Does anyone doubt that it is preferable for people to be drawn to worship God by teaching rather than forced by fear of punishment or by pain? But because the one type of people are better, it does not mean that the others, who are not of that type, ought to be ignored. Experience has enabled us to prove, and continue to prove, that many people are benefited by being compelled in the first place through fear or pain; so that subsequently they are able to be taught, and then pursue in action what they have learnt in words.
Some people suggest the following maxim from a secular author: “I am sure it is more satisfactory to restrain a child by shame and generosity, than by fear.” This is certainly true. However, just as boys guided by love are better, so boys reformed by fear are more numerous. Indeed, if we want to reply to them by quoting the same author, they can also read in him: “You can’t do anything properly, unless trouble makes you do it!” (Augustine: Political Writings
, 186)
…
Is anyone able to love more generously than Christ, who laid down his life for his sheep? Now when he called Peter and the other apostles, he did so with a single word. However, Paul, formerly known as Saul, who was to become a great builder of his church, was at first a fearsome destroyer of it; and Christ did not restrain him with a single word. Rather, he used his power to knock Paul down: with the aim of encouraging a man who had been raging in the dark of faithlessness to long for light in his heart, he first struck him with physical blindness. If that was not a punishment, he wouldn’t have been healed later on; and if his eyes had been sound (when he could see nothing with them open) scripture would not have described how something like scales, which had been covering them, fell from them when Ananias laid his hands on Paul, so that their gaze was opened up. Where do they get that cry of theirs? “We are free to believe or not to believe: did Christ apply force to anyone? Did he compel anyone?” Look–they have the apostle Paul! They should realise that Christ first used force on him and later taught him, first struck him and then consoled him. It is amazing, moreover, how Paul, who came to the gospel under the compulsion of a physical punishment, afterwards struggled more for the gospel than all of those who were called by word alone; although a greater fear drove him to love, still his perfect love casts out fear. (187)
Thoughts?
Like a good Calvinist (Augustinian?), I’d affirm that God compels all Christians to follow him. But I don’t see any biblical argument or example that makes me think that our human role in evangelism should extend beyond preaching and teaching. Though Paul may have been brought to faith by divine force, his own evangelistic techniques never used human force.
Augustine probably came to his conclusion in wrestling with the question of what to do with unbelievers in an officially Christian society, a question that Paul didn’t face in the pagan Roman Empire, and neither do we in the United States.
It’s not unbelievers that Augustine was probably talking about, it’s the Donatists.
In another letter to somebody-or-other, Augustine justifies taking the sword to the Donatists not to hurt them, but to compel them into the kingdom. His argument was basically that people are lazy. I.e., most Donatists don’t really care all that much about Donatism, but it’s just too much of a hassle to convert to the orthodox church. So what we need, he argued, is to provide them a little extra impetus (at the point of the sword) to energize them to take the action they really know they should.
The more interesting question (if I may), because it hits rather closer to home, is not about converting the heretic or nonbeliever, but it’s about protecting the church from outward attack (whether physical or spiritual).
Recall that the magisterial reformation (i.e., the Luthern and Reformed reformation) is called that not because it was majestic — although it was that — but because it was lead by magistrates. The Lutheran confessions are written to the Emperor and signed by princes (magistrates). The Westminster Confession written for and adopted by Parliament, etc.
And here, think of the role of the kings in the OT in occasionally reforming worship and Israel.
Until recently, it was thought unproblematic that the magistrate had a duty to preserve orthodoxy in the churches in his realm. While he might tolerate the practice of existing groups of dissenters, he wouldn’t tolerate evangelizing on the part of the heterodox.
It seems to me that Ro 13 would easily permit the magisrate that authority — i.e., to punish evil and to reward good. There’s no reason in Ro 13 to limit “evil” and “good” to purely temporal categories of behavior.
Jim,
Good thoughts. Does your question hit close to home because it’s somehow relevant in the U.S. today? If so, I’m not seeing it. It seems like in order for the magistrate to exercise that kind of authority, there would have to be an established church for the given state.
Just making conversation — “Closer to home” only because it related to the Reformation — which came a millenium after Augustine wrote.
That being said, recall that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment allowed state-level religious establishment up through WWII (and arguably up to 1961). So it comes even closer in the U.S. than most people recognize.