Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine

The Nations, the Parting of the Ways, and Roman Imperial Ideology

Terence L. Donaldson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781467459556
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Originally an ascribed identity that cast non-Jewish Christ-believers as an ethnic other, "gentile" soon evolved into a much more complex aspect of early Christian identity. Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine is a full historical account of this trajectory, showing how, in the context of "the parting of the ways, " the early church increasingly identified itself as a distinctly gentile and anti-Judaic entity, even as it also crafted itself as an alternative to the cosmopolitan project of the Roman Empire. This process of identity construction shaped Christianity's legacy, paradoxically establishing it as both a counter-empire and a mimicker of Rome's imperial ideology.

Drawing on social identity theory and ethnography, Terence Donaldson offersan analysis of gentile Christianity that is thorough and highly relevant to today's discourses surrounding identity, ethnicity, and Christian-Jewish relations. As Donaldson shows, a full understanding of the term "gentile"is key to understanding the modern Western world and the church as we know it.

CHAPTER 1

Three Orations and a Question

Eusebius, Aelius Aristides, and Paul were disparate personages—a fourth-century bishop of Caesarea Maritima, a well-to-do second-century sophist and orator from Mysia in the Roman province of Asia, an itinerant first-century Jewish “apostle of Christ to the gentiles.” One thing they had in common, however, was an oration addressed in one way or another to the Roman Empire (self-composed in the case of Eusebius and Aristides, composed by a later chronicler in the case of Paul). Taken together, these three orations focus our attention on a significant question about the construction of early gentile Christian identity.

EUSEBIUS’S ON THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

In 335 CE, in the context of an ecclesiastical gathering in Jerusalem to mark the dedication of the recently completed Church of the Holy Sepulchre—a project initiated by Constantine shortly after his defeat of Licinius eleven years earlier and his consequent emergence as sole ruler of the Roman Empire—a remarkable oration was delivered by Eusebius, the bishop of nearby Caesarea, in praise of the emperor and his accomplishments. After a brief description of the “lofty and noble structures” that Constantine had built to commemorate and honor the site of the Savior’s death and resurrection, Eusebius observed that some had questioned why so much effort and energy was devoted to the project. Apologist that he was, he saw these objections as providing him with an opportunity to proclaim in words what (he believed, and not without reason) Constantine was intending to proclaim in the imperial language of edifice and architecture (In Praise of Constantine 18.3). And so, addressing himself to the emperor, he set himself the task of proclaiming to everyone “the reasons and motives of your God-loving works” (11.7).

The address that follows—commonly referred to as On the Holy Sepulchre—is a kind of theological ethnography carried out within the framework of an encomium on the emperor and his accomplishments.¹ Eusebius lays out an apologia for the religion of the emperor in which the history of redemption is intertwined with the history of the nations. His argument contains a number of connected themes: the multiplicity of nations itself as the locus of the malady for which the Savior offers “his heavenly cure”;² the mission of the disciples to all the nations as the means by which this cure is made available; the Roman Empire, which established peace among the nations of the world, as an important element in the success of this mission; and the emergence of a unified empire under Constantine as the visible manifestation of the divine plan to overcome the division of the nations and to gather them into a harmonious unity, thus fulfilling the prophetic promise that Christ “shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth” (In Praise of Constantine 16.7).

While Eusebius does not portray the existence of multiple nations as inherently negative, he nevertheless establishes a close association between ethnic diversity and the various “evils which of old afflicted the whole human race [to pan tōn anthrōpōn genos]” (In Praise of Constantine 13.8). The root of the problem, as he portrays it, is “the polytheistic error of the nations [tōn ethnōn]” (15.8), an error that had two stages of development. The initial part of the problem had to do with the inability of human beings to recognize the Creator of the world, which led “each race [genos]” (13.5) to devise a multiplicity of other deities, variously identified with heavenly bodies, human passions, deified mortals, and even animals (13.1–6). Here Eusebius goes into considerable detail, listing a broad array of nations by name and describing their various religious practices.

The problem, however, went beyond mere human follies and fancies. Evil demons took advantage of the situation, using polytheistic worship as a means of insinuating themselves into human affairs (In Praise of Constantine 13.4–6) and thus infecting “the whole human race” (13.14) with a malady that first came to expression in human sacrifice (13.7–8) and then manifested itself in a variety of other noxious symptoms (13.9–14). Political disputes, open conflict and warfare, plunder and highway robbery, incest and other forms of sexual deviance, treachery and murder, brutality and dissolution—such was the hopeless situation of division, conflict, and vile immorality that “the nations of the whole world [ta kath’ holēs tēs oikoumenēs ethnē], both Greek and barbarian, driven mad by demonic forces” (13.9), had created for themselves.

