyr (Dialogue 14, 80–81), Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.30.4, 5.32.1, 5.35), Tertullian (Against Marcion 3.24), Hippolytus of Rome (Antichrist 6), Lactantius (Epitome 72, Institutes 7.22, 7.24), and others. ↑

37. See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 4.5. ↑

38. Didascalia Apostolorum, XXI ↑

39. Apostolic Constitutions 5.17, Dialogue with Trypho 137 ↑

40. See the Pseudo-Clementine literature, especially Recognitions 1, 27–71, and the interpolations within the Pseudepigrapha. When considering the evidence that early Jewish-Christians edited the Pseudepigrapha (originating from Jewish communities from second century CE and before), Professor of Jewish and Biblical Studies Torleif Elgvin highlights how Jewish-Christian editors may be identified: “(a) a positive view of the people of Israel, (b) an ecclesiology in which Jews are an integral and necessary part of the church (i.e., no ultimate division between the church and Israel is envisioned), (c) an eschatology with a significant role for Israel, and (d) a positive view of the Torah, which portrays Jesus as obedient to the Torah and sees Jewish Torah observance as positive both in the present and the eschaton [World to Come].” Elgvin, “Jewish Christian Editing of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,” 280. ↑

41. See Skarsaune and Hvalvik, Jewish Believers in Jesus; Ray A. Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period Until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century (Jerusalem, Israel: Brill Academic, 1988). ↑

42. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, 92. ↑

43. See book recommendations at the bottom of this article. ↑

44. For example, Chrysostom’s attacks on Christians in his church in Constantinople reflect a significant amount of overlap between the Christian and Jewish communities in the mid-fourth century. Chrysostom was angry that Christians were attending synagogue services, eating matzah, and doing other things commonly associated with Judaism. This illustrates that the Jewish and Christian communities had not yet completely parted in the East at this time. ↑

45. In saying this, we do not discount the many persecutions the Jews experienced at the hands of the Romans, from the attacks of 70 and 135 CE, to the torture and death of Rabbi Akiva, to the forced disputations in Roman debate houses. Despite these persecutions, Judaism was a legal religion in the empire. ↑

46. Josephus, Wars of the Jews 7.18. Reinach writes, “Judaism, during the entire duration of the Roman empire, remained a recognized religion (“religio licita”).” Theodore Reinach, “Diaspora,” ed. Isidore Singer, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1901–1906), 4:564. On the Fiscus Judaicus, see Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Tractate Bahodesh 1. Paul Foster, “Vespasian, Nerva, Jesus, and the Fiscus Judaicus,” in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. David B. Capes et al. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 316. ↑

47. There is considerable debate about when the Birkat ha-Minim (Cursing of the Heretics) prayer became a part of synagogue liturgy. It is not our intention to weigh in on that debate. However, there is evidence that some form of prayer was said against believers in Jesus from within synagogues as early as the second century CE. See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 95–96. See Philip L Mayo, “The Role of the Birkath Haminim in Early Jewish-Christian Relations: A Reexamination of the Evidence,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 16, no. 2 (2006): 325–31. ↑

48. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue, 64: “It will be thus seen that at the beginning Judaism had the whip hand of Christianity, in that it was the Jews who decided what a Jew was, and who had the right to be admitted to the privileges they enjoyed. By the simple act of excommunication they could expel a Christian from these privileges and report against him as an atheist. Moreover, so long as the Christians chose to remain—officially, at least—a Jewish sect, they were subject to the discipline of the synagogue.” ↑

49. Some examples include John 16:2 (Jews could not legally execute people, so they worked through Rome), Acts 13:50, 18:13–17, and Acts 21—22. ↑

50. Justin Martyr stated that Jews of his era sought the death of Christians when it was in their power (Dialogue 95–96, cf. 110, 131, 133). Jews assisted in the burning of Polycarp “as [was] their custom” in Martyrdom of Polycarp 13.1 (cf. 17.2–3). Tertullian said that Jews joined with pagans to call for the death of Christians and that synagogues were “fountains of persecution” (Scorpiace, 10). Eusebius cited an anonymous second-century writer who claimed that one mark of true Christianity was being persecuted by Jews and slain by lawless men (Ecclesiastical History 5.16.12). ↑

