"...for nearly the first four hundred years of our era, Christians had regarded freedom as the primary message of Genesis 1-3 -- freedom in its many forms, including free will; freedom from social and sexual obligations such as marriage and business; freedom from tyrannical government and from fate; and self-mastery as the source of such freedom."
Over against the Gnostic version of finding freedom through deeper
knowledge (gnosis) of Christ's message -- opponents such
as "Justin, who was converted to Christianity around 138,
emphasized instead that believers gain freedom from sin -- the
freedom to live a moral life -- through baptism. Justin declared
that baptism had freed him and other Christians from the passions
of lust, greed, and racial hatred:
We, who formerly delighted in immorality, now embrace chastity alone...we, who once valued above everything else acquiring wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and share with everyone in need; we, who hated and destroyed one another, and refused to live with people of a different race, now live intimately with them.
Justin also claimed to be free from the demands of the Roman government where these conflicted with his commitment to Christ. When arrested and ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods, Justin refused; he was immediately taken out to be beaten and beheaded along with six other equally adamant Christians. Despite such persecution, and sometimes in direct defiance of it, many Christians of the first three centuries regarded the proclamation of autexousia - the moral freedom to rule oneself -- as virtually synonymous with the Gospel." (28)
Of course, this changes with Augustine and his doctrine of original
sin, in parallel with what Pagels characterizes as "the most
extraordinary social and political transformation in the history
of Christianity," -- namely, the transformation of Christianity
from a "countercultural" religion at odds with "the
world," and especially the Roman Empire, into the
religion of the Empire.
For the defiant Christians hounded as criminals by the Roman government a central question was: Are human beings capable of governing themselves? And to this question they emphatically answered 'yes.' But following the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 313 CE, most Christians gradually came to say "no." Early Christian spokesmen, like Jews before them and, for example, the American colonists long after, had claimed to find in the biblical account of creation divine sanction for declaring their independence from governments that they considered corrupt and arbitrary. For in the Hebrew account of creation God gave the power of earthly rule to adam -- not to the king or emperor, but simply to 'mankind' (and some even thought this might include women). (28, with reference to: Vita Adae et Evae 22.1-2; Jubilees 2.14)
One of her sources here is Gregory of Nyssa (4th ct.) who follows
Rabbinic tradition in claiming that "after God created the
world 'as a royal dwelling place for the future king' he made
humanity 'as a being fit to exercise royal rule' by creating it
in 'the living image of the universal King.' Consequently, Gregory
concluded, 'the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted character
... in that it owns no master, and is self governed, ruled autocratically
by its own will.' Besides dominion over the earth and animals,
this gift of sovereignty conveys the quality of moral freedom:
Preeminent among all is the fact that we are free from any necessity, and not in bondage to any power, but have decision in our own power as we please; for virtue is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion. Whatever is the result of compulsion and force cannot be virtue.
(De hom, op 2.1; 4.1; 16.11. W. Moore, H.A. Wilson, trans. Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 5.)
Pagel's raises and then answers a central question:
Why did most Latin Christians, instead of ignoring Augustine's idiosyncratic views as marginal -- or even rejecting them as heretical -- eventually embrace them? How did his teachings on 'original sin' become the center of Western Christian tradition, displacing, or at least wholly recasting, all previous views of creation and free will? (29)
Her answer has to do with the changing political situation of the church -- namely, as it shifts from the early "countercultural" church defined by its opposition to the Empire, to a church closely identified with and supported by the Empire. As she puts it,
The political and social situation of Christians in the early centuries had changed radically by the beginning of the fifth century. The traditional declarations of the virtues of human freedom by martyrs like Justin, who defied the Roman government as being inspired by demons, no longer seemed to fit the situation of Christians, who found themselves, under Constantine and his Christian successors, the emperor's 'brothers and sisters in Christ.' (29)
In this light, John Chrysostom will reflect continuity
with the earlier tradition -- while Augustine will articulate
its transformation into a Christianity more suited to the Empire
as a "Christian" Empire.
