Please note that due to software, not everything in this transcript will be accurate

Against Coercion

Media – Invictus

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s a clip from Invictus, the 2009 film directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman as the late, great Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon as the legendary Springboks captain Francois Pienaar. (Oh, Springboks is the South African Rugby Union team–most of the film is set during the 1995 Rugby World Cup) This clip portrays Mandela’s first day as President of South Africa in 1994. After 27 years in prison under apartheid, Mandela suddenly found himself leading the nation. Unsurprisingly, some people who had worked under the previous regime were deeply nervous. But within minutes of starting his new job, Mandela said to a colleague:

“We know that staff here probably expect us to get rid of them … but that is not the nature of our organisation. I want you to tell the staff here that if they do their work properly, they must feel comfortable that they can stay and do their job.”

 Mandela wasn’t interested in punishment. He wanted to bring people with him—and he did. When Mandela died in 2013, his biographer John Carlin wrote in The Guardian that he had achieved a political “mission impossible … persuading a whole people, in this case the most racially divided people on Earth, to change their minds”. Mandela wasn’t perfect. But at a crucial turning point in history, he was one of history’s great persuaders. This isn’t an episode about Nelson Mandela (as good as that would be). It’s about another African—this time a North African—who also relied on persuasion at a decisive moment in history, some 1,700 years earlier. Today, I finally get to talk about Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius … Lactantius to his friends.  Like Mandela, Lactantius found himself on the wrong side of a repressive regime: the brutal persecution of Christians by Roman imperial decree in the early 300s. But within a decade, everything changed. Lactantius found himself at the very centre of power—as a household teacher and adviser to Constantine, after the emperor’s conversion to Christianity. In just ten years, Lactantius went from persecution to remarkable influence. And yet, despite that power, he didn’t seek revenge on his former persecutors. Instead, he argued for religious tolerance—and relied on persuasion, not coercion, to commend Christianity to his pagan friends. We’ve explored the Great Persecution (episode 162) and Constantine (episode 61). But this episode is about the in-between period and a remarkable, often-forgotten, individual who affected that turning point, and whose ideas about persuasion over political power are needed today more than ever. I’m John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions … 

Undeceptions theme

John Dickson (Studio)

The 200s AD (the third century) was a rough one for the Romans—they were nearly undone by invasion, civil war, plague, and economic collapse. In episode 162, Persecution Complex, we traced some of the key moments of that century, which saw emperors come and go at a rate only matched by Italian Prime Ministers. The Empire fractured—and then, finally, it was stitched back together (perhaps ‘hammered’ back together) by strongman leaders like Emperor Diocletian, one of whose policies was to sort out the Christians! Anyway, Lactantius was born in the middle of this century, around AD 250. We don’t know much about his upbringing, except that he was born and raised in North Africa (which was a highly cosmopolitan part of the empire) and he received a top-tier education in classical rhetoric and literature. Under Diocletian, who came to power in 284, Lactantius travelled to the eastern capital, Nicomedia, where he landed a prestigious job as teacher of rhetoric at the imperial court. Somewhere along the way—we don’t know how or when—Lactantius became a Christian. Diocletian’s rise to power ended a time of peace for the Church. One of the things we tried to point out in episode 162 is that persecution of Christians was sporadic and not constant in the Roman empire. It was terrible in the 250s AD but then it sort of calmed down for a couple of decades, and churches got busy building churches, and charities, and generally having influence. So reports the great Church historian of the time Eusebius of Caesarea. This is where we pick up with our guest, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, Professor of Roman History and Late Antiquity at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Beth wrote The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
What Eusebius says is that Christians were building big churches. They were serving in administrative roles. They had special dispensation not to have to sacrifice if they were holding office. And this … putting those two things together allows us to, to argue that that this really is, as you say, almost full legal rights or maybe even full legal rights.

John Dickson:
So are we talking 260s/70s?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
About 260 to the period of Diocletian. So you have gradually the Christians interpenetrating political social society. Um, we know that there are Christians in the army.

John Dickson:
Yes.. and Christian philosophers in the academies.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So this is what’s happening in, in the last 40 years of the third century,

John Dickson (Studio)

As Christians grew in number, some—like Lactantius—started rising through the ranks of power. Not everyone liked that. The dominant intellectual force of the time was Neoplatonism—a spiritual philosophy drawing on Plato, associated with Plotinus (mid-200s) and his famous student Porphyry (late 200s – right in our period). Neoplatonism taught that all reality flows from a single ultimate source—“the One”—and that the soul’s goal is to return to it. Later on, Bishop Augustine of Hippo noted that this new Platonism came closer to Christianity than any other pagan philosophy. But back in Lactantius’ time, the Neoplatonists weren’t feeling the love. Christianity looked less like a cousin—and more like a rival. 

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
At the same time, you’re having what I would say is a reaction on the part of these Neoplatonists who do not think that this is the right way to “the one”, who feel threatened by this this movement that seems to be you know, to cross social boundaries, to be blasphemous to maybe even be polluting and harmful to the city. And these philosophers who are charged, right, with advising the sovereign manage to finagle their way into influence at Diocletian’s court, probably through his Caesar Galerius and through some oracular priests and, and making an oppression on the emperor that way. And so, you know, it …as we know today, it’s not uncommon for a group once marginalised that comes into, you know, sort of social acceptability, to disturb and disrupt the people who had been the brokers of power before. And to trigger a backlash.  And so I think that that’s what is happening in the court of Diocletian, as these philosophers, you know, who are elite, who have traditionally been the great thinkers of the empire, when they start to be troubled, you know, an emperor is gonna listen.

