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CENTURIONS GUILD

Change of Command

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St. Martin -A ModelVeteran

Commentary by Zach Cornelius

November 11

is Veterans Day in the UnitedStates.

In many countries this day is stillcelebrated as Armistice Day or RemembranceDay.

Prior to the slaughter and thedestruction of

Western Europe known asWorld War I (and before France existed as anation), November 11

was celebratedthroughout modern France, and much of Europe, as the day St. Martin was buried atthe city of Tours.Named after Mars, the god of war, youngMartin was forced to enlist in the Romanarmy at the age of ﬁfteen, an obligation heinherited through his father’s vocation.

Military service was not particularly desirablefor the boy, as he had grown very fond of theChurch by age ten, when he became acatechumen, over the protests of his parents.To his favor he was placed in a cavalry unitthat served as the personal body guard of Caesar. The

scholae imperatoris,

imperialguard, was a position of honor and distinction.

He would ride a powerful war horse and wearthe recognizable white

chalmys

or cape linedwith lambskin as the uniform of the eliteguard.

He and his comrades would be knownas the “men clothed in white.” It was this capethat distinguished him as a body guard of Caesar himself.On a cold night during a harsh winter, ridingthrough the town of Amiens, in modern dayFrance, Martin happened upon a homelessman shivering in the cold.

The elite guardhad sympathy for this poor man, but what washe to do?

He had nothing but his splendiduniform.

He decided to draw his sword andcut his magniﬁcent

chalmys

in half and give aportion to the shivering man.

This was not an easy decision for Martin.

Hehad naught to pass the poor helpless man, fordoing so was to disobey Christ, nor destroyhis imperial cape

which would surely incensehis Roman comrades.

It was at this point thathe realized that at times his allegiance toChrist trumped that of his unit, Caesar, andthe whole of the Roman Empire.

Shortlythereafter, he was baptized into the Church.It wasn’t long after this event that Martin’simperial cavalry unit was called up to ﬁghtthe Gauls in the city of Worms, against tribesthat had invaded the Empire.

It was customthat the night before a battle, Roman soldierswould report one by one to their commander(Caesar Julian, in Martin’s case) to receive amonetary gift to inspire their dedication andloyalty to the Empire.

Martin believed it tobe dishonest to accept the gift, since as aChristian, he could not draw blood on thebattleﬁeld.According to Sulpicius Severus, Martin’sbiographer, he said to Caesar:

“I have beenyour soldier up to now.

Let me now be God’s.

Let someone who is going to ﬁght have yourbonus.

I am Christ’s soldier; I am not allowedto fight.” The Emperor did not take kindly tothis request, and Martin was promptlyimprisoned for cowardice. Behind bars, inresponse to the charge, Martin offered to besent to the front lines. His jailers leapt at theopportunity, thinking it a fitting consequencefor this seditious young centurion.Overnight, the Gauls would successfullynegotiate a treaty, and no fighting would takeplace. Dejected, his former comradesdischarged him from military service. Shortlythereafter the life of Saint Martin the hermit,monk, priest, and bishop began. He wouldtrade in his patriotism for piety.As Americans we somberly remember themillions of our countrymen and women whohave died in our country’s wars.

As people of the Christian faith we can remember St.Martin, who saw the shedding blood andserving Christ as contradictory to one another.

He choose courageously to lay down hissword and take up his cross, even in the faceof certain death.

~ Zach, who shares the name of another Biblicalcenturion, is a cofounder of Centurion’s Guild

A quarterly community newsletter published by Centurion’s Guild

For God and Country (in that order)

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Issue #2 - Winter 2009Statue of Martin, Bishop of Tours, inOdolanow, by Jerzy Sobocinski. He is knownto have insisted “I am a soldier of Christ, it isnot permissible for me to ﬁght.” He wasaccused of cowardice despite offering to besent to the front lines at Worms in 336 CE.

CENTURIONS GUILD2

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Change of Command

The following is a restatement of the major points made by John Howard Yoder in hisbook by the same title (Herald Press, 1983).The the stated question is the proverbial challenge to any pacifist, Christian orotherwise. Yoder crafts an excellent exposeof the fallibility of many of the argumentsthat lie within that challenge, with thesecond half of the book including essays and statements of historic and contemporary pacifists. We hope you will find the book as provocative yet refreshing as we have(Editor’s note: we can only playfullyimagine that the title is a thinly veiled pun, playing off the popular “What Would Jesus Do” slogan, but we cannot be entirely sure).

