Killing at god's command: Niketas Byzantios' polemic against Islam and the Christian tradition of divinely sanctioned murder

Author： Krausmüller DIRK

Publisher： Routledge Ltd

ISSN： 0950-3110

Source： Al Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, Vol.16, Iss.1, 2004-03, pp. : 163-176

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Abstract

My article has two objectives: I discuss aspects of the Byzantine debate about the principles on which a Christian value system should be based and I show how this debate was mirrored in Byzantine polemics against Islam. My starting point is a ninth-century controversy between the Byzantine philosopher Niketas Byzantios (fl. c. 850) and an anonymous Muslim author. The Muslim author justified the concept of holy war by arguing that murder can be either licit or illicit, depending on whether or not the action is approved of by God. Niketas rejected this argument as irreconcilable with Christian ethics, maintaining that for Christians murder is always bad. However, in doing so Niketas departed from earlier Christian positions, developed in anti-Manichaean polemic and Biblical exegesis, which either defined killing as a neutral act or rejected an essentialist approach in favour of God's will as the overriding criterion.