John Dickson (Studio)

Two of the “great thinkers” pushing back against Christianity were Hierocles, the governor of Bithynia, and the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry, the one I mentioned earlier. Bithynia—located in what is now northwest Turkey—was home to Nicomedia, the city where Diocletian spent much of his reign. That made Nicomedia the eastern administrative and military hub of the empire. As governor of the region, Hierocles wielded real influence. And he was listening closely to Porphyry. And neither of them had much time for Christians.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So, Hierocles is very much on the side of these philosophers. Before becoming Governor of Bithynia, he was in Antioch and he was perhaps even part of a subsidiary school that was under the philosopher Eumenes.

John Dickson:
So is that, uh, Syrian Antioch?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Yes, Syrian Antioch

John Dickson:
Where there are a lot of Christians by the 200s.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Where there are a lot of Christians. And in Rome is where, well, where Plotinus was teaching. So you see, you know, these are, these are kind of flashpoints of, of tension. So Hierocles, coming through this Neoplatonist tradition being quite persuaded by these arguments that this was the proper philosophy. This is the way, not only for one’s soul to ascend to God, but … the philosopher should advise the emperor so that the whole empire can be a reflection of the divine cosmos. He’s so influenced by this that when he comes to be governor of Bithynia, he brings this teaching with him, and he has the ear of Galerius, the Caesar. And through Galerius, they arranged for their case to be heard by Diocletian. They organise what we would call a conference, in the palace where Porphyry, who is Plotinus’ student, and, probably, an acquaintance of Hierocles, presents the arguments in favour of clamping down on Christian worship.

John Dickson:
And Porphyry is a big deal. Right. Give my listeners a sense of how big a deal he is, philosophically speaking.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Right. So Plotinus is the, the leader the neo-Platonic movement was teaching in Rome in the mid two hundreds. Porphyry was his most illustrious student, and we know actually about Plotinus’ work through Porphyry, who wrote a biography of Plotinus and who edited all of Plotinus’ teachings. In the late two hundreds, early three hundreds, Porphyry is the spokesman for this particular movement. And you know, I think that it’s hard to know at this point how … I think he’s a more complicated, interesting character than he is represented in, let’s say the Christian press, for whom he is the arch enemy. It’s not clear to me that he would’ve necessarily sanctioned the violence that ensued against the Christians, but he presented his thoughts on why Christianity was mistaken, why the worship of Jesus as a human being was mistaken and polluting. And…

John Dickson:
Even though he didn’t like say, Jesus is an idiot, did he?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
No, no, no, no. In fact, he thought that Jesus was, was a worthy spiritual guide.

John Dickson:
Which is actually a more powerful argument in some ways, isn’t it? We love Jesus. He, it’s fantastic. It’s you lot that have elevated him.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
And Heirocles at the same time, is part of this conference and presents either something of Porphyrys own or his own, where he’s comparing different works of what Christians would call scripture and finding, you know, mistakes between them. So if, You know, if you, if you line up the various, canonical gospels, they disagree about many things.

John Dickson:
One woman at the tomb. Four women at the tomb. Before dawn. After dawn.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
No one at the tomb. So, in an effort to discredit Christianity, this is Heirocles’ argument.

John Dickson:
So we’ve got a technical argument. But a and they’re a very high level philosophical argument. That’s pretty powerful. Christians must have felt a little bit under the squeeze.

Porphyry despised Christianity – and his arguments laid the intellectual groundwork for the terrible repression Christians were about to face. 

Reading

How can these people be thought worthy of forbearance? They have not only turned away from those who from earliest time are referred to as divine among all Greeks and barbarians … and by emperors, law-givers and philosophers-all of a common mind. But also, in choosing impieties and atheism, they have preferred their fellow creatures (i.e. to worshipping the divine), And to what sort of penalties might they not justly be subjected who … are fugitives from the things of their fathers?
Porphyry – Philosophy from Oracles  

John Dickson:
Yeah, no, that’s a very good point. Okay. So Diocletian though is hosting these this little talk fest against the Christians. All these courtiers are there. The elites are there. Academics are there. Sitting in the audience is a very learned Christian who has to listen to this stuff. Lucius Lactantius. What must he have been thinking as he’s sitting there listening to this stuff?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
You know, over, over the decades where that I have been thinking about him, you know, it’s, he’s become more and more well-rounded more better and better known to me. When I first started working with him, he was interesting intellectually. In our current environment, the poignancy of his position has really come home more and more, especially recently. You know, the, the feeling of having, you know, he in this is now we’re in 303, he’s probably in his sixties. So for his entire adulthood, Christianity has been legal and he’s been able to move freely. Diocletian had Christian courtiers beyond him. He was there as a professor of rhetoric, probably as a lawyer, maybe even working in the chancery ddrafting legal documents. I, you know, to sit in that audience and hear the way the conversation was going, his heart must have just fallen out of him. You know, it’s just the, this prickle of fear, this sinking feeling that the world as you know, it is, is, is no longer.

John Dickson (Studio)

By 303, Lactantius’ worst fears were realised: Diocletian kicked off what became the worst persecution of Christians the Empire had ever seen.

