In this monograph Niko Huttunen argues against a view that anti-imperial sentiment was a foundational value of early Christians. To many this may seem incontestable but it is true, as Huttunen makes clear in his introductory chapter, that a body of New Testament scholars (rather than patrologists) are keen to argue a contrary case, one that asserts an inbuilt enmity between Christians and the Roman Empire.
Huttunen's case takes its lead from the concept of recognition, developed by Risto Saarinen. In broad terms the concept assumes a form of mutual recognition rather than straightforward tolerance, and can manifest itself in an upward form (submission to those in authority) or a downward one (as the less strong party seeks recognition of itself). Recognition, it is asserted, can be mediated by a third party understood as a person or set of rules. An example of the latter would be Christian attempts to be recognised as a philosophical sect, that is to be positioned within a recognisable cultural map. It also manifests itself in practices. The prioritising of this concept, which by implication allows for a subtler, more nuanced approach to the question under discussion, the avoidance of an either/or approach, dictates the content of the rest of the book's chapters, which deal, consecutively, with the three levels assumed by the concept of recognition, namely the cultural, political and practical.
Chapter ii examines what the author terms imperial recognition in the intellectual sphere. Here Huttunen shows that while absolute rejection of Christianity is witnessed amongst Roman authors, there is a good deal of evidence for a mooted recognition of Christianity's status as a philosophical sect, albeit a flawed one. In this context there are detailed discussions of Epictetus, whose mention of Christians has been highly contested, but which Huttunen defends, Marcus Aurelius, Lucian and Galen, with the last of these the most positive with his explicit mention of ‘the school of Moses and Christ’. Huttunen also seeks to show how such muted recognition accords with Christian self-presentation, not least in the letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, where philosophical aspiration is more obviously on show than some have contended. Justin's desire, then, to be recognised as a philosopher in the mid-second century has deeper roots.
Chapter iii looks more closely at the political level of recognition. Much of the discussion is devoted to Romans xiii, which acts as a ‘difficult’ text for those who would argue for an endemic enmity between Christians and imperial Rome. Huttunen helpfully shows how the text mirrors well-known pagan and Jewish discussion of the law of the stronger, in which divine support is revealed in supremacy. Romans xiii, then, is a descriptive, not a prescriptive text, even if the level of obedience it assumes goes beyond other ancient traditions as found in Stoic writers like Epictetus. Huttunen is clear, however, that Paul assumes that the powers that be belong to the world and that in his own eschatological framework, their power is temporally limited. The very fact that Paul sees the world as passing away (1 Corinthians vii.31) implies that Christians did not adapt to society wholeheartedly, and that other writers, such as the John of Revelation, took more radical positions.
Chapter iv addresses the practical side of the discussion, here through an examination of Christian attitudes to military service. This is the longest chapter and a helpful engagement with a subject which for obvious reasons has captured the attention of a range of scholars. Huttunen is clear that the mere existence of military metaphors in Christian writings is not evidence of Christian soldiers, an obvious point that is somewhat laboured. More interesting is the way in which he seeks to show how Christian authors who wrote on the military by and large (with the exception of Julius Africanus) reflected the scepticism and slightly negative posture of pagan elites. Such scepticism was not reflected in the practices of some Christians who certainly became soldiers as, inter alia, excavations from Dura Europos and Megiddo show; and as some of Tertullian's anti-militaristic writings imply. Such recognition of the Roman Empire on the part of Christians, and Christians on the part of the Roman authorities questions a wholly negative account of Christian/Roman relations.
Huttunen's monograph kicks against a position which only passes muster among a small number of New Testament scholars as opposed to students of the later ancient Church. It reflects elements of a picture influenced by some of the assumptions of post-colonialism in which the subaltern Christians to some extent imitate elements of the dominant discourse both to reduce alterity but also, through incomplete imitation, to disguise themselves as compliant while creating a new discursive place for themselves. Huttunen refers to these views at the beginning of his monograph, though not so much at the end. His position is a perhaps more conservative one, though his emphasis on the eschatological aspect of early Christianity, and his broaching of the extent to which the values emerging from that important theological position affected early Christian attitudes does lead to a muted view of Christianity's revolutionary characteristics albeit subtly expressed. Attitudes on both sides of the debate varied. Revelation's rebarbative tone is to be contrasted with Paul's or the Apologists’ more conservative one (the latter are interestingly not a subject of discussion). Just as was probably the case with Jews, especially for the period up to the middle of the third century, very few pagans paid any attention to Christians – in this respect Celsus, by some way the most significant witness, and absolutely negative, is an anomaly. Lucian's sarcastically pitiful tone and Galen's damply positive response represent points on a varied scale about which one is not that well informed. Consistent with this is the relative absence of evidence for persecution, a category, which in any case, reflecting strains in Huttunen's book, is being questioned. ‘Recognition’, insofar as that is a helpful concept to approach the subject of this monograph, was much more a concern of Christians than non-Christians who by and large ignored them. In his monograph Huttunen makes a set of discreet contributions to scholarship, but his overall conclusions are unsurprising.
