Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire: From Justin Martyr to Origen. By Jared Secord

Abstract

In this valuable and stimulating work, Jared Secord argues that Christianity was not the most important consideration when a Christian intellectual interacted with non-Christians, particularly imperial authority. He writes that ‘they depicted themselves as full participants in the intellectual culture of the Roman Empire and were judged on this basis’ (p. 2). He draws support for this from both Christian and non-Christian figures. As Romans appropriated Greek culture, ‘in the first century bce, Greeks and Romans imagined a future that was based on Greece restored to its classical past, with Romans as its leaders, who proved to be much more Greek in their ancestry than had previously been believed’ (p. 19). This was possible due to a concept passed to the Romans through their Greek education, eugenia. The idea that a thinker was subject to the benefits and limitations of their intellectual ancestry, much as was a statesman, meant that the ‘lineage’ of an intellectual dictated their networking success in Roman society (pp. 11–19). The Greek perspective that the Asiatic world was barbarous and in need of taming became a mission passed to the Romans, and celebrated by writers such as Dionysius and emperors such as Hadrian. This drove Christian intellectuals to define themselves in terms of their Greekness, as attempted by Justin Martyr and attained by Clement, Julius Africanus, and Origen, or in terms of their rejection of Greekness, as in Tatian, less successfully. Although Tatian famously rejected the received rules of the game and insisted his thought was superior by virtue of his avoidance of Greek philosophy, Secord points out that in so doing, several aspects of his rejection betray rather Greek assumptions.