Reading

And now Diocletian raged, not only against his own domestics, but indiscriminately against all; and he began by forcing his daughter Valeria and his wife Prisca to be polluted by sacrificing. Eunuchs, once the most powerful, who had chief authority at court and with the emperor, were slain. Presbyters and other officers of the Church were seized, without evidence by witnesses or confession, condemned, and together with their families led to execution. In burning alive, no distinction of sex or age was regarded; and because of their great multitude, they were not burnt one after another, but a herd of them were encircled with the same fire; and servants, having millstones tied about their necks, were cast into the sea. Nor was the persecution less grievous on the rest of the people of God; for the judges, dispersed through all the temples, sought to compel everyone to sacrifice. The prisons were crowded; tortures, hitherto unheard of, were invented; and lest justice should be inadvertently administered to a Christian, altars were placed in the courts of justice, hard by the tribunal, that every litigant might offer incense before his cause could be heard.
Lactantius – On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Chapter XV

John Dickson (Studio)

That terrible account – written by Lactantius himself – reflects just how violent and dangerous this period was for Christians. PLUS subscribers are about to hear Beth’s thoughts on how Lactantius might have navigated this dangerous period. Head to the show notes to see where to sign up if you want to listen to that part of the interview.

John Dickson – Studio

What we know for sure is that shortly after the persecution broke out, Lactantius left Nicomedia – though we’re not sure whether he was being hunted or if, because of his reputation, he was allowed to leave. A few years later, he popped up again in Trier, in what’s now Germany, to tutor Crispus, son of the new Emperor Constantine. Before he undertook that assignment, though, he used his persecuted downtime to write his magnum opus: the Divine Institutes.

John Dickson:
Okay. So he is lying low. He’s lost his job. He’s lost rank and status. And having been at the center of the court now is, you know, sidelined. So he does what any good academic does. He writes a book. He uses the sabbatical. I balk at saying defending Christianity. It certainly does that, but it does way more than that. And you are the one who has, I, I think, proven it’s all, it’s a lot more significant than a defense of Christianity.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So he calls it the Divine Institutes, these, this is the way you will learn about the divine law.

John Dickson:
Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. So it’s, he thinks of it as a kind of legal, social, theological, philosophical, moral work. It’s not a textbook on the Christian faith! Which is really interesting. And – does, does he not draw inspiration and even style from the great Cicero?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Oh yeah. He’s also a big fan of Cicero.

John Dickson – Studio

Cicero was a Roman politician, writer, and philosopher who lived in the first century BC. He’s considered one of Rome’s greatest orators, and in his day, he argued fiercely in favour of Rome remaining a Republic. Even today, his Latin prose is widely regarded as the gold standard of classical Latin. Anyway, his arguments cost him his life: He was executed on the orders of Mark Antony in 43 BC.

John Dickson:
They call Lactantius the Christian Cicero, right?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
They do indeed. 

John Dickson:
Do you think that’s deserved?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Yes, I do. Cicero, you need to remember, it was in a very similar position. don’t think of it that much.

John Dickson:
A little bit sidelined, you mean?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Well, in a time of tremendous political upheaval. So Cicero is living during the transition of the Roman Republic to an empire. And he, he knows the big players, and he gets in trouble with them. And, he’s, he’s, you know, he’s a senator once Julius Caesar is murdered and Cicero writes On the Republic and On the Laws, an imitation of Plato writing on the republic, on the laws. And he’s trying to imagine how to navigate the system, what would be a good government in this new state of affairs? And, Lactantius really sees Cicero as a kindred spirit in that way because he also, Lactantius also perceives himself as living at just that cusp of transition, that whatever we had is not working anymore, and we need to think about doing something better.

John Dickson:
Can I ask you the impossible? Can you give me the 60-second summary of the institutes?

Beth DePalma Digeser:
God. It is I think, a manifesto for Christian rule. I think it is a book that is designed for a particular reader or audio auditor who is going to be the Emperor Constantine and it’s meant to inspire that leader plus a host of elites, uh, who might also be listening to it, administrators, army personnel and so on, that that the right way to govern an empire is to have religious tolerance and to aspire to have everyone on an ethical path that leads to monotheistic devotion.

John Dickson:
It’s pretty audacious, given the time he writes this in the middle of the persecution, to imagine a Christian Empire. I mean, how on earth?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Well, but you need to keep your chronology in mind. So the terrible events of 303 and the edicts of persecution, Lactantius’ retirement … Diocletian then retires in 305. Going on in the West, Constantius becomes Augustus. Constantine, his son, who knows Lactantius, has gone out west to join his father.

John Dickson:
Because they may have met in court, right?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
They likely knew each other fairly well at court. Constantine had spent a number of years in the Eastern court and in Nicomedia, so they clearly knew each other.

John Dickson – Studio

Hey, just chiming in again to say that at this point, the Roman Empire was so vast it was basically impossible for one person to run it. So, Diocletian split the job between four rulers – an Augustus and a Caesar in the Western provinces and an Augustus and a Caesar in the eastern provinces. Back to Beth.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So Constantine goes west to his father, as his father becomes Augustus of the West. By 306, Constantius is dead, and Constantine has been raised to the purple by his troops. My thinking is that we know that Lactantius was in Nicomedia between 303 and 305. We also know from Jerome that he was tutor to Constantine’s son. I think that he’s invited to Trier in these early days, to… The reason given is to tutor Constantine’s son Crispus, but also he is a talented writer, rhetorician, legal administrator. And so it seems to me that, and there are, there are traces within the Divine Institutes as well. It seems to me that he is writing this already in Trier for that audience. And so he is free to really say lots of things about the persecution from this position of relative safety. And to imagine that his patron, who is at least, you know, Christian-friendly, could aspire to being this kind of, of ruler. And I think that in part the Divine Institutes is to motivate Constantine to be that kind of ruler.

