What did Christianity offer its believers that made it worth social estrangement, hostility from neighbors, and possible persecution?
Helmut Koester:
John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School
A NEW COMMUNITY
Why was the Christian community something that people wanted to join? I thinkthat only because at least certain parts of the early Christian mission wereintent in creating new community, that only for that reason this movement wassuccessful. Now what does it mean "new community?" Let me talk about this intwo different levels. One was certainly that the message that was preachedhere promised gifts, spiritual gifts, to people that went beyond the everydaylife experience and promised also immortality, a future life which would beliberation from sickness and from disease and from poverty, and individualisolation. There is a future for the individual. And the message of thepossibility for a human being to be related to something that is beyond thepowers of this world was certainly one great attraction. But that alone wouldnot have been enough. I think it's a very important spiritual-religiousfactor. But it would not have been enough, because, in spite of all theglories of the Roman Empire, people lived in the world in which there wasinequality, there was great poverty on the one hand and immense wealth in thehands of a very few people. There were sickness and disease and there were nopublic health services, and doctors were expensive.
Now here's also the question of the inequality which Rome really reinforcedthrough the Augustan system. Rome is a very strict hierarchical system, inwhich the emperor is at the pinnacle, all the way up and then all the blessingsin the world that come to people come down from above. The emperor is theconduit to the divine world. And if you're at the bottom of that socialpyramid, not a whole lot of things are coming down to you anymore. Slaveryslowly diminished, but continued to exist.
Now the Christian community, as we have it particularly in the letters of Paul, begins with a formula that is a baptismal formula, which says inChrist there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slavenor free. This is a sociological formula that defines a new community. Hereis a community that invites you, which makes you an equal with all othermembers of that community. Which does not give you any disadvantages. On thecontrary, it gives even the lowliest slave personal dignity and status.Moreover, the commandment of love is decisive. That is, the care for eachother becomes very important. People are taken out of an isolation. If theyare hungry, they know where to go. If they are sick, there is an elder whowill lay on hands to them to heal them.
WELFARE INSTITUTIONS
Now we have increasingly in the Christian churches, in the time up toConstantine, the establishment of hospitals, of some kind of health service, wehave a clear establishment of social service - everything from soup kitchens tomoney for the poor if they need it. We have the very important establishmentof the institution of widows, because a widow in the Roman society who had losther husband and did not have money of her own was at the very bottom of thesocial ladder. One of the first welfare institutions we find in the church wasall the widows who were recognized as virgins of the church, consideredparticularly precious possessions of the church; they were paid by the churchand therefore were rescued from utter poverty in most instances.
Christianity really established a realm of mutual social support for themembers that joined the church. And I think that this was probably in the longrun an enormously important factor for the success of the Christian mission.And it was for that very reason that Constantine saw that the only thing thatwould rescue the empire is to take over the institutions that the Christianshad already built up, [including], by that time, institutions of education inreading and writing, because Christians wanted to have their membersknowledgeable and capable of reading the Bible.... We find that inadministration of the last pagan emperors, before Constantine, at the very endof the third century, a large number of the people in the imperialadministration are Christians, because they could read and write. Whichconstituted a big problem with the persecution of the Christians because theywere thrown out of their office first when the persecution began, and suddenlythe government didn't work anymore.
One should not see the success of Christianity simply on the level of a greatreligious message; one has to see it also in the consistent and very wellthought out establishment of institutions to serve the needs of thecommunity.
L. Michael White:
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin
Given the intersection between religion and politics that we find socharacteristically in the Hellenistic Roman world and especially within thesemajor cities, it does seem incongruous that Christianity could have survived,much less have grown to be the prominent force that it would become by theearly fourth century when the Emperor Constantine would make it one of hisofficial religions of the empire. But I think we can see several factors thatcontribute to that growth and development.
For one thing the Roman world was not uniform in its religious beliefs. Therewere lots of new religions that had come in between the time of the conquest ofthe Alexander the Great down to the time of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian,when the Christians become a prominent issue. Within this period we find newreligions coming from all over the Eastern Mediterranean world. There are thecults of the Egyptian gods, Isis and Serapis. There is the great mothergoddess... from Eastern Turkey....
All of these traditional forms of Mediterranean national religions also comein to the Roman world and have cultic followings. So from the Romanperspective, new cults aren't necessarily a problem. The Romans begin to getconcerned about these religious groups, however, precisely when it seems theybecome subversive or when they will not participate in the public religiouslife of the empire. Anything that looks like disloyalty to the state raisesthe concern of governors and magistrates like Pliny the Younger.
What is it that is making Christianity prominent in this time? Does it haveanything to do with the kind of a sense of belonging?
