Larry Siedentop

If, originally, the only unit of lasting human association was the family, and the basis of that association was religious belief, then certain condition had to be satisfied before wider assocations became possible….Each extension of human association required the establishment of a new worship, recognition of a divinity superior to the domestic divinities.

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If, originally, the only unit of lasting human association was the family, and the basis of that association was religious belief, then certain conditions had to be satisfied before wider assocations became possible….Each extension of human assocation required the establishment of a new worship, recognition of a divinity superior to the domestic divinities.

[The ancient family] was a church which constrained its member to an extent that can scarecly be exaggerated. The father, representing all his ancestors, was himself a god in preparation. His wife counted only as part of her husband, having ancestors and descendants only through him.

This restriction of affection to teh family circle gave it an extraordinary intensity. Charity, concern for hu mans as such, was not deemed a virtue, and would probably have been unintelligible.

But [Plato’s] conception of society remains one in which radical status differences ensure the harmony of thought and action. For Plato, everyone is obrn with an attribute that fits him or her for a particular social role, his or her ‘proper’ place.

At the core of ancient thinking we have found the assumption of natural inequality.

For the Jews ‘law’ meant not logos or reason, but command. The law, properly so called, was Yahweh’s will.

Paul’s conception of the Christ overturns the assumptions on which ancient thinking had hitherto rested, the assumption of natural inequality.

Through his conception of the Christ, Paul insists on the moral equality of humans, on a status shared equally by all.

What Paul did, in effect, was to combine the abstracting potential of later Hellenistic philosophy—its speculations about a universal or ‘human’ nature—with Judaism’s preoccupation with conformity to a higher or divine will.

For Pqul, belief in the Christ makes possible the emergence of a primary role shared equally by all (‘the equality of souls’), while conventional social roles—whetehr of father, daughter, official, priest or slave—become secondary in relation to that primary role.

Before Paul, speculation about a ‘human’ nature had not carried a strong moral message. By contrast, Paul’s Christ carries a revolutionary moral message.

The fate of the individual soul rather than a community of ‘the saints’ became the focus of marcionism. Apparently th churches Marcion estables were rather hieractic, perhaps a hangover from Gnosticism. Nonetheless, his churches were also criticzed for giving women an import role. If Marcion was a heretic, it was probably because he developed teh individualism latent in Paul’s thought to the point where he would one day be condisdered a proto-Protestant.

In any case, the Gospel of Thomas contains extraordinary passages devoted to what can only be described as women’s ‘liberation’.

In the Gospel of Thomas we see the moral intuitions generated by Christian beliefs being given a new application. Belief in teh moral equality of humans was beginning to threaten fundamental status differences.

Of course, the Gospel of Thoas was a minority report. Bit it reveals that the moral intutions generated by Christianity were hard to contain, even when teh organized church was anxious to placate Roman authorities and deny that it had any conspiratorial or subverisve character.

Thus an unintended consequendce of the persecution of Christians was to render the idea of the individual, or moral equality, more intelligible.

The Christian movement gained from being marginal. The offer of dignity through belief in the Christ did not openly challenge partriarchy or servitude. Bit it offered self-respect. A moral revolution was under way.

The church had already found it necessary to organize itself. A hierarchy of offices emerged. The informal distinctions of the frist century gave way to a structure of bishops (for each city), aided by presbyters and deacons. ‘The exact history of this transition within two generations from apostles, prophets and teachers to bishops, presbyters and deacons is shourded in obscurity, though our sources give occasional glimpses of the process.’ [footnote 2] But adjusting to hierarchy did not stop there. By the later third century Christians also occupied important positions in the Roman administration, at the centre and in privinces. Christians were to be found even among high officers in the army. The church had, moreover, acquried rich benefactors, and the largest episcopal sees developed elaborate welfare organizations. Indded, they amounted to mini-welfare states, through their provision for poorer members. Bishops were fast becoming important civic figures.

The penetration of the Roman state by the church had important consequences for each. On the one hand, it led to striking changes in the rhetoric and the behaviour of the urban governing classes. On the other hand, it threatened the sense of an egalitarian ‘community of saints’ that had sustained the church as a persecuted minority, and led to a mvoement within the church to reject the world and its ‘temptations.’

Where paganism had concerned itself primarily with exgternal conformity of behaviour, Christianity now concerned itself especialy with inner conviction.

For ‘Christian humility’ might be invoked as efectively as ‘Divine Majesty’. This alternative could present the claims of authority as moving ‘from within or below’ upwards, rather than descending from ‘on high’. In that sense, the assumption of moral equality proved to be double-edged.

The early churchillustrated this alternative road, although in a patchy, incoherent way. For once the age of apostles and prophets had passed, presbyters and bishops were chosen by general consent of believers. The ‘laying on of hands’ on candidates for presbyters, from which group ‘bishops’ gradually emerged as the senior figures, illustrates earliest practice. The choice of bishop was often the result of popular ‘acclamation’, even when the candidate had been pre-selected by virtue of his learning and paideia. Here we can see a kind of compromise between the traditions of the urban notables and a mroe egalitarian emerging culture.

The choosing of ‘superiors’ by ‘inferiors’ was the norm, though it was not formalized or systematic. It was only later, when the church became closely joined to the Roman empire, that the norm had to compromise with another, that is, with the practice of ‘superiors’ choosing ‘inferiors’. Even before official toleration and then adoption of Christianity by the empire, the role of the bishops as spokesmen for their cities in dealings with the emperor had given an airstocratic turn to the proceedings of urban churches. Nor did wealth hurt.

Outward conformity and behaviour was all that had been expected in the ancient family and polis. But monasticism consecrated a vision of social order founded on conscience, on hard-won individual intentions rather than publicly enforced status differences.