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  • Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity
  • Tadd Ruetenik
Rob Arner . Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010. Pp. xvi + 136. Paper, US$17.00. ISBN 978-1-686-08612-4.

The author of this work is admirable, certainly for his willingness to argue for a position that, taken in its entirety, runs counter to almost all of Christianity. In his small but ambitious project, Rob Arner argues that Christian ethics should involve moral opposition to abortion, but also to war, capital punishment, and suicide. Such a position, he [End Page 301] indicates, is "neither 'liberal' nor conservative,' for it cuts across all human ideological distinctions, challenging all to uphold the dignity and value of each human person from conception to death" (xv). Arner notes that when he presents his view, liberals applaud his condemnations of war but shuffle uncomfortably when he makes anti-abortion statements. Likewise, conservatives nod their agreement to anti-abortion statements and are uncomfortable with his criticism of war. That Arner is willing to make a Christian challenge to Christian comfort zones is laudable, and his skill in presenting this challenge is evident.

The book is most memorable in its explanation of what Arner refers to as "three moments in the cycle of violence" (7). Using figures such as Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, and Paul Hill, who killed an abortion doctor, Arner identifies three stages of immorality: an initial act of violence, the "vigilante" response, and then the state-sanctioned killing that purportedly rectifies the whole matter. Arner, to his credit, allows McVeigh and Hill to speak here: McVeigh points out the hypocrisy of concern for American civilian deaths while being unconcerned about similar American-perpetrated deaths in Iraq; Hill argues that a true believer in the anti-abortion cause should do exactly what he did in order to prevent a greater loss of life. Hill's arguments are particularly well articulated, and indeed valid—if one accepts, of course, the legitimacy of violence. What Arner ends up doing, I believe, is making McVeigh and Hill into martyrs, not for the particular causes they themselves believed in, but for the general cause of Christian non-violence. Such a conclusion is as disturbing as it is compelling.

Arner's consistently pro-life position is not unique, of course. Official Catholic morality, for example, has opposed abortion, capital punishment, and assisted suicide, and has at least put limits on war. The author's position goes a step further, however, by noting that "before the Constantinian synthesis necessitated the development of 'just war' notions, killing in war was always rejected as an acceptable option for Christians" (71). What Arner shows is that the ancient Church, organized around the Apostolic Tradition, was so opposed to military idolatry and killing that people who did such things were subject to excommunication. One could still remain a soldier if converted to Christianity while enlisted, but one could not take the military oath and would have to refuse killing, even under direct orders to do so. One could thus be a soldier and Christian but would have to renounce most of what soldiers do and are. Arner argues that this is the original, and, more importantly, the most consistently Christian view, one that has been buried since the Constantinian synthesis.

In addition, Arner shows that the ancient Church was opposed to the Greco-Roman practice of abortion and infanticide, done not only because of deformity, but also for cosmetic concerns, or to promote population control. He also shows, importantly, that the Christian anti-abortion view is also anti-patriarchal. The Roman notion of paterfamilias, he notes, gave the father life-and-death control of his family. "Against such a backdrop," he argues, "the slaughter of Bethlehem's boys as ordered by Rome's puppet king Herod (Matthew 2:16) is not such an inscrutably large leap" (57). Arner's theological argument is briefly supplemented by positions not limited to the authority of Christian tradition. He quotes anti-abortion feminist Sydney Callahan, whose work questions "the moral logic of connecting the liberation of women with the...

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