From a historical perspective, the growth of Christianity in the second andthird centuries really is a phenomenon to be reckoned with, both socially andreligiously. What made it grow? What made it succeed in ways that even othernew religious groups of the time did not is a very important question. Nowtraditionally at least the answer to that question of why did Christianitytriumph in the Roman world was answered very simply. It was God's will, ofcourse, but I think we can probably find some other answers as well.
Sometimes it's been suggested that Christianity appealed to a kind of highermoral plane. A better form of religiosity than their Roman neighbors, andthat's what made people convert to Christianity. I'm not really convinced ofthat. What we really see in the second and the third centuries is thatChristianity is defining its identity precisely in terms of the values of Romansociety at large. They say "We're just as ethical as you, or better but interms of what you Romans think are the ideal virtues of society. We Christiansare practicing Roman family values just like you."So there not reallyholding themselves apart from Roman society in quite the same way as we mighthave expected.
MASSIVE DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES
So why do they succeed? Why do people become Christians? I think there aresome important historical observations to make here. One is that we have torealize that the Roman Empire itself was going through some massive demographicchanges at this time. Now let's think about it this way... cities are growingbut the population itself, at least within cities, was probably not growingeasily. There's more people dying than are being born in most major cities.In other words, the old pagan aristocracy is shrinking, not growing. Where arethey coming from, these new people in the cities? Probably they're immigratingfrom the countryside or moving from other countries, but then again that'sexactly what we hear about the Christians. They're on the move. They travelto the cities. They're the new population along with a lot of other people, soI think from a kind of social perspective we have to see the growth ofChristianity as a product of the changing face of the city life in the Romanworld....
On top of all that there are plagues and famine, and it's been suggested bydemographers now that if you've got a survival rate of only one tenth moreamong one part of the population than another segment of population when youhave a massive die off... the result will be that at the end of this process[there will be] far more members of that one group relative to the totalpopulation. In other words, in a very short period of time you can have agroup that was at one point a very small minority seemingly become miraculouslynow the majority, and I think in part that's what happens to the Christians.That through this period of very turbulent times in the second and thirdcentury, the Christians now become a significant proportion of the leadingcitizens of some of the major cities of the Roman world.
A SENSE OF BELONGING
Now what are they offering? It's very simple. With new immigrant groups, allof them trying to find their way into Roman society -- to make it in the Romanworld, to be a part of the mainstream, to march up the ladder of success --belonging is one of the key issues, and what I think the Christians offerprobably as well or better than anybody else in the Roman world is a sense ofbelonging. To be part of the Christian community... to be part of the church,is to belong to a society of closely knit friends, brothers and sisters andChrist, and it may be something as simple as that that spells the [basis] ofthe success of Christianity in the Roman world....
Christianity was beginning to grow in substantial ways by the late second andearly third century precisely because it was responding to some basic, deeplyfelt human needs. It really was probably beginning to answer the questionsthat people were asking, and we can see that growth in a variety of ways. Forone thing, there really is no empire wide persecution of Christianitythroughout the entire second century and into the first half of the thirdcentury. It was always sporadic; it was always local concerns. The first timethe empire as a whole says "We have to eradicate Christianity," is not untilthe year 249, 50, the persecution of Decius, ... but by that time, theChristians are so numerous that they can't possibly be eradicated; they'vealready grown that much.
So, in the sense, the persecution really doesn't catch up until it's alreadytoo late. We have some indication of the basic growth of Christianity at thistime, especially in the cities, in terms of the records of the city of Rome.In the year 251, right at the time of the persecution of Decius, we have aregister of the church at Rome, which says that they had 46 presbyters and 56exorcists and doorkeepers and a number of other people that they catalogued;seven of this and seven of that; quite a lot of people are in this catalog.And at the end, it says over 1,500 widows [and needy persons] on the roster ofthe church at Rome; that is, people, women who are being taken care of by thechurch. The church becomes, in a lot of ways, a new kind of social welfareagency in the Roman Empire. The leaders of the church are the patrons ofsociety. By the end of the third century, Christian bishops in many placeswill have taken over the role of the old civic patrons that had led theprocessions at Ephesus and Corinth and Rome. They've made it into society.
Wayne A. Meeks:
Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University
HUMAN APPEAL OF CHRISTIANITY
In the final analysis, after we've answered all the questions that thehistorian has tools to answer, there still remain fundamental mysteries aboutreligious change. Why among all of the movements following prophets in Romeand Palestine did this one survive? Why among all of the varieties of Judaismin the first century did only two survive as world religions? One, thereligion of the Rabbis -- the other, the religion of Christianity. And, hidden[in] this is something which we finally don't have the tools, I think, toanalyze, and that is that this new message, [this] rather improbable messagethat the Son of God has come to earth and been crucified, in human form, andrisen from the dead ... appealed to a lot of perfectly ordinary people, or sothey appear to us, in such a way that they were willing to change their livesand to become initiated into a group which brought them only hostility,estrangement from their families and neighbors, and the possibility ofpersection to the point of death.
