Brian Hamilton-Vise

It is unlawful for clerics to kill

“It is unlawful for clerics to kill, for two reasons. First, because they are chosen for the ministry of the altar, on which is represented the passion of Christ slain ‘who, when he was struck, did not strike’ (1 Pet. 2:23). Therefore it does not become clerics to strike or kill–for ministers should imitate their master, according to Ecclesiasticus 10:2 (‘As the judge of the people is himself, so also are his ministers’). The other reason is because clerics are entrusted with the ministry of the New Law, in which no punishment of death or bodily maiming is appointed. And so, in order that they may be fitting ministers of the New Testament, they should abstain from such things.” —Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, 64.4 (respondeo)

A few things to notice here:

• Thomas is not at all dismissive of the idea that the nonresistant character of Jesus’ life is in a very important respect exemplary for some of us. This puts him at odds with the (frequently Calvinist) argument that Jesus’ voluntary death, because it was atoning, is absolutely unique and should not affect the way we think about violence.
• Nor does he project life under the New Law wholly beyond history. The New Law is, for Thomas, already in force, and the kind of kingdom it generates is already visible. This puts him at odds with the (more Niebuhrian) argument that, though the kind of world Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount is normative in the form of an ideal, its realization is impossible so long as sin remains constitutive of our common life.
• Rather, he restricts the range of the temporal normativity of Jesus’ example. Jesus’ death is indeed exemplary, and the New Law is indeed in force, for priests. (He elsewhere comes to the same conclusion about certain vowed religious, but on slightly different grounds.) And in this case, Jesus’ example is absolutely binding. I’ve not found a place where Thomas deals with the consequences of a priest actually shedding blood, against this injunction, but here and elsewhere it’s clear that killing renders a priest unfit for his priestly duty, unfit to celebrate the sacrament of the altar.

One could at least understand, I think, the idea that clerics have a special vocation to the imitation of Christ’s form of death that not all Christians are required to share. But he simply assumes, without trying to justify himself, that the laity are altogether excluded from this form of imitation and from witness to this aspect of the New Law. And he excludes them with the stupidly feeble argument, “it is necessary sometimes for a man to act otherwise [than according to Jesus' command not to resist evil] for the common good” (ST II-II, q. 40, a. 1, ad. 2).

8 April 2009 | Comments (0)
Tags: Ethics, Thomas Aquinas