Pagans and Christians in the City

by Steven D. Smith

  For pagans, in sum, this city and this world were, and are, our home—the only home we have. This life, and the good things of this life, are the only ones we need to concern ourselves with.

  An atheist might say much the same thing, of course. Or at least he might utter much the same words. But there is a crucial difference. The pagan could make those affirmations in an appreciative or laudatory or even rapturous tone, because our home in this city and this world and this life is a consecrated home—consecrated by its association with the gods. This world is our home not merely in the atheist’s sense that, however shabby, it’s the only one we’ve got, but rather in the sense of acknowledging how the gods have endowed this home with a “shining beauty and grace.”55

  The pagan orientation, in short, accepts this world as our home, and does so joyously, exuberantly, worshipfully. (Or at least that is one part of the pagan orientation; we may encounter other, darker aspects as we proceed.)

  The transcendent monotheism of Judaism and Christianity, by contrast, disrupts this comfortable sense of being at home. Though created and sustained by God, the world is now also separated from God—a separation aggravated, in Christian doctrine, by the Fall. Christians (and also Jews) effectively undid the pagan sacralization of the world, and instead effected a “desanctification of nature,” as Heschel explained.56 As a result, Assmann observes, the monotheist “does not feel entirely at home in the world any more.”57 Judaism and Christianity are religions “of distantiation, in contrast to religions of complete immersion in the world.”58

  In Christianity, this distantiation generated an orientation that was complex—one that was, and is, difficult for non-Christians (and, often, Christians as well) to understand, and even more difficult for Christians actually to maintain. Matters would have been simpler if Christianity had simply and starkly rejected “the world” as a fallen realm to be resisted and escaped. Some Christian heretics took this view.59 And indeed, even what became the canonical Christian Scriptures repeatedly warned disciples to keep themselves “unspotted from the world,”60 sometimes coming close to what sounded like flat condemnation of the world.61 Saint Simeon Stylites sitting for years atop his pillar, or Saint Antony dwelling in the desert, living on bread and water consumed only after sunset once a day, or once every few days,62 would seem to embody this sort of contempt of the world.

  At the same time, Christianity early on condemned as a heresy the view that the world is simply evil. Although fallen, the world is a creation of the true God, and hence good. It is to be appreciated as a blessing, not shunned or despised as an affliction.63 We can try to appreciate this complex and challenging stance by considering how the desacralization of the world influenced the way Christians thought (or aspired to think) on an assortment of related topics: nature, the goods of this world, sexuality, and the city.

  Nature

  As noted, paganism sacralized nature—every mountain, valley, and stream had its proper deity—while Christianity revoked this sacralization. And yet Christianity also taught that nature was God’s good creation. Though not “sacred” in the way it was for pagans, the world as God’s creation continued to have a “sacramental” quality. The delicate prescription was thus neither to deny the beauty of the natural world (which would be ungratefully to disparage God’s work), nor to rest in any adoring appreciation of that beauty (which would be a form of idolatry), but rather to appreciate natural beauty while looking beyond it to its source in the Creator.

  Addressing the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Athenagoras the Athenian used analogies to illustrate the distinction and explain why “Christians do not worship the universe.” When people visit the imperial family, “if they chance to come upon the royal residence, they bestow a passing glance of admiration on its beautiful structure,” Athenagoras pointed out. “But it is to you yourselves that they show honour.” Likewise, “at the musical contests the adjudicators do not pass by the lute-players and crown the lutes.” In the same way, “beautiful without doubt is the world.” And “yet it is not this, but its Artificer, that we must worship.”64

  Augustine made the point in poetic terms.

  And what is this God [that I love]? I asked the earth and it said: “I am not he”; and everything in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea, and the deeps and the creeping things, and they replied, “We are not your God; seek above us.” I asked the fleeting winds and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes was deceived; I am not God.” I asked the heavens, the sun, moon and stars; and they answered, “Neither are we the God whom you seek.” And I replied to all these things which stand around the door of my flesh: “You have told me about my God, that you are not he. Tell me something about him.” And with a loud voice they all cried out, “He made us.” My question had come from my observation of them, and their reply came from their beauty of order.65

  In the abstract, these attitudes toward nature are importantly different. And yet, the practical significance of the difference still may not be obvious. The pagan thinks nature is divine; the Christian claims that nature itself is not divine but rather a creation and reflection of the divine. So the pagan gazes up at the starry sky and exclaims, “How divine!” The theologically fastidious Christian looks up and says, “What a sublime manifestation of the divine!” As a practical matter, how important is this difference? The pagan might praise nature in poetry—as in Virgil’s Georgics, for example—but the Christian might do the same. Think of Saint Francis’s famous “Canticle of the Creatures.” Or Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.”

  Glory be to God for dappled things. . . .

  All things counter, original, spare, strange; . . .

  With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

  He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change.

  Praise him.66

  If the differences in pagan and Christian attitudes to nature did not have hugely different practical implications, however, the divergences become more conspicuous when we come to the other topics.

