The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  For such reasons, many historians have moved to a broader definition of conversion and a more general sense of what it means to count someone as a Christian. As a rule, they do not include only those who were “blinded by the light” and then, on the spot, turned their lives around. Instead, they follow the very basic and more sensible path I set forth earlier: conversion can simply be considered an exchange of one set of religious beliefs and practices for another. Some people—possibly very large numbers of people—will not make the change instantaneously, completely, or with full commitment. But for our purposes, when it comes to Christian conversion, this kind of change will mean deciding to worship the Christian god, with the concomitant idea that Christ is somehow the Son of God and the savior.

  For most of those who came to this belief, it meant abandoning the worship of the other gods. As we have begun to see, this made converting to the Christian faith different from anything else in the pagan world. Unlike devotees of traditional religions, Christians were expected to abstain from other cultic practices. Whether they always did so or not is another question, and one that is normally impossible to answer. But in the version of Christianity that was more or less authorized from its early centuries, conversion was not “both/and” but “either/or.” Christians—at least the ones we are best informed about—understood their religion to be restrictive, not additive; exclusive, not inclusive.10 It is this difference, I will be arguing, that ultimately mattered for the Christian mission. Enough people bought into this idea that it became one of the main reasons Christianity took over the empire.

  ISSUES OF STRATEGY

  How, then, did Christians go about convincing pagans? It is important to begin with a point too frequently overlooked. Potential converts to a new set of religious beliefs and practices will already have assumptions about the divine realm and how to interact with it, and a new religion cannot possibly expect to convert anyone without adhering in some degree to those assumptions. If Christianity were completely strange, no one would have had a way of conceptualizing it. It would have been not merely unattractive but unrecognizable. In order to convert pagans, Christians had to establish common ground with them. Moreover, they had to show the superiority of the Christian faith precisely at points of significant contact.

  It is important, therefore, to consider not only how Christianity differed from other religions on offer but also what it had in common. The great historian of early Christian conversion Arthur Darby Nock once noted that “the originality of a prophet lies commonly in his ability to fuse into a white heat combustible material which is there.”11 We need to consider the combustible material that was available for Christians to stoke into a fire.

  To start, we might reflect further on why pagans followed their religious customs in the first place. On one level, of course, most pagans practiced religion simply because that was what everyone had always done and what they themselves had been instructed to do since early childhood. Think about it in terms of a modern analogy. Why does everyone stand for the national anthem at a ball game? A lot of people, of course, think deeply about the moment with a sense of reverence. They reflect on the wars the country has fought, its struggles for freedom, and possibly their own involvement in those conflicts or the price paid by some of their relatives. But a lot of other people stand just because that’s what everyone around them is doing and it is what they have always done. They may be thinking mainly about the game ahead or the hot dog they want to buy.

  No doubt numerous pagans simply did what they had always done without giving it a great deal of thought. Others would have had clear and compelling reasons for doing what they did: the gods deserved to be acknowledged, worshiped, and thanked for all the many good things they had provided. Even more, the gods needed to be honored so that they would provide more good things, more benefits—even specific benefits, such as rain for the crops, safety for the home, and health for the family. Worshipers especially appealed to the gods for what they could not provide for themselves. In no small measure, worship was about acquiring access to this divine power.

  Is there one divine being who has more of this power than the others? One who was above them all? Jews obviously worshiped one god, the god of Israel. What is not as widely known is the point I raised already in chapter 1: that some pagan polytheists also believed in one ultimate divine being.

  THE WORSHIP OF ONE GOD

  There should be some term that would differentiate between the belief in only one true god—the strict definition of monotheism—and the worship of one god to the exclusion of all others, who are seen, nonetheless, to be gods. That is the term I have already used and will continue to use, “henotheism.”12 I will contend that the growing popularity of henotheism in the empire paved the way for the Christian declaration that there is in fact only one god and he alone should be worshiped.

  Traditional Jews had long insisted on worshiping only their own ancestral god. As far as many were concerned, the pagan gods were not gods at all. Scholars have often maintained that the popularity of Judaism in the empire made the Christian mission possible: that pagans were widely attracted to the Jewish notion of one god; to the stress in Judaism on weekly fellowship, community, and sense of belonging as part of the worship; and to the strict code of ethics in the Jewish tradition.

  There may indeed be an element of truth in this claim, but a major caveat is necessary. The idea that Judaism was widely seen as “attractive” may be overly romantic. It is true that Jews did attract some outsiders into their ranks. That was the case with most cults, however, including the sundry mystery religions. On the whole, though, unlike most of the mystery religions, Judaism was looked upon with real suspicion in the empire. Jews were often thought of as superstitious and very strange indeed, even repugnant. They practiced circumcision (“You do what to your baby boys?”); they refrained from perfectly good foods; they refused to put in a full week of work; and they kept to themselves and did not interact with the greater society—for example, at civic festivals.

