Читать книгу The Second-Century Apologists - Alvyn Pettersen - Страница 10

The second-century Greco-Roman world, generally speaking, was one of confidence, peace, and prosperity. “Wars,” Aelius Aristides of Smyrna wrote in c.145, “have so vanished as to be but legends of the past.”1 “A person travels,” he continued, “from one country to another as though it were his homeland.”2 These reflections may, of course, be not wholly true. For they may well contain an element of flattery, having, at least nominally, been addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius. Yet they are neither unparalleled nor out of keeping with what was generally acknowledged to be the case then.

Peace and prosperity in the Empire

Certainly the early second-century empire was sufficiently confident and at ease with itself that it was able to tolerate irritating minorities such as Stoic philosophers and Christ­ians. The emperor Trajan [98–117], commenting, for example, on the anonymous denunciations of Christ­ians by inhabitants of the province of Pontus, maintained that such denunciations were “not in keeping with the spirit of the age.”3 Nor had the situation changed that much by the 170s when, in his Plea, the Christ­ian Apologist Athenagoras wrote of the emperors Marcus Aurelius’s and Commodus’s humanity shown to all, of the equality of everyone before the law, and, assuming that it is more than a mere rhetorical flourish, of “the profound peace that prevailed in the empire.”4 Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons and Vienne [fl.178], meanwhile, wrote of the peace and security then enjoyed even by Christ­ians. In words that echoed Aristides’s, Irenaeus paid tribute to the imperial law, noting that through Rome’s agency “the world [was] at peace and [even Christ­ians could] walk the highways without fear and sail where [they] wished.”5

Such self-confidence, peace, and security were due in large part to the above-average ability as soldiers and administrators of the rulers of the empire from Nerva [96–98] to Marcus Aurelius [161–180]. This ability these rulers put at the service of their overarching aims, made known to all through the coinage then circulating, namely security, with an ensuing freedom of movement, growth in trade, with an increasing prosperity for many, and a uniform system of justice for all; and these overarching imperial aims were then to be realized locally by a provincial élite. At the same time, the way in which the empire was understood was changing. The former division of “Greek” and “barbarian” was gradually giving way to the distinction between “Roman” and “non-Roman”; provinces increasingly were thought of as a part of the empire; and provincial élites were viewed as the equals of the élites in Italy, and even of those in Rome.

Peace and prosperity, it is true, were not unbroken. There were occasional raids by groups based in northern Africa and in parts of Asia Minor. There were, for example, intermittent persecutions of Christ­ians in eastern Bithynia in 112 and in Gaul in 177. There was a resumption of the war against the Germans in 178. However, these were interruptions in an otherwise lengthy period of general political stability.

In this generally long season of peace, and as a result of it, almost every level of society of the many city-states of the second-century Greco-Roman world benefitted. Romanization led to better buildings being erected; streets increasingly were paved; public sanitation was greatly improved. It was, however, not only life in the individual city-states that was enhanced. So too were the relationships between the various city-states. For trade, common currency, and increasingly similar administrative systems began to bind not only individual city-state to individual city-state but also many city-states together within the one empire. No wonder then that Celsus, taunting Christ­ians in c.178, wrote that whatever Christ­ians received in this world, they received from the emperor.6 Nor was Celsus alone in thinking so. By the end of the second century there were not many provincials who would have questioned the statement that the benefits that they all enjoyed derived from their emperor. Indeed, there were not many provincials who would have balked at the suggestion that, in some sense, the emperor embodied the empire, even as the head of a family embodied a family. For, even as in a family, the traditional basis of Roman society, the paterfamilias exercised almost complete authority, especially in and through his providing for and protecting his family members, so any emperor, committed to following Augustus’s example in rebuilding the empire’s security and stability, exercised similar authority. In some sense, the emperor was the paterfamilias of the empire. He was the empire’s ultimate provider and peace-maker. He was to be honored and obeyed.