Chyrsostom, in a speech directed to crowds angry over the Emperor's taxation policies (!), argued, in Pagels' words, "that the right of government belongs not to the emperor alone but to the entire human race...." Quoting Chrysostom:
"In the beginning, God honored our race with sovereignty,"
which is apparent first of all in the characterization of humanity as created in the image of God. John takes this status as the image of God to mean that all humanity partakes in the power of self-governance (autonomy or sovereignty). He continues:
For the image is not in part of our nature, nor is the divine gift in any single person...but this power extends equally to the whole race; and a sign of this is that the mind is implanted alike in all; for all have the power of understanding and reflecting...they equally bear within themselves the divine image [italics added].
Indeed, John goes on to distinguish between a natural and an artificial form of governance, so as to say that the rule of the emperor over others is artificial -- and thus often changes. In particular,
As John saw it, imperial rule epitomized the social consequences of sin. Like his persecuted Christian predecessors, John ridiculed the imperial propaganda, which claimed that the state rests upon concord, justice, and liberty. On the contrary, he said, the state relies upon force and compulsion, often using these to violate justice and to suppress liberty. But because most humankind followed Adam's example in sinning, government, however corrupt, has become indispensable, and, for this reason, even divinely endorsed:
If you deprive the city of its rulers, we would have to live a life less rational than that of the animals, biting and devouring one another....For what crossbeams are in houses, rulers are in cities, and just as, if you were to take away the former, the walls, being separated, would fall in upon one another, so if you were to deprive the world of magistrates and the fear that comes form them, houses, cities, and nations would fall upon one another in unrestrained confusion, there being no one to repress, or repel, or persuade them to be peaceful through the fear of punishment.
Because of human sin, fear and coercion have infected the whole
structure of human relations, from family to city and nation.
Everywhere John sees the disastrous results: "Now we are
subjected to one another by force and compulsion, and every day
we are in conflict with one another."
But the tyranny of external government sharply contrasts with the liberty enjoyed by those capable of autonomous self-rule -- and, above all, by those who, through Christian baptism, have recovered the capacity for self-government. Chrysostom identifies external tyranny with the Roman Empire, and the capacity for autonomy, with the emerging new society of the Christian church: "There, everything is done through fear and constraint: here, through free choice and liberty!"
The use of force, the driving energy of imperial society, is utterly alien to church government:
Christians, more than all people, are not allowed to correct by force the faults of those who sin,...in our case the wrongdoer must be corrected not by forced, but by persuasion.
Although he believes that a priest's authority actually surpasses
the emperor's, Chrysostom says that Christian leaders refrain
from using force out of religious principle:
For neither has the authority of this kind been given to us by law, nor, if they had been given, should we have any place to exercise our power, since God rewards those who abstain from evil out of their own choice, and not out of necessity [italics added].
The Christian leader, refraining not only from the use of force,
but even from the subtler pressures of fear and coercion, must
evoke each member's voluntary participation:
We do not have "authority over your faith," beloved, nor do we command these things as your lords and masters. We are appointed for the teaching of the word, not for power, nor for absolute authority. We hold the place of counselors to advise you. The counselor speaks his own opinions, not forcing his listeners, but leaving him full master of his own choice in what is said [italics added].
Church government, unlike Roman government, remains wholly voluntary
and, although hierarchically structured, it is essentially egalitarian,
reflecting, in effect, the original harmony of Paradise."
(29)
In addition to the concerns this position entails regarding the growing power and wealth of the churches (see Pagels, 29-31), Chrysostom's emphasis on freedom and autonomy of human beings leads to a different understanding of sin and the Genesis story than we find in Augustine.
The Augustinian position sees Adam's sin to consist precisely in the desire for freedom -- a sin, moreover, that is not simply that of Adam as an individual, but of Adam as "corporate" humanity, such that all humanity is marked by Adam's original sin as themselves original sinners.
By contrast, Justin, Clement, and Chrysostom take freedom -- understood as the ability to master one's will -- as the true nature of rational beings (Pagels, 31), and, as we have seen, the central characteristic of baptized Christians. Moreover, this lifting up of autonomy as a central good in Chrysostom is accompanied by his insistence that Adam's sin was Adam's -- as an individual, not (as Augustine will argue) as the sin of humanity. So Pagels notes:
That Adam's sin brought suffering and death upon humankind most Christians, like their Jewish predecessors and contemporaries, would have taken for granted. But most Jews and Christians would also have agreed that Adam left each of his offspring free to make his or her own choice of good or evil. The story of Adam, most Christians assumed, was intended to warn everyone who heard it not to misuse that divinely given capacity for free choice. (31f.)