CHRISTIAN (Χριστιανός, G5985). The word Christianus is basically a Lat. formation, Hellenized in Luke’s Gr. text (Acts 11:26). The ending -anus or -ianus (pl. -ani) is not pejorative. It is merely descriptive, and common Lat. (Hale and Buck, Latin Grammar, par. 210). In historical writings of classical times it is used to define a group in terms of its allegiance: e.g. commonly in Caesar’s Civil War for his opponent Pompey’s troops, “Pompeiani,” and by Caesar’s lieutenant Hirtius for Caesar’s troops, “Caesariani.” Tacitus records the story that the Emperor Augustus ridiculed the historian Livy for his republican sympathies, calling him Pompeianus (Ann. 4.34). There is nothing, however, in any way satiric in the ending itself, for Tacitus follows the practice already mentioned of naming combatant groups after their leader: e.g. Galbiani, the legionaries of the brief-lived emperor Galba (Hist. 1.51). In Mark 12:13 mention is made of the “Herodians,” the friends and supporters of Herod’s house, and the name is equally without emotive significance.

It follows that, when the members of the Early Church (the “brethren” of Acts 1:16; “all who believed” of 2:44; the people “of the Way” of 9:2; 22:4; the “disciples” of 11:26) “in Antioch were for the first time called Christians,” the word was not necessarily a satiric coinage of the Antiochenes, who were somewhat prone to name-calling. The formation of the word demanded no such content. If it was bestowed to parallel the Augustiani, as Harold Mattingly has suggested, the organized “cheerleaders” of the Emperor Nero, it is the context rather than the etymology which puts the contempt into the word. The suggestion of the great expert in Rom. coins is rendered dubious by the date. Luke seems to imply that the term was invented at Antioch at the time of the events which he is describing. This would date it around the years a.d. 40 to 44. It is likely to have been a bureaucratic term, invented by some clerk of the Antioch administration to cover a distinct group among the Jewish community of which the authorities had become aware. The scorn which was infused into the word was the mood of all time, and, like the glad acceptance of those who actually found honor in a term which bore the name of their Lord, reflected an attitude toward Christ.

There are three classical contexts: Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny all use the word in writings of the second decade of the 2nd cent. and within a few years of each other. Tacitus (Ann. 15:44) speaks of the Christians of a.d. 64, the year of the great fire, a minority group which had incurred the hatred of the proletariat and became the scapegoats for Nero’s crime. Suetonius (Nero 16) uses the same word in the same connection. Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan (a.d. 110-112), describes his repressive acts against the Christians of Bithynia in a manner which implies the general acceptance and currency of the term. All this is parallel with the NT evidence. The first usage, in Antioch, has been mentioned and dated 40 to 44. Perhaps fifteen years later, Herod Agrippa II, after listening to Paul, remarked ironically: “In a short time you think to make me a Christian!” (Acts 26:28). Five years later still, or thereabouts, with the Neronian persecution a near or present reality, Peter, possibly writing from Rome, bade those who were in the Church in certain eastern provinces not to be ashamed if called to suffer “as a Christian” (1 Pet 4:16). It would appear that the term, in whatever fashion it was first applied, had become, like “Methodist,” accepted by those to whom it was given. It had, after all, a certain appropriateness, for it implied loyalty and acceptance of a person, and that person, the Messiah (Christ). The Church fathers followed naturally, and in patristic lit., as in the legal codes of Justinian (viz. Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary), the term is frequent and regular. (The dictionary also lists a superlative, Christianissimus, and an adverb Christiane.)

The true modern use of the word follows the same tradition. In all evangelical contexts the Christian is one who accepts, with all its implications, the lordship of Jesus Christ. There is also a deviant use, in which sectarian groups have sought an exclusive application of the term, and a popular use, in which the word is employed to signify that which conforms to ethical standards, social attitudes, or even political allegiance alleged to reflect the spirit of a basic Christianity, without creedal connotation of any sort. (It is in this sense that 19th cent. Unitarianism claimed the appellation.) French, and English by derivation from French, has a strange and pathetic doublet. In French both chrétien and crétin derive from Christianus. A “cretin” was an afflicted unfortunate, a human being, and no brute. Honoré de Balzac discusses the pathos of the term in his novel Médecin de Campagne.