That said, it is not possible to understand the second-century Greco-Roman Empire simply in terms of ruling emperors, well-administered provinces, and any ensuing peace and prosperity. For the empire then was not deemed to be secular in the modern sense of the word “secular.” Celsus’s thought that whatever people received in this world they had received from the emperor was held to be true by many. It was, however, also held by many to be less than the whole truth. For it was then also believed to be true that the gods of the Greco-Roman cults played a significant role in the maintenance of the empire’s peace and prosperity. Without the pax deorum, the “peace of the gods” of the empire, there could be no pax Romana, Roman peace. Religion was therefore an inalienable part of daily life, in both the home and the public sphere.

Religion in the empire

The worship of the gods of the imperial cult was an ancient practice, founded upon the belief not only that the cult had helped individuals and their cities come into being, and then come so far and for so long, but also that, had the cult not been faithfully practiced, the life of the few for whom life had been bleak would have been yet bleaker. It was therefore commonly held that a person, and, by extension, a city, could not be too careful. It was better to honor all the gods than to offend even one. For even one offended god might wreak havoc on the life of a person or a community. It is true that some with philosophical inclinations had more sophisticated understandings of the gods. For instance, the Skeptics thought that the gods were modelled on people’s social relationships on earth, that the cults and the images of the gods were valid only because they already existed, and that their purpose was but to promote civic cohesion. Platonists too approached the gods differently from the general populace, having long held that the Homeric epics and the ancient myths of the gods were allegories, that, when interpreted aright, explained the world and humanity’s place within it. Such ideas, however, were too subtle for most people and were largely ineffective when it came to changing the attitudes and practices of the vast majority. So, the vast majority of people continued to worship the gods and practice the ancient cult. Indeed, an individual might continue to worship a number of gods, not necessarily in succession, but at one and the same time. Certainly, it must be admitted, an individual might adhere to one particular deity as his or her particular protector; but that individual would not have “converted” to that deity, to the exclusion of all other deities. Indeed, there was no need to “convert.” For some understood a local god as the local expression of a god worshipped elsewhere and many operated with a form of polytheism, which, stripped to its essentials, could be reduced to the formula, “you cannot be too careful; so worship them all.” An extreme example of this urge in late classical piety to cover all eventualities is manifest in the erection of an altar on the Areopagus in Athens dedicated to the “unknown god.”7 Furthermore, many, while honoring one god, deemed to be the “high” god, were yet conscious that, in honoring their “high” god, they were, at one and the same time, also honoring lesser deities, subordinates of “their” one high god. For some, in fact, the more local, lesser deities were included in the Roman imperial pantheon, and the more these were honored, the fuller and the richer became the honor and worship of the one who was the “high” god of that pantheon. The worship of such a “high” god did not therefore amount to monotheism, even as it did not preclude a priest being a priest of more than one deity.

Such was possible for the vast majority of the second-century Greco-Roman world for two main reasons. Firstly, in the pursuit of religion it was rites that were important. What therefore the cult demanded of an individual was an act, particularly the religious ceremony of sacrificing to the gods. Secondly, there was no particular interest in a person’s beliefs, no demand that an individual should affirm certain beliefs and deny others. So, to accuse people of being “atheists” was therefore to accuse them, not of failing to believe in a god or gods, but of being unwilling to engage in the act of sacrificing to the empire’s gods, which, to most people then, amounted to both an unreadiness to honor the god or gods and a refusal to seek to appease them, and so to take part in the common effort to sustain or to restore the pax Romana. Heresy (haeresis) then, therefore, had no sense of “heresy” as now generally understood. Rather, it meant “choice,” an individual’s choosing the thinking and associated practices of one or more schools of thought. Thus, “heresy” for most people then bore not a sense of false doctrine but of choice, where no choice in and of itself was wrong. The opposite of heterodoxy therefore was not orthodoxy, but homodoxy, “agreement.”

At least two social consequences followed from this. Firstly, given that, in the second-century empire, there was a galaxy of gods, a variety of cults, and a readiness of people to respect, if not to engage in, the differing religious practices of the time, imperial religion, not surprisingly, became a very strong, widely shared bond that held the empire together, particularly in times of internal turmoil and external threat.

