Augustine criticizes the theater and public spectacles out of a personal confessional frame of mind since he participated in such debaucheries as a young man in Carthage. In his Confessions he asks why is it that in the theater a man desires to behold sorrows and tragedy which, if he actually experiences them, would make his miserable? Do we love the grief of others in order to be able to show mercy to them?

100 – 500 AD

2nd century

Tatian (110-172)

Tatian, the Assyrian Gnostic student of Justin Martyr’s, in his Address to the Greeks, reacted to the stage players mocking church figures and practices and dress. Not subject to political winds like the government, the Church had its theological absolutism and consistency to back up its opposition to the perceived licentiousness on stage.

Clearly there was a drift towards bloodthirsty and vulgar and demeaning spectacles during the early years. It was right and proper for the theologians to condemn these shows and urge Christians not to participate in any way. Tatian specifically denounced the actor, who outwardly counterfeits what he is not and who in his impersonations, must be reckoned a “solitary accuser of all the gods, an epitome of superstition, a vituperator of heroic deeds, an actor o murders, chronicler of adultery, a storehouse of madness a teacher of cynaedi” and an instigator of capital sentences.

For good measure, the old Gnostic throws in “a number of singers” who “wink and gastrulates in an unnatural manner.” The effect of these performances is that “your daughters and your sons behold them giving lessons in adultery on the stage. Turning directly to the Romans, he states, “Admirable, too, are your mendacious poets, who by their fictions beguile their hearers from the truth1” Tatian was one of those early ascetic theologians who denounced all bodily pleasures such as eating meat, drinking wine or have sex. So while he was a fringe figure, he did create an impression which lasted hundreds of years.

Epistle to Diognetus (anonymous)(140)

This is an apology for Christianity which says that the new Christian church blends in with the surrounding “Greek and barbarian” culture and is distinguished by the quality of life, “In habiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them had determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking (or paradoxical) method of life.”

Tertullian (160-215)

Following Tatian comes the powerful Tertullian who inveighs against stage shows. For Tertullian, the shows are nothing more than public versions of pagan rituals dedicated the false gods who will lead Christians astray. Everything about the theater is idolatrous – costumes, set design, scripts, actions, music. For Tertullian, Satan controls the stage and it is his weapon to defeat Christ and take away His followers. There is nothing innocent or accidental about public stage performances. They are a tool of the devil. Tertullian devotes an entire treatise to the danger of public shows, The Shows or De Spectaculis.

3rd century

Lactantius (240-320)

Lactantius wrote in his The Divine Institutes (6, 20, “Of the senses, and their pleasures in the brutes and in man; and of pleasures of the eyes, and spectacles.”) That “the pleasures of the five senses are vicious and deadly, ought to be overcome and subdued by virtue or recalled to their proper office.” And then he approvingly quotes Cicero, “In truth, debaucheries, and adulteries and disgraceful actions are excited by no other enticements than those of pleasure. And since nature or some God has given to man nothing more excellent than the mind, nothing is so hostile to this divine benefit and fits as pleasure. For when lust bears sway there is not place for temperance nor can virtue on this account, that it might subdue and conquer pleasure, and that when it passed the boundaries assigned to it, it might restrain it within the prescribed limits, lest it should soothe and captivate man with enjoyments, render him subject to its control, and punish him with everlasting death.” (On the Republic and On the Laws). There is more, but I must move on.

Josiah Barish states, “By the second or third century audiences no longer cared for comedy to tragedy, which had dwindled to insignificance among the scenic activities, their place take by mimes, wild beast show, lubricous pantomimes, chariot races and gladiatorial fights.”

4th century

John Chrysostom (344-407)

Chrysosom continued the polemic against pleasure and relaxation in his homilies, particularly his homily on 2 Thessalonians 1:8, when he commented: “For conversation about pleasant things profits the soul nothing, but renders it more languid, while that about things painful and melancholy cuts off all that is relaxed and dissolute in it, and converts it, and braces it when unnerved. He who converses of theaters and actors does not benefit the soul, but inflames it more, and renders it more careless. He who concerns himself and is busy in other men’s matters, often even involves it in dangers by this curiosity.” His thoughts on Philippians 4:8 are the same.

5th century

Augustine (354–430)

Augustine criticizes the theater and public spectacles out of a personal confessional frame of mind since he participated in such debaucheries as a young man in Carthage. In his Confessions he asks why is it that in the theater a man desires to behold sorrows and tragedy which, if he actually experiences them, would make his miserable? Do we love the grief of others in order to be able to show mercy to them?

Theater going is cathartic for us. Going to the public spectacles enables us to wishes the sorrows and sufferings of the characters prolonged so that we can continue to suffer along with them. The fictional emotion in the theater provides the essentially good and valuable capacity for fellow feeling, even if it is false. It is a self-indulgent and specious feeling and relieves us of the need to really act. The theater feeds our passivity and narcissism. (Confessions, Book 3). For Augustine, the theater was not necessarily evil and demonic (like Tertullian believed) but rather a convenient symptom of the basic sinfulness of humankind and a natural out working of the fall away from God centeredness.    “Contrast that holy spectacle with the pleasures and delight of the theater. There your eyes are defiled; here your hearts are cleansed. Here the spectator deserves praise if he but imitates what he sees; there he is bad, and if he imitates what he sees he becomes infamous.”

In Christian Doctrine (Book 1, chp. 29) he writes, “For in the theaters, dens of iniquity though they be, if a man is fond of a particular actor, and enjoys his art as a great or even as the very greatest good, he is fond of all who hoi with him in admiration of his favorite, not for their own sakes but for the sake of him whom they admire in common; and the more fervent he is in his admiration, the more he works in every way he can to secure new admirers for him, and the more anxious he becomes to show him to others. If however, he meet with any one who opposes him, he is exceedingly displeased by such a man’s contempt of his favorite, and strives in every way he can to remove it.”

Bob Case is a 1974 graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary, where he was editor of the student newspaper, SALT. He worked for many years as published of a local newspaper in Washington state, and is currently the Director of the World Journalism Institute. He blogs at Case In Point where this article first appeared; it is used with his permission. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]