Lactantius
Short answer: Lactantius was a Latin-speaking Christian teacher and apologist who wrote in the early fourth century, during the last persecutions and just before the reign of Constantine. He is often called the Christian Cicero because of his polished Latin prose and his habit of quoting pagan authors against themselves. His most important book, the Divine Institutes, argues that the pagan religions and even the best philosophies of his day are empty, and that the true worship of God is found in what Scripture reveals. In doing this he followed a method the Apostle Paul had already used at Athens. Acts 17:22-31 shows Paul standing on the Areopagus, using the altar to an unknown god, and quoting pagan poets while calling the Athenians to turn to the living God who made the world and has now commanded all people everywhere to repent.
Who Lactantius was, and when he wrote
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was born in North Africa around the middle of the third century. He studied rhetoric and became a professional teacher of it, so good at his craft that he was invited to teach in the eastern capital of the empire. There he lived through the Great Persecution that began under the emperor Diocletian in the year 303. The suffering he witnessed, and the way pagan writers defended the persecution, shaped his whole approach to writing.
His major work, the Divine Institutes, was written in that period of suffering and political instability. Its purpose was to set out the Christian faith as a complete account of life and worship, in a style educated Romans would respect. He wanted to show that Scripture was not the crude superstition that pagan critics claimed, and that paganism was not the ancient wisdom its defenders presented. Later in life he tutored a son of Constantine and wrote shorter works on the anger of God and the workmanship of God, but the Institutes remain his central contribution.
He never became a bishop and was not a systematic theologian like Augustine, who came soon after him. He was an explainer, a teacher, an apologist. Some later writers counted him flawed on particular doctrinal points, and that is worth saying honestly. But his central contribution, a reasoned defense of the worship of the one true God against idolatry, stands squarely in the tradition of the apostolic preaching recorded in Acts.
Lactantius and the method of Acts 17
Paul did not begin his speech at Athens with direct quotation of the prophets. He began with what the Athenians already had. Acts 17:22 says, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things.” From that observation he moved to the altar bearing the inscription to an unknown god and used it as a doorway into the truth. Lactantius does something similar across hundreds of pages, entering the pagan library and the pagan literature and turning its own testimony against its worship.
This is not the same as endorsing pagan religion. Paul went on to say that God declares that all people everywhere should repent, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, and he has given assurance of this by raising a man from the dead. The Athenian way of worship was the problem, not the starting point for a synthesis. But the approach was still to go to the point where the hearer already was, and to lead from there toward the truth about the Creator and the judgment to come.
Lactantius adopted that posture for a Latin-speaking audience. Rather than demanding that a Roman senator or orator first adopt the whole vocabulary of the church, he showed, from the poets and philosophers the senator already admired, that paganism was self-defeating. Then he presented the worship of the true God as what those writers had been groping toward. The method is apologetic and missionary at once.
Why he quoted the pagan poets, and why it worked
Lactantius leaned heavily on the very pagan authors his readers revered. He cites the Roman poet Virgil, the Greek poets and dramatists, and the philosophers, sometimes at length, not to admire them without reservation but to prove a point: their own testimony condemned the myths and the images used in pagan temples. If Virgil's poetry described the gods in ways no moral person would defend, then the educated defender of paganism had a problem, and the Christian apologist had an argument.
Paul does something recognisably similar at Athens when he says, as some of the poets of the day put it, that we are God's offspring, and uses that line to draw the Athenians away from thinking of God as being like gold or silver or stone, shaped by human art and imagination. The supplied text of Acts 17:22-31 captures that same movement from what the audience already accepted toward the Creator they had not yet honoured. Lactantius simply carried that pastoral instinct into the Latin world.
This made his work effective as persuasion rather than as ammunition for people who already agreed with him. He was not writing only for the church; he was writing for educated outsiders who thought Christianity was for the uneducated. Quoting their own authors on their own terms was a way of earning a hearing. That is the same reason Paul's speech at the Areopagus addressed the setting itself, an altar in public view.
The Divine Institutes and the case against idolatry
The Divine Institutes is organised around a sustained case that the gods of the nations are not gods. Lactantius argues that they were either deified human beings, or inventions of poets, or objects crafted by human hands. He points out that the images people bow before are made by the very artisans who make ordinary household objects, and that their gold and silver are the same material as a common coin. An image, he insists, cannot save or hear or speak.
This is close in spirit to Paul's words at Athens about the divine nature not being like gold, silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. Lactantius dwells on the same absurdity and presses it further, asking why a person would fear an object that he could have purchased, or that a thief could carry away. The argument is not original to him, and he would not claim otherwise. It is the argument of the prophets and the apostles, restated for a Roman readership.
He then builds his positive case on the unity of God, the providence of God, and the moral demands of God. He writes about the way human beings were made for worship, and how misdirected worship deforms a life. A person who worships what he has made will inevitably live beneath his own dignity. Christian worship, by contrast, restores the creature to the Creator, and that is why the moral teaching in the later books of the Institutes is inseparable from the doctrinal teaching in the earlier ones.
Deaths, the soul, and the limits of pagan wisdom
One of Lactantius's recurring themes is that the pagan philosophers could teach virtue but could not give hope. He is willing to grant that a Socrates or a Cicero said many fine things about honesty and self-control. But he argues that the philosophers never settled the central questions: what happens after death, why the innocent suffer, and whether God cares about the details of a human life. On those points, he says, they speculate and disagree, while Scripture speaks with the authority of the God who made the world.
