Saint Pacian on the Jews

Saint Pacian is one of the many lesser-known Christian 'Fathers of the Church' and is perhaps considered one primarily because of one of the best known and most important of the early Church Fathers Saint Jerome openly eulogised him and his contribution to the Christian cause.

Pacian - from what little we know about him - was a 4^th century Christian bishop of Barcelona and perhaps surprisingly for modern Christians he was a married man whose son Flavius Dexter rose to prominence as an influential member of the court of the arch-Christian Emperor: Theodosius (who was responsible for the destruction of polytheism in the Roman Empire). If that was all we knew of Pacian then he would be interesting enough as an actor in history, but we have several of his sermons and works that have come down to us.

Now Pacian is a good example of what has been called the 'Judaiser' tradition in Christianity or put very simply he is a representative of those Christians who held/hold that Christianity was/is a perfected form of Judaism as opposed to a radical break with it (as Church Fathers like Irenaeus conceived it). This means that for example Pacian views jews as merely heretics and not members of a different religion from Christians such as himself.

For example he writes early on in his first epistle that:

'For such are the heresies which have sprung forth from the Christian head, that of the mere names the roll would be immense. For to pass over the heretics of the Jews, Dositheus the Samaritan, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, it were long to enumerate how many grew up in the times of the Apostles, Simon Magus, and Menander, and Nicolas, and others hidden by an inglorious fame. What again in later times were Ebion, and Apelles, and Marcion, and Valentinus, and Cerdon, and not long after them, the Cataphrygians, and Novatians, not to notice any recent swarms!' (1)

In the above Pacian is clearly stating that he views the jews as a heretical sect of proto-Christian believers (who in turn have their own sub-heresies) who recognise the same things as Christians do, but are heretical because they refuse to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah/Christ. In doing so he places the jews alongside Jesus' Messianic competitors such as the famous Simon Magus as well as radical Christian traditions as the followers of Marcion who regarded the Old Testament and the jews as emanations of the devil!

It is clear that Pacian viewed Christianity as a kind of perfected Judaism - to use Ann Coulter's infamous aphorism (which a lot of jews promptly claimed was 'anti-Semitic' as is their want) - and also that he views Jesus himself as a very jewish Messiah.

Pacian makes this very clear when he describes the Virgin Mary in his treatise on penance 'Paraenesis ad Poenitentiam' thus:

'Fear not this cutting, most beloved. David bore it. He lay in filthy ashes, and was disfigured by a covering of rough sackcloths He who had once been accustomed to gems and to purple, hid his soul in fasting; he whom seas, whom woods, whom streams served and the land bringing forth the promised wealth, wasted in floods of tears those eyes with which he had beheld the glory of God; the ancestor of Mary, the ruler also of the Jewish kingdom, confessed himself unhappy and miserable.' (2)

As we can see: Pacian describes Mary's ancestor David as 'the ruler of the Jewish kingdom' with the necessary implication that Mary's son Jesus was also the ruler of said jewish kingdom and that because David was jewish and was Mary's ancestor that made both Mary and Jesus jewish.

Indeed Pacian actually argues against the Christians who argued that Christianity was a radical break from Judaism in his third epistle when he states thus:

'Therefore (you will say) the Jews at least who repented before Baptism cannot repent after Baptism. Who taught you this, brother Sympronian? Who convinced you that he who may have repented before, ought not to repent afterwards? But this we will see hereafter. Meanwhile, even if the Jews were precluded from repentance after Baptism, because they had repented before, allow that the Gentiles at least who, before, knew not the law of repentance, ought to repent afterwards. But I would not that you should be deceived even as to the Jews. For on this very ground did they before repent, because they had corrupted their old Baptism, and they repented as having, after Faith, betrayed the Faith.' (3)

In the above we can see that Pacian is attacking the arguments of those who - like Irenaeus - saw Christianity as a primarily gentile faith that the jews had categorically rejected en bloc and argues instead that Christianity should be understood as pure universalism personified. Pacian argues that jews and gentiles have been levelled by Jesus' new covenant and that this therefore means that the fact that the jews had rejected Jesus as their Messiah en bloc did not mean that they were individually to be treated as being unable to be re-cleansed by baptism because of the 'sins of their fathers'. (4)

Pacian argues this on the basis that jews and gentiles should be treated equally as while the jews chose to ignorantly kill Jesus: the gentiles were just ignorantly unaware of both him and his doctrines. This Pacian argues means that both jews and gentiles are equally guilty and thus are in a sense guiltless because they have both committed sins out of specific and general ignorance of Christ. This Pacian suggests means that when a gentile and a jew come to be instructed and baptised in the Christian faith: they should be treated equally as 'repentant sinners before the lord'.

Indeed if anything we can see that Pacian favours the jewish convert over the gentile convert as he states quite unequivocally that Sympronian should 'not be deceived' by the attitudes of other gentile Christians to the jews and should treat them as having been faithful to their faith (i.e. the pre-Christian revelation), while gentiles as polytheists have just been ignorant and worshipped meaningless idols.