The ﬁrst dependent assumption we mayidentify is that of

determinism

on your part – that you have the only decision to make,and that it is only your decision that willprovide resolution. If you do not act, theattacker

will

kill the victim, and your courseof action

will

end in the death of theattacker. The accuser demands that theattacker is motivated only by pure evil, thatthere exists no hope of redemption.However, no crime is ever without motive;there is in fact something that will satisfyany attackers’ purpose for violent action(cooperating with their demand for money,safe harbor, etc.). It is simply unreasonableto believe that the only course mustinevitably lead to death (the victim’s at thehand of the attacker, or the attacker’s at yourown hand). No course is predetermined; theonly limit to nonviolence is one’s owncreativity and commitment.The second assumption is that of

omnipotence

, that you have absolutecontrol and that your course of action willundoubtedly result in success. We cannotknow for certain, in any instance, that ourown decision will unfold without event orunseen consequence. Furthermore, both thevictim and the attacker are assumed to beincapable of sentient thought or free will;their reﬂexes and instincts are consideredimmaterial to the argument. It isridiculously optimistic to pretend that anyagent, acting in concert with suchunpredictable variables as a derangedattacker and a terror-stricken assailant,could enjoy absolute control over anysituation, violent or otherwise. Anotherassumption related to omnipotence is that of

omniscience

, the idea that you know withabsolute certainty how your course of actionwill unfold. After all, the obligatoryconclusion is that of death. You areexpected to be able to operate withoutdoubt, a convenience no person in historyhas ever been able to enjoy in such an event.In any and all situations, we can be sure of only one thing, that we know nothing forcertain and must act out of consideration forthe unpredictability of the situation.A third assumption our inquisitor reliesupon is

individualism

, the belief that onlymy own interests are to be consideredrelevant. However, the victim’s relationshipto me must inform my decision; I should notact outside their interests. If the victimshares my commitment to nonviolence, itwould not be their desire that I use lethalforce to save them from whatevercatastrophe awaits them. If they do notsubscribe to nonviolence, I would still arguethat the desire to use a disproportionateamount of force against their attacker wouldbe founded in self-centrism (on the part of either the victim or the defender), an evilthat already must have motivated theattacker. Put simply, true justice has inmind even the interests of the criminal. Adefender cannot not justify adopting the roleof judge, jury, and executioner alone andhope to be protected by the claim of havingobjectively served justice. Furthermore,when a person is reduced to a possessiveobject, such as the case when it is assumed

What Would You Do?

Book Review by Logan Laituri

that the victim has no capacity to inﬂuencewhat must be exclusively

decision, itbecomes an act of self-interest disguised as avirtue.Stemming from the last issue comes thepresumption of

righteousness

. Your actionsare immediately considered ethicallysuperior to those of the attacker. However,you lose any credibility as judge and jurywhen your own interests and welfare are apart of your decision. Your objectivity iscompromised. It is then that people oftenclaim, falsely, that their decision iseffectively determined by the actions of theattacker (“

they made me do it

”). Once the‘victim card’ is played, your actions becomesanctioned by a fabricated sense of moralsuperiority. Far from being justified, youbecome the evil you had hoped to conquer.After all, it is violence and hostility thatproduces the attacker in the first place. Suchare products of a culture so misled abouttrue justice that it teaches its members not tomurder by murdering murderers. Thosewho would use violence so readily haveseldom been shown the prophetic power of love to destroy fear. The Hitler’s of theworld only know hatred and fear preciselybecause they have never been shown graceand reconciliation. Even if it meanssacrificing my own life, I will not become avictim to the myth of redemptive violence.

~ You can follow Logan on his blog at feraltheology.wordpress.com

CENTURIONS GUILDChange of Command

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Michael Moore’s

opus magnus

comes at the most appropriate of times. Moore’s critique of thepractices of America’s currenteconomic system comes at a timewhen our generation is beginningto question the love affairbetween faith and empire,between evangelicalism andAmerica. The documentary openswith a comparison of America’scurrent situation to that of Rome’sprior to its demise, the parallelsare haunting and aim to forewarnus that if the need for change isleft unnoticed, America too couldsuffer the same fate.The high point of the moviecomes when Moore addresses thecommon religious rhetoric inplace that allows Christians to becomfortable with the currenteconomic practices of entitiessuch as the Department of Treasury and Goldman Sachs.Both of whom were key playersin the economic “bailout” failurewe have become so familiar with.But Moore’s critique is not biasedin partisanship, Moore critiquesboth Republicans and Democratswho were involved in what hecalls “socialism for the rich”.Of course Moore offers ampleamounts of humor and this time Ibelieve he tops himself. Voicingover scenes from the classic Jesusof Nazareth (1977) Jesus is madeto say to the paraplegic “I cannotheal your preexisting condition”and other like statements.Moore’s deﬁnitely comes forwardwith his Catholic Christianconvictions and does so in a kindand gentle manner. There isnothing too abrasive but Moore isquite forward in his convictionthat Jesus would not approve of our current economic practiceswhich cause a foreclosure everyseven and a half seconds.Capitalism: A Love Story is amovie I would recommend everysocially concerned Christian see.It is a long awaited critique.

~ You can keep up with Kyle atwilliamkylecaldwell.wordpress.com

Capitalism: A Love Story

Movie Review by Kyle Caldwell

Centurion’s Guild isnow an ofﬁcial co-conspiring communityof CONSP!RE Magazine! Contact usto get a free copy andcheck out Kyle’s andLogan’s contribution tothe third issue: “OurCommon Life”

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Genesis

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