Lactantius

• Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius was born in Africa, of heathen parents.
• He may have been a pupil of Arnobius.
• He won fame in Africa as a rhetorician, and Diocletian summoned him to be a professor at Nicomedia. He tells the story of his journey in a poem (lost).
• Converted in 303, he resigned from his position in the same year when the persecution broke out, and lived in utter destitution.
• Ca. 317 Constantine invited him to teach Crispus, his son, at Trier.
• He was more successful in attacking paganism than defending Christianity. St. Jerome wrote: “I wish that he could have upheld our heritage with as much ease as he destroyed others.” (Ep. 58:10).
• Comprehensive and versatile, he has a natural, pleasing, restrained style, “The most eloquent men of his time, like a very fount of Tertullian eloquence” (St. Jerome). Pico della

Mirandola (1494) and other humanists called him the Christian Cicero.

• Except for St. Jerome and perhaps St. Augustine, no Christian writer of antiquity was so deeply versed in Latin and Greek literature, but his knowledge of ecclesiastical literature was meager.
• He tended towards dualism which seems to be derived from Stoicism, as well as towards Chiliasm. His Theology
• He defines Christianity only as a kind of popular morality without giving enough attention to the redeeming of mankind by a divine Savior.
• He denies, especially in his Letters to Demetrianus, now lost, the existence of the divine personality of the Holy Spirit, identifying Him sometimes with the Father, sometimes with the Son.
• In Divine Institutes 6.4 , he wrote:
• Since good and evil things are set before us, we should remember that it is much better to offset short-term evil by eternal things than to endure eternal evils for short-term and perishable things. For in a contest, in this life, an enemy is set before you. You must work hard first so that you can enjoy rest afterwards...But, if you choose present ease over hard work, you do yourself the greatest harm: the enemy will surprise you and will find you not resisting…In short, we must patiently submit to everything that is unpleasant and painful, all the more because God, our Commander, has appointed us eternal rewards for our efforts. 10

1. De Opificio Dei (On God’s Workmanship): 304 or 305.

• It was written against the Epicureans who blame the work of nature in order to show that the world is prepared and governed by no providence.
• It is a treatise of man, anatomically and physiologically, maintaining against the Epicureans that the human organism is a creation of God. 2. Divinae institutiones (Divine Institutes): Seven books.
• His chief work, composed ca. 311.
• It is apologetic and theological in character. It is commonly held that the above-mentioned work is an epitome of this.
• Books 1-2 impugn polytheism and prove monotheism to be the only true religion.
• He outlines Christianity, concluding with a description of the after-life of the blessed in books

3-7. 3. De ira dei(The Anger of God): 310-312.

• Against Stoics and Epicureans.
• The Epicureans imagined God as entirely inert, without anger or kindness, because these emotions are inconsistent with His nature.
• Lactantius insists that this theory implies a denial of divine providence and even God’s existence; for if He exists, He cannot be inoperative, since to live is to function. 4. De mortibus persecutorum (The Death of the Persecutors): 313 or post 316.
• An account of the terrible deaths of imperial persecutors - Nero, Domitian, Valerian, Diocletian, Maximin, and Severus. An argument is derived for the truth of Christianity. 5. De ave Phoenice(The Bird Phoenix)
• A poem which relates the myth of the fabulous Eastern Bird rising from its pyre to a new life every thousand years.
• It has a specific Christian color, and is believed to be the work of Lactantius.
• Herodotus is the first to narrate it, and Clement of Rome was the earliest Christian author to make it a symbol of the resurrection. It appears also in Tertullian.
• There are, besides, lost works and spurious works, e.g. De resurrectione,De passione Domini.