The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order:

Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early

Christianity before the Age of Cyprian (review)

H. A. Drake

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2001, pp. 403-405
(Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2001.0040

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/10217

Access provided by University of Ottawa (12 Jan 2018 22:53 GMT)

 BOOK REVIEWS 403

Book Reviews

Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. has now published the second volume of its English
translation of Henri de Lubac’s Exégese Médiévale under the title Medieval
Exegesis, Volume 2: The Four Senses of Scripture (ISBN 0-8028-4146-5) in
paperback for $45.00. In spite of the title, the book deals heavily with patristic
exegetes, especially Augustine, Gregory, Jerome, and Origen. This is a remark-
able work of scholarship, and thanks to Eerdmans for making it available in an
affordable, more usable format.
The indefatigable Alister McGrath has produced a third edition of his
Christian Theology: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers, ISBN 0-631-22528-
5) which approaches the subject topically and gives early Christian writers as
much prominence as medieval and modern ones, especially on topics like
theodicy and the Trinity. The accompanying volume is a collection of primary
sources entitled The Christian Theology Reader (Blackwell Publishers, ISBN 0-
631-20637-X). It follows the same format. Again the patristic emphasis is
generous, for example, more than one-third of the excerpts on “The Person of
Christ” are patristic. Both volumes are paperbacks priced at $36.95.
Eerdmans has published a paperback version of the second, expanded edition
of Charles Hill’s Regnum Caeolorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early
Christianity (ISBN 0-8028-4634-3, $30.00).
Joseph F. Kelly

Allen Brent
The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order:
Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early
Christianity before the Age of Cyprian
Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 45
Leiden: Brill, 1999
Pp. xviii + 369. $118.00.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when scholars routinely evaluated
the traditional religions of the Roman empire by Christian standards and, not
surprisingly, found them wanting. More recent scholarship has sought to
evaluate these religions on their own terms, and found them not only more

Journal of Early Christian Studies 9:3, 403–414 © 2001 The Johns Hopkins University Press
404 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

consistent, but surprisingly vigorous long after the old thinking would have them
dead and buried. Rather than seeing Christianity as the driving force behind
religious change, this scholarship has also tended to see both Christianity and
traditional religion being moved by underlying shifts in religious temperament to
which both were obliged to respond.
With this book, the argument comes full circle. Brent’s thesis is that Christian
ritual developed in direct response to imperial theology as expressed in the ruler
cult, thereby exhibiting all the traits of a “contra-culture.” After two chapters
discussing the thesis and the development of the imperial cult, Brent takes the
reader step-by-step through parallel developments in imperial ideology and
Church Order as demonstrated in Luke–Acts (ch. 3), Clement of Rome (ch. 4),
the Apocalypse (ch. 5), and Ignatius’s letters (ch. 6). Two final chapters deal with
changes under the Severans. In chapter 7, Brent branches out to discuss
universalism in the cults of Isis and Magna Mater and developments in classical
philosophy, which he then compares with growing Christian thought about the
Trinity. In the final chapter, Brent draws parallels between the careers and
thoughts of Elagabalus and Callistus.
This is heady stuff. Few today would argue with the general notion that
Christians drew on imperial patterns as they developed their liturgy, just as their
apologists drew on the imperial image to flesh out their picture of divine
monarchy. Brent seems to acknowledge as much, stating at several points that the
real innovation of his book is its systematic application of the concept of a
contra-culture to Christian development. In a contra-culture, Brent explains,
“the values of the dominant culture are reversed, and members of that contra-
culture achieve a status denied them by wider society” (15). Such a group
“legitimates itself by constructing an alternative frame of reference with a related
alternative scale of values that justified both its significance and indeed its very
existence.” In this sense, it is “parasitic . . . on the social construction of reality
of the host culture” (130).
Brent’s approach elicits many useful and insightful parallels between Christian
and imperial practice, and his emphasis on the frequently neglected religious
significance of imperial cult is all to the good. But his argument is marred on
several levels. The most basic one is structural. Brent’s standard means of
exposition is to assert a point, then take a phrase, note the parallels and move on.
The result is a choppy text with some subsections that are no more than a
paragraph in length. More importantly, the method prevents a connected
exposition and forecloses the opportunity to consider alternative explanations or
to explore the ramifications of a decision. The difference between correlation and
causation, for instance, is never broached. Instead, the parallel, however tenuous,
becomes the proof.
For an argument with such broad implications, Brent’s focus is, in fact,
surprisingly narrow. His thesis precludes considering the extent to which
imperial cult might itself have been influenced by broader trends, because in
Brent’s view it was the function of imperial cult to assimilate all of these traits to
begin with. On the Christian side, although Brent occasionally recognizes the
possibility of influence from Judaic or early Christian scripture, he never once
 BOOK REVIEWS 405

considers the extent to which the teachings of Jesus might have had something to
do with the creation of Christian values. When he is fully free-associating, Brent
leaps gaily over standard chronological and methodological barriers, as when he
cites third-century texts to illustrate changes he posits for the early second
century (227) or the late and suspect Acta Callisti for proof of the link to
Elagabalus (325).
Despite all of its reliance on trendy sociological jargon, moreover, there is one
sense in which Brent’s study constitutes a major step backward: where earlier
scholarship faulted traditional religion for its lack of theology or dogma, Brent
now praises imperial cult for precisely these traits, leaving the reader to wonder
whether the thesis of contra-culture has also required the projection of such
categories onto religious systems that we had finally learned were able to subsist
quite well without them.
I usually ignore typographical errors in a review, but since traditionalists have
so little else to admire in this book, I must point out that Brent does live down to
Brill’s traditionally appalling indifference to such nuisances and even manages to
take it to a new low, going beyond mere misspelling (as the consistent use of
“lead” for “led”) and incomplete sentences to the exotica of added (or missing)
words that result in contradictory assertions (e.g., p. 2, contra-culture is “a kind
of reversed mirror image” and p. 101, “is not a mirror image”) and outright
howlers that the most minimal standard of copyreading should have corrected
(see, for instance, p. 87: “The suovetaurilia at Rome in 9 b.c. that had followed
the lustrum of 8 b.c.”—a convenient, but by no means the most egregious
example).
H. A. Drake, University of California, Santa Barbara

Stanley S. Harakas
Patristic Ethics. In Wholeness of Faith and Life:
Orthodox Christian Ethics. Pt. 1
Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1999
Pp. xii + 161. $12.95 (pb).

Perhaps Father Stanley Harakas’s collection of six studies in patristic ethics will
frustrate both historians and ethicists, at least those who insist on strict borders
between their fields. Yet that lack could also be its chief virtue. The first in a
series of three short volumes of Harakas’s writings on Christian ethics in the
Orthodox tradition, the book is instructive for those in other traditions as well.
For along with its expositions of specific patristic authors, texts, and topics, it
illustrates the possibilities (and possible traps) of ethical reflection done through
living conversation with the ancient wisdom of a tradition. Done well, such a
mode can only be good for the field of early Christian studies.
Harakas’s book is most helpful when he allows patristic authors to set the
terms of inquiry. “If by ethics we do not only mean a sustained rational argument
on deontological or teleological themes” then not only may the approach “fill