What was there about this movement which could make that kind of appealto people? ...In the final analysis, I think we don't know. We can speculate,we can say it offers a kind of community, which is rare in any society andcertainly rare in antiquity. It offers a closeness, it offers a powerfulideology which explains the evil in the world, or at least it provides powerfulsymbols for understanding that evil, it offers you a sense of the moralstructure of the universe.... It has an ideology of justice, which will beguaranteed by God, finally. It offers a community which shapes the basic moralintuitions of its members, which brings that kind of moral admonition, whichotherwise, in the Roman world, we find... only in the schools of philosophers,which after all, is an elite phenomenon, limited to a very small stratum ofhighly educated people. [Christianity] makes this [morality] available toperfectly ordinary folk.
So, we can talk about a lot of these factors, which we say must haveentered into this, and yet finally there is hidden behind the difficulties ofour sources, but hidden more behind, I think our final inability to penetratethe deepest structures of the human personality, there is the fact thatcountless individual decisions were made that added up to a profound culturalchange in the whole Empire....
CHRISTIANS ON LOVE
Was love a part of the message or the appeal?
One of the key words which we find in many varieties of the earliestliterature of the Christians is the word "love" and, okay, people have alwaystalked about love and that's no surprise, but they talk about love in a verystrange way. They talk about a God who loves, a God who loves enough that hewould send his very son into the world -- never mind how odd the notion of Godhaving a son was to the Jews, who began this movement, but there it is -- andwho calls upon people to exercise a similar kind of love, a love which ismanifested in this death, of the Son of God.
How did Christians write about , talk about, think about [love]? Is itstrange?
One of the oddest things about Christianity, of course, is that itbegins with having to explain a paradox. The one that they think of as Savior,the one whom they come quickly to speak of as the Son of God..., is also theone who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. How do you put that together? Oneof the ways they do this, is by saying, "What a remarkable thing is this, thatthe Son of God comes not to conquer the Romans, not to establish a politicalstate in Israel, but he comes to demonstrate the love that the Creator of theuniverse has for all people?" So that this shaming act that Pontius Pilateused to try to wipe out this little group, is turned about, in the Christianmentality... [into a] manifestation which demonstrates God's approach to us,and therefore sets a kind of model, by which people ought to relate to oneanother.
One of the things that runs through the Pauline letters, is hisconviction that what he calls the Word of the Cross, or the reasoning of theCross, ought to pervade the whole lives of the congregations which he hasfounded. So, that... the way in which one exercises leadership or authority inthe congregation... must somehow tally with the notion that the power of God ismanifested in this reversal of things, in which the powerful one comes to becrucified in the most shameful form, that the one who is equal with God, givesthat up to take on the form of a slave. This becomes the model of what loveis. Or in the Johannine literature and the Johannine letters, you have similarkinds of language, "We love because he first loved us." So that love is insome sense being re-defined as this other-regarding sacrificial act, [choosing]to put oneself on the line for the sake of the good of the other, and this isgrounded in the claim about the way the ultimate power and structure of theuniverse manifests itself in in human society. I think this must have had avery powerful, emotional appeal to people.
Elizabeth Clark:
John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion and Director of the Graduate Program in Religion Duke University
DIFFERENT DEGREES OF DEVOTION
What was the appeal of Christianity as opposed to [the appeal] ofpaganism?
Christianity probably appealed to people in several ways. First of all,it did have a very high moral standard that it set forth.... Of course somephilosophical sects and groups would also put forth rather similar ways of lifefor their practitioners. Christianity had an institution that providedmaterial benefits but also had a whole sacramental system that offered to itspractitioners, supposedly, repentance from sins and overcoming sin andovercoming death... As the church developed, it allowed for different degreesof Christian devotion. So, that if you wanted to give yourself up to a highlyascetic life and renounce practically everything, you would be much glorifiedfor doing that, but you could be married and have a position in worldly lifeand have a family, career and so on and that was all right, too. So,Christianity could adjust itself to different types of people, just as it couldadjust itself to the highest class of intellectuals but also adjust itself tocommon people whom the church writers always remind the theologians that Christdied for the lowly, as well as, for the educated.
Paula Fredriksen:
William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture, Boston University
SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
If it weren't for the translation of the Jewish Bible into Greek, and if itweren't for Diaspora Jewish communities living in synagogues, rimming the edgeof the Mediterranean, Christianity could not have spread. But Christianity[is] an interpretation of the idea of Israel. And the way Christianity is ableto spread as it does is through the lifelines of these Diaspora synagogues.The language of the movement, as soon as we have actual evidence from [it], isGreek. The Bible it refers to is the Greek Bible. The communities that serveas the matrix for the message are synagogue communities, and we get stories inMatthew or stories in John about this particular community being kicked out ofthe other synagogues. So what do they do? They form their own group.Business as usual, again.
