Gold from Egypt: The Battle over Pagan Culture in the Early Church
Thomas Cole’s 1836 painting, “The Consummation” as part of the series “The Course of the Empire”.
Among the most resilient myths of our age is the story, told in countless books and films, of the Church suppressing knowledge and holding back scientific progress. It’s a Hydra with many heads, and one of these heads has reappeared in recent years: the myth of the early Christians as relentlessly opposed to Greco-Roman culture. This view has been put forward most recently in Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. Although her book was panned by academic experts, it has gained popular traction, and Nixey was warmly welcomed, along with her unnuanced polemic, at the Dublin Festival of History in 2017. Nixey’s narrative of destruction is inaccurate but we must admit that Christian attitudes to pagan culture were ambiguous.
Gods Behaving Badly
When we speak of classical or Greco-Roman culture we naturally think of visual art: paintings, marble sculptures, great buildings like the amphitheatre of Ephesus and the Parthenon in Athens. We think too of works of literature: the epic poetry of Homer and Virgil, the tragic dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles. We think of philosophers too: Plato and his school, the Academy; Aristotle and his followers, the Peripatetics; the Stoics; the Cynics; the Sceptics.
Alongside the philosophers, we think of another class of intellectuals, the orators, skilled in the art of persuasion: men like Demosthenes and Cicero. All these images and texts and people are what made up classical culture, along with popular music, clothing, hairstyles, mealtime customs, and forms of worship.
But this last item on the list – worship of the gods – was somehow present in all the other items on the list. Ancient painting, architecture, epic poetry, drama – all were suffused with stories of the gods. And some of these stories were quite shocking: stories of rape and other cruelty, petty vindictiveness, and constant discord.
Many early Christians who knew these stories and began to contrast them with the God of Jesus Christ understandably came to think of these gods not just as false gods, but as demons, deliberately leading people astray. We who live in the twenty-first century can admire a statue of Jupiter without anxiety precisely because we have little awareness of what Jupiter got up to, but such a luxury wasn’t available to Christians in the ancient world. Stories that scandalised them, and corrupted their neighbours were stamped into every bit of marble and fabric around them, and written into every poem and play.
Given this background, it’s understandable that some Christians were deeply anxious about Greco-Roman culture. But did they go on to try to burn the whole thing down, all the poetry, all the philosophy, all the beautiful art?
All Things to All Men
Right from the beginning, in fact, a more subtle approach was taken to the majority Mediterranean culture, exemplified by St Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.
Paul, like the vast majority of the earliest Christians, was a Jew, a Pharisee, but he seems to have had a good Greek education too. It’s true that in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul seems to downgrade secular wisdom:
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?... Greeks seek wisdom but we preach Christ crucified, folly to Gentiles... I did not come to you with lofty words or wisdom, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 1:20-23, 2:1-2).
This countercultural pose must be balanced against the fact that Paul does, in fact, make use of Greek thought, peppering his letters and speeches with learned quotations. His speech to the gathered philosophers of Athens in Acts 17 is a brilliant example. There he quotes a philosopher, Epimenides, and a Greek poet, Aratus, all in the lead-up to his proclamation of the Risen Christ.
Apart from his use of philosophy and poetry, recall too Paul’s use of sporting images. Sporting contests weren’t part of Jewish culture – as the authors of the Books of Maccabees are so keen to remind us (1 Mac 1:14, 2 Mac 9), the gymnasium was a Greek thing – so when Paul tells the Corinthian Christians to exercise self-control like athletes, to subdue their bodies like boxers (1 Cor 9:24-27), he’s drawing on the culture of Corinth, not on Jewish culture. He’s putting into practice the principle of cultural adaptation he makes explicit in the same letter: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews... To Gentiles I became as a Gentile... that I might win Gentiles... I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:20-22).
And still, this cultural chameleon is aware of the risk of following the culture instead of following Christ. He warns the Colossians not to become a prey to “philosophy according to human tradition”, as opposed to philosophy “according to Christ” (Col 2:8).
Even with this warning in mind, however, it’s clear that Paul doesn’t hate pagan culture. He’s happy to make evangelical use of it, but he insists always on the centrality, and irreplaceability, of proclaiming Christ crucified, however countercultural a message that might be.
An Unfamiliar Saviour
Fifth century depiction of crucifixion on the doors of the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome
It’s interesting, though, that, when it comes to early Christian visual art, it took a very long time for Christians to actually represent Jesus crucified. The earliest example we know, on the doors of the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome, dates from the fifth century.
Earlier representations of Jesus in the catacombs are more likely to show him as the Good Shepherd. There are, of course, roots for this in the Gospel of John, but it’s worth noting that the pose in which Jesus is shown is actually typical of earlier Greco-Roman art. In contrast with the astonishing crucifixion scene, Christ represented as the Good Shepherd fitted in nicely with the pagan imaginary.