Secondly, beliefs were important for people like the Jews and the Christ­ians, even to the point of being the basis both used for excluding certain religious choices, certain “haereses,” and for directing the doing of (or refraining from) particular acts, whatever the cost. Any belief-based resistance on the part of a Jew or a Christ­ian to, for example, sacrificing to a Roman deity therefore reeked of obstinacy and intransigence.8 Indeed, often it was interpreted as a standing in the way of that which united the empire, especially when the empire was particularly vulnerable to fragmentation. Such religious people seemed therefore to stand in marked contrast with those who practiced the cult of the empire; and their understandings of proper social engagement differed greatly.

Nor could these contrasts and differences be seen as easy bedfellows. Practicing the imperial cult involved the giving of gifts and the making of sacrifices, given and made in thanksgiving and for propitiation. As in daily life, so in the imperial cult, two themes dominated, that of personal honor and that of giving in order that one might receive in return. It was, therefore, thought, firstly, that deities, being not just important patrons but also powers of immense superiority, demanded the highest honors. Secondly, it was further believed that, if deities were not granted the highest honors, they might become angry. Thirdly, it was also thought that, although deities could be very generous givers, they were not committed givers, bound to giving regular gifts in return. For these reasons it was therefore necessary always to honor all gods (other people’s as well as one’s own), not to allow anyone to dishonor any gods through, for example, excluding themselves from the cults, and always to appease the gods, for fear lest they might, just possibly, be angry. For a person never knew if, when, or how a god might have been outraged; and if a god, by chance, had been outraged, that same person never knew whether the result would be that the god would then not support or would even punish that individual, his family or her city-state or empire. Such contrasted greatly with Christ­ian beliefs, which insisted on monotheism, resisted the thought that people, mere creatures, could lay any claim upon God, the Creator of all, and maintained that God was ever faithful, always generous. God, Christ­ians held, was to be honored, and the divine name was to be hallowed, simply and solely because God was God.

That people held that the gods of the empire needed appeasing is evidenced variously. A local leader might call upon his people to sacrifice to the local deities when he wished to win the favor of the gods in order to counter a local threat. A school teacher, introducing pupils to the Homeric myths, could not avoid those passages that spoke of gods being angered either by the absence or the dishonorable practice of sacrifice. Pausanias [c.110–180], given to rationalizing the more bizarre aspects of myths, nevertheless left untouched those that told of a god’s anger, to be discerned in earthquakes and famines and to be appeased by people performing appropriate religious rituals at local shrines. In a speech to the Roman Senate in c.203, Manilius Fuscus, a future governor of Asia, advocated all due worship and veneration of the immortal gods, so as to ensure the continuing security of the empire. Marcus Aurelius [121–180] may have dismissed as superstition belief in the anger of the gods, but many of his contemporaries did not. Faced with famine or threat, they still consulted oracles, heeded the god’s advice as to which rite would appease the divine wrath, and performed those commended, in order to persuade the heavens to end whatever evil had befallen them.

Alongside this worship of the gods there was also the cult of the emperor. For like the gods of the cult, emperors also were held to be powerful but unreliable benefactors, whom their subjects needed always to honor. In this “human” field the precept, “give to the giver that hopefully the giver may reciprocate, and not to the person who cannot reciprocate,” was also to be followed. The powerful always needed to be gratified.

Very clearly the cult was an aspect of every part of a person’s life. It was not simply a “leisure time” pursuit, the modern day equivalent of a “weekend” hobby. People of the second century “did god” in the temple and in civic life. They “did god” in education, in tradesmen’s guilds, and in clubs. Their painters, engravers, and carvers could scarcely survive without making images of the gods or creating designs containing cultic symbols. Their soldiers had to swear loyalty to the “divine” emperor as well as to the god Mithras. Their emperor needed ever to be “kept sweet.” In short, the cult was integral to daily life, and every citizen probably had a role in it. Further, people “did god” more indirectly. For the cult impacted upon local economies. At the most basic level, any meat bought in a market probably had been slaughtered as a sacrifice in a temple. The annual feasts of societies of tradesmen generally were held in the temple of their tutelary god, their meal previously having been offered to the gods. A cult often had its own funds, its gods receiving rents from lands, offerings from collection boxes, and taxes from sacrifices. Cults and their priesthoods were therefore financially valuable. Not surprisingly therefore Greek cities increasingly both multiplied their priesthoods and then put these up for sale. In first-century Miletus, for example, the authorities decreed the number of sacrifices to be offered annually to the god Asclepius and stipulated that the cult priests should receive the hides, the entrails, and the best cuts of all animals sacrificed. This financially attractive lot the city authorities then sold, to the benefit of three parties: (i) the city authorities who devised and then auctioned the lot would have gained financially; (ii) whoever was successful in bidding for the cult’s priesthood benefitted from the cult’s increased annual business; and (iii) local merchants and businesses found their services the more in demand, especially at the times of major festivals, when pilgrims required the services of not only the cult but also market traders and providers of accommodation. Anyone then who might oppose such a local cult could find themselves having to defend their position before, at the very least, the local cult, local businesses, and other interested parties. Witness the events in Ephesus where Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, joined with others of the same trade, and rose up against the apostle Paul.9

