The Origin of Satan (28 page)

governors, as those sent by him to punish those who do wrong

and praise those who do not. ... As slaves of God, live as free

people. . . . Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.

Honor the emperor (1 Pet. 2:13-16).

SATAN’S EARTHLY KINGDOM / 147

What
was
revolutionary, however, was that Christians

professed primary allegiance to God. Such allegiance could

divide one's loyalties; it challenged each believer to do

something most pagans had never considered doing—decide for

oneself which family and civic obligations to accept, and which

to reject.

Tertullian, for example, who lived in a world where what we

call freedom of religion was alien or unknown, nevertheless

claims such liberty for himself and censures the emperors for

“taking away religious liberty [
libertatem religionis
] so that I may

no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled

to worship against it.”105 Origen, as we have noted, defending

Christians against charges of illegality, dares argue that people

constrained by an evil government are right not only to disobey

its laws but even to revolt and to assassinate tyrannical rulers:

It is not irrational to form associations contrary to the existing

laws, if it is done for the sake of the truth. For just as those

people would do well who enter a secret association in order to

kill a tyrant who had seized the liberties of a state, so

Christians also, when tyrannized ... by the devil, form

associations contrary to the devil's laws, against his power, to

protect those whom they succeed in persuading to revolt

against a government which is barbaric and despotic.106

Such convictions did not arise from a sense of the “rights of

the individual,” a conception that emerged only fifteen hundred

years later with the Enlightenment. Instead they are rooted in

the sense of being God's people, enrolled by baptism as “citizens

in heaven,” no longer subject merely to "the rulers of this

present evil age,” the human authorities and the demonic forces

that often control them.

A hundred years after the gospels were written, then,

Christians adapted to the circumstances of pagan persecution the

political and religious model they found in those gospels—God’s

people against Satan’s people—and identified themselves as allies

of God, acting against Roman magistrates and pagan mobs,

148 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

whom they see as agents of Satan. At the same time, as we shall

see in the next chapter, church leaders troubled by dissidents

within
the Christian movement discerned the presence of Satan

infiltrating among the most intimate enemies of all—other

Christians, or, as they called them, heretics.

VI

THE ENEMY WITHIN:

DEMONIZING THE HERETICS

During the second century Christianity's success in attracting

converts raised new questions about what “being a Christian”

required. Within provincial cities throughout the empire,

Christian groups gained many thousands of new converts.

Especially in the cities, conversion aroused conflict within

households. When heads of wealthy households converted,

they often required their families and slaves to accept baptism.

More often, however, conversions occurred among the women

of the household, as well as among merchants, traders, soldiers,

and the hundreds of thousands of slaves serving in every

capacity in Roman apartments, great houses, and palaces.

Conversions may even have happened within the emperor's

household. Tertullian, writing in the city of Carthage in North

Africa (c. 180) boasts to his pagan contemporaries that “we are

only of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you:

city, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, the army camp,

tribes, palace, senate, and forum.”1 All converts understood, of

course, that baptism washes away sins and expels evil spirits, and

conveys to the recipient the spirit of God, the spirit that

transforms a sinner into an ally of Christ and his angels. But then

what? What does a Christian have to do to stand “on the side of

the angels” in this world? What precisely is required if, for

example, the baptized Christian is married to a pagan, or is a

soldier, who has sworn allegiance to the emperor, or is a slave?

Most pagans regarded the baptism of a family mem-

150 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

ber or a slave as a calamity portending disruption within the

household. Tertullian himself describes how pagans ostracized

converts:

The husband casts the wife out of his house; the father

disinherits the son; the master, once gentle, now commands

the slave out of his sight; it is a huge offense for anyone to be

called by that detested name [Christian].2

Among themselves, Christians debated whether converts

should maintain ordinary social and familial relationships or

break them, as Jesus in the gospels required when he said,

“Whoever does not hate his father and mother, wife and

children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my

disciple” (Luke 14:26). Such questions evoked many different

answers as the movement increased in size and diversity

throughout the empire. Sometimes in one city there were several

groups, each interpreting “the gospel” somewhat differently and

often contending against one another with all the vehemence

ordinarily reserved for family quarrels. The apostle Paul himself,

confronted two generations earlier by rival teachers, tried to

prevent them from speaking, calling them Satan’s servants,

false aposdes, deceptive workers, disguising themselves as

apos-des of Christ. And no wonder! Even Satan himself

disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his

servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness (2

Cor. 11:13-15).

“But,” Paul adds ominously, “in the end they will get what

they deserve.” Christians dreaded Satan’s attacks from outside—

that is, from hostile pagans—but many of them believed that

even more dangerous were Satan’s forays among the most

intimate enemies of all—other Christians, or, as most said of

those with whom they disagreed, among heretics.

