Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantius

Known since the Renaissance as the 'Christian Cicero,' Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was a professor of Latin rhetoric, Christian apologist, and theologian at the court of Emperor Constantine. Jason M. Gehrke provides an historical study of Lactantius' major work, The Divine Institutes of the Christian Religion, focusing on its core notion of virtus.

Gehrke's volume uncovers the Roman political and philosophical traditions that informed arguments about virtus in early Latin Christian writers -- especially Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Cyprian. Their works illuminate the fundamental meaning of virtus in the Divine Institutes and enable a new historical portrait of Lactantius' Christology and ethics. Gehrke goes on to discuss practical moral arguments about wealth, sexuality, and warfare that Lactantius developed as an expression of true virtus revealed in Christ. In this, the Divine Institutes appears as the first attempt at a complete synthesis of third-century Christian thinking about the implications of God's revelation in Christ for traditional Roman beliefs about the divine and moral order. As an expression of traditional Latin Christian theology, Lactantius' Divine Institutes reveal the significant influence of classical Roman literature, philosophy, and politics upon the Christian development of doctrine in the Latin west.

Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantius explores the character, sources, and logic of Lactantius' important work.

Jason M. Gehrke is Assistant Professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he teaches courses in the intellectual, religious, and military history of the Roman Empire. He holds a PhD from Marquette University, where he studied the history of ancient Christianity in the Roman world.

Introduction1. Virtus in Roman Life and Literature2. Power and Virtus from Republic to Principate3. Virtus in Early Latin Christian Apologetic4. Virtus: The Power of God in Lactantius5. The Power of the Son6. Virtus Revealed in Christ7. Virtus: Christ's Precepts of JusticeConclusion