While this list of vices and evils is commonplace for the most part, one item stands out—political disputes or, more precisely, “fierce contention over laws and forms of government [nomois te kai politeiais]” (In Praise of Constantine 13.9). One might wonder what place there could be in a list such as this for disputes over politeia, especially a place at the head of the list. But it is a measure of its significance that Eusebius returns to it a little later, when he is speaking of the positive benefits that have resulted from the death and resurrection of the Word of God. Here it appears not simply at the head of the list, but as the (penultimate) cause of the others. What has produced wars, atrocities, and suffering of every kind is the fact that “all the nations of old upon the earth [panta ta palai epi gēs ethnē], the entire human race [genos], were cut up into provincial, national, and local governments, tyrannies and many kinds of rule” (16.2). However, the multiplicity of nations, with their various forms of government, was not the ultimate cause of human evil, strife, and misery. For Eusebius, a nation’s politeia—its form of government or corporate way of life—was an essential element of its character as a nation, and the politeia of every nation of the world was founded on “the delusion of polytheistic error” (16.3). Thus the ultimate cause of the various evils plaguing humankind was the polytheistic (and thus demonic) foundation on which ethnic diversity was constructed.

This, then, was “the inveterate malady which had asserted its dominion over the whole human race” (In Praise of Constantine 13.14) and which, Eusebius goes on to proclaim, Christ had come to remediate. To be sure, the remedy had already been available to some extent through the words of the prophets, together with the example of those few men of old who had been able to discern the truth about God. But the tyranny of the “ruthless and soul-destroying demons and spirits” had progressed to such an extent that a superior form of help was needed (13.15).

Christ’s work, in part, was to reveal himself as the Word of God and thus to reveal the nature of the true God and creator of all things. Revelation, however, was not sufficient in itself; the power of the demons needed to be broken. This is precisely what was accomplished through the death and resurrection of the Savior:

For as soon as the one holy and mighty sacrifice, the sacred body of our Savior, had been slain on behalf of the human race, to be as a ransom for all nations [pantōn ethnōn] heretofore involved in the guilt of impious superstition, thenceforward the power of impure and unholy daemons was utterly abolished, and every earth-born and delusive error was at once weakened and destroyed. (In Praise of Constantine 15.11)

If Eusebius here locates the site of the victory in Christ’s death, he can also link it with the resurrection. When he picks up the theme in the next chapter, he declares that when Christ “was raised, as a trophy of victory over the ancient demons and as a means of averting evil, the works of these demons were at once destroyed” (16.3). Either way, however, the defeat of the demons was the goal and outcome of the divine operation.

Given that the demons’ sphere of operation was the nations themselves, it is not surprising that the next step in Eusebius’s history of redemption is the worldwide mission to the nations. Indeed, it is the defeat of the demons that opens the way for the “one God [to be] proclaimed to all” (In Praise of Constantine 16.3). This mission is carried out by the disciples, “who were destined … to communicate to all humankind that knowledge of God which he before ordained for all the nations [pasi tois ethnesi]” (15.7). It was a sign of Christ’s own power that he was able to take “obscure and unlettered men” and turn them into “the legislators and instructors of the human race,” composing “writings of such authority that they were translated into every language of Greeks and barbarians, and were read and pondered by all the nations [pasi tois ethnesi]” (17.9). Thus not only did Christ promise that “his gospel must be preached in all the world as a testimony to all the nations [pasi tois ethnesin]”; through the mission of his disciples he fulfilled it as well, “for within a little time the whole world [hē sympasa oikoumenē] was filled with his doctrine” (16.8).