  Goods

  In the pagan conception, the gods’ assistance is sought in the pursuit of a variety of this-worldly goods. Life. Health. Wealth and power. Glory and fame. Peace. Happiness. These are by and large the same kinds of goods that the “interest-seeking conception” of the person that we looked at in chapter 2 recognizes as the desiderata that govern human pursuits and that inform the instrumental reasoning by which personal and public decisions are made.

  Christianity recommended a complex but fundamentally different attitude toward these goods. It did not deny their goodness. The world, once again, is a creation of the true God, and hence good; its pleasures and beauties are genuine goods. But they are not the ultimate good. That more ultimate good is something often described as “eternal life.” To this the worldly goods needed to be subordinated; otherwise they would lose their goodness.

  “Eternal life.” The term recurs repeatedly in the New Testament to describe the goal and reward of Christian faithfulness.67 The Apostles’ Creed repeats the theme: “I believe in . . . the life everlasting.” For his part, Augustine over and over emphasized that “eternal life is the Supreme Good.”68

  And what is “eternal life”? For Christians, the term connoted two things. As its literal meaning suggests, it meant life that goes on forever—that continues or resumes after death in a physical resurrection. But eternal life also meant something like the life of and with God, the Eternal. “For, impelled by the desire of the eternal and pure life,” Justin Martyr declared, “we seek the abode that is with God, the Father and Creator of all.”69

  In both respects, the Christian orientation contrasted sharply with paganism. To be sure, many Greeks and Romans surely hoped for some sort of existence beyond the grave.70 And some of the so-called mystery cults did seek to prepare their initiates for life in the next world. Even so, as the historian John Scheid explains, the mystery cults were not “religions of salvation and spirituality.” “The wellbein
g or salvation sought by these cults was of a nature just as material as that offered by the traditional cults: it had to do with this world, the here and now. True, they showed that death was not an evil, and offered hope for the beyond, but above all they set out to achieve a happy life in this world and possibly even to prolong it and help the deceased after their deaths.”71

  Scheid concludes that “there is no similarity between these cults and Christianity. They conveyed no message of triumph over death nor did they offer any fundamentally new revelations.”72 In particular, pagans rejected the idea of physical resurrection and of a final judgment. Indeed, Guy Stroumsa observes that this was “one of the characteristics of Christianity that would repel intellectual pagans the most.”73

  In addition, while hoping that the gods would assist them in achieving the goods of this world, pagans typically did not imagine any higher good—anything like union with the gods—that transcended earthly flourishing.74 For pagans, the goods of this world—of the here and now—would be, so to speak, as good as it gets. By contrast, Christians looked for a blessedness that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man.”75 Once again, it did not follow that for Christians the goods of this world were not authentic goods. But if they were pursued as the ultimate goods, then they would, paradoxically, lose their goodness and turn to evils.

  The idea is tirelessly and eloquently elaborated as the central theme of Augustine’s Confessions. The spiritual autobiography relates how, as a boy, Augustine is immersed in childish games, and then in sexual adventures and carousing with friends.76 Slightly later, as a talented and ambitious young man, Augustine leaves his provincial African town and travels to Rome and Milan in search of prosperity and eminence. Sexual gratification continues to be important to him (bk. 5).

  Gradually, however, he becomes convinced, at least in the abstract, that wisdom is to be preferred to sensual gratification. This conviction is reinforced by the sudden death of a dear companion. As friends, they had enjoyed everything together; now everything reminds Augustine of what has been lost beyond hope of recovery. “My heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow,” he recalls, “and everywhere I looked I saw death” (4.9, p. 51).

  Generalizing, he concludes that “every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things—it is torn to pieces when it loses them, and then realizes the misery which it had even before it lost them” (4.11, p. 52).

  Nonetheless, thoroughly immersed in careerism and the gratifications of sexuality, Augustine finds it difficult to relinquish the pursuit of these mundane goods. Even after he becomes intellectually convinced of the truth of Christianity, the allure of the world is strong. “But wait a moment,” he tells himself, resisting conversion.

  This life also is pleasant, and it has a sweetness of its own. . . . We must not abandon it lightly. . . . See now, it is important to gain some post of honor. And what more should I desire? I have crowds of influential friends, if nothing else; and if I push my claims, a governorship may be offered me, and a wife with some money. . . . This would be the height of my desire. . . . I talked about these things, and the winds of opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither. (6.19–20, p. 99)

  Sexual gratification in particular is difficult to forswear. “Lord, make me chaste,” Augustine famously prays, “but not yet” (8.17, p. 139).77

