Apologists not only defended themselves against the charge of atheism; they also attacked the pagan gods, pulling out every tool of mockery and sardonic irony in their arsenal. Myths found in the works of Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, Virgil, and others showed that the pagan deities were jealous, mean-spirited, vain, and ridiculous. They had love affairs, they fought and wounded one another, they committed rape; they were thieves, adulterers, liars, and murderers. Can anyone seriously imagine these are gods that deserve worship?
Moreover, the apologists accused pagans of imagining that their idols, made of wood, stone, and metal, were actually gods. For Christians, this was obviously absurd. A statue cannot be a divine being. As Tertullian indicates, they are “simply pieces of matter akin to the vessels and utensils in common use among us” (Apology 12). The pagan author Celsus points out that Christians will sometimes stand next to a statue of a god and shout, “See here: I blaspheme it and strike it but it is powerless against me for I am a Christian.”23 Celsus himself considered the charge absurd, since the statue was not the divinity but simply a physical representation of it. But Christians for centuries found the argument persuasive: pagans create material objects and then worship them as gods.
Or worse, they actually worship demons. One major strand of the Christian tradition insisted the pagan gods were fallen angels, evil demons who possessed the idols and demanded worship. Numerous Christian stories showed their exorcists casting demons out of cult statues and subjugating them to the true divine will. As the third-century bishop of Carthage Cyprian claims:
If you are there, you will see that we are entreated by those whom you entreat, that we are feared by those whom you fear, whom you adore. You will see that under our hands they stand bound and tremble as captives, whom you look up to and venerate as lords. Assuredly even thus you might be confounded in those errors of yours, when you see and hear your gods, at once upon our interrogation betraying what they are, and even in your presence unable to conceal those deceits and trickeries of theirs. (Letter to Demetrius 15)
CHRISTIANS AS MORAL REPROBATES
Christians had to defend themselves not only against the legal charge of refusing to worship the gods but also against the widely circulated accusations of rampant sexual immorality, similar to suspicions aroused by the devotees of Bacchus in the second century BCE and by yet other secretive cults in the empire. Apologists were particularly incensed by such charges and claimed that pagan opponents had reversed the issue, charging Christians with activities pursued by their own gods: pagan deities, not the Christians, committed incest, rape, and flagrant adultery. Christians committed themselves to extraordinary ethical standards and were very proud of themselves for it. They were so far removed from sexual impropriety, claimed the apologists, that they spurned not only adultery but also illicit sexual desire, proscribing not just extramarital sex but even lust. This was a uniquely high moral standard.
Some Christians insisted that even marital sex was to be harshly restricted. As Athenagoras insists: “The farmer sows his seed in the ground and waits for the harvest, not troubling to sow his land again the while. For us, too, the begetting of children is the limit of our indulging our passions” (Plea 33). Indeed some Christians went even further, intentionally remaining virgins for their entire lives. Even those who marry, claimed the apologists, considered a second marriage, after the death of a spouse, to be adultery. When it came to sex, they averred, the Christians were the most morally upright people on earth.
Although they also occasionally defended themselves against the charges of infanticide and cannibalism, most apologists simply considered them absurd. They pointed out once again that Christian morality far exceeded even what was widely sanctioned in the pagan world. Pagans enjoyed urban spectacles that included such niceties as gladiators fighting to the death in the arena and unarmed criminals being thrown to ravenous wild beasts. Christians opposed the taking of any life, since it was a gift from God.
As far as infants are concerned, the apologists insisted that Christians protected the newborns with unheard-of scruples. Christians alone refused to practice abortion or the exposure of unwanted newborns to the elements or human traffickers. Moreover, since Christians believed there would be a future resurrection of the dead, they absolutely would not allow their own bodies to become the tombs of ingested others.
PROOFS OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH
Christian apologists not only defended themselves against pagan accusations but also mounted positive proof for the superiority of their own religion. It was not superior simply because the others were ridiculous—although for the apologists they certainly were that. It was superior on its own merits.
For most early Christians, the superiority of Christianity was obvious; otherwise they would not have converted in the first place. As we have seen, what convinced most people appears to have been Christian claims about the miraculous. Empowered by their god, Christians could perform amazing acts of healing and spectacular exorcisms of demons. The Christian god was more powerful than anything paganism had to offer, and this was a persuasive apologetic argument.
Some of the apologists—especially Justin—developed a related proof: the life of Jesus and the history of the Christian movement had been predicted with extraordinary accuracy centuries earlier by the ancient Hebrew prophets.
Justin wrote two surviving apologies and a third book that is called the Dialogue with Trypho. The apologies are ostensibly directed toward a pagan audience to show the superiority of the Christian faith. The Dialogue is meant to show Christianity’s superiority to Judaism, even though it too may have been meant to provide arguments convincing to pagans. In it Justin claims to present an actual debate he held with a learned Jewish teacher, Trypho, in which they argue back and forth over the meaning of numerous passages of Jewish Scripture. In every case, Justin maintains the Scriptures contain predictions or foreshadowing of Jesus and the Christian religion. Trypho argues against these Christian interpretations. Since it is Justin who reports the debate, it comes as no surprise to see who appears to have the stronger argument.
