Living Under Monastic Law: Perfection and Obedience in John of Apamea

This article examines the attitude of John of Apamea, an early fifth–century Christian ascetic writer, to the Law and to the body. My argument is that the establishment of Christianity within the Roman Empire and the spread and institutionalization of monasticism, together with its emphasis on bodily practice and obedience to laws, has resurrected old themes and images from Jewish-Christian polemics, dating back to the Pauline epistles, over the relationship between the body and the Law. In John’s period, however, the question has changed: While in the first centuries c.e. the focus was the legitimacy of the Jewish law and body, now the concern is the legitimacy and meaning of Christian practice, laws, and bodies, whether in relation to the church in its entirety, to “lay believers” who cannot live up to the strict standards of monasticism, or to monasticism itself, which is increasingly regulated by rules of asceticism in general and of the body in particular. John uses Pauline distinctions between law and freedom, body and spirit, in order to establish an internal Christian hierarchy between different levels of believers. By situating lay as well as ascetic Christians on a lower stage on his spiritual scale, John seeks to both criticize and legitimize bodily Christian practice and monastic submission to laws. John’s ambivalent attitude towards Christian law and bodily practice is further demonstrated through his innovative appeal to Jewish law and practice, which serve as a prototype of a legitimate, yet inferior worship. In this sense, John’s relatively positive rhetorical use of Judaism stands as an exception, in comparison to most of late ancient Christian discourse on body and law and Christian anti-Jewish literature.