Christ­ianity in the empire

Within this world Christ­ianity was viewed with caution, if not suspicion. In comparison with the imperial cults and with Judaism it was seen as new. Its profession and practice were as yet unauthorized. Its followers met, not publicly, but privately, in house groups. Its teaching was open to anyone who would be a catechumen, but attendance at the eucharistic mysteries was permitted only to the baptized. For many, the imperial authorities included, Christ­ianity was therefore a religion about which they could discover little. There were rumors of “love feasts,” at which attendees were urged to love their brothers and sisters, greeting one another with a kiss. There was mention of gatherings at which worshippers met to eat another’s flesh and to drink his blood. Details of such also were scarce and explanations were vague. Cults such as those of Cybele and of Bacchus, when left unchecked, could encourage incest, ritual fornication, and cannibalism. In theory, at least, Christ­ianity might be another such sect. Whatever the case, there were rumors, which, as Virgil’s Aeneid once reflected,10 could spread rapidly and could not so easily be extinguished.

Christ­ianity in the second century, as noted, was as yet unauthorized. It was a religio illicita. Despite that, Christ­ians generally were not pursued. In a letter of AD 112 to the emperor Trajan, Pliny, the emperor’s special imperial commissioner in Bithynia, recorded that, although he was a senator and lawyer and knew that Christ­ianity was illegal, he did not know why.11 He further remarked that, although Christ­ians could be obstinate and intransigent, they were no more so than, for example, the swindling town councilors of Nicea and Nicomedia.12 He then concluded that, with the emperor’s agreement, he would not pursue Christ­ians as he would criminals. If, however, they were publicly denounced and then refused both to recant and to worship the Roman gods, he would punish them.13 If not denounced, it would then seem, Pliny was minded to leave Christ­ians alone. Some twelve years later, in AD 124 or 125, Trajan’s successor, the emperor Hadrian (117–138), instructed Pliny both that people were not to seek out Christ­ians and that the general practice of not admitting charges that were presented unsigned was to apply also in the case of Christ­ians. He also mandated that a person, even when tried and then found guilty of having been a Christ­ian, was yet to be pardoned, provided that the individual found guilty then demonstrated by engaging in a public act of worship of the imperial gods that he now no longer was a Christ­ian. Further, Hadrian decreed that, if Christ­ians were to be accused, Christ­ians had to be accused in open court. Consequently, accusers were then required to bear the delay and any expenses of prosecution before a governor who generally attended a nearby assize perhaps once a year; and transparency and justice were seen to be promoted, any charges against an accused Christ­ian now having to be heard before their accusers. Hadrian then added a significant rider: if the accusation failed, the accused, in accordance with the law of calumnia, which was especially aimed at preventing unwarranted persecutions, was then permitted to petition that the accuser should suffer substantial penalties for initiating vexatious litigation. For while Hadrian did hold that a Christ­ian righty found guilty of doing anything contrary to the laws was to be punished in a way befitting the offense committed, he equally strongly maintained that anyone who levied accusations against Christ­ians “merely for the sake of libeling them” was to suffer “heavier penalties, in accordance with his heinous guilt.”14 In the 110s and 120s, there seems to have been, therefore, an imperial self-confidence that extended, in practice, to tolerating, rather than pursuing, such critical minorities as Christ­ians.

