Introduction
The fourth century was a time of political and social unrest, as the
western Roman Empire was taken over by a quick succession of military leaders (one
of the better-known being Constantine). In those politically tumultuous times,
there was additionally a very important social change going on – the change
from a largely pagan society with a small minority of Christians to a society
in which the mandatory state religion was Christianity and paganism was being
persecuted by the Christians who had so lately been the ones being persecuted.
However, the Christianity of the late fourth century had not transformed the
Roman culture; instead it had adapted itself to fit the mold of Roman society.
This had required some change in Roman doctrine (such as moving from a pantheon
of gods to a monotheistic religion), but the greater change was in Christian
theology.
Christian philosophy adopted Greek methods of thought and
explanations of doctrine through the rise of the apologists. “The Christian
Apologists were a new breed of converts … [who] had known the advantages and
privileges of citizenship, even of power, in the empire. They were well-educated,
professional, acquainted with the subtleties of Greek philosophy.”[1] The Christianity
developing in the fourth century was not the Christianity of the Early Church
but instead a new kind of Christianity: one that had adapted to the culture it
found itself so unexpectedly ruling. The Roman Empire was a culture in which newly
converted pagans were attempting to fit their lifestyles into their new
religion; a culture that for centuries had placed reliance on virtue and
thought and tradition, and was now being heavily influenced by a monotheistic
religion. Instead of transforming every aspect of their lives, these pagans –
some of the most influential being Roman aristocrats who just wanted to keep
the Emperor’s favor and their wealthy lifestyle – adapted those parts of their
life which were absolutely necessary for conversion to the accepted religion,
went through a hasty catechumenate, and stepped into their new religion to keep
the peace just as Romans had done for the last thousand years. At all costs,
the Pax Romana must be kept – and if
this involved an allegiance to a new god, it certainly was not the first time
Romans had done such a thing. The fact that this time it was Christianity did
not mean that the nature of Roman society had changed all that much.
Christian and Roman societies
The early Christian church, beginning in a provincial part of the
Roman Empire and quickly spreading throughout the Mediterranean world, did not
at first glance have much to set it apart from any number of other mystery
cults which were currently flourishing in the Empire. Pagans viewed these
mystery cults with suspicion on account of their closed-door practices, but the
idea of Pax Deorum – the peace of the
gods – was enough for most Romans to simply ignore other religions. There were
notable exceptions, and the names of some of the emperors who did execute heavy
persecutions are well known. For the most part, though, the attitude of the
Roman government and people can be summarized in Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan
and the emperor’s reply: essentially, so long as the Christians were not
causing trouble and threatening a disturbance of the peace, there was no need
to actively hunt them down. Peace was the main concern, not any kind of
ideological warfare against a certain belief.[2]
Christianity’s monotheism was viewed with suspicion and fear of
danger that this religion would break down the standards of civilization and
push for something that was not only unhealthy for society but would also harm the
structure established in tradition and excite the wrath of the gods. “The old
polytheism was somehow built into the fabric of society, and to challenge it
could sound dangerously like revolution and a loosening of the bonds of custom
and morality.”[3]
The fact that Roman society was pagan should not be taken in any way to mean
that they were non-religious; on the contrary the Romans were deeply religious
and took the utmost care that they not anger the gods or do anything that might
cause the breakdown of the success of Rome – believed by many to be a sign of
the favor of the gods.
The culture even during the reign of Diocletian was becoming
infiltrated with Christians: “the traditional pagan governing class … [was] in
danger of being outbid by the new, ‘middle-brow’ culture of the Christian
bishops, whose organizing power and adaptability had been proved conclusively
in the previously generation [during the persecutions]”.[4] Yet even in at this time,
before Christianity was legalized, the focus was still on keeping peace – the
emperor Diocletian, for instance, was a “sincere … Roman traditionalist; yet he
ruled for nineteen years without giving a thought to the Christians”[5] The philosophy of the Greek
world was finding ways to express itself that were compatible with the new religion
that was slowly taking root.[6] The laid back attitude of
this culture allowed Christianity to take root and flourish, since it was not a
society that strongly held to a certain exclusive ideology. So long as one
group’s religion did not threaten another, there was not a problem and
certainly no need to cause a fuss that might disturb the gods. “In the fourth
century, there were many families … for whom the ‘crisis’ of the third century
had meant little, and the conversion of Constantine nothing.”[7]
Christianity was legalized in the Empire under Constantine, who
had found “a new and powerful God, who had favoured him [;]… at all costs
Constantine [believed he] must keep on the right side of Him. Anything which
would upset the proper worship of this ultra-powerful deity could not be
tolerated.”[8]
Later, in the Theodosian Code, the Emperor Theodosius shows this lingering
mentality, even in a society where Christianity was being made the only,
compulsory religion: “There shall be no opportunity for any man to go out to
the public and to argue about religion or to discuss it or to give any counsel.
