The Spread of Christianity…
Here’s a wonderful passage from “The New Testament and the People of God” by N.T. Wright that I wanted to share with the Dojo readers:
“Christianity did not spread by magic. It is sometimes suggested that the world was, so to speak, ready for Christianity: Stoicism was too lofty and dry, popular paganism metaphysically incredible and morally bankrupt, mystery religions dark and forbidding, Judaism law-bound and introverted, and Christianity burst onto the scene as the great answer to the questions everyone was asking. There is a grain of truth in this picture, but it hardly does justice to historical reality. Christianity summoned proud pagans to face torture and death out of loyalty to a Jewish villager who had been executed by Rome. Christianity advocated a love which cut across racial boundaries. It sternly forbade sexual immorality, the exposure of children, and a great many other things which the pagan world took for granted. Choosing to become a Christian was not an easy or natural thing for the average pagan. A Jew who converted might well be regarded as a national traitor. Even slaves, who might be supposed to have less to lose than others, and hence to appreciate an elevation of status through conversion, might face a cost: as we saw, Pliny thought normal to interrogate, with torture, slave-girls who happened to be part of the early Christian movement. We have no reason to suppose that interrogation under torture was any easier for a young woman in the second century than it is in the twentieth.
Why did early Christianity spread? Because early Christians believed that what they had found to be true was true for the whole world. The impetus to mission sprang from the very heart of early Christian conviction…This missionary activity was not an addendum to a faith that was basically ‘about’ something else (e.g. a new existential self-awareness). ‘Christianity was never more itself than in the launching of the world mission.’” (p.360)
Categories: Biblical Scholarship, Blog, Church History, New Testament, Political/Social issues