This decision by the second-century Greco-Roman Empire not to pursue Christ­ians is further reflected in the fact that between c.130 and 180 Christ­ian apologists were able to write “open letters,” formally addressed to the emperors, seeking to sway especially literate opinion that it might be more understanding of, and tolerant towards Christ­ianity. Indeed, that Christ­ian were not generally hunted down is further reflected in such debates as that in Rome between the Marcionite Apelles and the catholic Rhodo in AD 190. Rhodo had challenged Apelles to expound his faith, which Apelles did. There was, it therefore seems, at least in Rome at that time no general need for a Christ­ian to hide his or her faith and religious attachment.

That said, in the second century we do find the local and occasional hunting down of Christ­ians. Justin Martyr, for example, was denounced in 165 before the authorities in Rome by the Cynic Crescens, tried before the city prefect, Quintus Junius Rusticus, and, on refusing the demand to sacrifice, was condemned to death. This kind of pursuit of Christ­ians, however, seems to have been local and occasional, and generally was instigated by individuals and trade associations, and not by imperial representatives.

In this generally tolerant era churches then sought to win converts, a practice generally followed neither by the synagogue nor by the cults of the empire. For the Jews mainly were racially exclusive and did not engage in proselytizing; and the cults did not see the need to convince a person of the reality of their own gods and the unreality of other people’s gods, no one being either able or willing to say that this cult was true and that not, and everyone wishing rather to establish the peaceful co-existence of all cults.

The majority of those who then converted to Christ­ianity were converts from a paganism that allowed a mass of gods, even in one individual’s life, to an exclusive religion that believed in one God alone. Conversion to Christ­ianity therefore required its converts to renounce all other gods and any practices associated with, or which might promote, the deities left behind. So Christ­ians, both neophytes and those of long standing, withdrew their children from schools. For the capricious and, if understood literally, often immoral behavior of, for example, the Homeric gods featured in the curricula of local schools; and cultic observances punctuated school timetables. Tertullian described aspects of school life in north Africa in c.200. The cost of offerings to Minerva was taken from the fees of new pupils. Sacrifices frequently were offered. Prize-givings, when local dignitaries were present, were marked by cultic observances. Holidays were taken on the festivals of various gods.15 By such inclusion of the cult in a school’s life, even when such inclusion was only informal, a school modelled cultic practices. Indeed, in modelling such practices, a school provided a context in which the cult might be “caught” by its pupils, an altogether more subtle manner of “indoctrination” than any effected through teaching about a cult and its customs.

Christ­ians further withdrew from wider society by, for example, avoiding buying meat in the markets, given the meat’s provenance generally being a temple’s sacrificial practices. This they did, even though it might have financial consequences for their town’s economy. For their loyalty to the one God trumped their loyalty to their local town’s economy.

Christ­ians also increasingly refused to enter certain trades, even demanding that converts to Christ­ianity who worked in any such “prohibited” trade should resign. If converts did not resign, they yet were to be very mindful that the Christ­ian faith was to be sincerely and honestly lived daily, whatever the cost to their professional lives. So Christ­ian converts who were painters, sculptors, and carvers were required not to undertake any commissions that might promote what to the Christ­ian was idolatry. A soldier, who had not resigned from the army, was to commit to not killing. A gladiator was not to kill, a very costly injunction for both the gladiator and his owner. Equally, Christ­ians were to choose not to enter the seemingly harmless trade associations or professional guilds; and those who were members of such associations and guilds, on becoming Christ­ians, were expected to resign their membership of such. For these associations and guilds often performed various acts that had religious associations; and, insofar as such associations and guilds might act as funeral benefit societies, they frequently ensured that, on a member’s death, cultic rites and rituals were enacted. The collateral cost for Christ­ians of either not joining or resigning from such associations and guilds therefore included, but was not limited to, Christ­ians separating themselves from their work-colleagues’s friendship and support and a foregoing any financial and funeral help which these organizations traditionally afforded their members.

