Mondays with Tertullian
Christians, the Emperor and the Empire
Tertullian (ca. 155 – c. 220 AD) was a prolific Christian author from North Africa. He was the first great Latin theologian of the church, known for his apologies, treatises, and anti-heresiological works.
Tertullian illustrates the complicated relationship that Christians had with the Empire.
Christians did not always plan and plot the overthrow of the empire like a Christian Che Guevera, as much as they wanted peace with the empire and an end to persecution by the empire.
It was not always, “Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not!” Sometimes it was “Caesar is our earthly lord while God is our heavenly Lord!”
Tertullian says that Christians pray for the emperor and even more loyal to the emperor than other citizens!
For we, on behalf of the safety of the Emperors, invoke the eternal God, the true God, the living God, whom the Emperors themselves prefer to have propitious to them beyond all gods. … We pray for them long life, a secure rule, a safe home, brave armies, a faithful senate, an honest people, a quiet world - and everything for which a man and a Caesar can pray. (Apol. 30.3-4).
Of course, there are limits to the devotion and obedience that Christians will pay to the Emperor. They will not worship or regard him as more than a man:
We must respect him as the chosen of our Lord. So I have a right to say, Caesar is more ours than yours, appointed as he is by our God. … I set the majesty of Caesar below God and the more commend him to God to whom alone I subordinate him. This I do, in that I do not make him equal to God. For I will not call the Emperor “god” for various reasons, as that I “know not to lie”, that I dare not mock him, that he himself will not wish to be called “god.” If he is a man, it is a man’s interest to yhield place to God. Let him be satisfied to be called Emperor. (Apol. 33.2-3).
Tertullian also thinks that the Emperor and the empire are the “restrainer” who holds back the “man of lawlessness” mentioned by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8.
There is another need, a greater one, for our praying for the Emperors, and for the whole estate of the empire and the interests of Rome. We know that the great force which threatens the whole world, the end of the age itself with its menace of hideous suffering, is delayed by the respite which the Roman empire means for us. We do not wish to experience all that; and we pray for its postponement, are helping forward the continuance of Rome. (Apol. 32.1).
In the end, Tertullian said Christians would offer prayers for the emperor but not pray to the emperor, they would offer him obedience but not obeisance, address him as “lord” but not “Lord.”
A helpful introductory insight to the changing complexies of the churches developing thoughts on Christian relation with the Roman government. Thank you M.B.