Lactantius

c. 250 - c. 325 CE · Roman North African; professor of rhetoric at Nicomedia, tutor at Trier · Patristics, Latin Apologetics, Christian Ethics and Political Thought, Theodicy

Religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith.

Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) was a North African teacher of Latin rhetoric whom the emperor Diocletian brought to his capital at Nicomedia, in Asia Minor, to teach eloquence to a Greek city that had little use for it. He became a Christian there, lost his chair when the Great Persecution began in 303, and lived through the decade in which the emperors tried to destroy the Church and then one of them embraced it. In extreme old age Constantine called him to Trier to tutor his son Crispus. The Renaissance called him the Christian Cicero; Jerome wished he could have established the Church's…

Topics Lactantius addresses

• justice as piety and equity
• justice reigning under Saturn and fleeing under Jupiter
• the gods as deified men
• demons as source of error
• the two spirits, Son and envious adversary
• the false wisdom of philosophers
• philosophy refuting itself
• immortality as the chief good
• the antipodes ridiculed
• wisdom inseparable from religion
• God as Father to love and Lord to fear
• Christ as teacher of righteousness
• Sibylline oracles and Hermes Trismegistus as witnesses
• the honey of wisdom on the bitter cup
• religion defended by dying, not killing
• freedom of the will in religion
• universal siblinghood under one Father
• answer to Carneades on justice
• the two ways
• worship as justice and works of mercy
• prohibition of killing, war and infant exposure
• governing the passions, not extirpating them
• lust, marriage and continence
• the world made for man and man for God

Questions to put to Lactantius

Divine Institutes and the True Religion

• Why did you write a systematic introduction to Christianity aimed at educated pagans rather than at believers?
• What do you mean by anointing the cup with the honey of wisdom?
• How do you argue that wisdom and religion cannot be separated from each other?
• Why do you think philosophy has never found the chief good, even after centuries of searching?
• What makes immortality the chief good rather than happiness, virtue, or pleasure?

Justice, Equity, and the One Father

• What are the two parts of justice, and how do they hold together?
• How do you argue that rich and poor, free and slave are equal before God?
• What does the story of justice reigning under Saturn and fleeing under Jupiter mean to you?
• How do you answer the philosopher Carneades, who argued that justice and self-interest cannot both be served?
• Why do you say that a just man may not kill — not as a soldier, not as an accuser, not in any case?

Religion Defended by Dying, Not Killing

• Why do you say that nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion?
• How can worship forced on an unwilling mind be no worship at all?
• You narrate the deaths of the persecutors in detail — how does that sit alongside your argument that vengeance belongs to God alone?
• How do you see the relationship between your argument for religious freedom and your praise of Constantine?
• What does patient endurance accomplish that force never can?

The Anger of God and Providence

• Why must a God who loves the good also be angry with the wicked?
• How is God's anger different from the kind of passionate, uncontrolled anger we see in human beings?
• What goes wrong, in your view, with a God who is kind but never angry?
• How do you read providence in the human body as an answer to those who say man is born weaker than the animals?
• Why do you think the fear of God is the foundation not just of religion but of justice and the life of cities?

The Two Spirits, Evil, and the Last Things

• Can you explain what you mean by the two spirits — the Son and the envious adversary?
• Why does God permit the adversary to exist and act in the world?
• What's the argument that without evil there can be no virtue?
• How do you see the six thousand years unfolding, and what signs mark the end?
• What happens during the thousand-year reign of the just before the final judgment?

Pagan Witnesses, Philosophy, and the Sibylline Tradition

• How can you argue from the Sibylline oracles, Hermes Trismegistus, and the Roman poets if you also say their religion is false?
• What does it mean to you that truth extorted confessions from pagan writers against their own intentions?
• Why do you think the philosophical schools, taken together, refute one another rather than converging on truth?
• What's behind your mockery of the idea that people could live upside down on the other side of a spherical earth?
• Why did you find Cicero, Seneca, and Vergil more useful for reaching educated pagans than quoting Scripture directly?

Converse with Lactantius on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Lactantius's own writing, cited to the page.