Support for this view might seem to come from a comment by the late-fourth-century emperor Julian, known to history as “Julian the Apostate,” since he abandoned his Christian faith to adopt and promote traditional pagan religions. Julian was the only pagan emperor after Constantine; he ruled for nineteen months, from 361 to 363 CE. He was, in fact, Constantine’s nephew and had been raised in the church. But he rebelled upon taking office and was intent to re-convert the empire to paganism, as we will see more fully in chapter 9.
In one of his letters Julian laments the success of the Christian church and attributes it to the benefactions that Christians bestowed on others, expressing his wish that pagan religions could follow the Christian example of community and communal giving. In this citation he refers to Christians both as “atheists”—since they do not revere the gods—and “Galileans”:
Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead, and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism? . . . It is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, everyone can see that our people lack aid from us. (Julian, Letter 22)
And so, it has been argued, Christian communal life ultimately attracted adherents. There are, however, difficulties with this view. For one thing, as a young man Julian himself had been actively involved in the church and so knew of its workings from the inside. His was not an outsider’s report. He may well have believed that charity drew people in, but it is striking that the advantages of church membership are never mentioned as a reason for conversion by any Christian on record. As Adolf von Harnack concedes, based on an exhaustive evaluation of all our literary sources: “We know of no cases in which Christians desired to win, or actually did win, adherents by means of the charities which they dispensed.”7
That is not to say that benefits did not accrue to those who came into the church. On the contrary, there is good reason to suspect that numerous people found the Christian church very gratifying indeed, in no small measure for the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual benefits it bestowed. But there is a difference between benefits that might entice people to join the community in the first place and benefits that might encourage them to remain once they are there. Bringing someone in is not the same as keeping them in.
The early Christian churches were closed communities. Outsiders were not allowed to join in worship services. They did not know the inner workings of the church or the full advantages of what it had to offer. Indeed, as we will see later, stories about what happened within Christian communities could be considerably repugnant rather than attractive. In short, we have little evidence to suggest that people widely, if at all, joined the church because of the communal benefits they would receive. Something else probably made the Christian religion attractive.
SUPERIOR HEALTH CARE
One benefit of joining the church, which has been recently touted as particularly important for Christian growth, was the availability of better health care. This was one of the many controversial proposals set forth by sociologist Rodney Stark in his popular discussion The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History and was the thesis behind a more extensive treatment by Hector Avalos, Health Care and the Rise of Christianity.8
Despite Avalos’s in-depth discussion of how early Christians organized, managed, and implemented health care, he never mounts an argument to show how the Christian health care system attracted converts or led to church growth. Stark, on the other hand, applies his sociological training to the question and makes some intriguing suggestions. He points out that epidemics swept through the Roman world on more than one occasion during the period that Christianity was gaining members. The terrible plague that ravaged the empire during the reign of Marcus Aurelius killed, Stark avers, between a quarter and a third of the entire population of the empire. The emperor himself was one of the fatalities.
Stark notes that Christian sources celebrate the eagerness of Christians to minister to the sick in times of illness. Stark claims this was unlike the pagans, who, as a rule, simply let the sick fend for themselves. He goes on to point to studies that indicate that even without access to modern medicine, simple nursing—caring for someone who is ill—can have a drastic effect on survival rates. Stark concludes that Christians emerged from epidemics far more intact as a population group than pagans, so their relative numbers grew through nothing more than the decision to nurse the sick.
This is an intriguing perspective, but it has not proved widely persuasive, for several reasons. For one thing, Stark unrealistically and uncritically assumes that when Christian sources praise Christians and malign pagans for their health care practices, they are giving factual information. For him, a Christian author is simply stating historical reality when he praises fellow Christians for acts of love far superior to anything found elsewhere, and maligns outsiders for neglecting even their dying family members. Historians of early Christianity are never this sanguine when it comes to our sources. One always needs to consider their obvious biases.9
Beyond that, there is a fairly obvious reason for doubting that Christian nursing practices in times of epidemic led to growth in the church. If our sources are indeed to be trusted that Christians tended to the sick more often than pagans did, that would surely also mean that Christians were more often infected.