Pagan Roman tomb art associating the Good Shepherd with the role of philosopher and teacher
Early Christian depiction of Christ as the Good Shepherd, surround by Old Testament figures, in Roman catacombs
6th century mosaic of Christ the conqueror with the inscription “Ego sum via, veritas et vita” ("I am the way, the truth and the life").
Likewise with representations of Jesus dressed as a philosopher, surrounded by the apostles as his philosophical school, or even dressed as a Roman legionary, victorious over evil with the cross slung over his shoulder.
Even more daringly, we find in the late third-century Tomb of the Julii an image which borrows from pagan religious imagery, depicting Christ with the attributes of the sun god, Helios, including his chariot.
Again, there are good biblical roots for thinking of Christ in these terms – he is the “light of the world” (Jn 8:12), the one who “visits us like the dawn” (Lk 1:78), and whose face, on Mt Tabor, “shone like the sun” (Mt 17:2) – but borrowing Helios imagery is nevertheless a daring visual strategy.
Late 3rd century depiction of Christ as “Sol Invictus” from the tomb of the Julii
Philosopher, legionary, divine charioteer: to us, these images show us Christ in an unfamiliar guise, but for ancient converts, it was precisely the familiarity of the iconic schemes that made them attractive.
We see a similar strategy in literature. The epic poetry of Homer and Virgil had near-sacred status in the Mediterranean world, and one way cultured Christians made use of this was to re-tell Gospel stories – originally composed in an embarrassingly simple literary style – using lines and phrases from the Iliad and Odyssey (in Greek) and the Aeneid (in Latin). The “centones” that resulted were quite popular in their time, although other poems had more lasting appeal: the Gospel paraphrases of Juvencus, Sedulius, and Arator which, rather than adopt Virgilian phrases wholesale, simply imitated his style, resulting in an “epic” depiction of Jesus and the apostles.
What these works of art clearly dispel, in any case, is the idea that early Christians were engaged in a relentless campaign of destruction against pagan culture. Cultural appropriation was the name of the game.
Athens and Jerusalem
But didn’t such mixing of registers risk muddying the waters, and confusing the Gospel? Some Church leaders did indeed worry along these lines. The best known, and most often quoted, example, is Tertullian, the second-century North African theologian.
In his writings against Christian heresies, especially different forms of Gnosticism, Tertullian came up with a simple explanation: at the root of all these heresies lay pagan philosophy. All forms of philosophy – whether that of Plato, of Aristotle, the Stoics – all of them were bound to corrupt Christian faith:
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What agreement is there between [Plato’s] Academy and the Church?... Our instruction comes from "the porch of Solomon," who had himself taught that "the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart (Wis 1:1)... Away with all attempts to produce a mixed-up Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our victorious faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides (Prescriptions against Heretics, c. 7).
So Tertullian represents those Christians – and there were many of them, especially in the monastic movement that was about to take off in Egypt – who were suspicious of pagan philosophy, and pagan culture more generally. If Christianity is true, why would we need anything else? If you have the Psalms, why read Virgil? If you have the teaching of Jesus, why read any of the philosophers? If you accept the truth of Christianity, why have anything to do with the whole demon-infested cultural world around you?
Along the same lines, we find in a third-century document called the Apostolic Tradition, a list of professions that had to be abandoned if their practitioners wanted to be baptised. Some of the jobs on the list are unsurprising: pimp, gladiator, pagan priest, a fortune teller. But on the same list we find sculptors and painters, actors, and teachers of literature? Why are they included? Because their work involved representing and transmitting Greco-Roman culture in its entirety, with all its flaws and errors. To become a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, on this account, was to leave Athens behind.
The Seeds of the Gospel
But there were others who had a different attitude to pagan culture. Justin Martyr belonged to a generation before Tertullian, and rather than study theological differences internal to the Church, his entire focus was on apologetics: seeking to convince others – including Roman pagans – of the truth of Christianity.
As Justin reached out to pagans, he didn’t dismiss all their philosophy. In fact, on his way to Christ, he himself had sampled all the philosophical schools. He came to regard Christianity as the true philosophy, but he straightforwardly admits that he finds truth in all the philosophical schools. He knows that Jesus is the Word of God incarnate, but, in his First Apology, he writes that God has scattered his Word far and wide in the world, so that, as he says, “there are seeds of truth among all men”.
A fragment of the 4th century manuscript of Justin Martyr’s “First Apology”
This doesn’t mean, of course, that Justin thinks pagan culture is all good, or that every philosophical position is equally true. He’s consistently aiming to make converts after all. But his conviction that the Word of God is found, even embryonically, in all cultures, means that he can adopt a positive attitude to pagan philosophy, and find allies among the philosophers.
Jerome’s Anxiety
Tertullian and Justin represent two quite different Christian attitudes to the majority culture. These two attitudes continued to co-exist for centuries, even sometimes co-existing in the one person. This is the kind of complexity we find in someone like St Jerome, a highly educated Christian of the fourth century, deeply anxious about his use of and love for Latin and Greek literature.