  Eventually, though, in part through study and mystical experience, and in part through the influence and example of prominent Christians like Ambrose, the eloquent and erudite bishop of Milan, and Victorinus, a philosopher and Christian convert, Augustine is able to embrace the Christian faith more fully. That faith points him to a higher good—eternal life, or union with God—that is fulfilling, not shallow and transitory in the way earthly goods are. This new understanding culminates in a mystical experience that Augustine enjoys with his mother, Monica, shortly before her death. Mother and son are “discussing together what is the nature of the eternal life of the saints: which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man.” Their conversation gradually brings them “to the point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with that life to come, not worthy of comparison, even of mention” (9.23–24, p. 163). Looking back on the experience, Augustine would recall that “this world, with all its joys, seemed cheap to us even as we spoke.” And he would add: “If this [experience] could be sustained, . . . and . . . should so ravish and absorb and envelop its beholder in these inward joys that his life might be eternally like that one moment of knowledge which we now sighed after—would not this be the reality of the saying: ‘Enter into the joy of thy Lord’?” (9.25–26, p. 164).

  And yet the worldly goods, once again, are authentically good. “Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and in gold and silver and all things. The sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in physical sensation. Worldly honor also has its own glory, and so do the powers to command and to overcome. . . . For these inferior values have their delights, but not at all equal to my God, who hath made them all. For in him do the righteous delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart” (2.10, p. 25).

  In short, Christians were—are—faced with a delicate challenge. They must live in the world, rejoicing in its beauties and blessings; in that respect, their mode of life seems not so different from that of the pagans. And yet they must not forget that the ultimate good is God, not the world, and that this world is not their true home.78

  Sex and the City, Sex and the Cosmos

  As noted, one aspect of the pagan orientation that Augustine found especially difficult to relinquish was its easy, open sexuality. As we saw in chapter 3, the pagan approach to sexuality was characterized by two main assumptions. First, sexual fulfillment, whether heterosexual or homosexual, and whether within or outside of marriage, is inherently natural and good (for men at least); it is a manifestation of the “mysterious, indwelling presence of the gods.”79 Opportunities for sexual satisfaction abounded, not only or mainly with spouses, but also with the hosts of prostitutes and slaves that the city maintained. But, second, sexual activity must be subordinated to the needs of the city—which was a principal reason why respectable women were expected to marry and to remain chaste before marriage and celibate afterward.

  Within this matrix of assumptions, the Christian view of sexuality was not only radically alien; it was close to incomprehensible.80 To be sure, assertions about “Christian” views of sexual morality are simplifications; then, as now, Christian thinkers differed in their understandings of sexuality. Moreover, Christian views of sexuality were not hermetically sealed off from ideas prevalent in their world; they were influenced by, among other things, the doctrines of the Platonists, Stoics, and Pythagoreans.81 With these caveats, though, we can still say that Christian sexual ethics represented, as Kyle Harper explains, a “paradigm shift” and a “deep earthquake in human morality.”82

  The most obvious change was in the specific rules and prohibitions. For Christians, sex was permissible only within marriage—for both men and women: no more “double standard.”83 Same-sex sexual relations were condemned, as was pederasty.84 Prostitution was regulated and discouraged85 (though never actually eliminated). Even more important than the specific prohibitions, though, was the “new foundational logic of sexual ethics”86 that supported the specific rules. In its underlying logic, Christian sexual morality did not rely on the assumptions that informed Roman attitudes and practices, but instead was grounded in an entirely different set of premises.

  We might note the essential pagan assumptions that Christianity did not share. The view that sexual activity was a necessity and that, as Kyle Harper puts it, “mankind might find in erotic fulfillment nothing short of salvation”87 emphatically did not apply to Christianity; on the contrary, Christians tended to believe that the celibate life w
as not only possible but also commendable. So sexual renunciation became a prominent theme in Christian thinking.88 In addition, Christian sexual ethics shared none of the typical Roman assumptions about manliness—assumptions that encouraged sexual gratification as natural and necessary but sternly condemned men who acted as the passive partners in sexual encounters.89 Nor were Christian sexual ethics primarily based on social or political exigencies, such as the need for orderly reproduction within the family.90 In the Christian view, Kyle Harper explains, “the cosmos replaced the city as the framework of morality.”91

  Thus, in the Christian view, the human body was, as the apostle Paul put it, a “temple of the Holy Spirit.”92 In Paul’s understanding, the body became “a consecrated space, a point of mediation between the individual and the divine.”93 Unsanctioned sex functioned to pollute or desecrate that space.94 By contrast to the Roman and Greek encouragement of sex in moderation, in the Christian view “the sexual machinery of the body was something to be protected from contamination, not simply to be kept in proper balance.”95 And “the harmless sexual novitiate that was an unobjectionable part of sexual life in antiquity” now became “an unambiguous sin, a transgression against the will of God, echoing in eternity.”96

  To the detached modern critic, this logic may seem like question begging. Let us grant for argument’s sake that the human body is a temple, and thus at least in a derivative sense holy; even so, unless one begins by assuming that sexual relations are somehow presumptively impure, why should they be perceived as compromising that holiness? To the pagans, as we have seen, just the opposite description seemed to apply: sexual passions were not impure but rather the “indwelling presence of the gods.”97