Article Sidebar
Published:
Aug 11, 2021Keywords:
Article Details
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Main Article Content
A critical look at Didache 1:4b and its reflection on the non-retaliation of the Nigerian church
Prince E. Peters
Abstract
Didache1:4b – ἐὰν λάβῃ τίς ἀπὸ σοῦ τὸ σόν, μὴ ἀπαἱτει, οὐδὲ γὰρ δύνασαι [if anyone takes something from you that is yours, do not ask it back, because you should not or would not be able to] – is discussed in this article as problematic to the present mindset of the Nigerian church, especially as frontal attacks and premeditated persecutions from rival religions daily threaten to exterminate the Christian faith in Nigeria. This article argues that the Christians in Nigeria unwittingly interpreted this first-century document and wrongly so because this interpretation has metamorphosed into an ideology. The article suggests a sharp measure against this ideology.
Contribution: The church in Nigeria is controlled in their attitude towards self-defense by the text of Didache 1:4b. This article’s contribution is a reexamination of the text in comparison to its parallel in the synoptic texts to assert that the synoptic texts, instead of Didache 1:4b, suggests non-violent self-defense.