Justin and other apologists, in any event, were firmly convinced that details from Jesus’s life had been predicted by the prophets of Scripture centuries before he was born. The prophets predicted the messiah would be born to a virgin in Bethlehem; he would be a great miracle worker; he would be rejected by his own people, betrayed by one of his closest followers, condemned to execution, crucified, and raised from the dead; and he would ascend to heaven. All that had happened, just as prophesied. The Scriptures also predicted the Jewish people on the whole would reject Jesus as their messiah; gentiles then would become the people of God; God in his anger would destroy the Jewish capital city of Jerusalem; and on and on. Since these century-old predictions came to fulfillment, we have in Scripture a different kind of miracle. Christianity is a divinely inspired religion.
Although apologists other than Justin do not argue the case at equal length, they all would agree with the corollary, which relates in particular to pagan persecutions of Christians for not following ancient traditions. Everyone in the ancient world placed a high premium on antiquity. Ancient customs were followed because they were tried-and-true. They had worked for centuries. What was not valued was invention or novelty. If a practice or perspective was “new,” it was suspect. That is the principal reason pagans did not object to Jews practicing their religion. Jews might be superstitious, strange, and even ridiculous. But their religion had the stamp of antiquity, and so they were allowed to go their own way.
Christians, on the other hand, had a real problem when it came to justifying their views to a pagan audience. Their religion did not go back into hoary antiquity. It was a new thing. Jesus had lived recently. He was a teacher from Judea active during the reign of the emperor Tiberius. Any religion founded in his name was a novelty. It could not possibly be true. If it were true—indeed, the only true religion—what are we to think of the history of the entire human race pri
or to the death of Jesus? Was everyone who ever lived simply and hopelessly wrong? For many pagans, Christianity could not be true because it was not ancient.
The apologists had an argument against this view. They maintained that in fact Christianity was not a new invention arising in the time of Tiberius. It was old. Very old. How old? It was the fulfillment of the entire Hebrew Scriptures, books produced centuries earlier by inspired writers who anticipated, foreshadowed, and predicted Jesus and his church. Christianity was the true and correct interpretation of Judaism. And Judaism goes back to the very beginning—back to the creation itself, since it is the Jewish god who made all things.
That is one reason Christians were, in turn, so virulent in their opposition to the Judaism of their day. If Jews were right about their interpretations of the Scriptures, then Christians were wrong and they could not claim to be an ancient religion. Christians therefore insisted that Jews were a hardheaded and recalcitrant people who had always been disobedient to their god and who had never understood their own Bible. The Jewish Scriptures in fact were Christian. God had rejected the Jews and adopted the Christians. For that reason, the Bible was theirs.
And the Bible contained writings far more ancient than anything on offer in paganism. Moses lived eight hundred years before Plato and four years before Homer.24 He was centuries older than any author of any pagan writing. Moses predicted Jesus. Jesus was the fulfillment of everything Moses looked forward to. The Christian faith was not an invention of yesterday. It was the most ancient religion on the face of the earth.
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION AND DEFENSE: IN SUM
Americans are so accustomed to the idea of the separation of church and state that it is hard for many to understand politics and religion any other way. The state should not have power over what or how one worships, and the church should not run the government. Nonetheless, in the broader picture of human history and culture, this view is an anomaly. Before the Enlightenment almost no one argued that the state should stay out of the business of religion. The most notable exceptions were the early Christian apologists.
The apologists wanted the Roman state to leave them alone. It was not right that either local magistrates or senior imperial authorities should oppose a religious cult so long as it was not a social danger or a threat to public morals. Christianity was not dangerous and it advanced an unusually high code of ethics. Leave it alone. Let Christians worship their god as they see fit and do not try to force them to violate their religious consciences.
Even though these arguments may make inherent sense to modern Americans, to ancient pagans they would have been utter nonsense. The gods were very much involved with affairs of state and so naturally the state needed to support the worship of gods. Only certain Christians thought otherwise, and for obvious reasons. They wanted the state to stop opposing them.
Thus they devised the notion of the separation of church and state. This was a view that made considerable sense to Christians of all types so far as we can tell—until the Roman emperor became Christian. Then suddenly the idea seemed to vanish. After Constantine began showering favors on the church, the political views of the apologists were taken off the table. Now it made obvious sense to Christians for the emperor and all his underlings to support, promote, and advance the cause of religion. As we will see, this imperial shift—not in policy but in allegiance—had a devastating effect on the pagan world. The tables had turned. Now it was Christians, with their exclusivist views about true religion, who were in charge. The persecutors became the persecuted.
