Annotation CXV
”Put back thy sword into its place.” — Matthew 26:52
Whether it is lawful for Christians to make war.
Euthymius, in the exposition of this passage, seems to affirm that no right of war — not even for the defense of the Christian religion — is granted to clerics, saying: “When he had rebuked him — namely Peter — he taught that the sword must not be used, even for defending God. And by ‘the sword’ he forbade all arms.”
John Ferus, in the fourth book of the commentary on Matthew, following the same opinion, writes that all faculty of making war is forbidden not only to clerics, but even to laymen, in these words: “By this word Christ teaches three [things]. First, that the gospel is to be defended not by secular arms, not by human help, but that its defense is to be committed to God. Thus Paul: ‘The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.’1 Thus Christ used no sword. Secondly, in Matthew he says: ‘You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye; but I say to you, Love your enemies.’2 Thirdly, here he specially forbids to the Apostles the external sword. For they have, and ought to have, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.3 Hence Isaiah foretells that the battle of the Apostles will be as in the day of Midian — that is, as Gideon conquered the Midianites not by arms, but by trumpets and the crashing of pitchers:4 so the Apostles were about to do, spiritually.”
John Henten, the translator and scholiast of Euthymius, judges that Euthymius speaks not of the public, but of the private person. For it is lawful for no one — except the magistrate and his ministers — to use the sword by right. But as for those [things] which Ferus reasons for the assertion of his dogma, see what we have written below, Annotation 156.