Further, Christ­ians were not to sacrifice to the gods, even though not doing so would displease both the cult’s priest and wider society. For the cultic priest, having paid for his office as priest, would have wished to make the most of his cult, encouraging people to make sacrifices. Wider society meanwhile, especially when threatened by natural calamity or hostile peoples, wished sacrifices to be offered by every member of society, both to appease any divine anger directed against it and, by its so honoring its gods, to become again the recipients of the gods’s gift of peace. Yet, even when not threatened by natural calamity or hostile peoples, wider society wished sacrifices to be offered by as many members of society as possible. For, to varying degrees, it recognized that the very practices involved in offering sacrifices contributed to the up-building of communities. These practices included the careful allocation of the sacrificial animal, some parts being offered to the gods and other parts being given to the people. The thigh bones, sacrum and tail, for example, were burned for the gods, who, it was believed, feasted on the smoke. The entrails, once examined for signs of divine approval, were spit-roasted. The carcass was butchered, cooked, and consumed by the assembled people, either then and there, or taken elsewhere for eating later. So, the Hellenistic rite of animal sacrifice, as well as being a sharing of food with the gods, was, at one and the same time, also a sharing of food with the members of the local community, practices that resulted in the simultaneous strengthening of a community’s relationship with its gods and between its participant members.

That Christ­ians were not willing to offer or participate in such cultic sacrifices might well then have been seen, at the very least, as evidence that Christ­ians were careless of their non-Christ­ian neighbors, despite the assertions that Christ­ians loved all their neighbors as themselves. Indeed, that Christ­ians absented themselves from the sacrificial cult and its associated practices could also be read as signaling that Christ­ians were those who opted out of even those everyday little behaviors and religious customs that made a community’s daily living better together, and that especially enabled it “getting through” such liminal stages of its members’ lives as births, marriages, and deaths.

More gravely, not being willing to engage in the empire’s sacrificial cult might have been viewed as a sign of sedition and disloyalty to the province and the emperor. For not sacrificing amounted to undermining the empire’s leadership in seeking the pax Romana for all the empire’s peoples. What for Christ­ian monotheism was an example of unwavering loyalty and faithfulness was for many a non-Christ­ian a blatant example of selfish obstinacy, community disengagement, and unpatriotic intransigence.

Christ­ian monotheism involved, however, not only the giving up of certain practices but also the taking up of others. One particular consequence of asserting belief in one God was asserting the equality of all before that one God. In second-century social order there was an absence of a clearly defined “merchant” class. Rather, there were relatively few benefactors and notables and many generally poor; and commonly the former paid for the amenities of civic life for the latter. For all that, within such a society the primary social distinction was not that between the “rich” and the “poor,” but that between the “free” and the “enslaved.” The second-century church largely mirrored that social stratification. That Clement of Alexandria [fl.180–200] chose to write the work Whether the Rich Man May Be Saved? presupposes the existence of some very rich Christ­ian converts. The majority of Christ­ians, however, were, in all probability, people of humbler origin, free men and women who might well have had at least some slaves. Some of these slaves, in all probability, also were Christ­ians, people who along with the poor and the outcast had been attracted to Christ­ianity because it offered them both a dignity, as children of God, and an otherworldly security, which this world denied them. In recognizing neither rich nor poor, free nor slave, but all one in Christ, the churches were therefore cutting across society’s distinctions, even divisions of class and profession. They were challenging a concept of stability to which Greco-Roman society generally adhered.

The family in which the paterfamilias exercised almost complete authority was integral to society then; so too was the distinction between “free” and “slave.” The church, however, struck at the family—a Christ­ian mother was encouraged not to allow her non-Christ­ian husband to rule unchecked over her children. Certain churches even allowed her to divorce such a husband. The church—even though there is early evidence of churches regularly stressing that being “one amongst equals” in the eyes of God should not be used to justify the breaking down of a household’s conventional hierarchy16—was also perceived as undermining the separation of “free” from “slave.” So, the church was thought by many in society to be striking at society’s general stability. In short, the church’s inclusivity, founded upon and informed by its belief in one God, cut across the social and economic homogeneity of second-century Greco-Roman society.

