{At the risk of seeming irreverent: It could be said that Christianity began as a kind of spiritual insurance company. Believers in the resurrected Christ received (limited) protection from evil powers as well as a promise of eternal life. As long as believers kept their premiums up to date via regular worship, participation in the eucharistic meal, and tithing, then, like a good neighbor, Jesus was there.}
Ramsay MacMullen:
Ancient religion(s), including Christianity, addressed a universe that we today happen not to believe in. Back then, everyone knew that whatever could go wrong in the world, from floods to rebellion, was the work and sign of some of those certain Beings that are bad, legions of which are ubiquitous and actually immanent in our very selves, and are well known to be so from their being driven out of catechumens by baptism and out of the possessed by exorcism before the very eyes of the most reliable witnesses; while at the same time other Beings, which are good, manifest themselves in the driving out, and in other beneficent acts, or inflict merited punishment on wrong-doers.
The one point in which Christianity differed from the general context of opinion around it was the antagonism inherent in it—antagonism of God toward all other supernatural powers, of God toward every man and woman who refused allegiance, and of those who granted their allegiance [to God] toward all the remaining stubborn unbelievers. It was not the church’s liturgy, nor morals, nor monotheism, nor internal organization that seemed to non-Christians at all blameworthy; rather, Christianity presented a kind of polarization to its audience, a polarization that pricked or alarmed the observer. Christianity presented ideas that demanded a choice, not tolerance.
Moreover, the Christian God was pictured as being at war against all rivals, ranged with his angels in combat against Satan. Saint Paul issued a summons to join the struggle against the powers of darkness, a duty preached later by others such as Justin and Tatian. For non-Christians, such a view “impiously divides the kingdom of god and makes two opposing forces.” That a divine being would extend his wrath even beyond this dualism and send down suffering upon human beings simply for their failure to offer him regular worship seemed an even more blasphemous idea. As Livy put it, “People even attack the gods with headstrong words; but we have never heard of anyone on that account being struck by lightning.”
Jesus’ authority over the fiercest infestations of satanic power, making them do whatever he wished by a mere word of command, he passed on to his disciples, with instructions to use it. They did. The author of the Acts of Peter dramatized a Christian’s superiority over demonic power through a sort of ‘shoot-out’ scene in the forum of the capital; in faraway Pontus, the story circulated of Gregory the Wonder-worker’s exploits in a demon’s temple—just by routinely saying prayers there, where he had taken shelter from the dark, he made it forever uninhabitable by its former owner. The manhandling of demons—humiliating them, making them howl, beg for mercy, tell their secrets, and depart in a hurry—made visible the superiority of the Christian’s God over all others. One and only one Power was God; the rest were ‘daimons’ demonstrably, familiar to the audience as nasty, lower powers that no one would want to worship anyway.
Justin boasted, “How many persons possessed by demons have been exorcized by many of our Christian men?” Irenaeus asserted that “Some people incontestably and truly drive out demons, so that the very persons possessed often become believers.” Tertullian issued the challenge, “Let a man be produced who, it is clear, is possessed by a demon, and that spirit, commanded by any Christian at all, will as much confess himself a demon.” Cyprian declared that demons in idols, “When they are adjured by us in the name of the true God, they yield forthwith, and confess; they are forced to leave the bodies they have invaded, and you may see them, by our summons and by the workings of hidden majesty, consumed with flames.”
Stories of wonders wrought by other deities certainly circulated as well, making believers in and new devotees of Sabazius, Jupiter, Mithra, and so forth; but Christian converts, from the moment of believing, denied the name and very existence of other gods. In religious usage, a miracle is any event in which one knows one is dealing with God. The motive underlying the giving of allegiance was to avoid the horrors of divine punishment or to gain the benefits, in this world if not in the next, that were promised to loyal adherents.
----------------------------------------------
Recent Comments