  But it may be that precisely these perceived oddities were what made Christianity more acceptable than Judaism to the wider populace. Most Christians from gentile stock did not practice circumcision, keep kosher, or observe the Sabbath. They did, however, stress the worship of one god, high ethical standards, and community. Wasn’t this the best of Judaism without its peculiarities?

  In answering that question, we need to make a special effort not to think that somehow monotheistic faiths are inherently “superior” and that the movement away from paganism is somehow “progress.” It is not progress. It is not regress either. I am not making any evaluative judgment or asking whether one religious system is better than another and closer to some kind of ultimate truth. I am simply asking if a new religion may have proved attractive to those who followed the traditional ways.

  Scholars have long known of henotheistic tendencies among some ancient philosophers who had come to think that behind all the diversity of the world, above all the manifestations of what we know and experience, there must be one ultimate reality that makes sense of it all. This principle of unity could be understood to be the ultimate divinity, and so those philosophers stressed the “oneness” at the heart, or at the beginning, of all things.

  The sense of one ultimate divinity could also be found outside the ranks of the professional philosophers, among the non-philosophical, highly religious as well. In an inscription found in the city of Oenoanda in southwest Asia Minor (modern Turkey) appears the self-declaration of a god who terms himself a mere angel in comparison with the one ultimate divine being. In response to the question of who or what is God, here is how he describes that One:

  Born of itself, untaught, without a mother, unshakeable, not contained in a name, known by many names, dwelling in fire, this is God. We, his angels, are a small part of God. To you who ask this question about God, what his essential nature is, he has pronounced that Aether is God who sees all, on whom you should gaze and pray
at dawn, looking to the sunrise.13

  The “aether” (ether) that surrounds us all is God, but this god is not simply a material substance: God sees all and deserves universal worship. The other gods are his messengers, the “angels,” who form part of that greater divinity. This is not a Jewish or Christian text. It is from a pagan.

  We have seen that pagans might take several paths to arrive at such a concept of divinity. One is hinted at in the inscription, as God is said to be the one of “many names.” Thus it was sometimes thought that all the names of divine beings were simply alternative designations of the ultimate divine being, who encompassed all the activities of all the gods and the names associated with them. Other pagans would cite all the great attributes of their favored god: he is the mighty one, the all-knowing one, the great healer, and so on. So much would be attributed to this one that there would be nothing left for anyone else, making that one, in effect, the greatest god there was.

  Other pagans simply thought there had to be one god who was greatest. By the time of Christianity other cults proclaimed adherence to “the greatest” god, whether Sol Invictus revered by the emperor Aurelian, then Constantius, and finally Constantine, or instead the god explicitly called Theos Hypsistos (“the Greatest God”). One scholar has proposed an interesting hypothesis concerning the origins of the cult to this latter god by noting that Roman culture and religion were inherently competitive. Members of the aristocracy competed regularly, daily, for higher status, striving for greater position and rank. Cities competed with one another for prominence in their regions. Among other things, cities worked to stage the most lavish and interesting religious festivals to attract crowds from other places: the larger the crowd and the more glowing the accolades, the greater the sense of civic pride. Cult centers—such as oracles, where people could come to ask questions of a divinity and answers would be provided by specially appointed priests or priestesses, often in poetic verse—competed with one another for empire-wide attention and recognition. This was a culture, and these were religions, that were all about status, recognition, and prominence.

  So too with the gods of a city. The city of Ephesus claimed it was the center for the worship of Artemis. The goddess was worshiped there better than anywhere else. She, for them, was the great goddess, greater than all other divinities.

  The cult of Theos Hypsistos may well have emerged from some such context of competition.14 This god needed no other name. He was literally “the Greatest God.” He deserved more worship than any other. He is sometimes referred to in inscriptions as the “one” god.

  Contrary to what you might think, the declaration that he is “one” does not mean this god’s devotees believed he was the only god. We know this because of the way the term “one” is used in comparable ancient contexts. For example, if a benefactor to a community was especially generous, giving far more than anyone else had ever given the city, he could be referred to as “the one patriot and benefactor.” That would not mean that no one else had ever given the city anything. It meant he was uniquely beneficial. Calling any divinity “the one god” functions the same way. In the words of one scholar, “it underlines the uniqueness of one particular God.”15 In no pagan context do we find the claim that there is only one god, to the exclusion of all others. But we do find claims that ultimately there is one god over all.