As noted, during the second century Christ­ians seem not to have been pursued, neither systematically, nor continuously, nor for very long. When they were, some of the authorities before whom they were brought wished those accused of being Christ­ians to deny their faith. So, for example, the proconsul, trying the arrested Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna in AD 156, repeatedly stated that, if Polycarp were to “curse Christ,” he would be released;17 and Pliny, in a letter of AD 112, reported to the emperor Trajan that he had tested that those accused of being Christ­ians by requiring them to “curse Christ.”18 The majority, however, of the authorities before whom those accused of being Christ­ians were brought did not demand a denial of faith. Rather, not appreciating the Christ­ians’s strict monotheism, they required them to recognize the Christ­ian God as one god amongst many others. They sought Christ­ian involvement in not only Christ­ian worship but also the empire’s cult, especially in its sacrificial system. Such they sought; and they were bemused when Christ­ians resisted what they sought. This was partly because, as noted earlier, the empire understood religion in terms of rites and rituals, not ideas and beliefs, and so could not understand why Christ­ian ideas and beliefs stood in the way of their being willing to engage in a sacrificial rite.

The empire’s bemusement was then deepened by the practices of the Jews and of those Christ­ians, generically called gnostics. The Jews, the empire was aware, were willing to make a public act of sacrifice for the emperor, even though they were unwilling to sacrifice to the imperial cult; but Christ­ians, perceived in some sense as an “offshoot” of Judaism, had no system of public sacrifices. Christ­ians, the empire was told, did pray for the emperor; but the empire’s officials could see no obvious proof of this. To people accustomed to seeing religion as a formal, public duty, involving doing something very overtly, being told that Christ­ians said a prayer in the privacy of a house church must have seemed somewhat unsatisfactory, certainly in contrast with the doing involved in the Jews’ public act of sacrificing for the emperor, if not wholly insufficient.

Some Christ­ians, the empire was also aware, whilst they did not step forward to offer to sacrifice to the gods of the cults, did not, when required to sacrifice, refuse to sacrifice. What the empire did not appreciate was that these Christ­ians, gnostics, unlike catholics, were of the opinion that the world of matter and of history was completely inconsequential. Some of these therefore abstained as rigorously as possible from the inconsequential world of matter and history. These gnostics would never sacrifice to the gods of the cults. Other gnostics, however, also believing that the world of matter and history was completely inconsequential, maintained therefore that they could be so lax in their relationship to matter that any historical act, sacrificing to the gods included, could be done, without that act, in any way whatsoever, affecting their salvation. Whereas catholic Christ­ians would have viewed sacrificing to the gods of the imperial cults as committing the unforgiveable sin of crucifying again their already-crucified Savior,19 this latter group of gnostic Christ­ians saw such an act as not even insignificant, but void of value. When faced with the readiness of such gnostic Christ­ians, when asked, to sacrifice, civic authorities would not have easily understood why all Christ­ians would not, when asked, offer sacrifices to the gods of the empire.

That incomprehension, especially when put alongside both a concentration upon rites and rituals rather than beliefs and syncretic, pluralist theologies, may help to explain, though not excuse, why prosecuting officials and their supporters sometimes forsook persuasion and took to threats in their attempt to elicit a sacrifice to the gods of their cults.

Vibia Perpetua, a twenty-two year old with an infant child at her breast, came from a religiously divided family. She, her brother, Dinocrates, and her slave, Felicitas, were Christ­ian catechumens. Her father, mother, aunt, and other brother were pagans. In AD 202 or AD 203, Perpetua was brought before the procurator Hilarianus in Carthage and ordered to make a sacrifice.20 Pleas and threats ensued. Yet not even the pleas nor the threats of her father, the paterfamilias—whose will, pagans assumed, was always to be obeyed by his children—resulted in the desired obedience and sacrifice. So Perpetua and Felicitas were killed.

Some forty-six years earlier, in AD 156, Polycarp, the eighty-six-year-old bishop of Smyrna, although widely held in high esteem, was charged with being a Christ­ian. On the way from the farm house in which he was found to the amphitheater in Smyrna where he was to be killed, the arresting police chief sought to persuade Polycarp to do something, anything, which might have saved his life. People searched for a convenient form of words that might have spared Polycarp. They suggested that he said, “away with the atheists,” by which they meant “away with the Christ­ians who denied the gods of the empire.” He complied, saying, “away with the atheists,” by which he meant, “away with the pagans, who denied the one, true God of the Christ­ians.” Subsequent demands of Polycarp he would not grant; and so he was killed.

