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§ 173. Lactantius.

Firmiamus Lactantius stands among the Latin fathers, like Eusebius among the Greek, on the border between the second period and the third, and unites in his reminiscences the personal experience of both the persecution and the victory of the church in the Roman empire; yet in his theological views he belongs rather to the ante-Nicene age.

According to his own confession he sprang from heathen parents. He was probably, as some have inferred from his name, a native of Firmum (Fermo) in Italy; he studied in the school of the rhetorician and apologist Arnobius of Sicca, and on this account has been taken by some for an African; he made himself known by a poetical work called Symposion, a collection of a hundred riddles in hexameters for table amusement; and he was called to Nicomedia by Dioclesian to teach Latin eloquence. But as this city was occupied mostly by Greeks, he had few hearers, and devoted himself to authorship.2069  In his manhood, probably shortly before or during the persecution under Dioclesian, he embraced Christianity; he was witness of the cruel scenes of that persecution, though not himself a sufferer in it; and he wrote in defence of the hated and reviled religion.

Constantine subsequently (after 312) brought him to his court in Gaul, and committed to him the education of his son Crispus, whom the emperor caused to be executed in 326. At court he lived very simply, and withstood the temptations of luxury and avarice. He is said to have died in the imperial residence at Treves at a great age, about the year 330.

Jerome calls Lactantius the most learned man of his time.2070  His writings certainly give evidence of varied and thorough knowledge, of fine rhetorical culture, and particularly of eminent power of statement in clear, pure, and elegant style. In this last respect he surpasses almost all the Latin fathers, except Jerome, and has not unjustly been called the Christian Cicero.2071  His is the famous derivation of the word religion from religare, defining it as the reunion of man with God, reconciliation; answering to the nature of Christianity, and including the three ideas of an original unity, a separation by sin, and a restoration of the unity again.2072

But he is far more the rhetorician than the philosopher or theologian, and, as Jerome observes, has greater skill in the refutation of error than in the establishment of truth. The doctrinal matter of his writings, as in the case of his preceptor Arnobius, is very vague and unsatisfactory, and he does not belong to the narrower circle of the fathers, the authoritative teachers of the church. Pope Gelasius counted his works among the apocrypha, i.e., writings not ecclesiastically received.

Notwithstanding this, his Institutes, on account of their elegant style, have been favorite reading, and are said to have appeared in more than a hundred editions. His mistakes and errors in the exposition of points of Christian doctrine do not amount to heresies, but are mostly due to the crude and unsettled state of the church doctrine at the time. In the doctrine of sin he borders upon Manichaeism. In anthropology and soteriology he follows the synergism which, until Augustine, was almost universal. In the doctrine of the Trinity he was, like most of the ante-Nicene fathers, subordinationist. He taught a duplex nativitas of Christ, one at the creation, and one at the incarnation. Christ went forth from God at the creation, as a word from the mouth, yet hypostatically.2073

His most important work is his Divine Institutes, a comprehensive refutation of heathenism and defence of Christianity, designed to make Christianity better known among the cultivated classes, and to commend it by scholarship and attractive style.2074  He seems to have begun the work during the Dioclesianic persecution, but afterwards to have enlarged and improved it about the year 321; for he dedicated it to the emperor, whom he celebrates as the first Christian prince.2075

To the same apologetic purpose was his work De morte, or mortibus, persecutorum, which is of some importance to the external history of the church.2076  It describes with minute knowledge, but in vehement tone, the cruel persecutions of the Christians from Nero to Dioclesian, Galerius, and Maximinus (314), and the divine judgments on the persecutors, who were compelled to become involuntary witnesses to the indestructible power of Christianity.

In his book De opificio Dei2077 he gives observations on the organization of the human nature, and on the divine wisdom displayed in it.

In the treatise De ira Dei2078 he shows that the punitive justice of God necessarily follows from his abhorrence of evil, and is perfectly compatible with his goodness; and he closes with an exhortation to live such a life that God may ever be gracious to us, and that we may never have to fear his wrath.

We have also from Lactantius various Fragmenta and Carmina de Phoenice, de Passione Domini, de resurrectione Domini, and one hundred Aenigmata, each of three hexameters.2079

§ 174. Hilary of Poitiers.

Hilary of Poitiers, or Pictaviensis, so named from his birth-place and subsequent bishopric in Southwestern France, and so distinguished from other men of the same name,2080 was especially eminent in the Arian controversies for his steadfast confession and powerful defence of the orthodox faith, and has therefore been styled the "Athanasius of the West."

He was born towards the end of the third century, and embraced Christianity in mature age, with his wife and his daughter Apra.2081  He found in the Holy Scriptures the solution of the riddle of life, which he had sought in vain in the writings of the philosophers. In the year 350 he became bishop of his native city, and immediately took a very decided stand against Arianism, which was at that time devastating the Gallic church. For this he was banished by Constantius to Phrygia in Asia Minor, where Arianism ruled. Here, between 356 and 361, he wrote his twelve books on the Trinity, the main work of his life.2082  He was recalled to Gaul, then banished again, and spent the last years of his life in rural retirement till his death in 368.

We have from him, besides the theological work already mentioned several smaller polemic works against Arianism, viz., On Synods, or the Faith of the Orientals (358); fragments of a history of the Synod of Ariminum and Seleucia; a tract against the Arian emperor Constantius, and one against the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan. He wrote also Commentaries on the Psalms (incomplete), and the Gospel of Matthew, which are partly a free translation of Origen,2083 and some original hymns, which place him next to Ambrose among the lyric poets of the ancient church.

Hilary was a man of thorough biblical knowledge, theological depth and acuteness, and earnest, efficient piety. He had schooled himself in the works of Origen and Athanasius, but was at the same time an independent thinker and investigator. His language is often obscure and heavy, but earnest and strong, recalling Tertullian. He had to reproduce the profound thoughts of Athanasius and other Greek fathers in the Latin language, which is far less adapted to speculation than the copious, versatile, finely-shaded Greek. The incarnation of God was to him, as it was to Athanasius, the centre of theology and of the Christian life. He had an effective hand in the development of the dogma of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and the dogma of the person of Christ. In this he was specially eminent for his fine use of the Gospel of John. But he could not get clear of subordinationism, nor call the Holy Ghost downright God. His Pneumatology, as well as his anthropology and soteriology, was, like that of all the fathers before Augustine, comparatively crude. In Christology he saw farther and deeper than many of his contemporaries. He made the distinction clear between the divine and the human in Christ, and yet held firmly to the unity of His person. He supposes a threefold birth of the Son of God: the eternal generation in the bosom of the Father, to whom the Son is equal in essence and glory; the incarnation, the humiliation of Himself to the form of a servant from the free impulse of love; and the birth of the Son of God out of the Son of Man in the resurrection, the transfiguration of the form of a servant into the form of God, at once showing forth again the full glory of God, and realizing the idea of humanity.2084