Skip to content

Add your phone number?

Optional. Nothing is sent unless you choose it.
The Historic Faith
Sign in

Jumpstarter 7 of 10

Ideas to help restart your discussion
Will the Theologians Please Sit Down  /  Chapter 17: Commentaries that Muffle God's Word  /  Discussion Questions
All Questions
Question 7
If early Christians took “love your enemies…do good…pray for” as a direct command from Jesus (as Bercot implies Calvin sidestepped), what practices and communal instincts would you expect to see in the early church regarding enemies, persecution, and state violence?
Another way to ask: If early Christians treated “love your enemies…do good…pray for” as a direct command, what habits would you expect them to have when facing enemies, persecution, and government violence?

Direct Answer The transcript doesn’t directly describe early-church practices, but it implies that taking Jesus’ words at face value would produce a community shaped by active benevolence toward enemies and a refusal to reinterpret commands to make room for violence. The instinct would be to obey “love…do good…pray for,” not to find exceptions.

Support from Transcript:

  • Jesus’ command is quoted with specific actions: “Love your enemies, bless…do good…pray for those who…persecute you.”
  • Bercot says Calvin “skillfully wiped out this teaching” by claiming Jesus introduced “no new laws,” thereby removing its “radical implication.”
  • He draws the moral outcome of Calvin’s move: if war was allowed under the law, “it still is allowable to Christians,” implying the opposite reading would resist that conclusion.
  • In the same chapter, Bercot criticizes explaining away Jesus’ teachings on oaths and nonresistance, suggesting a consistent early-Christian posture would be straightforward obedience.
Discussion Follow-ups If a church really practiced “do good” to persecutors, what would that change about its politics and reactions to threats? What would it stop justifying as “necessary”?

Jumpstarter 7 of 10
Back Questions Next