Jason Matthew Gehrke

"Known since the Renaissance as the 'Christian Cicero,' Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (d. 324 A.D.) was a professor of Latin rhetoric, Christian apologist, and theologian at Constantine's court. Writing in response to Diocletian's persecution, he attempted a complete synthesis of third-century Latin Christian thinking about theology, ethics, and political order. This work explores the character and quality of that synthesis in his major work, The Divine Institutes of the Christian Religion by focusing on the core notion of virtus. The early chapters explore the socio-political (Chapter 1) and philosophical traditions that informed arguments about virtus in classical Roman (Chapter 2) and early Latin Christian writers - especially Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Cyprian (Chapter 3)"-- Includes bibliographical references and index.

Historical theologians have generally approached the third-century monarchian controversy as a doctrinal dispute arising from theological commitments internal to Christianity.¹ Although it has led to fruitful studies, this presupposition has directed scholars’ interest away from external factors that may have also shaped the debate. Recently, Clifford Ando has shown that in the two centuries preceding the monarchian controversy (19–215 C.E.), successive imperial regimes articulated a political ideology, which is represented in the Latin literature of the Augustan age—in the works of Cicero, Vergil, and Seneca, among others. Ando documents an imperial “political theology,” which used some philosophical notion