In words familiar to us all St. Paul observes that in Christ there is “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.” This is usually, and I think correctly, not taken to mean that the Apostle's ideal is the abolition of human distinctions in a blank uniformity. His own love for the figure of the Body with its various members suggests rather the maintenance of differences, freed from the stigma of inferiority, in the harmony of corporate life. We were reminded last year of the importance of the Barbarian, that is the non-Greek element in the Christian tradition. My subject this address is one of the chief representatives of another element—the Roman. Neither in the passage just quoted nor in the similar one in Galatians does the Roman appear in St. Paul's listing of the differences capable of being united in Christ. But St. John tells us that the titulus upon the cross of Jesus was written in Latin as well as in Hebrew and Greek. Pious as well as scholarly comment has seen in his emphasis on this point a reference to the place of Roman along with Greek and Jew in the Christian body, and in so doing has probably sensed correctly the intent of the Evangelist. Certainly the Roman striving for liberty under law is of great concern for us today, when the alternative to law appears to be not anarchy but despotism.

It has been recognized for some time that nationalism is a factor to be reckoned with in the ecclesiastical history of the later Roman Empire. Certainly the history of the Monophysites after Chalcedon is largely the story of the struggle of Egyptian and Syrian national feeling against the Empire. In all probability the bishops of Alexandria who in the two generations before Chalcedon combatted the rise of the imperial church at Constantinople— Theophilus, Cyril, and Dioscorus—were supported by the patriotism of the Egyptian nation as well as by the pride of the Alexandrian see. But there has not yet been any answer to the question, when did this union of Christianity and nationalism in Egypt begin?

The discussion of this problem involves interrogating our sources on a subject they do not consciously treat and must be a matter of interpretation rather than merely of quotation of evidence. The problem could be stated in two ways; the church historian asks, when did Egyptian Christianity become nationalist? while for Egyptian history the problem is, when did Egyptian nationalism become Christian? The Egyptian nation, with its language, its religion, and some remnants of its literature and culture, had continued to exist through the whole period of Greco-Roman dominance. In the Coptic church it was to find once more the means to vigorous self-expression.