Church Fathers on Christians and Caesar
“Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Matthew 22:21 How did the early church interpret its relationship to Caesar and the Roman Empire, as it applied the teaching of Jesus? The church rejected the empire's idolatry and many of its cultural values and it suffered greatly at the hands of the empire's leaders, but in priniciple it respected the God-given place of the empire and its emperor. The idolatrous Roman empire martyred the saints - including some of the men who wrote the words below - but the church generally believed that the empire could be redeemed as its citizens came to know Christ. Here is a selection of readings from the mid-second century to the early-third century. (An earlier version of this post contained writings attributed to Ignatius of Antioch. I have subsequently discovered that so-called " long recension " of Ignatius' letters probably originates in the fourth century, not the late first century. It does n...