If any person hereafter, with flagrant and damnable audacity, should suppose
that he may contravene any law of this kind or if he should dare to persist in
his action of ruinous obstinacy, he shall be restrained with a due penalty and
proper punishment.”[9]
And so the pagans, while objecting to the things about Christianity that they
thought would cause the gods to be angry with them and therefore sporadically
persecuting the Christians, did it not out of a certain malice but instead for
a measure of protection, as if to prove that they really were trying to keep
the peace. “One of Constantine’s main
aims [after his conversion] was to see that the Empire and the imperial dynasty
continued to receive God’s blessing”[10] –a clear continuation of
Roman tradition and not specifically Christian as much as it was a play for military
success, which success was imperative if Constantine was to keep his throne.
Beginnings of absorption of culture
As is the case with all humans, the people who lived in the fourth
century Roman world and their religious convictions were a part of their
culture. “The ruler worship of the ancient world did not cease with
Constantine’s conversion. It was transmuted into the liturgical homage the
Church accorded Christian emperors. If Christ became an Emperor, emperors and
kings were invested with divine Grace. There was no clear separation of the
divine and human spheres.”[11] Constantine set the trend
for Christianity to be the replacing religion, giving the traditional religious
gifts to Christian basilicas instead of pagan temples, gifts to bishops instead
of priests, etc[12]
– and accepting Christianity, at least as a
religion, if not necessarily the only one. This integration of Christianity into
everyday life – not a transformation or conquest, but a morphing of culture into
a Romanized Christianity – was a new practice adopted by Constantine and copied
widely after him by those who wanted to maintain his favor. Christianity was incorporated
all throughout the society and into the upper classes in ways that looked strikingly
Roman; by the late fourth century “the Catholic Church had taken on the sharp
contours of a closed aristocracy … treating themselves as a superior elite”[13] just as the church under
Constantine and afterwards was increasingly an experiment to see what happened
when a religion that was not set up to lead a government, much less an empire,
was suddenly the predominant (and later compulsory) religion.[14]
Integration of theology and philosophy
One of the first things that had to happen in order for this
development to take place was that the basics of philosophy had to match up
with the theology of the accepted religion. “Many of the existing cultural and
social forms and customs had to be adapted, and they transformed only very
gradually.”[15]
It would not do to have the majority of the people believing that there was a
pantheon of gods who were looking after them (or out to get them) while citing
a religion that had only one God. Philosophers set to work tweaking philosophy
to fit this new religion – again, making the entire transition as smooth as
possible; no need to be complicated and disturb social order.[16]
With state favor on the Christian religion, the people who still
wanted government handouts were increasingly drawn to this new religion – but
they were still Romans too. There was a rise of Christian thinkers for the
purpose of holding the civilization and theology together, modification of
Christian thought by influence of Greek philosophy, and a general metamorphosis
of the Mediterranean culture from a pagan culture dominating and an underground
Christian culture spreading to one civilized culture that could take the
elements of classical philosophy and combine them with Christian thought.