John Dickson – Studio

Against all odds, Lactantius was again in the court of Imperial power, during a persecution no less! But things wouldn’t remain dangerous for Christians for much longer. They were about to gain the most unlikely of allies: Constantine was about to become Emperor. Stick with us. 

Break 

Media – Constantine and the Cross

John Dickson – Studio

That’s a clip from the 1961 historical epic Constantine and the Cross, starring Cornel Wilde as Emperor Constantine. It gives a pretty romantic vision of Constantine as a pious, compassionate man, destined to be a hero of Christianity; there’s even a scene where, as a child, he jumps into an arena to save Christians being mauled to death by lions! It didn’t happen! Film critics didn’t love it. The New York Times called it “one of those ponderous costumed tabloids that trampled history to death and turned what’s left of its fragments into boring banalities”. Ouch! Still, the real Constantine absolutely deserves a Hollywood blockbuster, quite apart from his Christian significance. But it’ll never happen. Anyway, after being proclaimed Emperor by his troops in York in Britannia in 306, he entered into a world of complex and bitter civil conflicts. By 312, he was at war with his imperial rival Maxentius. It was at the height of this conflict, on the eve of the decisive battle at the Milvian Bridge, that he had his famous vision of the cross in the sky, and his dream of Christ. It was this episode which – apparently – led him to convert to Christianity. Here’s an account of it all – from Lactantius himself. 

Reading

Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter Χ, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of Christ. Having this sign, his troops stood to arms. The enemies advanced, but without their emperor, and they crossed the bridge. The armies met, and fought with the utmost exertions of valour, and firmly maintained their ground. In the meantime a sedition arose at Rome, and Maxentius was reviled as one who had abandoned all concern for the safety of the commonweal; and suddenly, while he exhibited the Circensian games on the anniversary of his reign, the people cried with one voice, Constantine cannot be overcome! Dismayed at this, Maxentius burst from the assembly, and having called some senators together, ordered the Sibylline books to be searched. In them it was found that:

“On the same day the enemy of the Romans should perish.”

Led by this response to the hopes of victory, he went to the field. The bridge in his rear was broken down. At sight of that the battle grew hotter. The hand of the Lord prevailed, and the forces of Maxentius were routed. He fled towards the broken bridge; but the multitude pressing on him, he was driven headlong into the Tiber.
Lactantius – On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Chapter 44

John Dickson – Studio

This was a big deal, not just for the Empire, but for global history. I’ve said before on the show that Constantine’s conversion is the equivalent of someone like President Xi of China becoming a Christian (please, God!!). The ripple effect was enormous. But it’s also really complicated. I have a thousand contradictory thoughts about Constantine. So let me direct you to that cracking episode we did on his life and reign, episode 61, ‘Emperor Constantine’ with two top-flight Roman historians and experts on Constantine, Alanna Nobbs and Doug Lee—link in the show notes. The world rapidly changed under Constantine … and Lactantius was by his side.

John Dickson:
So, can we pivot to Lactantius’ relationship with Constantine? You’ve mentioned that they knew each other probably in Nicomedia. Lactantius ends up in the Western court. So this is Trier in Germany – 306 ish. So is he… does he have two jobs? I mean, I’m trying to imagine. I mean, he’s there ostensibly as the tutor to Constantine’s son. Would that be a demotion? He’s just tutoring for some kid?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So people have said this, but you know, how could … how could a guy who was the, you know, the chair of Latin letters in Nicomedia stoop to being tutor of the Prince? We don’t know of any one of Lactantius’ generation who had a job similar to that, but later on we do know, for example uh, a fellow named Osonious was both tutor to Gratian and, and then became his court advisor. So, uh, Cassiadorus has, has a similar role. Themistocles.

John Dickson:
He deserves a whole episode – Cassiadorus. Oh my goodness.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Yes, he does. He’s so cool.

John Dickson:
He is amazing. He’s so, talk about generous spirit.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
No kidding. I know!

John Dickson:
You know, here are all the books from Christians you should read. Now, here are all the books from people who aren’t Christians you should read, and they’re fantastic too. 

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
I know. He’s, wonderful. So, so it, you know, it wasn’t, I think it was not unusual for, a, a man of his stature to have … I mean the emperor would want the best for his son, whom he was grooming to succeed him.

John Dickson:
And of course, there was a certain philosopher in ancient Greece who had a gig teaching one person, didnt he? Aristotle teaches, uh, little Alexander!

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So yeah, I don’t think it was a demotion. And I do think that we can see his fingerprints on a number of documents. So I think that the letter that Constantine sends to the Bishop of Arles to call them together for a meeting has Lactantius’ fingerprints right on it. The phraseology is very similar. And if he, can you be….But, there was a few years later, there was a position that we know of that develops when Constantine goes east, when he conquers Lucineus, called the Queister of the Sacred Palace. And that is an office where you are drafting legislation and you are drafting the emperor speeches. And that’s what SIUs was, in fact. So when we can see traces of Lactantius’s phraseology in this letter to the bishops at Arles, and when you can see traces of Lactantius’ ideas and phraseology in Constantine’s oration to the saints, that evidence suggests to me that that’s the kind of position that he held in Trier.

John Dickson:
Yeah. I mean, do you think the, um, edict of Milan also has echoes of Lactantius? Yeah. And then the famous letter, is it 324? The letter to the eastern provinces? You see Lactantius’ commitment to peace in a society through tolerance and persuasion. 

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Yes. 

John Dickson (Studio)

When Constantine became Emperor, he embraced Christianity and extinguished all oppressive orders against the faith. Christianity, he said, was wholly legal. The Edict of Milan – issued in 313 – guaranteed tolerance for all faiths. Here’s a bit of it.