Within the movement, some people began to develop systems

of organization to unify Christian groups internally, and to

connect them with other Christian groups throughout the

Roman

THE ENEMY WITHIN / 151

world. The authority all Christians acknowledged, besides that

of Jesus himself, was that of the apostles Peter, traditionally

revered as the first leader of Christians in Rome, and Paul,

founder of churches ranging from Greece to Asia Minor. Some

Christians, two or three generations after Paul, wrote letters

attributed to Peter and Paul, including First Peter and the letters

of Paul to Timothy. These letters, later included in the New

Testament and widely believed to have been written by the

apostles themselves, attempted to construct a bridge between the

apostles and Christians of later generations by claiming, for

example, that Paul had “laid hands” on his young convert

Timothy to ordain him as “overseer” or “bishop” of the

congregation as Paul’s successor. These letters are meant to show

that, like Timothy, bishops legitimately exercise “apostolic”

authority over their congregations. Those who wrote First Peter

and First Timothy were also concerned to deflect pagan hostility

to Christians by modifying some of the more strident demands

the gospels attribute to Jesus. Needing codes of conduct that

offered moral guidance to those who were married and engaged

in ordinary society and were not prepared to reject these

commitments as, according to Luke, Jesus admonishes, these

authors borrowed from pagan catalogues of civic virtue to

construct new, “Christian” moral codes. As New Testament

scholar David Balch has shown, these letters cast Peter and Paul

in the unlikely role of urging believers to emulate conventional

Roman behavior.3 So, in First Peter, “Peter” urges believers, “For

the sake of the Lord, accept the authority of every human

institution” (2:13), specifically that of the emperor and his

government. “Peter” also insists that believers carry out essential

household responsibilities; wives must “accept the authority of

your husbands, even if some of them do not obey the Word”

(3:1); and husbands should “honor the woman, as the weaker

vessel” (3:7). Slaves are to serve their masters as if serving the

Lord himself, and masters, in turn, are not to mistreat their

slaves; children are to show their parents appropriate deference

and obedience (2:18-22; 5:5). In First Timothy, likewise, “Paul”

offers Timothv similar moral advice, which he tells the young

bishop, in turn, to enjoin upon his congregation.

152 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

But not everyone accepted these codes of conduct or the

leaders determined to enforce them. Around 90 C.E., a famous

letter attributed to Clement, a man regarded by many as the

second or third bishop of Rome, after the apostle Peter, and

written to Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, the site of a

church originally founded by Paul himself, shows that the

community was in an uproar over a matter of leadership.4 In this

letter, Bishop Clement expresses distress that those he calls “a

few rash and self-willed people”3 are refusing to accept the

superior authority of the priests who he insists are their proper

leaders. Such dissidents have initiated what Clement calls a

“horrible and unholy rebellion”6 within the church. They have

rejected several priests set over them; apparently they also object

that distinctions between “clergy” and “laity”—between those

who claim to hold positions of authority and those they now call

“the people” (in Greek,
loos
)—are not only unprecedented but

unacceptable among Christians.

Denying the dissidents’ charge that clerical ranks are an

innovation, Clement, like the author of First Timothy, insists

that the aposdes themselves “appointed their first converts . . . to

be bishops and deacons.” Clement invokes the authority of the

prophet Isaiah, making a farfetched claim that in ancient times

Isaiah had already endorsed the “offices” of bishop and deacon.

Clement cites Isaiah 60:17 (“I will make your
overseers
peace,

and your
taskmasters
righteousness”), and interprets the key

terms (“bishops” and “deacons,” respectively), translated into

Greek, to suit his argument.

Clement also appeals to the letters of Paul to Timothy to argue

that “the apostles themselves appointed their first converts as

‘bishops’ and ‘deacons.’ ” Although Clement writes at about the

same time as the authors of Matthew and Luke, who depict the

Jewish high priests as Jesus’ enemies, Clement encourages

Christians to imitate the Jewish priesthood. Among Christians,

as formerly among Jews, Clement says, the high priests and the

subordinate priests are divinely ordained for special duties,

while “the layperson is bound by the order for laypeople.”7

Clement even urges his fellow Christians to emulate the Roman

army:

THE ENEMY WITHIN / 153

Let us then serve in our army, brethren. . . . Let us consider

those who serve as our generals. . . . Not all are prefects, nor

tribunes, nor centurions, nor commanders, or the like, but each

carries out in his own rank the commands of the emperor and

of the generals.8

Later, Christians actually did adapt from Roman army

administration the practice of organizing into districts (dioceses),

each administered by a central overseer (bishop), an organiza-

tional strategy that persists to this day.

As bishop, Clement describes the dissidents’ position as

having arisen from arrogance and jealousy. “Even the apostles,”

he says, “knew that there would be strife over the title of

bishop” (1
Clement
14:1). The remedy, Clement continues, is for