Monasticism as Radical Christianity

Lecture 16

T

he new conditions of Christians within an imperially approved and
sponsored religion were not regarded by all as uniformly positive.
With legitimacy, benefaction, and privilege came both security and
prosperity at the material level. This meant that Christianity was increasingly
“conformed to the world,” rather than its critic, and the bearer of culture,
rather than countercultural. The response of some Christians was the desire
to return to what they perceived as a more radical existence. This radical
edge—now in reaction to an established imperial church—emerged in the
4 th century in diverse forms of flight from society and asceticism that are
gathered under the term “monasticism.”

The Turn to Monasticism
• The desire for a more radical existence among some Christians
was continuous with elements in the New Testament that exhorted
believers “not to be conformed to this age” (Rom. 12:2), and to “go
outside the camp” to suffer as Jesus did outside the city, “for here
we have no lasting city” (Heb. 13:13). Likewise, some Christians
looked back at the portrayal of the first believers as sharing all their
possessions and having nothing they called their own (Acts 2:41–
47, 4:32–37).

•    The desire was continuous, as well, with those elements of radical

Christianity that persisted through the age of persecution: the

boldness of those facing martyrdom, who chose Christ rather than

Caesar; the representation of the apostles as subverters of the social

order, who challenged the stability of both household and state; the

New Prophecy that looked to a heavenly Jerusalem; the forms of

Gnosticism that rejected all outward forms to cultivate the spirit.

•    Some precedent for “living apart” in community had been set

already by certain Greco-Roman philosophical schools. The

Epicureans and the Pythagoreans had a long history of “life