Chapter 8
The First Christian Emperor
The fourth century saw cataclysmic changes in church-state relations, all of them hinging on the conversion of the emperor Constantine. Over the course of a mere eighty years, Christianity went from being under siege, to being tolerated, to becoming officially the state religion of Rome. Rarely has the world seen such a radical shift of opinion and policy in such a short time. By the end of the fourth century, approximately half of the empire claimed allegiance to the Christian faith.
FROM THE GREAT PERSECUTION TO FULL RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
In exploring the role of Constantine in this shift, we should recall that he was serving as a junior officer in Diocletian’s court when persecution began. Constantine was completely disingenuous—in fact, he was telling a bald-faced lie—when he claimed, some twenty years later, that he had watched Diocletian come to his fateful decision to persecute only when he himself was “still a boy.”1 He was no mere boy. This was in 303 CE. Constantine was born in 272 or 273. He was a thirty-year-old holding an important position in the emperor’s administration. He may not have been personally complicit in the opening years of the Great Persecution, but nothing indicates he expressed any disapproval either.
Soon afterward he served under Galerius, who was known to our Christian sources as particularly energetic in enforcing the decrees of persecution and possibly the one who urged their instigation in the first place. Galerius administered the eastern part of the empire, but in the West there was almost no enthusiasm for the edicts. Constantine’s father, Constantius, was the first western Caesar in the Tetrarchy and was himself probably a henotheist, although almost certainly a devotee of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, rather than the god of the Christians. He was not interested, in any event, in persecuting the Christian church.
Constantine joined his father in Gaul in 305 CE before being acclaimed Augustus himself on his father’s death in 306. The senior emperor of the West at his accession, Severus, was soon thereafter captured in his assault on Maxentius in Rome, and was replaced in the imperial college by a military man named Licinius, who was to play an important role in Constantine’s life for the next sixteen years.
The Great Persecution continued sporadically, mainly in the East, until the death of Galerius in 311. Immediately prior to his demise, Galerius—to everyone’s great surprise—issued the Edict of Toleration, in which he officially called the persecution to a halt. A copy of this edict has been preserved for us by the Christian historian Eusebius in his lengthy Church History. It is an intriguing document, in no small measure because it shows so clearly that Galerius pursued persecution not as a hater of religion but, quite the contrary, as an avid supporter of the gods.
In the document, Galerius argues that he had advocated persecution “for the advantage and benefit of the nation,” because “the Christians . . . had abandoned the convictions of their own forefathers and . . . refused to follow the path trodden by earlier generations.” The persecution was designed to compel the Christians “to go back to the practices established by the ancients.” But opposition to the religion had not had the desired effect. Christians “persisted in the same folly” and were not “paying to the gods in heaven the worship that is their due.” So the emperor chose to rescind the persecution: “In view of our benevolence and the established custom by which we invariably grant pardon to all people, we have thought proper in this matter also to extend our clemency most gladly, so that Christians may again exist and rebuild the houses in which they used to meet, on condition that they do nothing contrary to public order” (Church History 8, 17).
This was no deathbed conversion. But it was as close as one could get to admitting he was wrong. Galerius died soon thereafter, but his successor, Maximin Daia, resumed persecution with a vengeance for another two years before being defeated in battle by Licinius not long after the conversion of Constantine and the battle at the Milvian Bridge.
With all that upheaval in the imperial college, the Tetrarchy was no more. Maximinus, Severus, Galerius, Maxentius (never admitted into the college), and Maximin Daia were all dead. That left Constantine in the West and Licinius in the East. These two decided to broker a peace and met in Milan to cement their relationship. To create a family bond, Constantine arranged for Licinius to marry his half sister Constantia. More significant for our interests here, the rulers jointly agreed to bring the Great Persecution to a definitiv
e and final end.
What emerged from the meeting was the so-called Edict of Milan. This was not an edict but a letter addressed to provincial governors in the East. It was not written from Milan but from Bithynia, after the imperial meeting. Moreover, it was published not by Constantine but by Licinius, even though it appeared under both their names.
The letter is significant for two particular reasons: it declared an official state policy of tolerance for all religions whatsoever—not just Christianity—and it stated the reason for the policy: to ensure that “whatsoever divine and heavenly powers exist might be enabled to show favor to us and to all who live under our authority.” In other words, prosperity in the human realm required peace with the divine. Precisely this view, of course, drove the persecutions of the Christians in the first place. Both current emperors, the Christian Constantine and the pagan Licinius, agreed that, for the empire to thrive, God, or the gods, needed to look favorably upon it. That required toleration of difference, to ensure that “respect and reverence for the Deity [be] secured.”2
Thus, the edict explicitly states a policy of complete tolerance for all:
We have given the said Christians free and absolute permission to practice their own form of worship. When you observe that this permission has been granted by us absolutely, [you] will understand that permission has been given to any others who may wish to follow their own observance or form of worship—a privilege obviously consonant with the tranquility of our times—so that everyone may have permission to choose and practice whatever religion he wishes. This we have done to make it plain that we are not belittling any rite or form of worship. (Church History 10.5)
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