O’Donovan, Oliver and Joan Lockward O’Donovan, Editors. From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999)

The Christian church’s earliest history is a movement from localized organization to centralized organization marked by the crucial turning point of the Emperor Constantine’s conversion and the nationalization of Christianity as the official state religion. During the first four hundred years of church history Christians found themselves the subject of constant charges of antisocial and subversive behavior, antipolitical moralism, and sectarian organization that was ostracized and radicalized by local and state communities to the point of persecution.

The organization of the church politic and the church’s response to state politics grew out of a general apologetic aiming to clear Christianity from the charges of society. At the very least, the early Christian writers wrote to garner credible witness in defense against the customary charges given without the substantiation usually accompanying such accusation in later legally developed societies. In Justin’s first apology for example, he writes,

“For indeed we reckon that no evil can be done to us, unless we are proved to be evildoers, or shown to be wicked…nobody should think that [these] are unreasonable and daring utterance, we ask that the charges against us be investigated, and that, if they are substantiated let us be punished as is fitting.” (10)

Justin argues that the actions instigated against Christians rose out of passion and emotion vehemence against the Christian religion, and that the characterizations separating them from society were not properly formed out of reasonable judgment.

There are two significant consequences to this thought. The first consequence is that the early Christians began to recognize the perception they were creating by being primarily concerned with eschatological ends and the physical ramifications that bore upon their participation in the state and local political-economy. They were looking for the literal judgment of God because from their view the judgment of man had failed. Thus, they were a people oppressed, as Justin argues, and did not seek to take active part in or form opinions about the role of proper governance in society. In a sense, this would prelude Lactantius’ definition of justice as arising out of Christ’s two basic commands; Love thy God and Love thy neighbor.

The second major consequence is that it actually formed a statement on political thought, as least as far as the church’s role in political economy was concerned. In meting out justice for the accused Christians the early church fathers began to make qualifying statements about justice, due process of law, and the church’s relationship to the political sphere. Even though Justin seemed to put a great distance between the realm of body and soul, earthly and spiritual, church and polity, that distance was not infinite and thus a categorical separation completely distinguishing the two was not in the realm of his writing.

Justin’s letter to Diognetus serves to further articulate this second consequence. He articulates a view that does not classify Christians as distinct from their citizenship, but rather that their citizenship is augmented by their faith. Their conception of universal sharing bores down to their view that the cities they live in are not some place of their own (12), but rather belong to something greater and outside of their own personal ownership. It would appear that the Christians had an even better conception of public ownership, that is, citizenship, and collective stewardship in the political and city state which enhances the significance to which they attribute their life under a system of laws, rulership, and governance and what resistance to authority may appropriately look like.