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Christianity and Classical Culture

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This is a comprehensive narrative of the decline of the classical pagan world and the rise of the Christian middle ages. It is aptly subtitled, "A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine," for those two men stand out as the bookends of the transition. The story begins with Eternal Rome at the end of the Republic, and generally with the claims of pagan Rome to finality and mastery -- perfected science in the classical sense -- over the political order of the world. It ends with the destruction of the Empire and the seminal thinker of the next thousand years, Aurelius Augustine. On the way, Cochrane weaves together military history, theology, poetry, philosophy, law and politics in a prose that is certainly not to be confused with Gibbon, but is nonetheless quite readable. Cochrane's avowed mission is to let the classical authors, pagan and Christian alike, speak for themselves and for their positions, and this he does with remarkable fairness. A principal question of the book is, who won the war of philosophers and theologians? Did Athens conquer Jerusalem, imposing classical pagan or Platonic ideas on a Christianity now lost, or did Jerusalem conquer Athens, replacing the classical ways of thought in a radical way? The answer, as one might expect, is complicated, but intelligible. The book is 500 pages long, but will repay multiple readings.

Originally published in 1940, Christianity And Classical Culture: A Study Of Thought And Action From Augustus To Augustine by Charles Norris Chochrane (1889-1945) is a thoughtful, insightful, informative examination of the contrast and sometimes clash between the classical era's culture and struggle to understand the world in purely rational terms, and the completely new understanding of the world developed and spread by Christianity. From divisions of church and state; to the impact that Constantine and the spread of Christianity had; to a technical dissection of propositions concerning sometimes starkly different worldviews, Christianity and Classic Culture has survived the test of time to remain a pillar of philosophical, religious, and cultural analysis.

If you want to know how, and why, romanitas became christianitas, this is the book for you. But make no mistake, this isn't any gloss of the process, this is an in-depth as a how-to discussion of surgery.

I've been through this book twice, and I'm always amazed by Cochrane's ability. It helps me (always) to have a primer on Roman history out as I go through it - to check on some of his references and "name-dropping." A Latin dictionary doesn't hurt, either (my Latin's a little rusty since college).

If you want an extensive examination of the christianization of the Roman empire, get this book!