51. These are two of the most commonly known heretical groups at that time. The sixth-century Code of Justinian gives a more full list of the heretical groups that Theodosius legislated against with his Edict of Thessalonica: “Arians, Macedonians, Pneumatomachi, Apollinarians, Novatians, Sabbatians, Eunomians, Tetradites or Tessarescaedecatites, Valentinians, Papianists, Montanists, Priscillianists, Phrygians, Pepuzites, Marcianists, Borborians, Messalians, Eutychites, Enthusiasts, Donatists, Audians, Hydroparastates, Batrachites, Tascodrogites, Hermeiecians, Photinians, Paulians, Marcillians, Ophites, Encratites, Apotactites, Saccophorians, and the perfectly appalling Manichees.” One cannot help but chuckle at the final phrase. Codex Justinianus, I, 5, 5, as quoted in Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue, 194. ↑

52. John Acton, “Acton-Creighton Correspondence, Letter I,” April 5, 1887, https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/acton-acton-creighton-correspondence. ↑

53. Armenian King Tiridates III converted to Christianity, proclaimed it the religion of his kingdom, and baptized more than 4 million of his citizens. Mark Cartwright, “The Early Christianization of Armenia,” World History Encyclopedia, March 22, 2018, accessed April 7, 2022, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/801/the-early-christianization-of-armenia/. ↑

54. See the decree of Caesar in Josephus, Antiquities 13.199. See also Herman Rosenthal, “Caius Julius Caesar,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, 3:483–85. ↑

55. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 16. Hippolytus of Rome, On the Apostolic Tradition, ed. John Behr, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes, Popular Patristics Series 22 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 100. ↑

56. See Eberhard Arnold, The Early Christians: In Their Own Words, Revised edition. (Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing House, 1998), 72–73. Arnold quotes from Minucius Felix, Octavius 8.4; 9.1–6; 10.2, in which a pagan opponent of Christianity, Caecilius Natalis, gives the following corrupted description of Christian practices and beliefs, of which he seems to have no real acquaintance: “They form a rabble of profane conspiracy. Their alliance consists in meetings at night with solemn rituals and inhuman revelries. They replace holy rites with inexpiable crimes…. Just like a rank growth of weeds, the abominable haunts where this impious confederacy meet are multiplying all over the world, due to the daily increase of immorality. Root and branch, it should at all costs be exterminated and accursed. They recognize each other by secret signs and symbols. They love one another before being acquainted, so to speak. Everywhere they practice a kind of religious cult of lust, calling one another ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ indiscriminately…. To venerate an executed criminal and the gallows, the wooden cross on which he was executed, is to erect altars which befit lost and depraved wretches. The blood of the infant—oh, how abominable—they lap up greedily, they distribute its limbs with passionate eagerness. Their feastings are notorious…. Why do they not speak in public? Why do they never meet in the open? Is it not simply because what they worship and conceal is criminal and shameful?” ↑

57. Tacitus, Annals 15.44 ↑

58. This is a representative quote from the Edict as found in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 10.5.2: “Authority is to be refused no one at all to follow and to choose the observance or the form of worship of the Christians, and that authority be given to each one to devote his mind to that form of worship which he himself considers to be adapted to himself, in order that the Deity may be able in all things to provide for us His accustomed care and goodness.” Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Books 6–10, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church 29 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955), 269. ↑

59. See Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 10.5–7. ↑

60. Eusebius of Caesaria, “The Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine,” in Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Ernest Cushing Richardson, vol. 1, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890), 481. ↑

61. Os Guinness, The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2008), 20. ↑

62. David Berger, Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2010), 376. ↑

63. Philip Yancey, “The Lure of Theocracy,” Christianity Today, July 1, 2006, accessed April 7, 2022, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/july/24.64.html. ↑

64. “You who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you, and let them find sternness in you, and know that God is with the ones who guard (themselves).” (Quran 9:123). “You who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are allies of each other. Whoever of you takes them as allies is already one of them.” (Quran 5:51). “Fight those who do not believe in God or the Last Day… until they pay tribute out of hand, and they are disgraced.” (Quran 9:29). “Muḥammad is the messenger of God. Those who are with him are harsh against the disbelievers, (but) compassionate among themselves.” (Quran 48:29). “I shall cast dread into the hearts of those who disbelieve. So strike above (their) necks, and strike (off) all their fingers!’ That was because they broke with God and His messenger, and whoever breaks with God and His messenger—surely God is harsh in retribution. ¹⁴ ‘That is for you! So taste it! And (know) that the punishment of the Fire is for the disbelievers.’” (Quran 8:12–14). Translations from Gordon D. Nickel, ed., The Quran with Christian Commentary: A Guide to Understanding the Scripture of Islam, trans. A.J. Droge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020). ↑

65. Matthew J. Streett, Here Comes the Judge: Violent Pacifism in the Book of Revelation, Library of New Testament studies (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2012). ↑

66. For example, 2 Clement 13:4, Epistle to Diognetus 6.6, Polycarp to Philippians 3.3, Dialogue with Trypho 96, Apostolic Constitutions 1.2 ↑

67. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 142 ↑

68. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.37.1, 4.37.3, 4.39.3, 5.1.1; Clement of Alexandria, Quis Dives Salvetur, 10.2, 21.2. The premise of this argument is debatable, in light of biblical examples like the Damascus Road experience of Paul (Acts 9) and God directing the Assyrians in Isaiah 10:5–7. ↑

69. Tertullian, To Scapula 2, in Tertullian, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 105. ↑

70. Tertullian, Apology 24, in Tertullian, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, 39. ↑

71. To Scapula 2, Tertullian, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, 106. Also see Apology, 28: “But as it was easily seen to be unjust to compel freemen against their will to offer sacrifice (for even in other acts of religious service a willing mind is required), it should be counted quite absurd for one man to compel another to do honour to the gods, when he ought ever voluntarily, and in the sense of his own need, to seek their favour, lest in the liberty which is his right he should be ready to say, ‘I want none of Jupiter’s favours; pray who art thou? Let Janus meet me with angry looks, with whichever of his faces he likes; what have you to do with me?’ You have been led, no doubt, by these same evil spirits to compel us to offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperor; and you are under a necessity of using force, just as we are under an obligation to face the dangers of it.” Tertullian, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, 41. ↑

72. Clement of Alexandria, “Fragments of Clemens Alexandrinus,” in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria, trans. William Wilson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers 2 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 581. ↑

73. Cyprian, On the Advantage of Patience 16. David W. Bercot, ed., “Nonresistance,” A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide to More Than 700 Topics Discussed by the Early Church Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., July 1, 1998), 475. ↑

74. Commodianus, Instructions 48. David W. Bercot, “Nonresistance,” 475. ↑

75. Contra Celsus 8.41. Origen, “Origen against Celsus,” in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, trans. Frederick Crombie, The Ante-Nicene Fathers 4 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 654. ↑

76. Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies, trans. William Fletcher, The Ante-Nicene Fathers 7 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 156. ↑

77. The Divine Institutes 5.20 ↑

78. The Divine Institutes 5.21 ↑

79. Greek text: Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1871), 163. English translation: Ken Pennington, “The Council of Elvira, ca. 306,” accessed April 7, 2022, http://legalhistorysources.com/Canon%20Law/ElviraCanons.htm. ↑

80. J. Mitchell Jr., “Pacifism,” ed. Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1996), 879. ↑

81. Once followers of Jesus rise to political power, it is legitimate to wield the force of law and conduct just war for the preservation of good. However, this must be done through official legal and political channels, and not for the purpose of religious coercion. ↑

82. Augustine, Letter 93.5.19. Augustine of Hippo, “Letters of St. Augustin,” in St. Augustine, The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin with a Sketch of His Life and Work, ed. Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 389. ↑

83. Thomas Pink, “Conscience and Coercion,” ed. R.R. Reno, First Things, no. 225 (August 2012): 47, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/conscience-and-coercion. ↑

84. Augustine of Hippo, Letter 93.5.17. “Letters of St. Augustin,” in St. Augustine, The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin with a Sketch of His Life and Work, 388. ↑

85. When the kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity in 302, several million Armenians were baptized, but it is unknown to what extent these baptisms were forced. ↑

86. Augustine of Hippo, Letter 93.2.6. ↑

87. Garrett J. DeWeese and J. P. Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 92–95. ↑

88. See Ambrose, Letter 40. ↑

89. See Augustine, De Fide 6.9, Sermon 201.3, and Against the Jews 9. ↑

90. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue, 184. ↑

91. DeWeese and Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult, 95–100. ↑

92. For example, Catholic philosopher Thomas Pink wrote in First Things in 2012, “The Church has jurisdiction over the baptized, who have an obligation of fidelity to the Church, to believe her doctrine and to obey her laws, including a duty to assist her mission when she requests it. And, according to traditional doctrine, the Church has the right and authority to enforce this jurisdiction coercively, with temporal or earthly penalties as well as spiritual ones. The Church has no right to punish unbelief among the unbaptized, who are outside her jurisdiction and have no obligation of fidelity to the Church. But the Church still has the authority to use coercion to defend her jurisdiction against those unbaptized who interfere from without, proselytizing on behalf of false religions. As for the baptized, who do have obligations of fidelity to her, the Church has the authority to punish culpable unbelief through penalties for heresy, apostasy, and schism. The point of such sanctions is punitively to reform heretics, apostates, or schismatics, or at least to discourage others from sharing their errors.” Pink, “Conscience and Coercion,” 47. ↑

93. Michael L. Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: General and Historical Objections., vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 133. ↑