Reading

“We believed that we should give both to Christians and to all men the freedom to follow religion, whichever one they choose … so that whatever sort of Divinity there is in heavenly regions may be gracious and propitious to us and to all who live under our government.” 

John Dickson (Studio)

Constantine granted Christians equal status with the pagan religions. But – contrary to popular belief – Christianity didn’t become the official religion of the Empire under Constantine. That happened in the 390s – more than half a century after Constantine – under Emperor Theodosius. Even when Constantine became the sole emperor of East and West in 324, he could’ve imposed Christianity, but he didn’t. In fact, he wrote to the Eastern provinces to assure them that, although he would love everyone to become a Christian, he knew that would not create peace. He wanted peace above all things. And peace demanded religious freedom. The letter is amazing. It’s a public announcement from an Emperor in the form of a prayer to God:  

Reading

My own desire is, for the common good of the world and the advantage of all mankind, that Your people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord. Let those, therefore, who still delight in error, be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquillity which they have who believe. For it may be that this restoration of equal privileges to all will prevail to lead them into the straight path. Let no one molest another, but let everyone do as his soul desires … With regard to those who will hold themselves aloof from us, let them have, if they please, their temples of lies … We pray, however, that they too may receive the same blessing, and thus experience that heartfelt joy which unity of sentiment inspires.

Constantine, Edict to the People of the Provinces, as recorded by Eusebius in The Life of Constantine, Book 2, Chapter 56

John Dickson (Studio)

As Beth said, there’s every chance that Lactantius had a hand in drafting these notices or at least in sowing the seed of thought deep in Constantine’s conscience. We can be confident of this influence because religious freedom – in language similar to that you hear from Constantine – was already a really important theme of Lactantius’ earlier argument in his Divine Institutes.

John Dickson:
So let’s zero in on sort of the latter sections of his book where it starts to get a little more ethical, social, and political. Lactantius makes the case for religious tolerance. A pretty strong case and more than that for what you call Concord. Can you explain to me the difference between those two things? And then tell me what was his theoretical basis for this quite strong view about religious toleration?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
So to me, tolerance is simply putting up with something you don’t like. So, the Romans were not especially tolerant. I mean, we tend to think of them as tolerant because they had a wide variety of Gods…

John Dickson:
When you’re talking about this in the, in the book here I have double lines next to it going, wow. You know, there’s what a strong statement. You don’t normally hear that from a Romanist…

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
No, I know, I know. But, but they knew what they didn’t like. Yeah. And, and you know, whether it’s the cult of Bacchus, ’cause men and women were partying together, or whether it was aspects of Manichaeism, they, they were quite, quite willing to suppress ideas: Judaism, even philosophy from time to time. So they weren’t particularly tolerant. They were elastic. Right? So that’s the position of mere tolerance. For concord, Lactantius is thinking a little bit  further. It’s not that we’re in a state where we’re just going to be putting up with stuff in an open-ended way forever. He really sees this as working toward a particular goal, and his goal really is for everyone to become Christian. But he knows, I think from his own personal experience, that you can’t force someone to think something. And so his hope is that if you provide the foundation, the education, the kind of outreach that he’s doing in the Divine Institutes, that over time – especially if you have effective, tolerant Christian leadership – that over time society will change and you’ll achieve the end of a Christian state. And I would say that the fundamental principle is this idea of volitas in the latin, the will. So everyone has a will and you can’t, you can’t force the will to do a thing. It has to come from the person.

John Dickson:
And he also makes the point that, theologically, what God is worthy of worship would want us to be forced to love him?

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Exactly. You’d be useless to God if you didn’t go willingly.   

John Dickson:
And, and he makes that statement, um … that sounds so confident. If, if you have a good argument, debate us. Surely you could win. We are not afraid to debate you. It’s the truth that really detains us. Not anything else.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser:
Yeah. Which is, you know, to me arguing from strength.

John Dickson:
And that’s the thing he … we mustn’t think of tedious as this sort of soppy  liberal. You know, he, he is so confident. That he can be relaxed about religious plurality. It’s remarkable and, um, very attractive.

Reading

There is no need for violence and brutality: worship cannot be forced; it is something to be achieved by talk rather than blows, so that there is free will in it. They must unsheathe the sharpness of their wits: if the reasoning is sound, let them argue it! We are ready to listen if they would tell; if they keep silent, we simply cannot believe them, just as we do not yield when they use violence.
…
No one is detained by us against his will – anyone without devotion and faith is no use to God; but when truth detains, no one departs. If they have any confidence in their truth, let them teach it to us: let them talk, let them just utter, let them have the nerve, I say, to engage in debate of some such sort with us.
…
They realise that nothing matters more in human affairs than religion and that it ought to be defended with every endeavour, but they are just as deceived in the religion itself as they are in how to defend it. Religion must be defended not by killing but by dying, not by violence but by endurance, not by sin but by faith.”

Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book 5

Kirsten Mackerras:
The context for this argument is the most intense period of persecution that the church had faced to this date. 

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s my second guest, my lovely friend Dr Kirsten Mackerras. Kirsten recently completed her DPhil at Oxford (that’s a PhD but an Oxford one), and her topic was … Lactantius’ arguments about true justice. We’ve linked to her thesis (which will soon be a book) in the shownotes. Kirsten and I caught up for a tea in Oxford last month in the brand new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities—an amazing mix of library, conference hall, and cafe! 