  This is clear not only from ancient inscriptions—hundreds to Theos Hypsistos have been identified and studied—but also from the writings of ancient pagans.16 Consider a statement made by a devout pagan, Maximus of Madaura, written in a letter to the church theologian Augustine near the end of the fourth century:

  That the forum of our city is occupied by a gathering of savior gods, we see and assert. Who is so insane, so deluded, as to deny the utter certainty that there is one highest God, without beginning, without offspring in nature, like a great and glorious father? We invoke under many names his powers that are diffused through the created world, because, obviously, none of us knows his name: God is the name common to all religions. So it is that while we honor his parts (so to speak) separately, with various supplications we are clearly worshipping him in his entirety.17

  Christians realized that many pagans were drawn to the idea of one ultimate divinity. Some two centuries earlier we have the words of the Christian defender of the faith Athenagoras of Athens: “We [i.e., Christians] are not the only ones who limit God to a single being [since] almost all those who have reason to speak about the principles of the world are unanimous, even if unwillingly so, that the divine is singular.”18 Soon thereafter we have the rhetorical question of the Christian apologist Tertullian: “Is it not generally held that there is one higher and more potent, as it were the world’s chief ruler, endowed with absolute power and majesty?” (Apology 24).

  In short, the Christian declaration that there was only one ultimate divinity would not have seemed completely extraordinary among pagans. Most pagans no doubt knew about the Jews in their midst: Jews appear to have numbered in the millions and were widely known and discussed. But even more, the notion of one god over all would have been broadly familiar from both philosophical and religious traditions attested with growing frequency in the empire.

  When Christians spoke of this ultimate god, on the other hand, they insisted on two supremely important provisos. Unlike pagan henotheists, they maintained that this god was none other than the god of the Christians. And they insisted that anyone who chose to worship him was to do so to the complete exclusion of all other gods. One might think this exclusionary insistence would be off-putting and offensive in a world filled with gods, dooming the Christian mission to failure. On the contrary, it had just the opposite effect. It was this claim that led to the triumph of Christianity.19

  CHRISTIANITY AS A MISSIONARY RELIGION

  Even if pagans who adhered to one cult or another liked others to join them in their rituals of worship and welcomed them when they chose to do so, we have no evidence of organized efforts to make it happen. As a prominent historian of Roman religion, Ramsay MacMullen, states: “Of any organized or conscious evangelizing in paganism there are very few signs indeed.”20 In fact, we don’t know of any missionary religions in the pagan world.

  Not even the mystery religions appear to have employed organized efforts to bring in devotees. It is sometimes said that the expansion of Mithraism presupposes some kind of mission, but that turns out not to be true. The religion spread essentially by word of mouth from friend to friend, family member to family member—at least among adult males.21

  None of that is particularly surprising. What may be far less expected is that ancient Judaism also lacked any genuine missionary impulse. This claim cuts against what scholars had long argued: that the Christian concept of an evangelistic religion had been inherited from the Jews. But more recent scholarship has persuasively shown that this was not the case at all. Of course Jews typically did welcome anyone who seriously wanted to consider adopting their worship and ways. We do have records of pagans converting to become Jews. Among other things, this meant that converts, if men, were circumcised and, both men and women, went through the process of being admitted into the Jewish fold and agreeing to observe established practices of worship and custom.

  There were other pagans who might be thought of as “Jewish sympathizers.” These would be gentiles who chose, for rather obvious reasons, not to be circumcised and possibly not to follow the entire set of prescriptions in Jewish law. But they would have worshiped the god of the Jews and possibly him only, in synagogues with Jews, and participated in Jewish life as members of the community with a kind of secondary status. Sometimes these people are called “God-fearers” because they revered the one God even if they chose not to adopt certain Jewish identity markers.

  Nonetheless, there is very little evidence to suggest that Jews actively sought converts or partial converts. Outsiders may have been attracted to aspects of Jewish worship and life, but most Jews were content to observe t
heir traditional customs and forms of worship themselves and to let pagans do whatever pagans chose to do. This view has been argued convincingly by a number of recent scholars, including ancient historian Martin Goodman, who on the basis of a thorough examination of every significant piece of ancient pagan and Jewish evidence has concluded that the evangelizing mission of the Christian church was unparalleled and unprecedented: “Such a proselytizing mission was a shocking novelty in the ancient world.”22

  This mission of evangelism, as we will see, became a standard feature of the Christian movement and eventually, for many Christians, a contest for converts. But significantly, as Goodman explains, “For most of the period before Constantine’s conversion, such Christians will have been running in a race of whose existence most of the other competitors were unaware.”23

  If the concerted attempt to win converts was not a standard feature of ancient religion, even Judaism, why did Christianity become missionary? Even though our ancient sources provide us with no firm answer, some informed intuition would suggest that surely it had to do with the nature of the Christian message. Christians as early as Paul—the first to undertake a worldwide mission—maintained that Christ died because it was God’s plan to bring salvation to the world. Those who did not experience this salvation were lost, doomed to punishment. As an apocalyptic Jew, Paul, and then his converts, insisted God was soon to enter into judgment with this world. A cataclysmic act of destruction was to occur. Those who were in Christ would be spared the onslaught and be brought into God’s eternal kingdom. Those who were not would be destroyed. Some Christians insisted the coming cataclysm was not simply an annihilation in which a person would cease to exist. It was to entail ongoing punishment, eternal torment.