Soldiers and Saints: the Fighting Man and the Christian Life

Abstract

Courage is a virtue that has always been prized. The Old French source of the word, ‘corage’, goes back to the Latin root ‘cor’, heart, and signifies the spirit of a man: ‘lion-heart’ is a traditional image for bravery (as in the portrayal of Richard I in Scott’s Ivanhoe). Epic heroes were expected to have courage: the Aeneid begins ‘Arma virumque cano’ — I sing of arms and the man — and Aeneas is one who is not only ‘pius’ — respectful of the loyalties to family and country — and one who is ‘buffeted on sea and land’, but also one who is ‘multa quoque et bello passus’ — much enduring in war also. Although Milton endeavoured to write another kind of epic, rejecting ‘Wars, hitherto the only argument /Heroic deemed’, he too would have recognized the importance of the image of war as signifying the spiritual battle that takes place between good and evil in the human soul. The idea was common as a book-title in the seventeenth century: Benjamin Keach published War with the Devil in 1673, and Bunyan’s The Holy War appeared in 1672. In Bunyan’s narrative Diabolus gets possession of the town of Mansoul, which has to be retaken by Emmanuel. It is an elaborate recasting of the Christian life in terms of siege warfare, which Bunyan was familiar with from his service in the Parliamentary army. Bunyan’s awareness of the importance of fighting is found supremely in The Pilgrim’s Progress, where in Part II there is the noble figure of Mr Valiant-for-Truth.