Resulting culture
The culture that sprang from this kind of thought was one that had
not fused two distinct lines of thought together, but one that had drawn on the
cultural, political, religious, and social factors present in the fourth
century and created a new culture. This new combination was Christian in name and
individually had many sincere believers, but as a whole consisted of people who
only knew Roman culture as a culture and who had no concept of what kind of
life they would have if it wasn’t for being Roman and Christian together. Even
before Christianity was legalized, the ‘Great Persecution’ starting in 302 was
a ‘brutal shock’ to Christians who suddenly “found themselves officially
outcastes in the society with which they had so strenuously identified
themselves”.[17]
The thought of discontinuing being Roman on account of becoming a Christian was
a preposterous idea – unlike the Early Church, which saw Rome as being the
center of all evils, the fourth-century Christians simply saw Rome as being the
capital of their citizenship, the historic place where the center of the world
had stood for a thousand years.[18] The Christian bishops had
had an aristocratic education – indeed, many were of the senatorial class or
other wealthy, and elite people[19] – and reasoned both their
faith and their giving like Romans. It would be a great injustice to the
culture and beliefs of the people involved to claim that the fact that these
converts were Roman did not influence the way they practiced and lived out
their faith. On the other hand, the influence that Christianity had on the
culture was more a redirection of wealth than a cultural revolution.[20]
While there certainly were concessions that were made from the
Romans, the major differences that came about were changes on the side of the
Christians. An important one was on the issue of military violence – Christians
initially “were not allowed to shed blood or torture anyone even when under
orders. The same held true for Christians in the position of judges…. when
society became almost wholly Christianized on the surface, it became inevitable
and acceptable that Christians should assume all the burdens of law-and-order
enforcement, including the use of violence on behalf of the safety of the
empire, as long as the war could be considered morally justified and was
conducted without barbarism”.[21] In a culture that
consisted increasingly of professing Christians, something had to change in
either governmental structure or else religious practice – and in a situation
concerning military and judicial rule, it was religion that changed.
Conclusion
The Greco-Roman culture in which Christianity originated was a
pagan society accustomed to adapting to whatever the most acceptable,
profitable religion was as a part of
civilized life (since this was during the period of the end of the Empire and
the early Roman virtues were waning). Once the emperor Constantine began showing
particular favor to Christians, it was in the best interests of the rest of the
aristocrats in power to follow along with the religion to get the benefits. The
changes that were made in fourth-century Rome toward Christianity had threads
of Christianizing society, but were primarily social forms. The pagans became
Christians, but the church changed. Originally, there were small churches with
closed congregations that met to strengthen and support one another. Now,
floods of pagans came to large state basilicas led by bishops (aristocrats) who
were looking for state approval from the rest of their culture, just as they
always had. The changes in appearance of Christian philosophy in the fourth
century reflects this transition, as converted philosophers attempted to
justify the transition of Roma Aeterna
into a Christian society. It was imperative for public image that it not appear
that Rome had been wrong all along, and the issue of the favor of the gods had
to be worked out and smoothed over. Therefore, while some of the vocabulary of
the fourth century was Christianized, the major influence was in the other
direction as the Christian-State alliance changed the way the Church functioned
in society. As far as society was concerned, the vocabulary and some traditions
changed – but the church as a state religion looked very different than the
church as a persecuted religion, and thus Christianity was more compromised by
the merging of societies than the Roman state.
Bibliography
Brown, P. (1971). The World of Late Antiquity. London:
Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Chadwick, H. (1993). The Early Church. London: Penguin Books.
Cunningham, A. (1982). The Early Church and the State.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Fousek, M.S. (1971). The Church in a Changing World. St.
Louis: Concordia Publishing House.
Hillgarth, J.N. (1986). Christianity and Paganism, 350-750.
Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Smith, M.A. (1976). The Church Under Siege. Leicester:
Intervarsity Press.
Westcott, B.F. (1909). The Two Empires. London: MacMillan and
Co.
[1] A.
Cunningham, The Early Church and the
State, p. 9.
[2]
B.F. Westcott, The Two Empires, pp.
56-57.
[3] H.
Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 152.
[4] P.
Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. p.
86.
[5] ibid..
[6] ibid.,
p. 21.
[7] ibid.,
pp. 115-116.
[8]
M.A. Smith, The Church Under Siege,
pp. 23-24.
[9]
Qtd. J.N. Hillgarth, Christianity and
Paganism, 350-750, p. 47.
[10]
M.A. Smith, p. 24.
[11]
J.N. Hillgarth, p. 89.
[12]
M.S. Fousek, The Church in a Changing
World, p. 14.
[13]
P. Brown, p. 116.
[14] M.S.
Fousek, p. 13.
[15] ibid.,
p. 16.
[16] ibid.,
p. 17.
[17]
P. Brown, p. 86.
[18] M.S.
Fousek, p. 18.
[19]
H. Chadwick, p. 154.
[20]
P. Brown, p. 44.
[21] M.S.
Fousek, p. 22.
