Aliens and Sojourners: Self as Other in Early Christianity

Introduction: Aliens, Christians, and the Rhetoric of Identity

Introduction: Aliens, Christians, and the Rhetoric of Identity All Christians placed their citizenship in heaven. On earth they were but pilgrims and strangers. —Roland Bainton At the close of the first century c.e., the early Christian text 1 Clement (c.93–97) opens with a greeting from one group of Christian aliens to another: “The church of God residing as aliens (paroikousa) in Rome to the church of God residing as aliens (paroikousē ) in Corinth.”1 This was not the first text to characterize Christians in terms of their status as aliens or sojourners. But as the first century came to a close and the second century progressed, the trope proved to be an increasingly useful one. Other Christian writers made use of it in epistolary prescripts and elsewhere. Polycarp addresses his Letter to the Philippians (c.117–120) to the resident alien church at Philippi, while the Martyrdom of Polycarp (c.155–160 or 170–180) figures not only its specific audience as aliens but in fact the entire “holy and catholic church” as a body that sojourns.2 Similarly 2 Clement (mid-second century) seeks to reassure its audience and strengthen their resolve by reminding them that their sojourn in this world is of short duration.3 In all these ancient texts, we see instances of what I will call “the resident alien topos”—the designation (one that quickly became traditional) of the Christian self as a stranger, sojourner, foreigner, and/or resident alien in order to communicate varying forms of Christian alterity. In view are Greek terms such as paroikos, “resident alien,” xenos, “stranger-foreigner ,” parepidēmos, “sojourner” and politeia, “citizenship” that together form a linguistic complex repeatedly used by early Christians to speak about who they were and what it meant for them to be Christian.4 In light of the evidence for the widespread use of this topos in the first and second centuries c.e., numerous historians of Christianity have drawn 2 Introduction conclusions along the lines of the epigraph from Roland Bainton cited above: the claim to outsider status on earth must have served as a universal identity marker in the early Christian movement. According to this argument, the first Christians followed the Apostle Paul in looking to their heavenly citizenship (Phil 3.20) and thereby became a kind of spiritual “resident aliens.” As the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it eloquently, “they confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth” (Heb 11.13). By drawing on a particular language of stranger and alien status, these Christians articulated their difference, their marginality—in a word, their “otherness”—from the world around them. Nor was the vibrancy or usefulness of the topos limited to the context of the first and second centuries. Indeed it proved to have staying power not only through the systematic persecutions of Christianity in the third century, but also through the transition to imperial religion in the fourth century and beyond. Perhaps most famous is the theologically laden contrast that Augustine draws between saintly strangers (represented by Abel) and citizens of this world (represented by Cain) in The City of God: “When these two cities began to run their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world [Cain] was the first-born, and after him the stranger in this world [Abel], the citizen of the city of God, predestined by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above. . . . Accordingly, it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, but Abel, being a sojourner, built none. For the city of the saints is above, although here below it begets citizens, in whom it sojourns till the time of its reign arrives, when it shall gather together all in the day of the resurrection.”5 Even in contemporary theological reflection, the image of the Christian as a stranger, alien, and sojourner continues to enjoy a broad purchase . For example, in Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon issue a provocative manifesto regarding their vision of present-day American Christian identity: A colony is a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the middle of another, a place where the values of home are reiterated and passed on to the young, a place where the distinctive language and life-style of the resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced. We believe that the designations of the church as a colony...