Jerome even has nightmares about all this. In one of his letters he describes a vision he had when he was on his sick-bed. He sees the Lord seated on a throne:
Asked who and what I was I replied: “I am a Christian”. But He who presided said: “You lie. You are a follower of Cicero and not of Christ [Ciceronianus es, non Christianus]. For “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Letter 22).
This frightening experience leads Jerome to promise never again to read worldly books, or even to own them. Tertullian would have been delighted. Jerome even paraphrases him in the same letter: “What has Horace to do with the Psalms, Virgil with the Gospels, Cicero with St Paul?”
When Jerome was asked to write up a curriculum for the education of Paula, a young Christian woman, we see a similarly narrow attitude. His whole focus is on Scripture and Christian writers: start with the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, then Job, then the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, then all the prophets, the first 7 books of the Old Testament, the books of Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Esther. Only then is Paula allowed to read Song of Songs (if she read it before this point, Jerome claims, she would have thought it was simply a love song, and missed its spiritual message). The writings of earlier Church fathers are approved reading – Cyprian, Athanasius, and Hilary are mentioned – but everything else should be handled by Paula with great care, since it’s mostly dirt, with only a few nuggets of gold.
This might sound remarkably illiberal, but when we read more widely in Jerome’s letters, it’s clear that his counter-cultural poses are undermined by his own practices. He simply can’t help go on reading and quoting his favourite pagan authors. When one of his contacts takes him to task for this habit he defends himself by writing a long letter defending the Christian use of pagan wisdom. He lists all the examples of St Paul quoting Greek poets, philosophers, and dramatists, and concludes that he too is determined to make use of non-Christian literature to serve the true Israel:
Is it surprising that I too, admiring the beauty of her form and the grace of her eloquence, desire to make secular wisdom my captive and my handmaid, a matron of the true Israel? Or that shaving off and cutting away all in her that is dead – idolatry, pleasure, error, and lust – I take her to myself clean and pure and beget by her servants for the Lord of Sabaoth? My efforts promote the advantage of Christ's family (Letter 70).
Augustine: Reclaiming our Gold
St Augustine was younger than Jerome, but he shared with him this complex attitude to classical literature. In his Confessions, for example, he writes with regret about his exaggerated love for Latin literature. He recalls studying a comedy by the Roman dramatist, Terence: the stylish words were wonderful, he admits, but through them the young Augustine and his classmates were being fed “the wine of error” (Confessions I.17).
Stain-glass window depicting Saint Augustine, Phoenix Arizona.
Augustine is not, for all that, going to advise rejection of the pagan cultural patrimony.His approach – which would prove foundational for the medieval West – was to actively search in non-Christian thought for good elements which Christians could claim as their own, precisely because these good elements must have their origin in the true God.
If those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use (De doctrina christiana II.40).
But in this process of (re)appropriation Christians ought to be cautious, selective. He uses the analogy of the Jews leaving Egypt, taking with them the gold and silver of the Egyptians (Ex 12). The Jews didn’t take the gold idols with them, only the jewellery:
The Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and jewellery of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt took for themselves [...]. In the same way all branches of pagan learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God's providence which are everywhere scattered (De doctrina christiana II.40).
Augustine doesn’t just enunciate this principle, he enacts it. His enormous City of God can be read as an attempt to sift through the writings of Cicero, Sallust, and Virgil, and the examples of virtuous pagans recounted in histories, looking for what “Christian” gold he can find in these texts he so clearly admires.
And he goes further, aiming, with all this gold, to construct a truly Christian curriculum drawing on the best of Greco-Roman learning in grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music: the “liberal arts”. He sets himself the task of writing a textbook in each of these areas. He never accomplished this task, but others in the centuries after his death did so – Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore, and so on – resulting in a monastic curriculum, centred on the Scriptures, but drawing always on the best of Greco-Roman culture. It’s in this curriculum that we find the origins of universities, institutions so central to the task of preserving the past and constructing the future.
An End, and a Beginning
Augustine died, as is well known, with invading Germanic tribes at the gates of his city. These invaders had ravaged the Roman Empire – Rome had fallen to them in 410 – and it is these invasions, more than anything else, which led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire and its culture. In a time of fear, military spending naturally goes up, and cultural and educational spending goes down. No one thinks of writing poetry or copying manuscripts when you risk losing your lands overnight, and no emperor is going to divert funds to libraries or researchers when he’s fighting defensive battles.
But not everything was lost. Why not? Because by this stage in the history of the Church, after four centuries of careful reflection and debate, Christian thinkers had come to regard the best of Greco-Roman culture as true and beautiful, useful and instructive. As the Roman Empire fell apart and a cultural decline set in, it was committed Christians who gathered up and preserved, for Christian libraries and Christian schools, the works of pagan orators, philosophers, historians, natural scientists, and dramatists. Selectively, yes, but lovingly.
Fr. Conor McDonough
June 2020.