Posted on 11/20/2014 5:35:32 AM PST by xzins
For the first seventy or so years of Christianity's existence, the Greco-Roman world paid it relatively little attention. There were persecutions here and there (like the one that claimed the lives of Peter and Paul). But, for the most part, it wasn’t until the second century that their pagan neighbors began to focus their attention on just how different Christians were.
As Michael J. Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary wrote at The Gospel Coalition, one major difference was that “Christians would not pay homage to the other ‘gods’ ” of the Roman world. Since paying homage to these “gods” was a civic as well as a religious duty, this refusal caused Christians to be viewed with suspicion. Incredibly, some pagans even accused Christians of atheism!
As Kruger notes, there was another area in which Christians stood out like the proverbial sore thumb: and that was sex. As Kruger writes, “While it was not unusual for Roman citizens to have multiple sexual partners, homosexual encounters, and engagement with temple prostitutes, Christians stood out precisely because they refused to engage in these practices.”
Thus Tertullian, the second-century apologist who has been called the “Father of Western Theology,” wrote that Christians “do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us except our wives.”
The author of the second century “Epistle to Diognetus” wrote that Christians speak and dress like their neighbors and added “[Christians] share their meals, but not their sexual partners.”
Obviously, Christians regarded sexual ethics as a mark of what it meant to be what Peter called “a peculiar people.”
But that still leaves us with the question “why?” Were they and the God they worshipped “killjoys” who were opposed to pleasure? That’s how they and we have often been depicted, that is, when they (and we) weren’t being accused of trying to subjugate and oppress women.
To understand why all of this is, to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, “nonsense on stilts,” you need to understand the world into which Christianity was born and how revolutionary the Christian message concerning sex really was.
That’s one of the subjects of “Paul Among The People” by classicist Sarah Ruden.
The “Paul” being referred to was of course the apostle Paul, whom many moderns at best regard as “grumpy” when it came to women and sex.
As Ruden says, “Paul was not a 20th-century feminist . . . but [modern women are] the beneficiaries of a very long list of reforms. [And] Paul, I think, got all that started.”
To understand why that’s the case, it helps to remember that much of the sexual activity Michael Kruger refers to was far from-consensual. It was little more than “institutionalized violence,” which included “the rape of slaves, prostitution, and violence against wives and children.”
Paul’s denunciation of the sexual mores of his time was a part of his larger message “of all people being sacred children of God” and an expression of outrage at how they were being treated.
In other words, it was a message of true freedom.
Thus, when Christians refused to share their wives, it was a gift to their wives, who, in pagan society, had no say in the matter. When they honored women pledged to perpetual virginity, they were setting young women free from being treated as assets by their father in cementing alliances with other families.
Christians weren’t anti-sex, they were pro-human dignity. So much so that their sexual morality and vision for marriage shaped and transformed the culture around them. Not the other way around.
And that’s something modern Christians would do very well to remember.
It is clear that the socialists want to return to a random relationship culture and rid us of this monogamous/natural marriage culture.
The result of such a culture is seen in that Greco-Roman world that viewed women as mere chattel, beasts of burden. We see the same thing in Sodom when even Lot was willing to sacrifice his own daughters to men who were uninterested in the women.
In short, women went from semen depository to treasured representative of Mary’s own love for God and child. They became the one husbands were to love as Christ loved the church.
Exactly! God the Son didn’t start a political or military revolution but rather a MORAL revolution in line with what he created us to be. So many supposed disciples of Christ over the centuries have missed that fact.
True enough; but there was a reason why Christians impacted society and the world at that time and since, and that Judaism failed to do so. But then, Christianity is a following step from Christianity, and Christianity cannot be separated from Jusaism’s foundation - what we call the Bible.
They were to the pagan world, as the teachings of Christ spread. God has always demanded a different moral behavior by His people since ancient times. Christ and His Good News is what the old law anticipated and pointed to.
Christianity was systematically persecuted in the Greco-Roman world from the the time that Nero declared it an illicit religion in 64 AD. Whether an individual Christian suffered the capital punishment required by law depended on whether charges were brought against him. Roman law generally required a plaintiff.
Peter, Paul, and John all exhort Christians to hold up under persecutions. All of the apostles save John paid the ultimate penalty, and John was exiled. Early Christian writers such as Clement and Ignatius treat persecution as an accepted fact. The Roman Governor Pliny discussed the fine points of punishment with the Emporer Trajan in 112 AD, and both treat capital punishment for Christians as an accepted point in Roman law.
The notion that persecutions were random or sporadic is part of an argument designed to counter the Christian position that only true witnesses would die for their faith.
Pretty much agree with the rest of the article, though.
Prager’s contention is that the original Judaeic rules for sex are what permitted modern civilization and equality to arise. Christianity, being a rapidly spreading proselyting religion spread those rules to the Western World thus Western Civilization. I believe him.
Yes, by Jesus' example we see that all political and military decisions should have a moral base and not the other way around (as the world has so often have it backwards).
I enjoyed this article.
Thank you for posting it.
It was revolutionary in the way it spread through the Gentile world, but Paul’s teachings of course came out of Judaism. A minor nit to pick, but it’s annoying how many Christian articles ignore that.
I would agree that the Old Testament laws regarding sexual purity were absolutely radical in ancient pagan society,
However, Christianity further elevated the value of women even among Jewish society. The Apostle Paul’s declaration that there “is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, we are all one in Christ Jesus” WAS most definitely a radical concept among Jewish and pagan society.
Jesus often broke Jewish social mores of that time in the way He talked and treated women - i.e. the story of the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, etc.
And, of course Paul’s stunning statement that Christian husbands are to love their wife as Christ loved His church had/has profound implications on the value of women. That was an extremely radical idea in that time.
So, while I agree that God had already expressed in the Old Testament laws the value of women by implication in the laws governing sexual behavior, it was fully realized in the Gospel and in the New Testament which further elevated the role and value of women - and Christianity spread and impacted the pagan world to a much greater degree than did Judaism.
...and here you bring the reason. Very good!
The seeds of Jesus' view of monogamous marriage was present at creation, so I've no doubt that it is out of Judaism. That's not to say that Jews practiced it any better than do Christians.
The contribution of Christianity is evangelism/proselytism, an activity Jews were reluctant to pursue for whatever reason.
Thank you, LTOS.
Nicely explained.
Interesting. My little son’s best friend is Vietnamese. They are in Kindergarten together at a Catholic school. His Buddhist parents are immigrants and I wondered how they wound up enrolling him in Catholic school, even though it’s quite a financial burden for them. They work looooong days, God bless them!
I sent my kids to Temple Beth Israel preschool, where half the faculty was Catholic and most of the kids were Protestant. The only acculturation my kids got was memories of the “Grabbi” coming in occasionally to sing some song about “Hot Wheels.”
I never claimed otherwise. :)
The contribution of Christianity is evangelism/proselytism, an activity Jews were reluctant to pursue for whatever reason.
Absolutely agreed--and something I routinely point out to my more stuck-up Messianic brethren. Paul's genius wasn't in creating monogamy, but in his ability to communicate an Oriental religion to a Western audience, along with carefully discerning which commandments were universal for all mankind vs. those created as cultural markers for Israel.
Shalom!
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