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REGENT COLLEGE THE PATIENT DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN WITNESS: AN EXPLORATION OF THE TREATISES OF TERTULLIAN, CYPRIAN AND AUGUSTINE AN ESSAY PREPARED FOR THE RCSA ACADEMIC SYMPOSIUM 2020 BY CHRIS AGNEW VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA 6 MARCH 2020 1 “We do not speak great things, but we live them.”1 Patience is a virtue, but it was not always so. The ancient world’s cardinal virtues were prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude; so, when Tertullian wrote On Patience, he departed from ancient tradition and ushered in a new genre of Christian writing.2 Cyprian and Augustine wrote further treatises on patience; however, whilst Cyprian wrote with similar convictions, Augustine demonstrates departure from his North African counterparts. This paper will explore the key developments in this “patient tradition,”3 suggest that Augustine’s contribution is a representative of key shifts in the Christian landscape in post-Constantinian Romanitas and briefly reflect on missiological insight gained. Tertullian writes counter-culturally. Cicero and Seneca had written admiringly of endurance, of perseverance in adversity;4 however, more often in Latin writing, patience had the connotation of subordinates or victims who did not have any other choice, “patience was a response of slaves for whom it was an inevitability, not a virtue.”5 Contrastingly, Tertullian lauds patience as the “highest virtue”, the “moving force” behind all other virtues.6 He suggests he is “utterly unfit” to write on patience, and remarks that “no one can fulfil any precept or perform any work pleasing to the Lord without patience.”7 This is rooted in God himself being patient, as the greatest example (enduring the rebellion of humanity) and in incarnation (entering into an impatient world).8 In short, patience is the basis for all good, 1 Saint Cyprian, On the Good of Patience, 3, in Treatises, ed. Roy Deferrari, trans. Sister George Edward Conway, The Fathers of the Church 36 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), 265. 2 Robert Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 279. 3 A phrase I borrowed from Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2016), 284. 4 Wilken, Early Christian Thought, 283. 5 Kreider, Patient Ferment, 20. 6 Tertullian, On Patience, 1.7, in Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works, ed. Roy Deferrari, trans. Sister Emily Joseph Daly, The Fathers of the Church 40 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1959), 194. 7 Tertullian, Patience, 1.1, 1.6 (Daly, 193-4). 8 Ibid., 2.1, 3.2 (Daly, 195). 2 including humble obedience and love.9 Contrastingly, impatience comes from the devil, is the root of all evil10 and is “paradigmatic of the human condition.”11 Finally, patience demonstrates hope in the resurrection of Christ,12 and has a missiological edge, “attracting the heathen.”13 His discourse is replete with Scripture, mostly the Gospels, but also multiple references to Genesis, Exodus and the prophets, blaming impatience as barring Israel from receiving the good things of God.14 Evocatively, he likely wrote this in 204AD from Carthage, with the Severan amphitheatre martyrdoms of Perpetua and Felicitas ringing in his ears. It is an essay that implores Christians to live lives of patience, acknowledging that God is at work and that this slow yet transformative trajectory has redemptive consequences with “exceedingly attractive” witness.15 Cyprian, following in the footsteps of his Carthaginian senior, wrote On the Good of Patience approximately fifty years later. It was probably written in response to the wave of Decian persecution that had ripped through the Roman Empire, or in response to a pestilence that had killed huge numbers, in an effort to renew conviction.16 Like Tertullian, whom he draws on consistently, Cyprian begins with an emphatic call to patience, as the basis for all “listening and learning.”17 He similarly anchors it in God, who gives patience its “splendour and dignity”, and contests that patience spoken of aside from that which is God-given is false boasting (pointedly aimed at the philosophers of the day).18 His paradigm for patience is based on following and imitating Christ, “[Jesus’] every act right from the outset is marked 9 Tertullian, Patience, 5.5, 12.9 (Daly, 199, 215). 10 Ibid., 5.7 (Daly, 200). 11 M.C. Steenburg, “Impatience and Humanity’s Sinful State in Tertullian of Carthage,” Vigiliae Christianae 62 (2008): 107–32, https://doi.org/10.1163/157007208X247674, 115. 12 Tertullian, Patience, 9 (Daly, 209). 13 Ibid., 15.3 (Daly, 220). 14 Ibid., 5 (Daly, 200-3). 15 Ibid., 15.3 (Daly, 220). 16 Kreider, Patient Ferment, 26. 