This book presents an account of tolerance that differs from the standard liberal narrative. Jed Atkins recovers tolerance's beginnings in a forgotten North African Christian tradition from the first five centuries CE and shows how this bears on questions of political judgment, authority, freedom, rights, religious plurality, and natural law.

Jed W. Atkins is the E. Blake Byrne Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Duke University. He directs The Transformative Ideas Program and The Civil Discourse Project. He has published widely in the areas of Greek, Roman, and early Christian moral and political philosophy and the history of political philosophy. He is the author of Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason (CUP, 2013) and Roman Political Thought (CUP, 2018).

• Acknowledgments


• Introduction: Liberalism and the Christian Origins of Tolerance


• 1: Roman Tolerance?


• 2: Stoic Tolerance?


• 3: Paul and the New Testament Building Blocks of Tolerance


• 4: Tertullian and the Freedom of Religion


• 5: Tertullian, Cyprian, and the Virtue of Tolerance


• 6: Tolerance, Religious Liberty, and Universal Human Justice in the Thought of Lactantius


• 7: Tolerance in Augustine's City of God: A Secular Virtue


• 8: Augustine on Political Judgment and Tolerance


• Epilogue: Christianity, Islam, and Liberal Tolerance


• References


• Index