Even allowing for the possibility that such accounts as these of Perpetua’s and Polycarp’s martyrdoms were written in such a manner as to encourage resistance to both smooth and harsh words which sought to lead Christ­ians into ways that all Christ­ians should resist, these accounts do suggest the degree of incomprehension on the part of pagan officials, demanding sacrifices, when faced with what they saw as Christ­ian obstinacy. What Christ­ians believed or did not believe, especially as “belief” or “faith” was thought to be the lowest form of cognition by those brought up on classical Greek philosophy, was of little concern. What was of concern to the local officials was a gesture, literally a gesture of honor to the cult, and an acceptance of a widely held religious tradition. One can almost hear their plaintiff cry, “We are not asking you to forsake the worship of your god. We are simply asking you to honor our gods as well.” For, in short, the official powers wanted peace and stability, not martyrs for a faith.

It was in this wider context that Christ­ians began to write “apologies,” explaining and, to some extent, defending their worship and way of life. Their themes already are outlined in Bishop Polycarp’s conversation with the proconsul of Asia in the amphitheater in Smyrna in AD 156. In Polycarp’s looking “up to heaven and [saying], away with the atheists,” he was highlighting both the Christ­ians’s commitment to the one God of the Gospels—“heaven,” to which Polycarp lifted his eyes, being a frequent circumlocution for “God”—and their resistance to that “atheism” that denied the one true God in its exchanging the worship of the Creator for that of creation, as embodied in the cultic statues before which sacrifices were offered. In offering the proconsul an opportunity to learn the doctrines of Christ­ianity, Polycarp was seeking both to be open and transparent, not secretive, and to give the lie to the rumors that Christ­ians engaged in immorality and cannibalism. In telling the proconsul that Christ­ians “have been taught to render honor, as is proper, if it does not hurt [Christ­ians], to princes and authorities appointed by God,”21 Polycarp was outlining the very nuanced position that Christ­ians then were minded to maintain towards the imperial and civic powers of the empire. In short, the main themes that the Apologists sought to address were the very same topics that Christ­ians—be they the bishop of an ancient see or a young, breast-feeding mother in Carthage—could find themselves addressing in their daily life.

Questions for reflection

and discussion

1 Given that to many minds good governance, effective administration, better finances, and enhanced infrastructure generally lead to a state’s peace and prosperity, to what extent was Celsus correct when he maintained that whatever Christ­ians receive in this world, they receive from the state alone?

2 In what sense, if any, may people properly speak of the God of Christ­ianity being wrathful?

3 What place in religion is there for the practice of propitiating, or appeasing, the divine?

4 Some early Apologists saw the empire as the enemy of the church, while others recognized that even a non-Christ­ian emperor could be, and often was, a minster of God. How may these very different perspectives contribute to the thinking of contemporary churches as they contemplate how better to relate to their governments and peoples?

5 How radical should conversion to Christ­ianity be? Should, for example, Christ­ian parents insist upon their children being educated only in a church school, or, indeed, only in a school of a particular Christ­ian denomination? Or, in what ways should members of the armed forces, upon converting to Christ­ianity, reconsider their position?

1. Aelius Aristides, Panegyric to Rome, 26. 70.

2. Aelius Aristides, Panegyric to Rome, 26.100.

3. Pliny, Letters, 10.97.

4. Athenagoras, Plea, 1.2.

5. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 4.30.3.

6. See Origen, Against Celsus, 8.67.

7. See Acts 17:23, which tells of the apostle Paul noticing such an inscribed altar.

8. Pliny, Letters, 10.96.

9. Acts 19:23–27.

10. Virgil, Aeneid, 4.173–97.

11. Pliny, Letters, 10.96.1.

12. Pliny, Letters, 10.31, and 10.33.

13. Pliny, Letters, 10.97.

14. Justin, Apology, 1.68.

15. Tertullian, On Idolatry, 10.

16. See 1 Corinthians 7:20–24.

17. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, 9.3.

18. Pliny, Letters, 10.96,5-6.

19. See Hebrews 6:4–6.

20. Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, 1–21.

21. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6.15.18–25. See also Romans 13:1–4.