Pagans and Christians in the City

Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac

Steven D. Smith

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802876317
• eBook ISBN: 9781467451222
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

Traditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the United States wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago faced very similar challenges. 

Picking up poet T. S. Eliot’s World War II–era thesis that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism,” Smith argues in this book that today’s culture wars can be seen as a reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the Roman Empire. Smith’s  Pagans and Christians in the City  looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing ideas continue to clash today. All of us, Smith shows, have much to learn by observing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today’s most controversial issues.

CHAPTER 1

A Portentous Question, a Quixotic Proposal

Consider, as an entry into our inquiry, two variations on an earnestly posed question—variations separated by almost two millennia. The first instance of the question was pressed in classical Rome. The second instance arises today in connection with the so-called culture wars. The recurring question is simple but fraught; if we could discern the answer to the question, we would likely be helped thereby to understand something important about the beginnings of our Western civilization, about our own perplexing and conflicted times, and maybe even about the kind of species we are.

Pliny’s Question (and Tertullian’s)

In the early second century, a literate and genial (and sycophantic)¹ Roman gentleman named Pliny—historians call him Pliny the Younger to distinguish him from his famous uncle, the encyclopedist who died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—wrote to his boss, the emperor Trajan, asking for legal advice.² At the time, Pliny was serving as governor for the province of Bithynia, in the north of present-day Turkey, and citizens of the province had accused some of their neighbors of being Christians.³ In response, Pliny had adopted what seemed to him a sensible procedure for dealing with such complaints. An accused person was brought before the governor and asked whether he or she was a Christian. Sometimes an accused person would answer yes. In such cases, Pliny would carefully explain that being Christian was a capital offense, and he would then repeat the question, twice. If the accused persisted in his or her affirmative answer, Pliny would sentence the confessing Christian “to be led away for execution.”

Conversely, the accused might deny the charge or claim to have abandoned the Christian faith, and Pliny had devised a method to test such denials. Statues of the emperor Trajan and of pagan gods were provided, and the accused was ordered to worship the statues, to make an offering of wine and incense, and also to “[revile] the name of Christ.” A defendant who satisfactorily complied with these requirements was released.⁴

This was Pliny’s procedure, but he wasn’t sure whether he was handling the cases correctly. He was especially concerned because the accusations seemed to be proliferating. So he wrote to ask the emperor’s advice.

As part of his inquiry, Pliny also incidentally raised a more fundamental question: Why were Christians being subjected to legal sanctions at all? Was “the mere name of Christian . . . punishable, even if innocent of crime”? Or, instead, were only “the crimes associated with the name” to be punished?⁵

Pliny’s working assumption, it seems, had been that merely being a Christian was a capital offense, because his investigations (conducted by interviewing some former or lapsed Christians, and also by examining under torture two slaves who were said to be deaconesses in the church) had revealed that the Christians, while practicing a “degenerate sort of cult,” were not guilty of committing any actual crimes. True, they did exhibit an “unshakeable obstinacy” that Pliny found irritating. But “obstinacy” was not a criminal offense, and, in fact, Pliny had discovered nothing more culpable than this. “The sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery, to commit no breach of trust and not to deny a deposit when called upon to restore it.” Later they would “reassemble . . . to take food of an ordinary, harmless kind.” And even the predawn services and the later gatherings had been discontinued after Pliny, in accordance with a general Roman policy disfavoring private assemblies, had issued an edict forbidding such meetings.⁶

Despite their seemingly innocuous or even laudable behavior, Pliny had been sentencing people to death, evidently merely for being Christians. But he wondered whether he was doing the right thing.

In his response, Trajan expressed approval of Pliny’s approach. Christians should not be aggressively “hunted out,” Trajan cautioned, and they should be treated with due process in “keeping with the spirit of our age.” But if brought before the governor, they “must be punished.” Meaning, it seems, executed, since that was the punishment Pliny had been dispensing. There was no need to prove any independent offense; being Christian was enough. Accused persons could obtain pardon, though, by recanting and “by offering prayers to our gods.”⁷

And why exactly should people be put to death merely for being Christian? Pliny had raised the question, but Trajan tendered no answer.

Just under a century later, the why question was raised again—albeit this time indignantly—by a feisty Christian lawyer living in Carthage. Addressed to the “rulers of the Roman Empire,” Tertullian’s Apology demanded some justification for “the extreme severities inflicted on our people.”⁸ In most respects, Tertullian insisted, Christians were no different from other Romans. “We sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor shambles [slaughterhouse], nor bath, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other places of commerce. We sail with you, and fight with you, and till the ground with you; and in like manner we unite with you in your traffickings” (69).

Nor were Christians unfaithful citizens, Tertullian protested. On the contrary: Christians obeyed the law, cared for their poor (64), and supported the government. “Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer. We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Caesar, an emperor would wish” (54–55).

Tertullian acknowledged that Christian theological doctrines might seem far-fetched to sophisticated Romans. But these doctrines “are just (in that case) like many other things on which you inflict no penalties—foolish and fabulous things, I mean, which, as quite innocuous, are never charged as crimes or punished” (80–81).

And yet, “with our hands thus stretched out and up to God, [you] rend us with your iron claws, hang us up on crosses, wrap us in flames, take our heads from us with the sword, let loose the wild beasts upon us” (55). And these savage punishments were inflicted merely because someone was Christian. “The mere name is made [a] matter of accusation, the mere name is assailed, and a sound alone brings condemnation” (8).

