Dilemmas of a Socinian Pacifist in Seventeenth-Century Poland

The antitrinitarian Polish Brethren, from the inception of their denomination as a breakaway from the Calvinist Reformed Church in 1565, had earnestly debated the issue of whether a "true Christian" might collaborate in the workof the sword-bearing magistracy, take part in war, or kill a fellow human being in self-defense. Whereas the brotherhood in the militarily exposed Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with a few exceptions, gave a positive answer, the congregational leaders in the more secure kingdom of Poland for the most part said no. To do any of these things, the latterargued, entailed disobedience to Jesus' commandments as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the New Testament. For Christ replaced the laws of the Old Testament, which had allowed the ancient Israelites to wage just wars and wield the sword for good cause, with a gospel of love and defenselessness. This doctrine of nonresistance the pacifist Brethren, of course, had taken over from the Anabaptists of central Europe, whose insistence on adult baptism they also adopted

Anabaptists · Baptism · Doctrine · Gospel · Israelites · Old Testament · Political science · Protestantism · Sermon · SWORD · Theology · Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies

• Reassessing the Polish Brethren on Magistracy, Pacifism, and Warfare in the Seventeenth Century

  Open Access•Francesco Quatrini•The Historical Journal•2020

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