Simplicity and Humility in Late Antique Christian Thought: Elites and the Challenges of Apostolic Life by Jaclyn L. Maxwell (review)

• Published in: Journal of Early Christian Studies Vol. 29; no. 4; pp. 650 - 652
• Main Author: Brakke, David
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2021
• Subjects: Attitudes; Christianity; Christians; Cultural differences; Education; Social factors; Theology; Values
• ISSN: 1067-6341; 1086-3184; 1086-3184
• DOI: 10.1353/earl.2021.0048

In other words, the men whom she studies provide evidence not for the duplicitous ways that leaders attempt to manipulate differing cultural values to their advantage, but for the diverse ways in which the traditional Roman values of hierarchy and privilege and the socially disruptive Christian values of simplicity and humility interacted as a new imperial Roman Christian culture was developing, that is, "a period when thinkers were incorporating new strands of thought into their understandings of social and economic divisions" (162). Maxwell is careful to explain that Christian social attitudes neither replaced nor were subsumed by existing views as the number and diversity of Christians grew; rather, "social teachings of the Bible added new dimensions to how Roman Christians understood themselves and their world" (33). Chapter Four studies how Christian authors invoked the simplicity of the apostles or the value of elite education in theological controversies; they wavered between, on the one hand, contrasting the simplicity of orthodox faith with the obfuscation of heretical philosophizing (e.g., Epiphanius) and, on the other, adducing the expertise of traditional education as a qualification for reliably orthodox bishops.