One of C.S. Lewis's maxims I agree with (but too often fail to heed) is this: for every just-published book you read be sure and read at least two old books, classics which have stood steady amidst the winds of change. I've recently feasted on some durable classics which truly deserve their acclaim.
To understand Christianity, we need to know ancient history as well as biblical texts, to appreciate foundational thinkers as well as more recent interpreters. Charles Norris Cochrane's Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957, 1st pub. 1940) provides a classic text which I first read years ago and recently re-read to my profit.
In Part I, "Reconstruction," Cochrane describes the development of the Roman Empire, replacing the Roman Republic, the fulfillment of Augustus' designs. Impressive on many counts (e.g. establishing a judicial system based upon the natural law), Rome's world conquest simultaneously imposed "a virtual servitude for all but the few in whose hands lay the means of exploitation, the control of economic and political power" (p. 18). Along with its political structures, one learns, under Cochrane's tutelage, to appreciate the intellectual struggles between the philosophical advocates of materialism and idealism, neither of which fully satisfied the soul of antiquity, opening doors of opportunity for the message of the Early Church. In some significant ways--for the ultimate failure of Rome, as Tacitus and others argued, was due to spiritual bankruptcy--the Church gradually replaced the Empire as the only cohesive, preeminent social institution bequeathed by antiquity to the Medieval Era. The empire collapsed amidst a litany of liabilities: increasingly oppressive taxation which drove the rich to flight and the common folks to despair; the bankruptcy of municipalities as well as individuals; the professionalization and accompanying decay of the military; increasing crime and violence. (Though I routinely warn students not to simplistically equate "symptoms" of decay in ancient Rome with trends in today's society, it was frankly difficult, while reading Cochrane, to refrain from drawing uncomfortably close parallels myself!)
In Part II, "Renovation," we explore the "new republic" which Constantine established. "The year 313 [when Constantine issued the 'Edict of Milan' and granted religious toleration to Christians] has rightly been taken to mark a turning-point in European history" (p. 177). Fifty years after Constantine's edict of toleration, another emperor, Theodosius, imposed Christianity as the "official" religion of the empire, and what we label "Western Christian Culture" gained political power and prominence.
Concerning Constantine, Cochrane neither celebrates nor denigrates his efforts. In a rather fair appraisal, he presents the emperor's work as a blend of sincere religious conviction and shrew political strategy. Cochrane critiques the compromises the Church made to gain respectability, yet he refrains from the kinds of pompous (usually Evangelical Protestant) critiques one often finds leveled against the emperor. Unlike some Catholics, however, Cochrane refuses to enshroud Constantine in a halo of sanctity! He was primarily a political leader whose self-interest granted significant political gains to the 4th century Church. Much transpired as a consequence of the overtly-Christian policies of Theodosius. For example, Sunday, the "Lord's Day," became an enforced, legal holiday. Pagan cults were suppressed. Pagan temples were seized, their statues destroyed. Heretics became enemies of the state, all too frequently persecuted for their views. Bishops, priests, monks, became figures of authority and consequence. Such were the socio-political consequences of a "christianized" empire. Yet, for all its failings, the politically-installed "new republic" was but a passing preface to the enduring legacy of the Christianity.
That is explored in Part III, "Regeneration." This is the capstone of the work, the part that enables thoughtful Christians to better grasp the significance of the Early Church and its theologians. Brilliant, saintly thinkers such as Athanasius, Ambrose, and Augustine dared to declare that "all truth is God's truth" and struggled to shape "a synthesis of human experience for which there had been no parallel since the time of Plato" (p. 360). They (Augustine especially) set forth a radically new notion of history: a cosmic drama detailing Adam's fall and Christ's redemption, a victorious message of salvation and hope. The Kingdom of God (in the ultimate and invisible sense) and the Church (in the immediate and visible sense), reveal the eternally significant workings of God.
Unlike the pervasive pessimism of most ancient historians, who shared Herodotus' cynicism--"'Of all the sorrows which afflict mankind, the bitterest is this, that one should have consciousness of much, but control over nothing'" (p. 468)--Christians saw meaning in the past and reason to hope in the future. We humans have a role, not a dictated fate, because God grants us freedom to cooperate with Him in His work. Thus, as Augustine insisted, we must never confuse grace with fate! We are indeed saved only by grace--it's all God's work--but it's not autocratically imposed upon us. These theologians also found in the doctrine of the Trinity the ultimate answer to profoundly spiritual questions. "The revelation of Christ was the revelation of the Divine Nature as a Trinity. Accordingly, in the Trinity, Christian wisdom discovers that for which Classicism had so long vainly sought, viz. the logos or explanation of being and motion, in other words, a metaphysics of ordered process. In so doing, it does justice to the element of truth contained alike in the claims of classical materialism and classical idealism; while, at the same time, it avoids the errors and absurdities of both" (pp. 436-37).
In his work, The Trinity, St Augustine "discovered a principle capable of saving the reason as well as the will, and thus redeeming human personality as a whole. It saved the reason because, while denying its pretensions to omniscience and infallibility, it nevertheless affirmed the existence of an order of truth and value which being in the world as well as beyond it, was within the power of man to apprehend. And, in saving the reason, at the same time it saved the will, by imparting to it that element of rationality without which it must degenerate into mere subjective wilfulness" (p. 384).
Thus faith and reason cooperate. Neither blind faith nor autonomous reason suffices. Faith enables us to understand and understanding clarifies faith. The Christianity which emerged out of classical culture remedied the flaws of antiquity, and, as magisterially articulated by Augustine, shaped the emergent ethos which would give structure to Western/European Civilization.
This is a rich book, full of illuminating quotations and penetrating explanations. It's the rare kind of book which so profoundly explores the roots of our culture as to deserve the label of an "historical classic." Few books better clarify the thoroughly theological issues which give foundations to our faith.

This work has long been known to scholars in the field and is one of the best interpretive works on the relationship between classical culture and Christianity. If many of the judgments may seem a little assured to a new reader, (the first edition came out in 1940) Cochrane handles the extremely complex material with poise and skill, and the work is extremely well-written.
For a more recent take on this subject see Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and classical culture: the metamorphosis of natural theology in the Christian encounter with Hellenism. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

This book is a definitive study of the impact of Christianity on ancient Greco-Roman culture. Although the author's writing style is ornate, it is not turgid and every page is packed with ideas and information. In the process of unfolding his thesis, Cochrane provides nothing less than a unified overview of the major Western classics from Plato to Augustine, of political action over the entire span of the Roman Republic and Empire, and of the integral relations of thought and action. His thesis is that Christianity provided a way out of the cultural and political impasse of late antiquity, which was based on the internal contradictions of the notion of power as domination. Culminating in Augustine, the Christian thought of late Western antiquity subsumed everything that was viable in the classical tradition and introduced a new concept of community for which the notion of progress was fundamental. Far from the usual antiquarian excercise of academia, this book is one rigorous work of historical scholarship that provides sorely needed perspective on our own time and place, precisely when the multicultural revolution is shaking the foundations of moribund political and religious ideas and institutions.