Paul strikes a complementary note in his speech at Athens when he says that God overlooked the times of ignorance, but now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness. The gospel is not merely better advice than the philosophers gave. It announces an event, a judgment, and a resurrection, and it calls for a response. Lactantius leans on that difference constantly: philosophy can describe, but only revelation can summon and console.
This is why his writing has a pastoral edge even at its most argumentative. He is not interested in beating the philosophers in a debate. He is interested in the reader who has been taught that the soul is mortal or that the gods are indifferent, and who has no ground for courage in the face of death. His answer is the Creator who has spoken and who will judge, and the worship of that Creator as the only life worth living.
First Corinthians and the wisdom of this world
The New Testament supplies the theological frame for everything Lactantius attempted. In the supplied text of 1 Corinthians 1:20-25 Paul asks where the wise, the scribe, and the lawyer of this world are, and says that God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. That is not an attack on thinking. It is a statement about the cross, which looks like foolishness to the world but is the power and wisdom of God. Lactantius felt that tension keenly: he was trained as a rhetorician and used rhetoric, yet he insisted that the world's wisdom could not save.
Colossians 2:8 gives the pastoral warning that runs alongside it, that no one should be taken captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, and not according to Christ. Lactantius read the philosophers widely and quoted them freely, and he would have agreed that this verse is a caution and not a prohibition. The danger is not learning but captivity, being carried off by a system that never reaches Christ. His whole project was to make sure the gospel, not the schools, had the final word.
Romans 1:18-23 supplies the reason he expected his arguments to land. Paul says that what can be known about God is evident, because God revealed it to them, and that people suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. The problem is not only ignorance but moral resistance. That is why Lactantius spoke of repentance as well as proof, and why the Areopagus speech ends with a call to turn, not merely to think differently.
What pastors and teachers can learn from him
The first lesson is that learning the language of your hearers is not compromise. Paul knew the Athenian poets well enough to quote them accurately. Lactantius knew Virgil and Cicero well enough to use them as witnesses. A teacher who understands the books, songs, and assumptions of the people in front of him can show where those assumptions fail and where they point beyond themselves. That is patient, pastoral work, not capitulation.
The second lesson is that the goal is always repentance and worship. It is possible to win an argument and lose the person. Paul's speech does not end with a clever observation; it ends with the command to repent and the promise of judgment and resurrection. Lactantius, whatever his weaknesses on particular doctrinal points, kept the same end in view. He wanted readers to stop worshipping what their own hands had made and to worship the God who made them.
The third lesson is that Scripture must govern the argument. Paul's address in Acts 17 is still Scripture. Second Timothy 3:16-17 says that every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. Apologetics that drifts from that standard becomes a different religion wearing Christian vocabulary. Lactantius at his best quoted pagan writers in order to serve the biblical case, not to replace it, and that is the pattern worth imitating.
Biblical fidelity check
Acts 17:22-31 establishes that Paul addressed a pagan audience by beginning where they were, using an altar and pagan poetry, and then moved to the Creator, the unity of the human race, the command to repent, and the coming judgment confirmed by the resurrection. It does not establish that all religions are basically the same, nor that pagan worship was acceptable to God. Paul calls it ignorance that God overlooked for a time, and he calls for a change. It also does not give a formula that guarantees a hearing; some mocked, some said they would hear him again, and some believed.
A common misreading says Paul was endorsing the Athenians' religiosity, or that the Areopagus speech is a model of finding the divine in every culture. The text will not carry that. Paul says God commands all people everywhere to repent, and he names the resurrection as the decisive act. The speech is a missionary appeal, not a compliment. Lactantius, read in that light, is a useful example of quoting outsiders to serve the truth, and a caution against quoting them to dilute it.
Other passages that speak to Acts 17:22-31
The themes in Paul's Areopagus speech run through the whole New Testament. The call to unity and the warning against division in a congregation is treated in this study of 1 Corinthians 1:10, while the ground of that unity in God's faithful calling is explored in this article on 1 Corinthians 1:9. For a wider walk through the letter's opening themes, see 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord. The warnings about idolatry and the danger of testing God, which sit closely beside Paul's Athenian appeal, are examined in 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Lactantius and why does he matter?
Lactantius was a North African teacher of rhetoric who became a Christian apologist in the late third and early fourth centuries. He wrote the Divine Institutes, a sustained defense of Christian worship against pagan religion and philosophy, in polished Latin that educated Romans respected. He is often called the Christian Cicero. He matters because he shows how early Christians engaged the intellectual culture of their day without surrendering the exclusive claims of the gospel, and because his method resembles Paul's appeal at the Areopagus.
Was Lactantius a trustworthy theologian?
He was a careful and useful apologist but not a fully reliable systematic theologian. Later writers noted that he held some positions on the nature of the soul and on the Spirit that did not match the church's maturing consensus. Faithful Christians should read him as a historical witness and a model of method rather than as a final authority. Scripture, not Lactantius, is the standard by which his work must be judged.
What does Acts 17 teach about engaging other religions?
Acts 17 shows Paul beginning with what his hearers already knew and moving them toward the Creator, repentance, and the resurrection. He did not treat pagan worship as an alternative path to God; he called it ignorance and urged a change. So the passage supports respectful engagement that knows the audience and speaks its language, and it also supports a clear call to turn to the living God. It gives no warrant for treating all beliefs as equally valid.
