The Second-Century Apologists. Alvyn Pettersen

The Second-Century Apologists - Alvyn Pettersen


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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.

      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

      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.


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