Kirsten Mackerras:
Lactantius’ big view about what makes religion meaningful is that religious decisions have to be made through reason. For Lactantius, religion and wisdom are inseparable. And if you have one without the other, you’ve gone astray. So Lactantius is almost goading his opponents here saying that they resort to violence because they know they’d lose in a fair debate. God doesn’t need burnt animals or offerings. It’s the loyalty and devotion of his worshipers and in their living a virtuous life which is truly valuable to him. Now, this sounds obvious to us, but it was actually a radical shift in the way most people understood religion. For the average Roman religion was about performing the rituals the gods and ancestors had handed down. Religion was really important to them, but it was much more about what you do than what beliefs you hold. Lactantius saw Christians being compelled to sacrifice, to offer incense and said, ‘That person’s fingers are performing an act that the rest of them rejects. How is that meaningful? What God just wants your fingers?’ If the true part of worship happens in the mind, violence can’t actually coerce meaningful worship. It can only compel external behaviour. Religious acts require free choice to be meaningful, and so the state should ensure that people have the freedom to make those choices freely. And no God who wants to be worshipped through violence deserves to be worshipped anyway. They’re obviously not a good being that you would want to follow.

John Dickson (Studio)

Lactantius’ lengthy chapter on “Justice” in his Divine Institutes is probably the first sustained attempt in Western history to offer a case for the reciprocal tolerance of all religions. And centuries later, his arguments were echoed by one of the most famous names in the modern progress toward freedom of religion: Thomas Jefferson. The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, drafted by Jefferson and passed in 1786, reads:

Reading

“… no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

John Dickson (Studio)

Secular folks sometimes today sometimes imagine that Thomas Jefferson—a good Enlightenment humanist—more or less invented religious freedom. In fact, the idea goes back at least 1,500 years, to Lactantius, and even earlier to the Christian lawyer Tertullian. And here’s a lovely detail: Jefferson owned a beautiful leather-bound copy of Lactantius—and an underlined copy of Tertullian. So we know for sure that Jefferson himself didn’t think he’d invented religious freedom. But Lactantius wasn’t just concerned with religious freedom. He believed Christians – perhaps more than anyone – had a duty to pursue a special kind of justice for all.

Kirsten Mackerras:
One of Lactantius’s contributions to the history of ideas is that he gives us the first systematic account of Christian moral theology. So ethics, what does it mean to be a good person? And his ethics are centered around justice, which he calls the summation of all of the virtues. He interacts with a whole range of traditions, um, and classical philosophies on justice, and he is aiming to show that the Christians are the ones who are actually able to put it into practice. So the root meaning of justice, particularly in classical philosophy, is to give people what is due to them. And Lactantius splits this justice into two virtues: piety and equity. Both of which were important roman values. Piety, in fact, was a really important component of the emperor’s propaganda. They depicted themselves as ‘We are the pious emperors’. And Lactantius says, ‘God created us, and he’s our Father and Lord, which means we owe him worship or piety. But if God is our father, then all humanity are siblings, all made in the image of God, and we owe our siblings love and care’. So Lactantius is transforming the way people understand justice and piety and extending it more broadly, making it much more demographic, um, and going beyond what was taught by other schools, including the stoics who kind of come closest to him on this, on this topic. His argument about justice is grounded in lots of Roman poetry and philosophy, but ultimately, he says justice means loving God and loving your neighbour, meaning everyone.

John Dickson:
Without a Bible quote!

Kirsten Mackerras:
Without a Bible quote. It’s the Christian great commandment, but he’s gotten there by classical philosophy in his premises rather than the Bible.

John Dickson (Studio)

Hey, this is a really interesting feature of Lactantius’ approach — unlike earlier Christian public intellectuals, he avoids using the Bible. I asked Kirsten to explain it. 

Kirsten Mackerras:
Lactantius hopes his work will go beyond earlier writers, uh, because he wants not only to respond to challenges towards Christianity, but to create a positive account of Christianity on its own merits.

John Dickson:
Yeah that’s super key, isn’t it? It isn’t apologetics in the sense of ‘You say this, but, but we’ve got an answer to that’. It goes way beyond. 

Kirsten Mackerras:
So this is Christianity, but he’s still trying to be intelligible and persuasive to outsiders, which is really quite unique in the history of early Christian literature. 

John Dickson:
He’s also very conscious of the fact that previous writers had … you know, relied on the Bible for their answers and stuff, right? And he’s a little bit critical of that, isn’t he?

Kirsten Mackerras:
Absolutely. Because he doesn’t think it’ll be persuasive. He knows that you need eloquence and polished writing to appeal to the intelligent non-Christian. Um, and he, so he doesn’t quote the Bible. Instead he quotes, um, Roman literature and basically any other philosophical or religious text he can find that he thinks is gonna be persuasive. So it’s a very different approach, um, to people who were writing about Christianity for Christians. And actually meant a lot of scholars reading him later think that he doesn’t understand Christianity. He’s not really properly converted. It’s ’cause they didn’t understand what he was trying to do. Yeah. Um, and Another really big difference between him and previous writers is that the previous writers would address their works to people like the emperors or judges and say, ‘Please don’t persecute us. We promise that we’re we’re good for the empire. We’re not causing you harm’. But Lactantius is the first Christian writer who had the social status, uh, for emperors and governors to take him seriously. He wasn’t writing to, uh, far away authority figures he would never have any contact with. He was writing to his peers, his former students, and so he had a better knowledge of what it would take to persuade these people, not to persecute Christians. And since he was, he was one of them, they were much more likely to give him a hearing.

