Christianity: Religion or Philosophy?
An Ancient Perspective that Helps us to Understand Today
“Atheists!”
That was the charge leveled against the early Christians. (By "early Christians” I mean the Christians in the first and second centuries CE.)
It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around today. After all, wasn’t it abundantly clear that the early followers of Jesus were participating in a religious movement?
No, it wasn’t. Not then.
To understand this, we need to get a better understanding of what “religion” was in the ancient world and how it worked.
Ancient religion
If we want to understand the religious environment of the earliest Christians, we need to understand a central concept: providence
Providence is the way deity influences the world. The Romans believed that the reason for Rome's greatness was divine providence. In other words, Rome had become powerful because the Roman gods made Rome powerful.
Of course, Roman citizens had their part to play in this. Their specific role was to worship the Roman gods so that the Roman gods would continue Roman prosperity.
A primary way they did this was through piety.
In short, piety was the way that society as a whole and individuals in their daily lives gave honor and worship to the Roman gods. Prayers, offerings, sacrifices, and other acts of piety contributed to the building up of divine goodwill.
Overall, the Romans believed their success and prosperity resulted from being the most religious people around.
How did the Romans view those who didn't share their religion?
They weren't dogmatic about their religion being the only true one. After all, while they had their gods, Greeks also had their gods. And Jews had their God. Different people had different gods.
But when it came to what they considered "superstition", that's another story.
Superstitious people tended to have a view of deity that was dark and ominous. Their gods were capricious and fickle. Unlike properly-religious people who worshiped the gods with piety, superstitious people worshiped their gods out of fear.
One of the biggest problems with superstition was that it was entirely unreasonable. From the typical Roman perspective, this was a clue that the gods worshiped by superstitious people weren't even gods at all. They were delusions. And worshiping gods that didn't exist could cross the line into atheism, which included rejecting the gods that did.
Meanwhile, Christians claimed that there was only one God, which was theirs. And they didn’t believe this because of reason, but because of faith.
This claim crossed the line of rejecting the Roman gods. Hence, the charge of “atheism”.
And, if you recall, the Romans believed that societal piety led to divine goodwill, which led to the Empire’s prosperity.
Imagine that you are a faithful Roman citizen at the time. Can you see how the existence of atheists within your society would be an active threat to the well-being of all Romans?
So, initially, despite their Jewish roots, the earliest Christians were not even seen as religious at all. On the contrary, they were seen as rejecting religion itself.
Ancient philosophy…to the rescue?
When we think of ancient philosophy, I think we tend to think of big ideas and complex understandings of the universe.
There’s certainly something to that. After all, philosophy was known as the “queen of the sciences” because it dabbled with and tried to make sense of pretty much everything.
By the second century CE, however, it's important to note that philosophy was less about a way of thinking and more about a way of being in the world. It was about how to live a life of virtue.
For the most part, the earliest Christians (those in the 1st century CE) seem to have come from more of a "biblical thinking" perspective, which we might also think of as the Petrine perspective (if you missed this, check out my article “Christian (Dis)Unity: The Drama between Peter and Paul”). As such, they didn't believe that it was appropriate to appeal to reason to understand their religion. Rather, it was of utmost importance simply to take it on faith.
As a result, they resisted and rejected any attempts to mix in philosophy.
That, however, was about to change
In the second century CE, something caught the eye of some Roman philosophers. Even though Christians had a simplistic and naive way of thinking, they somehow managed to live their lives virtuously at a level on par with the followers of the various philosophies.
Apparently, the parables of the Christians had the same effect on life as a philosophy on life. Therefore, some philosophers started to talk about Christianity as a “school” of philosophy. This was the minority viewpoint, but it was an important shift in the intellectual culture.
In fact, this approval of Christianity as a school of philosophy was huge
In the second century, the practice of philosophy (yes, it was considered to be a "practice") was a culturally popular way to live a life of virtue. With the minority of scholars elevating Christianity to the level of a school of philosophy, a new door had opened.
In fact, Justin Martyr described his conversion to Christianity as a conversion to philosophy. And he became the first known Christian "apologist".
Apologists were those who took on the task of communicating what Christianity was all about to non-Christians. To do this, they leaned into the popular philosophies of their day.
In essence, the Christians had gone beyond simply taking everything on faith and stepped into "reasonable" beliefs that outsiders could resonate with.
As philosophical thought became more ingrained into Christian teachings, Clement of Alexandria even identified philosophy as the "handmaiden of theology".
I believe it is at this point in time that Christianity started transitioning more toward the theological thinking that would later dominate it and become orthodoxy.
In fact, if you noticed in my earlier article, by the time we get to the disputes between Athanasius and Arias, we see dueling philosophies. I do believe that the Arians were largely heirs to the Petrines’ ideal of biblical thinking. But on another layer, we also have a battle between Athanasius' platonic thought patterns and Arius' Aristotelian influence.
A bizarre journey
When we think about the transformation Christianity experienced in the first 400 years of its existence, it's absolutely dizzying.
Here's the Cliff's Notes version:
It began as an offshoot of an established religion in the Roman Empire
Then it transitioned to not even being accepted as a religion in the Roman empire, with its adherents labeled as “atheists” whose presence constituted a danger to the state
Because of its ability to lead people into virtuous lives through parables, it became somewhat accepted as a school of philosophy.
As apologists and others embraced philosophical concepts and language to understand and communicate what they were all about as Christians, they were able to connect with the surrounding culture
Eventually, Christianity would become the official religion of the Roman Empire, and its orthodoxy would be enforced by the sword
Christians went from being persecuted to becoming the accepted religion that dominated everything.
What changed?
I personally don’t want to see Christianity ever become a force that uses power to persecute others ever again. But, as someone who wants to promote a particular religious perspective today, my main question here is…
“What changed?”
I want to learn from history so that I can have more of an impact today.
It seems to me that the big shift happened when Christian leaders became willing to understand their faith through the philosophical concepts of their day. In other words…
They learned to interpret and express their faith in and through the language of the culture in which they lived.
I believe this has great significance for us today. And I want to explore that next week.
Peace, Bo
www.evolvingchristianfaith.net
PS: If you want to know more about this, check out Robert Louis Wilkin’s The Christians as the Romans Saw Them.
Want to know more about my perspective?
Feel free to pick up my book, Drinking from an Empty Glass: Living Out of a Meaningless Spirituality on Amazon.
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