Nov 1: All (soldier) Saints
Back in 2014, I was studying in Scotland and I decided to write a listicle, the pseudo-essays of Buzzfeed renown. What better way to lead up to Veterans Day than to profile soldier saints who blur the line between patriot and pacifist? Too often, military families get used as little more than props by theological extremists to either vilify or venerate them; as though there are no shades of grey between military martyr Maximilian of Tebessa and American sniper Chris Kyle. Seven years ago, a celebrity Christian agreed to amplify my #10Saints10days series but …didn’t. You can read about that exchange over at The ☧ost.
Since then I’ve realized something - there are actually 12 days from All Saints to Veterans Day, if you count the holy days. Oh, and also that Christians can be petty AF when their ideological commitments supersede our collective faith. The good news, however, is also hard. Not only are those petty-ass “Christians” my brothers and sisters, I can be petty too. We are ALL saints, even if we’re still also a little sinner in all of us. In the same way, soldier saints must not be excised from our faith just because we don’t like what we think they stand for. There are both pacifists and patriots who make up the Church, both the dearly departed of the Church Triumphant as well as the living saints of the Church Militant. We don’t need fewer saints, we need more. So this year I’m rebooting my soldier saints listicle with not just ten lucky lives, but twelve. And this time I’m mainlining it, going for the jugular, the New Testament itself:
Jesus
Rakes
CPT Marvel
Loginus
Cornelius
Sergius Paulus
Dez
Julius
Timothy
Philemon
But before we get to the individual soldier saints, what does it mean that the Church is ‘militant’ or that early Christians referred to themselves as milites Christi, soldiers of Christ. What does it mean that the whole body of believers is the army of God, the militia Dei?
Militia Dei
Latin is fun, but the New Testament was written in Greek, and the Hebrew Scriptures are in, well, Hebrew. We have to rewind our brains and forget the associations we have between armies and violence since that is not the primary function of militaries. Rather those who served were gibôr ḥayil, a phrase meaning something like ‘brave strongmen.’ An equivalent might be citizen-soldiers, like the Minutemen of colonial militias, an especially skilled martial minority.
Deuteronomy 20 makes lots of exemptions to military service, not just women and clergy; including those who are new homeowners, farmers, newlyweds, or ‘tender-hearted.’ After these exemptions, you the full saba Yehovah (H6635, Exodus 12:41), the whole military of God. This ‘army’ is not first and foremost for fighting, laham (H3898), because that is the work of the Lord; "YHWH will laham for you, and you have only to" shut the fµ¢k up and be still. (Exodus 14:14).
The ṣāḇā Yᵊhōvâ is a subgroup within the wider eda Y’israel, the whole “congregation” of Israel, that transcends tribal affiliation. If the eda (H5712) is the whole nation, then saba' is the ‘rank and file,’ an organizational body less meant to fight alongside than to form up before YHWH. This is why the closest cognate to saba is seba (H6634), to summon or persuade.
The Greek equivalent to ṣāḇā is stratia (G4756), from stratos, as in stratosphere. In fact, the first time ṣāḇā appears in Scripture is in Genesis, “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” (2:1, NIV). In Greek literature, individual stratiotes were commoners obligated to serve their nobles, a synonym of laikos, from which Christians get the word “layperson.” Violence is far from the primary meaning of these words, even if it is there. In Isaiah 9:5. It is noteworthy that seon sa’an (H5430, H5431, "the boots of the tramping warriors") are cognates of the noun seia (ruler 📏) and the verb sa’ssaeia (to measure).
It is 👏 no 👏 coincidence 👏 that the Gospel of Matthew quotes from Isaiah 9 before describing God’s earthly ministry in Christ, our Ruler, and the full measure of humanity. If “YHWH is a warrior” (Exodus 15:3), that makes Jesus a military brat. It makes sense since Nazareth was a military town, Israel’s Fayette’nam, and his earthly ministry takes the form of a successful military campaign reminiscent of the one undertaken by his namesake, Joshua. And it is to him we shall turn next… 😁
All saints are milites Christi, constituent parts of the militia Dei. If it feels weird to get behind the military language of the Bible, it’s because we have forgotten to read Scripture as one body of Christ with many members. We have looked at the corruption that surrounds us and assumed that’s how things really are. Pacifists talk of My Lai and Haditha as natural consequences of military intervention rather than its worst failures, and patriots circle the wagons of self-justification rather than admonish their own. When we read scripture closely and honestly, we will see that the truth is always more complicated than it is convenient: simple but deep.
Here are the (soldier) Saints I’ll cover here':
“Jesus” [Joshua]
Rakes of Luke 3&7
CPT Marvel
Loginus of Legend
Cornelius the Centurion
Sergius Paulus the
Dez the Jailer
Julius the Sailor
Timothy the soldier of Christ
Philemon the enslaver
