Stefan Freund: When Romans Become Christians ... The “Romanisation” of Christian Doctrine in Lactantius

In his “Divine Institutes” Lactantius provides the pagan reader with a general survey of Christianity. Research has been able to show quite cleary that the apologist presents Christian subject matters from a traditional Roman point of view, especially as regards the image of God, and ethics. In this paper I shall investigate this “Romanisation” of Christianity with regard to other areas, especially Christology, the idea of revelation, the conception of history and eschatology.