John Dickson (Studio)

I find that fascinating. And one of the topics Lactantius wants to be heard on, as Kirsten points out, is justice. Greeks and Romans loved the concept of ‘justice’ … but Lactantius had a special twist on the idea that he wants them to consider. 

John Dickson:
And he really, like that whole ‘justice is giving what is due’, as soon as you plug equality into that right it changes the whole meaning of justice. Talk us through that.

Kirsten Mackerras:
Absolutely. So the late Roman Empire had a really high level of social stratification. You had few wealthy elites at the top of the society, probably including Lactantius, and then a large number of poor citizens and slaves at the bottom. And Lactantius teaches the revolutionary idea that in order to be a person of justice, in order to have virtue, you must consider all people to be equal with yourself. Here’s what, here’s a quote from him. He says. 

“God who created human beings and gave them all the breath of life, wanted all to be on a level that is to be equal. No one is a slave with him and no one is a master for if he’s the same father to everyone” (He’s quoting the poet Lucretius) so we are all his children with equal rights..

So amazing.

John Dickson:
Hang on, I thought Thomas Jefferson invented human rights and equality.

Kirsten Mackerras:
Lactantius got there first. Lactantius gives another argument for why the Romans should stop the persecution. Now, the Romans were really scrupulous about their religious observance. When they were expanding their empire and they attacked a city, they had a ritual where they would call the gods of that city out of the temples, say, come and join us Romans, we’ll worship you. So that when they went in and leveled the city, they wouldn’t be guilty of sacrilege against those gods. And they believed that they had received imperial power because they were the most pious, godly people in the world. So their empire was a divine reward for the quality of their religious worship. One mistake in the performance of religious rites meant the whole thing was void, and you’d have to start over. So Romans have really, really high levels of honour for temples. And Lactantius draws on a biblical image that says the Christian’s body is a temple, the place where God dwells. And so Lactantius says, well, if you like temples so much, why are you killing Christian bodies, which are temples? Violence against Christians is sacrilegious. It violates Rome’s own principles. Sacred space was important to the Romans, but Lactantius says, the sacred space is the Christian bodies they’re torturing. So Lactantius is using Roman religious beliefs, really deeply held values, against Rome’s policy of persecution.

John Dickson:
And it doesn’t mean only Christians are sacred space, does he? Because he believes in equality…. that the image of God is in everyone. 

Reading

God who created human beings and gave them the breath of life wanted all to be on a level, that is, to be equal, and he established the same conditions of life for everyone, creating all to be wise and pledging them all immortality; no one is cut off from God’s celestial benevolence. Just as he divides his unique light equally between all, makes springs flow, supplies food and grants the sweet refreshment of sleep to all, so too he bestows fairness and virtue on all. No one is a slave with him, and no one is a master, for if ‘he is the same father to everyone’, so are we all his children with equal rights.

Divine Institutes – Book 5

Kirsten Mackerras:
Lactantius, he doesn’t advocate for the overturning of Roman society or destruction of Roman institutions, uh, but he says you need to treat people like they’re your equals, even if you are a senator and they’re a slave. So equality is to be expressed in humility. 

John Dickson:
We might do a little sidebar and I might do a little sidebar. Yeah. thing on, um, the passage where he talks about our final duty toward humankind is even to bury the pauper who is unknown to us, but known to God. We will give them an honored burial. Yeah. That’s how seriously he takes this equality thing.

Reading

The last and greatest duty of piety is burial of strangers and paupers, something which those experts in justice and virtue have never discussed…We will not therefore, permit a creature made in God’s image to fall prey to wild beasts and birds: we will return it to the earth whence it came; unknown to us he may be, but we will fulfil his kinsmen’s duty; in their absence, humanity will step in, and where a man is mourned, there we shall reckon our duty is needed.

Divine Institutes – Book 6

Kirsten Mackerras:
So one of the ways that Lactantius wants to see this expressed, uh, is through generosity. People who have money should give to those who don’t, who are poor, imprisoned foreigners, sick or otherwise suffering. He really criticizes the customs of his culture here. He says you shouldn’t give to get any kind of honor or reward or repayment.

John Dickson:
Which parenthetically was the main idea of doing good. It was reciprocity like the people you do good will praise you and give you honors.

Kirsten Mackerras:
Absolutely. Um, but Lactantius sees generosity as a spiritual investment. And if you receive a reward, a return in this life, then you’ve lost your spiritual investment. 

John Dickson:
I mean it sounds like he’s thinking of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount there. You will have your reward with the father, you know? Don’t left hand know what your right hand’s doing. But he doesn’t quote.

Kirsten Mackerras:
But he doesn’t quote. Um, the classical tradition basically said you should give to the person who deserves it the most. Uh, which in Aristotle is the idea of distributive justice giving according to worth or dessert. Lactantius says, justice means you give to the person who needs it the most. Justice doesn’t begin with the people who are closest to you. It begins with the people who need your help the most. And the goal is that everyone will have enough to survive, and he sees charitable giving as a moral obligation. It’s an act of justice that the poor have the right to expect this help of the rich. It’s not something that a person might choose to do. He also applies this equality to sexual behavior. Roman law left men free to sleep around, uh, but said that a woman who sleeps with anyone other than her husband is an adulterer. Lactantius argues that the same definition of adultery and the same standards of chastity applied to both men and women. He says married couples should adjust themselves to a joint morality and accept the union in a spirit of equality. We must imagine ourselves in the other, which I think is great marital advice even for today. So these ideas from Lactantius’ privatized religion and made the individual conscience so much more important in determining, determining religious allegiance. We live downstream of this idea and we enjoy its benefits today.

