Christianity is often viewed as an alternative to Roman religion. But in many ways, Christianity was an expression of Roman religion. To see how this was so, we need to situate ourselves within a common Mediterranean religiousness that accommodated a world full of gods. From this divine throng, in the course of the fourth century, one deity will emerge supreme.
A world full of gods
Many gods lived in the Roman Empire. All ancient peoples knew this to be the case. In a world where many different peoples worshiped many different gods, in a world where all gods existed and where any god was more powerful than any human, a practical religious pluralism long prevailed. How is it, then, that one particular god emerged as the focus of late imperial politics and piety?
Ancient divinity ran in many registers, from the spirits directing the casting of lots to the deities of individual families to the forces controlling the cosmos. Gods could attach to particular places—groves, mountains, temples, altars. They attached to particular peoples, whether through birth and blood (Heracles was the progenitor of the Spartans) or through mutually agreed upon covenants (the Jewish god was the divine “father” of Israel). Different peoples solicited divine good will by worshiping their gods according to their particular “ancestral practices,” inherited protocols for showing respect. Piety defined peoplehood. Theology in this sense was an aspect of ethnicity.
Cities observed festivals honoring the gods who superintended civic wellbeing. The emperor himself, beginning with Augustus, served as pontifex maximus, “greatest priest,” charged with oversight of proper Roman cult. Heaven, if alienated, might wreak havoc: plague or earthquake, famine or flood. The sacred duty of good government was to safeguard the pax deorum, the “peace of the gods,” that pact regulating diplomatic relations between heaven and earth. Public order mattered. Happy gods helped. Piety in this sense was an aspect of politics.
Gods and the one God
Jews did and did not share this worldview. Like their pagan neighbors, Jews conceived of their own god as the highest and best god—just as Romans praised Jupiter as optimus maximus, the greatest and the best. But even in his own book, the Jewish god was never the only god. Jewish scriptures teem with other gods. Often, they are linked to foreign peoples. These gods have social agency: in times of war, they battle with YHWH when their peoples do. But these other gods also attend his heavenly court. They serve as the powers presiding over other nations. Jewish tradition mocked the material representations of these lower gods as “nothings” or as mute images, but these lesser divinities themselves filled the Jewish cosmos too. Jews were not to worship them—God insisted on their sole allegiance—but that did not mean that these other gods did not exist.
Inscriptions reveal a comfortable Jewish accommodation to these other gods. The names of two North African Jewish ephebes, Jesus and Eleazar, adolescent citizens-in-training in the gymnasium, are engraved on a stele dedicated to Heracles and Hermes. Moschos son of Moscion, self-identifying as a Jew, placed a votive inscription in the temple of two Greek gods. Jews appear as leaders in town councils, as soldiers in foreign armies, as athletes and as actors: their activities would involve them with pagans both human and divine. Jews in principle worshiped only their own god, yet in the cities of the Diaspora they managed to acknowledge the gods of their neighbors as well.
But Jewish traditions are multivocal. Alongside this evidence of comfortable ecumenism we find condemnations of foreign gods, linked to the worship of their images (“idols”). The most strident of these appear in prophetic texts that speak of the ends of the ages, when God would at last reveal himself in glory and establish his kingdom. At that point, says Isaiah, gentile nations will also turn and worship the Jewish god in Jerusalem. The nations will smash their idols, predicts Tobit. Their gods will themselves kneel in submission to God the Father, says Paul (Philippians 2:10-11). In these apocalyptic writings, at the end of history, the god of Israel stands as the religious destiny of all peoples. Jewish apocalypses broke the bonds between divinity and ethnicity. All peoples, in these traditions, would be united in the worship of the one, the highest god.
God and empire
Jewish traditions of exclusive worship carried over into gentile Christianities. It is at this point that the principled pluralism characterizing the early empire began to give way. The Jews’ allegiance to their own god was considered appropriate for Jews. But Christian gentiles, as ex-pagans, ceased worshiping their own gods. In the eyes of their pagan neighbors, that risked divine anger—and divine anger meant divine reprisals. If the Tiber overflows or the Nile does not, complained Tertullian (ca. 200), Christians were held to account. Their theological lèse majesté put the whole community at risk.
In the early third century, just as various forms of Christianity spread, the idea of Rome was itself radically reformatted. Caracalla the emperor extended Roman citizenship to all free residents of the empire. Historians dispute the motivation for his decision, but not its effects. Caracalla’s initiativegreatly expanded “Romanness,” involving new citizens in new ways with Roman law and, thus, with Roman gods. Theology in this sense became an aspect of citizenship. Rome was not only the eternal city: it was now the universal one, too.
Exactly one century later, in 312, a successful general, Constantine, consolidated his grasp over the empire in the West. He credited his victory to the Christian god. And as he extended his power over the whole empire (in 324), he attributed his success, again, to the Christian god. Military victory empirically evinced divine patronage. In return, Constantine began lavishly to support one particular sect of the church, a sect that had a surprisingly articulated ecclesiastical infrastructure: Christian bishops who had long championed their creed as right-thinking (“orthodox”) and as universal (“catholic”).
In consequence of Constantine’s initiatives, heaven changed its denomination. The Christian god usurped the prerogatives of the old deities. The richly variegated divine population of traditional Mediterranean piety collapsed into two warring camps, devils and angels. Saints filled in the spots once inhabited by local lower gods. Theology was no longer an aspect of ethnicity. It increasingly became a function of political choice.
Nonetheless, the ancient convictions that military success indicated heavenly favor, and that public safety depended upon public piety, remained the same as they ever were. Impiety risked divine wrath. And the definition of impiety, at the urging of the bishops, was defined especially by doctrine. Christian diversity was condemned as “heresy.” Theological difference was criminalized. As a result, the persecution of Christians by the Roman government after the conversion of Constantine only increased. In the eyes of imperial authorities, heresy—Christian diversity—posed a danger to the state.
Conclusion
Long after repudiating its originary Jewishness, long after reinterpreting its apocalyptic patrimony, the church endorsed by Constantine continued in its commitment to the idea of the exclusive and universal worship of the One God. And long after Caracalla, the idea of universal Romanness received continuing legal refinements. Pagans, Jews, and especially heretics in consequence were progressively disenfranchised. The correct way to be Roman meant, increasingly, the correct way to be Christian—and to be the correct kind of Christian. Suppression of religious irregularity, the duty of responsible government, ensured the common weal.
The empire itself, claimed the theologians, had been brought into being around the same time as the coming of Christ in order to ensure the spread of the gospel. An empowering ideology prevailed: earthly monarchy reflected heavenly monarchy. One god, one church, one empire, one emperor. By the late fifth century, however, the western empire had crumbled. Local strongmen replaced imperial monarchs. Regional churches sprang up and took root. Notional unity dissolved. Yet the idea of universal allegiance to the single high god perdured, the lasting legacy of Christianity’s commitment to the coming of God’s kingdom.
Paula Fredriksen, the Aurelio Professor of Scripture Emerita at Boston University and professor emerita of comparative religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the author of When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation; From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus; Sin: The Early History of an Idea (Princeton); and other books.