What are the views of St. Cyprian of Carthage (departed 258 A. D.) on participating in military service?

St. Cyprian of Carthage was a disciple of the scholar Tertullian and one of the most important Western theological writers of Northwest Africa. It seems that he did not treat this subject in so straightforward a manner as his did his teacher. He believes that God created iron to be used in the cultivation of land, not to kill people in wars.⁹⁴⁶ He rebukes a world in which it is considered unacceptable for an individual to kill another in self-defense, yet acceptable to kill others in defense of the nation: “The whole world is wet with mutual blood; and murder, which in the case of an individual is admitted to be a crime, is called a virtue when it is committed wholesale.”⁹⁴⁷

He completely refuses the idea of the hand being extended in violence and thereby stained with blood, insisting that, “after the Eucharist carried in it … the hand [must not be] spotted with the sword and blood.”⁹⁴⁸ He seems to believe that wars are unavoidable,⁹⁴⁹ and ascribes

942 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 1.24 (ANF 2:304–305).

943 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Paedagogus) 3.12 (ANF 2:293). These words are in fact found in Luke 3:14.

944 St. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen 10 (ANF 2:200).

945 Minucius Felix, The Octavius 30 (ANF 4:191–192).

946 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 2: On the Dress of Virgins 11 (ANF 5:433).

947 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Epistles 1.6 (ANF 5:277).

948 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 9: On the Advantage of Patience 14 (ANF 5:488).

949 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 7: On the Mortality 2 (ANF 5:469).

the weakness of the imperial military forces in his days to divine punishment.⁹⁵⁰ He prays for the success of the empire’s armies in expelling its enemies.

St. Cyprian uses soldiers in battle as a metaphor for spiritual warfare: “It is a good soldier’s duty to defend the camp of his general against rebels and enemies,”⁹⁵¹ and “if to soldiers of this world it is glorious to return in triumph to their country when the foe is vanquished, how much more excellent and greater is the glory, when the devil is overcome, to return in triumph to paradise”⁹⁵² Such passages make it difficult to hold that St. Cyprian considers war to be an immoral act.