ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the most thorough, systematic, and sophisticated pacifist reading of the New Testament that has been offered to date—namely, that made by Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament. It addresses the historical question of Christian attitudes to military service during the first three centuries of the Christian Church. The chapter describes the Scholastic development of Augustinian thought, particularly its constraint of 'holy war' by the moral norms of 'just war'. It summarizes the views of St Augustine, which have been seminal for subsequent Christian 'just war' thinking. The specification or delimitation of the violence forbidden by the New Testament implies a corresponding delimitation of the patient suffering that it recommends as morally normative for Christian life and ethics. The chapter concludes what Christian pacifists and just war proponents share in common and where the main points of difference between them lie.
