Caesar and the Lamb, Second Edition: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service

Through the available patristic writings, Caesar and the Lamb focuses on the attitudes of the earliest Christians on war and military service. Kalantzis provides the reader with many new translations of pre-Constantinian texts and tells the story of the struggle of the earliest church to bear witness to the nations that enveloped them as they transformed the dominant narratives of citizenship, loyalty, freedom, power, and control. Kalantzis examines writings on war and military service in the first three centuries of the Christian church in an organized manner, but the ways the communities of Christ at the margins of power and society thought of themselves and the state are not presented here through the lens of antiquarian curiosity. At the heart of Caesar and the Lamb is a desire to understand the world in which Christianity arose and to ask questions of the past that may help us understand the early character of the Christian faith with the hope that such an enterprise will also help us evaluate its expression in our own time.

George Kalantzis is professor of theology at Wheaton College and founding director of The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. His historical research and writing focuses on the development of christological and trinitarian thought, as well as the intersection of classical Greco-Roman society and early Christianity. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Evil and the Doctrine of Creation, ’Who Do You Say I Am?’: On the Humanity of Jesus, and Christian Dying: Witnesses from the Tradition. He serves as series editor for Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources and series coeditor for Classic Studies on the Apostolic Fathers.