Book Seven Of A Happy Life

Lactantius was a Christian writer of the late third and early fourth centuries, born somewhere in North Africa and active during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. He became one of the most important Latin Christian authors of his era, and his major work, the Divinae Institutiones or Divine Institutes, was a seven book defense of Christianity aimed at educated pagan readers who knew their Cicero and their Plato but had only heard about the new religion in fragments and rumors.

This volume is the seventh and final book of that larger work, focused on the question of the happy life and the ultimate end of human existence. Lactantius drew heavily on classical philosophy, particularly Stoic and Platonic ideas, and tried to show that Christianity offered a more coherent answer to the questions Greek and Roman thinkers had been wrestling with for centuries. His Latin prose is among the most polished of any early Christian author, which earned him the nickname the Christian Cicero in the Renaissance when his works were rediscovered.

The seventh book takes up the themes of immortality, the Last Judgment, and the nature of the blessed life that awaits the faithful after death. Lactantius weaves together biblical material, Sibylline oracles, and classical philosophical sources in a way that twenty first century readers may find unfamiliar. He was writing in a moment when Christianity had just gained legal status in the Roman Empire and was still defining itself against both pagan philosophy and earlier Christian heresies. His tone is confident, sometimes triumphant, but always grounded in the classical rhetorical training that made him a respected teacher even before his conversion.

For students of late antiquity, patristic literature, or the history of Western philosophy, this is a primary text worth knowing. The English translation is generally readable and the historical importance of the work is significant.