Scott, who wrote novels extolling the Christian heroism of thernCrusaders.rnOh, well, I have been told, those heroes were not good Christians.rnWho says so? Not the first gentile Christian, a Romanrncenturion converted by Peter; not the Popes, who called repeatedlyrnfor Crusades; and not Archbishop Turpin, one of Roland’srncompanions, who, even with four lanceheads in his breast, diesrnfighting, surrounded by “four hundred men, / Some wounded,rnsome clean through the body cleft, / And some of them madernshorter bv the head.”rnPerhaps the greatest pressure against the rights of selfdefensernand revenge was exerted by the Christian Church,rnwhich preached forgiveness of enemies and avoidance of bloodshed.rnUnfortunately, the Church’s positions on self-help, revenge,rnand capital punishment have been seriously distorted byrnliberal theologians. In the Old Testament, of course, death isrnthe punishment for dozens of crimes—homicide, sacrilege,rnwitchcraft, adultery, etc. Cases of homicide were a family affair,rnas at Athens. A close kinsman of the victim, the avenger ofrnblood, was responsible for tracking down and killing the killer.rnThe age of “avengers of blood” had long passed by the timernof Jesus’ ministry, and it was to an empire governed by Romanrnlaw and the law of the Jewish state that earlv Christians wouldrnhave looked in their search for justice. There is no reason to assumernthat Jesus or his disciples were pacifists. Given the opportunityrnto denounce the profession of arms and capital punishment,rnneither Jesus nor his disciples spoke out.rnFor St. Paul, the sword symbolizes the power of the state torndefend its subjects from evil: “For rulers are not a terror to goodrnworks, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power?rndo that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of thernsame: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But ifrnthou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not thernsword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to executernwrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:3-4). Noternthe somewhat technical term “revenger,” “ekdikos.” The justrnruler, so far from acting as a disinterested enforcer of abstractrnrules, actually takes revenge upon the evildoer.rnThere were pacihsts and quietists in the early church, but thernmainstream of Christian theology recognized that both socialrnnecessity and justice were sometimes to be maintained onlyrnwith the sword. Homicide in self-defense is permitted by St.rnThomas so long as the force used is aimed at defense ratherrnthan killing, and there is little warrant either in Christian Scripturesrnor in the fathers for revenge killings or vendettas. For thernearly fathers, the assumption had to be that the Roman staternwas capable of dispensing justice; by the Middle Ages, justicernwas in the hands of the Emperor, kings, and minor nobles whornmight prescribe trials of ordeal or judicial combat. WhatrnChristian doctrine has trouble grappling with is the situation ofrna wild frontier, where there is no justice, with periods of insurrectionrnwhere authority breaks down, or with social conditionsrnlike that of Albania and Montenegro 100 years ago, where thernonly justice possible lay in the hands of a murdered man’s nextrnof kin.rnWhat Nietzsche and M. de Benoist appear to dislike is not sornmuch the robust faith of historic Christendom, as the mildmanneredrnSunday-school Methodism, Deism’s foster child,rnthat has replaced the militant Christianity that is inextricablyrnbound up with all that is best in our civilization.rnBenoist makes a good case for pagan generosity and tolerancernof diversity, but there are two obvious difficulties. Greekrnpagans were, it is all too true, willing to concede that other nationsrnhad their gods and that some of those gods might well bernidentical with Apollo and Zeus. In what way this differs fromrnthe transformation of satyrs into saints, against which the laternHerbert Armstrong railed for so many years, I cannot imagine.rnThe ancients did, after all, engage in persecution even beforernthe arrival of Christianity. In classical Athens—a period Irnchoose because it is the high watermark of ancient civilizationrn(why lie? of all civilization)—the prosecutions of Anaxagorasrnand Socrates, whatever the ultimate motives, prove that diversityrnof opinion had its limits. Look at the portrayal of the beerswillingrnloutish Egyptians in Aeschylus’ Supplices, if you want tornsee what Athenians thought of immigrants, or of the same peoplernin Herodotus’s Histories. The one thing we can concede tornthe Egyptians: they were exactly the kind of tolerant and openmindedrnpagans celebrated by M. de Benoist, and they disgustedrnthe Indo-European peoples he wishes to celebrate.rnLet us put our objection in a nutshell: it is this very fetish ofrntoleration and diversity that has landed us where we are, and asrna defender of the West agamst our enemies, neopagans mayrnturn out to be no more reliable than an American Catholicrnbishop or a Congregationalist Food Stamp facilitator.rnAny dream of a new civilization liberated from the ancientrnfaith is a progressive fantasy. Man will have religion, and if herncannot get the genuine article he will settle for any cheaprnknockoff he can get his hands on: Marxism, feminism, Gaiaworship,rnself-actualization cults, scientific racism, the Men’srnMovement, Scientology. Bereft of God, we shall only worshiprnGolden Calfs or moonfaced gurus. A civilized nonbelieverrnshould work very hard to preserve Christianity as a civilized institutionrnthat channeled the religious impulse away from vulgarrnnonsense and into activities that have given us most of ourrngreatest art and literature. The works of the Deists, which haverndone so much to subvert Christendom, he would want burnedrnby the public hangman.rnThe EastA^’est conflict today reminds us of our connectionsrnwith the Greeks and with that form of Christianity that tookrnshape in the territory of the Roman emperors whom Westernrnbarbarians insisted on calling kings of the Greeks. Our betrayalrnof our Orthodox brothers led to the fall of Constantinople, thernnear-conquest of Christian Europe by the Muslims, the subversionrnof every revolution against the Turkish rulers of thernBalkans, and now—as prelude to the last act, when the followersrnof a prophet every bit absurd as the Reverend Moon havernbeen pouring into Bosnia to firm up the staging area for theirrnjihad against Europe—we are still fighting among ourselves,rnlike Uniate and Orthodox Greeks on the eve of the Turkish entryrninto Constantinople: Catholic against Protestant, WesternrnChristendom against Eastern, freethinkers against believersrnagainst Jews against pagans.rnIt is not that these quarrels are insignificant, but, from thernpoint of view of the civilization, they are family quarrels amongrnpeople who share a language of discourse and cultural referencernthat is completely foreign to the Muslims, fetishists, andrncultists, who cannot tell the difference between Nietzsche andrnSt. Paul. They want our blood, our treasure, our women, ourrnnations. Sentimental Christians would hand everything over tornthem in the name of charity, and some sentimental pagansrnmight do the same, admiring the vigor and persistence of thernbarbarians at the gates.rn10/CHRONlCLESrnrnrn