This aspect of Pacian's thought can be seen in another passage of his third epistle where he states:

'Built, as it is written, upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner Stone. Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. For there is One God, Who justifies the ungodly by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith. Certainly, that lowly people, whom God compared to the piece of silver, the younger son, and the sheep, was the Church, whence are Apostles, whence is the whole assembly of believers, whence the Christian people. To this body then are joined our members also, and all portions of believers, out of the wild olive tree of the Gentiles, that they might grow together into a good olive tree, partaking, as the Apostle says, of its fatness; and so we might be all one in Christ, Jew and Greek, bond and free. If, therefore, we with those lowly ones are one body, those things which were said to the lowly among the ancients were spoken also to us; and thus whatever was declared to a part of the body, was announced to the whole body.' (5)

Pacian here can be openly seen to be giving priority status to the jews in that he asks the rhetorical question as to whether Jesus is the representative of god to the jews alone only to answer that he is also the god of the gentiles. This wording could normally be written off as an example of formulaic rhetoric, but for what Pacian says next in that 'to the body of the Christian people are appended our members' and then that further to this number are the (to paraphrase) 'all the believers who are not born jewish' (i.e. 'born out of the wild olive tree of the Gentiles' as opposed to the already 'cultivated olive tree of the jews').

Now there are two issues that need to be brought out of this choice of words: the first is as I have stated that Pacian gives priority to the jews who he regards as proto-Christians who have kept their faith (as per earlier in the third epistle) and merely need theological correction as to who the Messiah is (hence the necessary consequence of the jews being a cultivated olive tree in his metaphor). Where-as the gentiles are - per his metaphor again - wild and untamed and need to be proverbially house-trained to Jesus' teachings as opposed to the jews who are house-trained but need their sense of direction honing.

The second is the problem of Pacian's phraseology in his stating that to 'the body of the Christian people are [to be] appended our members', which (having checked the original text for confirmation) is difficult to read any other way than Pacian saying that he was himself a jewish convert (i.e. our members means the members of the tribe of Israel [the jews]). We certainly don't have enough evidence to reasonably charge Pacian with actually being jewish per se, but the fact that his wording almost necessarily implies this produces the tantalizing possibility that one of the influential members of Theodosius' court and involved in numerous anti-pagan atrocities was a crypto-jew.

It would also make sense of Pacian's strange obsession with placing the jews as opposed to gentiles (as represented in Pacian's work as the 'Greeks') at the head of Christianity and his own view of Christianity as a perfected or evolved form of Judaism. It would also make a form of perverted sense in relation to Pacian's view of the jews as being proto-Christian heretics as if Pacian was a jewish convert then it is not unreasonable to suggest that he thought that by accepting Jesus he was merely being consistent with Judaism, which would mean that jews who didn't accept Jesus were heretics towards their own faith (i.e. because they hadn't recognised the Messiah as such).

This view is strengthened when we see that when Pacian does refer to the jews negatively: he does so only in the sense that the jews were - to use Saint Asterius' term - 'disputatious' and refused to recognise Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah in spite of his answering all the questions their vicious doctrinal minds could conjure up. (6)

What Pacian doesn't do is - unlike many of Fathers of the Church - invoke the charge of Deicide (which he implicitly defended the jews against in this third epistle) or suggest that the jews have stained their souls irreparably by their actions. Instead Pacian ascribes the actions of the jews to their being caught in the devil's whiles and that accordingly they are not to be blamed for their actions, but rather their devils should be proverbially cast out. (7)

This means of course that Pacian is relieving the jews of any responsibility for any evil they have done in the past, are doing now or will do in the future, because in doing so they are not themselves and thus are not to be blamed, which is completely the converse of his attitude towards the gentiles who he implicitly blames for not having sought instruction in the Christian faith sooner.

We can thus accordingly see that to Pacian: Christianity was a form of Judaism that had simply had its Messiah arrive as opposed to the 'heretical' form of Judaism adhered to by the jews where the Messiah had yet to arrive. As well as the fact that Pacian himself may well have been jewish and that accordingly would mean that the influence of the jews and the part they played in the decisions of the controversial and militant Christian Emperor Theodosius may well have been both significant and considerable.

As such we can only present it is a possibility and nothing more, but the possibility itself is absolutely tantalising in its implications that the jews yet again played a key role in fermenting the religious wars that were gripping the Roman Empire at this late stage.

References

(1) Pacian Ep. 1:1

(2) Pacian Par. 17

(3) Pacian Ep. 3:20

(4) In some ways the argument between those who regard jews as able to be cleansed of the mortal sin of decide and those who regard it as an indelible stain is one of the oldest in Christianity and has long been a fault line between the Judaiser and anti-jewish schools of Christian thought. A good example of this long running civil war in Christian thought can be found in the battle between the 'Confessing Church' (Judaisers) and the 'German Christians' (anti-jewish) before and during the Third Reich.

(5) Pacian Ep. 3:28

(6) Pacian Ep. 2:1; Disc. Bap. 5

(7) Ibid.