But I think it's really because there is an international population thatresonates with these great religious ideas of God as the Creator, ofrighteousness pouring down like waters, of a Kingdom of God and what that wouldmean in terms of the way a community socially constitutes itself ... it'sbecause of that, because of Diaspora Judaism, which is extremely wellestablished, that Christianity itself, as a new and constantly improvising formof Judaism, is able to spread as it does throughout the Roman world.
But doesn't belief have anything to do with it? Why are people attracted?There were so many religious options. I guess I want to know what Christianityoffered... Why did people become Christians?
Why do people join the movement? Jews joined the movement because it isa particular articulation of Jewish religious hope seen through this one figureof a redeemer. But it's certainly consistent within what we know as thedifferent options of Judaism. The intriguing thing is why did gentiles join?And, here we have, again, the evidence of Paul's letters in 50. He thought itwas miracle. These are gentiles, who are going in and out voluntarily from thesynagogue, who, on the basis of the message they're getting about the Son ofGod being on the verge of coming back, are suddenly enabled -- Paul says,through the Holy Spirit -- [to] abandon idol worship. They make acommitment to this particular community.
If you look at the way the movement spreads sociologically, as opposed totheologically, if you look [at] what distinguishes Christianity from all theother religious options in the Mediterranean, it doesn't distinguish it fromJudaism. Both groups meet at least once a week. Both groups have veryarticulate ethical norms. Both groups have a tremendous ethic of communitycharity. Both groups have revealed ethical patterns of behavior.... Nopromiscuity. Don't kill the kids. Don't worship idols. Don't go to whorehouses. This whole thing that serves to build up community and create a kindof support system. Also, there's this tremendous religious prestige, thanks tothe antiquity of the Jewish Bible, which by entering into the church, theseChristians enter into that history as well. That's tremendously prestigiousand important. Judaism itself is, for all its peculiarities, consideredprestigious because of its antiquity. And so there are lots of reasons,sociologically and practically, why Christianity would appeal.
Elaine H. Pagels:
The Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion Princeton University
Most people who study the origins of Christianity are curious about howthis unlikely movement would have succeeded in such a powerful and dramaticway. And it's not an easy question to answer, why this movement succeeded whenothers did not. One thing that I always think about is that the gods of theancient world, if you look at them, their images, if you read about them in theIliad, and the poetry of Sophocles..., the gods looked like no one more thanthe aristocrats, the emperor and his court. They looked like the courtiers.But here is a religion which claims that God is made manifest in a peasant,probably a man who didn't write, a man who came from the people, a man who wascompletely unimpressive in worldly terms and much more like the vast majorityof people. And in this astonishingly unexpected place, this movement said, Godis revealed to be with us. I think that's a powerful statement in itself....
The Gospel of Mark most people think is the earliest of the gospels of the NewTestament. And that book is extraordinary and strange.... If you read itapart from the others, it's a story of this country teacher coming from nowherewith incredible power descending upon him, healing people, exorcising people,speaking strange, bold astonishing things, and startling everyone. And thenthe end of the story, from Chapter 9 on, moves toward his agonizing andhumiliating death. And there's the suggestion of the end of the original bookthat he will rise from the dead, but the way Mark was originally written, thestory of the resurrection isn't told. So it's a devastating story of humanpain. And I think that must have deeply appealed to many people then, as itdoes now, for one thing.
When I was working on the book, "Adam, Eve and the Serpent," I was thinking agreat deal about why this movement succeeded, and I thought it may have had alot to do, as well, with the story they told about the creation. Because theytold the story about how human beings were made in the image of God.... Now ifyou think about the gods of the ancient world and you think about what theylooked like they looked like the emperor and his court. So those gods lookedvery different. But this religion is saying that every person, man, woman,child, slave, barbarian, no matter who, is made in the image of God and istherefore of enormous value in the eyes of God.... That's an extraordinarymessage. And it would have been enormous news to many people who never sawtheir lives having value. I think that is a powerful appeal of thisreligion.... The Christian movement seemed to convey a sense of human worth intwo ways. Both by the story of Jesus and his simplicity and his humility interms of social status, in terms of achievement, in terms of recognition duringhis lifetime. And also in the story of creation; it conveys royal status onevery person....
When we think about the appeal of this movement to many people it'scertainly clear that some were drawn by the way that this community would takecare of people. For example, like other elements of the Jewish community, thefollowers of Jesus tended to feed the destitute, take care of people who werewidowed so that they wouldn't become prostitutes and orphans and so forth.That was a primary obligation of Jewish piety. And Jesus' followers certainlyunderstood that. We know that when people joined the Christian communities inRome, for example, they would be buried. This is not something anyone couldtake for granted in the ancient world. And this society was one in whichpeople took care of one another. So that is an enormous element of the appealof this movement.