That punishments were inflicted merely for the status of being Christian was underscored, Tertullian thought, by the fact that, in stark contrast to how they treated other offenses, Roman authorities were quick to forgive anyone who renounced Christianity. “Certainly you give no ready credence to others when they deny [a criminal accusation]. When we deny you believe at once” (5). “Seeing, then, that in everything you deal differently with us than with other criminals, bent upon the one object of taking from us our name [of Christian], . . . it is made clear that there is no crime of any kind in the case, but merely a name” (6).

Roman persecution of the Christians may seem all the more puzzling in light of the Romans’ reputation for broad-minded religious toleration. Under the empire, as we will see in chapter 3, a vast and diverse array of deities, rituals, cults, and temples flourished in relative harmony. As the Romans had conquered the various lands of the Mediterranean world, they had typically left intact as much of the local government, culture, and religion as possible: so long as the subjects accepted Roman rule, eschewed subversion, and paid their taxes, the Romans were generally content to leave well enough alone. Thus, the renowned and immensely erudite historian Edward Gibbon (with whom we will frequently consult) lauded the empire for its “universal spirit of toleration.”⁹ Jonathan Kirsch, a popular historian, describes the “open-minded and easygoing attitude of paganism.”¹⁰ The eminent Yale historian Ramsey MacMullen describes Rome as “completely tolerant, in heaven as on earth.”¹¹

Why, then, did the Romans feel impelled to torture, banish, and execute people for, as Tertullian claimed, “the mere name” of Christ?

It might have been, of course, that Christianity was associated with subversive or antisocial conduct; “the mere name” might have been evidence of, or perhaps a rough proxy for, crime or subversion. Or at least the Roman authorities might have thought so. Could that have been the reason why they were torturing and executing people for being Christian?

But what other criminal or subversive behavior could be associated with the religion? In the first centuries of its existence, to be sure, Christianity was the source of shocking rumors. Christians were said to indulge in incest, cannibalism, and wild orgies. One story had it that Christians covered an infant with flour, then killed him, cut him up, and drank his blood. Another exotic rumor intimated that on their holy days, Christians of both sexes and of all ages mingled together to feast and drink; they then tied a dog to the lamp and provoked the dog to run, putting out the light, and in the darkness each Christian indiscriminately indulged in sexual intercourse with whomever happened to be nearest to him or her.¹²

Tertullian treated these sorts of slanders with contempt, and historians have generally given them little credence.¹³ Rumors of cannibalism may have reflected uncomprehending and hostile inferences drawn from the Christian practice of eating the consecrated bread with the belief that it became the body of Christ; suspicions of incest might have arisen as a reaction to the Christian custom of calling each other (including spouses) “brother” and “sister.”¹⁴ In any case, it seems unlikely that Roman authorities believed such rumors. Pliny surely didn’t; as noted, his investigations uncovered only innocuous or exemplary behavior.

And yet he executed Christians anyway. Pliny was a proper gentleman and official who wanted to do the right thing, and he had no deep-seated or idiosyncratic animosity toward Christianity. But he thought that as a Roman governor, his duty was to execute convicted Christians. And in this he was evidently correct, as the emperor’s response to his query confirmed. But, once again, why?

We will return to the question in due course. For now, let us turn to another question, or perhaps to a different version of the same question, raised in a more contemporary setting.

Laycock’s Question

Douglas Laycock is an agnostic, a libertarian, and a law professor who has been called “the preeminent lawyer-scholar of religious freedom over the last quarter-century”;¹⁵ and he raises a timely question that has surely occurred to others as well. Commenting on recent cases in which same-sex couples have sued marriage counselors or photographers or florists or other professionals who have objected on religious grounds to assisting with same-sex unions, Laycock observes that in most such cases these professionals’ services are readily available from other counselors or providers who do not have any such objection. Moreover, he suggests, no sensible same-sex couple would actually want the services of, say, a counselor who is religiously opposed to their union.¹⁶ Why, then, do these parties insist on suing people whose services they neither need nor want?

Here, though, a small correction is needed, and also an addition. Laycock presents the point I have just described not so much as a question but more as an accusation. He says the plaintiffs in these cases are trying not to gain a needed remedy but rather to drive traditionally religious professionals out of business, and he says the plaintiffs are doing this because they are intolerant.¹⁷ In addition, Laycock makes a similar accusation against Christians who oppose same-sex marriage or who favor other sorts of regulations of sexual activity: these Christians are also being intolerant. Laycock the libertarian is visibly frustrated with both sides in these culture-war issues: a perfectly good “live and let live” arrangement is available, he thinks, but each side rejects it. Each side persecutes the other even when there is no good reason to do so and nothing to gain. “Each side wants a total win.”¹⁸

Laycock’s “intolerance” interpretation of the contending parties and their motivations is contestable, to be sure.¹⁹ But suppose he is right; even so, his accusation of intolerance is more a characterization than an actual explanation of the conflicts he is commenting on. Let us stipulate that it is intolerant to sue people you disagree with, or to restrict their private sexual behavior, when they are not inte...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Robert P. George
• Acknowledgments
• 1. A Portentous Question, a Quixotic Proposal
• 2. Homo Religiosus
• 3. City of the Gods
• 4. Believing in Paganism
• 5. Looking beyond the World: The Christian Revolution
• 6. The Logic of Pagan Persecution
• 7. The Struggle for the City
• 8. Under a Christian Canopy
• 9. Secularism and Paganism
• 10. Counterrevolution, Part I: Symbols, Sex, and the Constitution
• 11. Counterrevolution, Part II: Religious Freedom
• 12. Coming Home? The Imminent Immanent City
• Index