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Docta Ignorantia LXXXI Tillich On War Tillich no doubt talks about Christian soldiers somewhere -- he was one! WWI German Army Chaplain -- but I don't know where. He mentions Templars in a book of lectures I have -- "certain warrior monastics" he calls them -- but doesn't discuss theology and war there. In Vol III of the Systematics on page 53 and page 387, especially the latter, he deals with war as a subject. The discussion is very abstract but right about critical matters. St. Paul frequently uses warrior-hood and soldiery to describe the Christian life and Mohammed did, of course, developing the concept of Holy War or Jihad, which is not a killing of folks such as these extremists do but rather a war on the negative, down-ward-dragging impulses in one's own heart, to eradicate them. Paul uses the phrase "put on the whole armor of Christ." And he means of this what Tillich/Augustine stands for -- the approach to God in which man discovers himself by discovering God. Tillich is from the tradition of German Pietism focused at the great university town of Halle in Prussia, where he got his degree. Pietism is one of the movements under which Templarism went after it sequestered itself. It is Franciscan in nature. The path or Dharma (Calling, Proper Conduct) of the soldier is to secure the Blessing of God by practicing the fundamental spiritual virtue, detachment. You remember that when the world was made a Voice was heard over the waters which said: "Renunciation is the foundation of life." As MacArthur said in his Thayer speech, the soldier is called upon to practice the most fundamental spiritual virtue, detachment (renunciation of attachment to the body). Soldiering is itself a spiritual path and an essential aspect of alll spiritual paths, whether directly soldiering or not. We founded Adwaitha Hermitage on soldierly qualities of Franciscan, Benedictine and Jesuit spiritualities. This is stated in the founding document. The purpose of war is to eliminate negative tendencies from the community by uprooting them from the hearts of people. People put themselves in the way of having to be killed because they refuse to repent (literally, turh around), to uproot the negative tendencies they have and so others have to go at them to eliminate them from the body politic, to keep it healthy. Criminals are put away for the same reason. An irony is that the body -- which gets killed in war -- takes the punishment that rightly belongs to the heart or the mind. When war or punishment is necessary, the culprit is the mind or the heart but the victim that has to take the heat is the body, which is morally neutral, a mere inert instrument. Also, in his Theology of Culture, see starting on p 133 and p 40. There might be something there. This little volume, BTW, is a superb gem. A summary. The second (p. 10) chapter is something you should memorize, at least in principle, because he gives there the absolute unchangeable structure of reality. It will help you now in your discussion of soldier because it lays the most basic survey of the actual ground we all must walk.
Adwaitha Hermitage
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