Swords into Ploughshares

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. ISAIAH 2:4

Near the end of On the Incarnation, Athanasius turns from arguments to facts. He has reasoned with the philosophers; now he points to what anyone can see. Look at what has happened in the world since Christ came, he says. Look at what He is doing now. No mere man could have done this. And the evidence he chooses is not miracles of healing or wonders in the sky. It is changed lives.

What the philosophers could not do

He begins with a comparison that must have stung his educated readers. The wise men of Greece, he says, wrote a great deal about immortality and virtue, and yet they could hardly persuade even a few of their own neighbours. They argued among themselves, envied one another, and their influence ended with their deaths. But Christ, he says, “by ordinary language, and by men not clever with the tongue, has throughout all the world persuaded whole churches full of men to despise death, and to mind the things of immortality.”

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. 1 CORINTHIANS 1:26–27

That is still one of the great arguments for the faith. The gospel did not spread through the eloquence of its preachers or the power of its patrons. It spread through fishermen and tentmakers, slaves and widows, whose lives had been changed. Athanasius asks his readers to explain that.

The fierce made gentle

Then he describes what he regarded as one of the plainest signs of all. Before Christ, he says, the nations beyond the empire’s borders lived by the sword. It was impossible to cross land or sea without weapons in hand; the sword was their staff and their support. And yet, when such people heard the teaching of Christ, they laid down their savagery. He has a memorable line for it: “instead of arming their hands with weapons they raise them in prayer.”

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. MATTHEW 5:9

And they did not stop fighting altogether, he says; they changed their enemy. Instead of warring against each other, they now stood against the devil and evil spirits, subduing them by self-control and virtue. They became self-restrained in youth, patient under insult, generous when robbed, and brave in the face of death.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. EPHESIANS 6:12

He saw the same change in the new virtue of chastity. In a world where self-indulgence was taken for granted, young men and women were choosing lives of purity for Christ’s sake. Adulterers became faithful, murderers laid down the sword, cowards played the man. Who, he asks, has done this, if not the Saviour?

A physician for Egypt

The Life of Antony shows the same thing on a smaller scale. Athanasius describes the old hermit in his later years as a kind of physician given by God to all Egypt. He writes that no one came to him in grief who did not go home rejoicing; no one came mourning his dead who did not put off his sorrow; no one came in anger who was not turned to friendship. Poor men went away content, careless monks went away strengthened, and young men went away resolved to live soberly.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. MATTHEW 11:28

There is some idealising in the picture, as there always is when a disciple writes about a master he loved. But the point stands. Where Christ is present, through His people, lives are changed — not only in dramatic conversions but in the steady healing of anger, grief, greed and fear.

Evidence we can offer

What Athanasius offers here is a kind of evidence every Christian can give. Not every believer can argue with philosophers. But every believer can say, with the man born blind, One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see (John 9:25). The changed life is the most persuasive argument there is, because it cannot easily be dismissed.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

It is also a searching test. If the proof of Christ’s power is changed lives, then the question comes back to us. Are we living proof or living counter-evidence? Does anyone who knows us see in us the gentleness, purity and courage that Athanasius saw in the Christians of his day?

An honest word

A careful reader will notice that Athanasius was sometimes too confident. He wrote as though the triumph of the gospel over idolatry and violence was nearly complete, and as though Christian peoples would never again take up the sword against each other. History has not been kind to that hope. Within a few generations of his death, Christians were killing Christians over doctrine and power, and the church has too often blessed wars it should have condemned. Athanasius’s own party in Alexandria, as we have noted, was accused of using force.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 7:21

But the failures of Christians do not cancel the power of Christ. They only show that the change He works is not automatic, and that it is always at war with what remains of the old nature. The swords beaten into ploughshares are real, in countless lives. The call is for us to be among them.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write a short, honest account of one way Christ has changed your life. Be ready to tell it to someone this month.

2. Name one area of your life where the old sword is still in your hand — anger, a grudge, a harsh tongue. Ask Christ to beat it into a ploughshare.

3. Consider someone you know who is weighed down by grief, anger or fear. How could you be, in a small way, a physician for them this week?

4. Where Christians have used force or violence in Christ’s name, pray that the church will repent and learn the way of peace.

5. Read sections 50 to 52 of On the Incarnation and list every change Athanasius says Christ has made in people.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You have changed the fierce into the gentle and the fearful into the brave, and You are still doing it.

Thank You for every life You have remade, and for what You have begun in mine.

Take out of my hands whatever sword I still hold, and teach me to raise them in prayer.

Make me living evidence that You are alive, for the sake of those who do not yet believe. Amen.