The disciples, however, were not the sole agents of the worldwide success of the gospel. God was also at work through a second channel—the Roman Empire itself, which had its own role to play in overcoming the ethnic fractiousness of the human race. Eusebius attaches considerable significance to the fact that the emergence of “the doctrine of Christ” coincided with the emergence of the empire under Augustus: “so at the self-same period, the entire dominion of the Roman empire being nested in a single sovereign, profound peace reigned throughout the world” (In Praise of Constantine 16.4). Coincided, yes; but coincidence, no. For Eusebius, it was precisely “by the express appointment of the same God” that these “two roots of blessing, the Roman empire, and the doctrine of Christian piety, sprang up together for the benefit of humankind” (16.4). Working together, they were able to address the twin causes of the human malady—the division of the human race into hostile, warring nations; and the demonic forces at work in the polytheistic structures of the nations themselves:

But two mighty powers, starting from the same point, the Roman empire, which henceforth was swayed by a single sovereign, and the teaching of Christ, subdued and reconciled these contending elements. Our Savior’s mighty power destroyed at once the many governments and the many gods of the demons, and proclaimed to all humankind [pasin anthrōpois], both Greek and barbarian, to the extremities of the earth, the sole sovereignty of God himself. Meantime the Roman empire, the causes of multiplied governments being thus removed, effected an easy conquest of those which yet remained; its object being to unite all nations [pantoiōn ethnōn] in one harmonious whole; an object in great measure already secured, and destined to be still more perfectly attained, even to the final conquest of the ends of the habitable world [tēs oikoumenēs], by means of the salutary doctrine, and through the aid of that Divine power which facilitates and smooths its way. (16.5–6)

Even so, the “two roots of blessing” are not placed on a completely equal footing. Rome’s ability to unite the nations under one sovereign was dependent on the prior victory of the “Savior,” whose defeat of the demons effectively removed the underlying “causes of multiplied governments.”

While Eusebius may acknowledge that the divine purposes have not yet been “perfectly attained,” he nevertheless places the emphasis on the “great measure” to which these purposes have been “already secured.” The worship of the one God has spread throughout the inhabited world: “the ears and tongue of all humankind on earth [have been filled] with the praises of his name” (In Praise of Constantine 16.8); “spiritual and rational sacrifices are offered as a sacred service by all the nations [hapantōn tōn ethnōn] to the One Supreme God” (16.10); “in every region of the world of humankind,” Christ is “acknowledged by all the nations [tōn ethnōn hapantōn] as the only Son of God” (17.13). Accompanying the spread of true worship, people from every walk of life and every nation have been converted to piety, virtue, and peaceable relations with others: “multitudes from multitudes of nations” (myria myriōn ethnōn) have been instructed to live “a just and virtuous life” (17.6); “the whole human race, subdued by the controlling power of peace and concord, received one another as brethren, and responded to the feelings of their common nature” (16.7). Such transformation took place not only among individuals but among the nations as well: “the inveterate strife and mutual hatred of the nations [tōn ethnōn]” was a thing of the past (16.7); people could travel freely “from West to East, and from East to West,” as if the whole world was “their own native country [patridas]” (16.7); indeed, with the one God as their Father, and “true religion as their common mother, … the whole world [tēn sympasan oikoumenēn] appeared like one well-ordered and united family” (16.7).³ And all of this, Eusebius declares, is a fulfillment of the prophetic promises, especially those “which speak as follows concerning the saving Word. ‘He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.’ And again, ‘In his days shall righteousness spring up; and abundance of peace.’ ‘And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: and nation shall not take up sword against nation [ethnos ep’ ethnos], neither shall they learn to war any more’”⁴ (16.7).

It was, then, a remarkable oration, striking alike for its context as well as its content. Speaking in Jerusalem, “that city from which as from a fountain-head the Savior Word has issued forth to all humankind” (In Praise of Constantine 11.2), Eusebius addresses himself to the sole emperor of the Roman world, as he stands within a magnificent new edifice constructed by the emperor himself in honor of that Savior Word, whose devotee and subject he has now become. In vivid terms, Eusebius presents us with a vision in which the mission of the disciples and the empire of Rome function as divinely intended partners in a grand project, one in which all the nations of the inhabited world are gathered into a single unified dominion. What may have appeared at the outset to have been two distinct or even oppositional projects—the mission of the disciples to preach the gospel “to all nations [panta ta ethnē]” (16.8) and the campaign of the Roman Empire “to unite all nations [pantoiōn ethnōn]” (16.5)—turn out in the end to have been a single e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1. Three Orations and a Question
• 2. Positioning the Question
• 3. Ethnē as an Identity Ascribed to Non-Jews: By Jews
• 4. Ethnē as an Identity Ascribed to Non-Jews: By Jewish Christ-Believers
• 5. The Nations in Roman Imperial Discourse
• 6. Ethnē and Gentile Christian Identity (Before 135 CE)
• 7. Ethnē and Gentile Christian Identity (After 135 CE)
• Afterword
• Bibliography