The Second-Century Apologists. Alvyn Pettersen

The Second-Century Apologists - Alvyn Pettersen


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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.

      Christ­ianity in the empire


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