17 Cyprian, Patience, 1 (Conway, 263). 18 Ibid., 2-3 (Conway, 264-5). 3 by an accompanying patience.”19 This is exemplified in the epigraph to this paper, showing emphasis on actions as well as words. In this he builds on Tertullian; there is more emphasis on the example of Christ, “following Christ is the heart of Cyprian’s spirituality.”20 In the face of persecution , Cyprian offers patience as their “helper and companion,”21 and cements it as the foundation for faith, hope and love.22 In the closing chapters, Cyprian burns with eschatological intensity different from Tertullian. He urges them not simply to live with patient, hopeful expectation, but to live patiently because the consequences of not doing so are terrifying.23 He too bemoans the evil of impatience, cataloguing the failures of Adam, Cain, Esau and the Israelites, though he does not do so as exhaustively as Tertullian.24 Alongside these references, his treatise is similarly filled with Scripture (as Tertullian), with an even greater representation from the Gospels as his sources. Finally, in chapter twenty there is rich imagery of patience as commending and saving, powerful and fortifying, anchored in imitation of the patience of Christ and foundational for missional expansion.25 Tertullian and Cyprian both argue persuasively for patience as fundamental for Christian living, and Justin Martyr noted in the previous century that his friends turned to Christianity “observing the consistent lives of their [Christian] neighbours, or noting their strange patience….”26 This patience was practical as well as philosophised; it was not just spoken, it was lived; it garnered curious attention and catalysed growth. In 417AD, Augustine of Hippo wrote a third treatise on patience. Whilst Augustine similarly attributes patience to God and suggests that God calls forth such a virtue in 19 Cyprian, Patience, 6 (Conway, 268). He charts Jesus’ incarnation, baptism, conflict with the devil, foot washing, receiving the kiss of Judas and his passion as patient. 20 Simone Deléani, quoted in Kreider, Patient Ferment, 28, emphasis mine. 21 Cyprian, Patience, 12 (Conway, 275). 22 Ibid., 15 (Conway, 277-8). 23 Kreider, Patient Ferment, 30. 24 Cyprian, Patience, 19 (Conway, 281-2). 25 Ibid., 20 (Conway, 282-3). 26 Justin Martyr, 1 Apology, 16.4, in Early Christian Fathers, ed. C.C. Richardson, trans. E.R. Hardy, LCC I (London, 1963), 252, emphasis mine. 4 humans,27 the emphases are markedly different from Cyprian and Tertullian. Early on he explores “true patience, recognised only through its cause,”28 rather than extolling its inherent goodness. Augustine’s preoccupation with cause is notable, subtly dismissing the schismatic Donatists29 and rejecting the “false patience” of the heretical Pelagians.30 True patience pertains to those with true inner motivation, not simply outward behaviour (even in the face of suffering or persecution). From chapter twenty-three onward, Augustine reverses the direction of his ‘patient’ spiritual fathers, saying patience comes from love; “without [charity], there can be no true patience in us…hence, our patience is from Him from whom our charity comes.”31 Strikingly, he qualifies the negative of blind patience; “whenever the lust of the world patiently sustains the burdens of any calamity, it glories in the strength of its own will…it is not patience but madness.”32 This insight acknowledges how the vulnerable could be “uncreatively servile” in patience,33 and he instead points to love as the starting point and the lens through which patience must be lived out. Contrary to Tertullian and Cyprian, Augustine spends considerably less time on impatience, suggesting it more as a pathway to evil, rather than an absolute evil in itself.34 It is also no surprise, given Augustine’s propensity to focus on the interior, that the emphasis on practical imitation of Christ is similarly lacking. This is reflected in the Scripture cited; Cyprian cites the Gospel of Matthew twenty-four times, Augustine only cites it three times, instead preferring Paul’s more cerebral Romans (twenty-two citations).35 Fascinatingly, in Augustine’s sermon there is no allusion to the witness of patience, nor is there quotation from the patient tradition (yet 27 Saint Augustine, On Patience, 1-2, in Treatises on Various Subjects, ed. Roy Deferrari, trans. Sister Luanne Meagher, The Fathers of the Church 16 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 237-8. 28 Augustine, Patience, 6.5 (Meagher, 240), emphasis mine. 29 Ibid., 13.10 (Meagher, 246). 30 Ibid., 15.12 (Meagher, 249). 31 Ibid., 23 (Meagher, 258). 32 Ibid. 33 Kreider, Patient Ferment, 283. 34 Augustine, Patience, 2 (Meagher, 238). 35 Kreider, Patient Ferment, 284. 5 there is evidence of his love