John Dickson (Studio)

Lactantius deserves the same airtime we usually give to more famous early Christian thinkers— like Gregory of Nyssa or Augustine of Hippo. Lactantius can be mentioned in the same breath. His writing on equality, justice, ethics were breakthroughs we now take for granted. So why doesn’t he enjoy the same level of admiration? Beth thinks part of the answer lies with Jerome—that’s Saint Jerome, best known for translating the Bible into Latin in the fourth century, which basically gave the West the Bible in the common or vulgar language. We call his Bible the Vulgate, for that reason. Jerome also wrote a kind of ancient Who’s Who of Christian thinkers called On Illustrious Men. But Jerome barely mentions Lactantius. Jerome was a kind of tastesetter of antiquity. Being passed over by him was a bit like releasing a great film or album and then missing out on every end-of-year “best of” list. Jerome does call Lactantius “the most eloquent man of his time” … but elsewhere he complains: “Lactantius has a flow of eloquence worthy of Tully. Would that he had been as ready to teach our doctrines as he was to pull down those of others!” There’s something to the criticism. Lactantius didn’t write in an ‘evangelistic’ mode. But I also think Jerome sort of missed the subtlety of what Lactantius was trying to do. He was trying to explain to his pagan intellectual peers – right in the middle of terrible persecution – why Christianity makes good sense of our world, of our lives, of ethics. There’s little doubt that people like Jerome and Augustine were, in the end, far more theologically important than Lactantius. But, for me, Lactantius stands as a wonderful historical example of generous Christian engagement with elite scepticism. We’ll be back in a moment.

Break 2

John Dickson (Studio)

Let’s press pause. I’ve got a Five Minute Jesus for you. I don’t know if this just reveals my own bias, but it seems to me that some of the most universally impressive people in history weren’t the bullies or the strong-armers. They were people who pursued great and costly goals—but did so with humility, an other-person-centred posture, and a gentleness of speech. They refused to push others around to get where they wanted to go. In the modern period, we think of Nelson Mandela—a man who, after decades of unjust imprisonment, deliberately turned away from revenge and instead tried to build a fragile, divided nation through reconciliation, persuasion, and moral authority. Or Martin Luther King Jr.. People have raised questions about his personal life—I don’t pretend to know what to make of all that—but there’s no doubt that the power of his influence came not through coercion or violence, but through patient argument, public witness, suffering, and a relentless appeal to conscience. Or even Mahatma Gandhi. I know he’s controversial within India for various religious and cultural reasons. But the reason he’s so revered in the West is that he resisted British rule with words, self-sacrifice, and love—ideas he explicitly said he learned from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And those ideas really do come from Jesus:

“The meek will inherit the earth.”
“The first shall be last, and the last first.”
“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”

And of himself he said: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve—and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

According to Jesus, real influence doesn’t come through domination. It comes through service, suffering, and humble persuasion. Now—you don’t need to remind me that Christians haven’t always lived this way. I wrote a whole book about the bullies of church history. But many Christians did. In the pressure-cooker world of the first century, the apostle Paul the Apostle urged believers: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” In the next century, in one of my favourite early Christian texts, an anonymous writer explained Christian influence to a pagan official named Diognetus like this:

“Did God send Christ to rule by tyranny, fear, and terror? Certainly not. On the contrary, he sent him in gentleness and meekness … as one who saves by persuasion, not compulsion … as one calling, not hunting down … as one loving, not judging.”

And then there’s Lactantius, writing in the early 300s, right in the middle of the Great Persecution. He put it with stunning clarity:

“Worship cannot be forced; it must be achieved by words rather than blows … Religion must be defended not by killing, but by dying.”

If that sounds beautiful to you—or at least like a noble ideal—it’s not ultimately because of John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, or any of the other great modern champions of persuasion and liberty of conscience. It’s because of the enduring impact of the one who said that true greatness lies in service—and who didn’t just say it, but gave his life as a ransom for many. You can press Play now.

John Dickson:
What can we learn from Lactantius all these years later?

Kirsten Mackerras:
What can we learn from him?It’s a fundamental part of Christianity that all people are equal, all people are equally made in the image of God, and therefore, Christianity demands that we treat others as equals. Just as important as ourselves, regardless of their social status, their nationality or citizenship, their gender, or any other factor. We think of this as a liberal idea that comes from the Enlightenment, but you find it clear as day in this 1700-year-old text. One of Lactantius’ other works, um, was on the deaths of the persecutor, which modern readers can find quite vindictive a nd blood thirsty. Uh, he’s celebrating the way that the persecuting emperors died horrible deaths. And yet, even, even in this book, he says that it’s God’s room. And yet even in this book, he said that it says. And yet even in this book, he says that it’s God’s place to seek vengeance and to make things right. It’s not the role of the Christians. So Christians should be active in seeking justice and seeking to do good, but they should be absolutely passive. Absolutely not get involved in seeking revenge or redress even for horrific violence that they’ve experienced. I think his argument, his insistence, that people need to be free to make their own religious decisions based on their own reason and conscience still resonates today. And I think if we accept his premises that the important parts of religion are internal, uh, which is a very modern assumption, then we have to, we have to follow his argument to its logical conclusion. If we think that the meaningful part of religion is that you mean it in your head, in your heart, then any form of coercion will compromise the quality of that religion and God won’t want it. Um, sadly, it didn’t take the church long to retreat from this high watermark of toleration, but that was a failure of the church to live up to its calling, and I think, um, we should be encouraged to take Lactantius at his best and to run with him.

John Dickson:
Yeah, let’s do that.

Undeceptions theme