As it turns out, early Christian texts bemoan precisely this fact: Christians frequently died because they acquired the diseases they were trying to heal. This is a point that Stark, naturally enough, glosses over. But it is clearly stated in the eyewitness accounts, nowhere more grippingly than in a letter written by a mid-third-century bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, Dionysius, as quoted by the church historian Eusebius. In this letter Dionysius refers to an epidemic that “came out of the blue” and notes how the Christians dealt with it in their community:
Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing in themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead . . . . The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen.
Dionysius claims that the care of the sick continued postmortem, leading to yet more deaths within the community:
With willing hands they raised the bodies of the saints to their bosoms; they closed their eyes and mouths, carried them on their shoulders, and laid them out; they clung to them, embraced them, washed them, and wrapped them in grave clothes. Very soon the same services were done for them, since those left behind were constantly following those gone before.10
We have no indication from outsiders that they were drawn to the church because of the improved possibilities of health care, and it seems unlikely that a Christian inclination to stay in intimate contact with the contaminated led to a growth in Christian numbers. We should therefore look elsewhere to discover what attracted converts to the church. The best place to begin is the actual accounts of conversions from the early church. These are relatively abundant and scattered throughout the decades and centuries with which we are concerned. Moreover, these narratives are unambiguous about what attracted outsiders to the faith. The Christians did amazing miracles.11
MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS TO THE FAITH
As I pointed out earlier when discussing Paul, I am not saying that Christians really did miracles. A modern-day believer may think they did; a nonbeliever will think they did not. Either way, it is safe to say that Christians were believed to do miracles. It is consistently reported that this belief is what led outsiders to convert to the faith.
To understand how it worked, it is important to recall a key point at which ancient pagans and Christians agreed with res
pect to human interaction with the divine. Participating in worship was believed to have real benefits. Among pagans, gods were worshiped, on one hand, simply because they were great and deserved to be acknowledged and revered for who they were. At the same time we have constant testimony that failure to participate in worship could lead to dire consequences: the gods could and occasionally did make life very unpleasant for communities that failed to grant them their divine due. Even more than that, the gods were worshiped because of the great benefactions they could give: they controlled the weather, caused the crops to grow, made the livestock multiply, healed the sick, and protected travelers from harm. The gods could provide what humans needed but could not provide for themselves. The gods had superhuman powers, and, in no small measure, worship allowed people to access that power.
Why, then, would a pagan decide to worship a new or different god? Because of the beneficences that god could provide. Why worship the Christian god? For the same reason: he too could do miracles, and even better ones. But in this case there was a catch. Anyone who came to worship the Christian god was expected to forgo the worship of the other gods. That was the Christian message from the beginning, as we saw from the first surviving letter of our very first Christian author, Paul, who reminded the Thessalonians that they had turned from their “dead idols” (i.e., gods who were powerless) “to the living God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). How could one tell this god was living? Because he was active in the world. He was doing things, through humans, that humans could not do on their own. He was performing miracles. And so, as we have seen, Paul spoke of the “signs and wonders” that he himself performed on the mission field (Romans 15:18–19); of the proofs of his message that came “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4); “of the signs of a true apostles . . . performed among you with signs and wonders and miracles” (2 Corinthians 12:12). These words of Paul’s are borne out time and again in our accounts of Christian conversion from the pages of the New Testament up through the fourth century. Christians do miracles; that convinces outsiders that God is on the Christians’ side; as a result, the outsiders convert.
Take the very first account we have of the spread of early Christianity, the New Testament book of Acts. The conversions begin, naturally enough, with Jews, just weeks after Jesus’s death. They happen because of miracles. The first episode occurs already in chapter 2, the famous account of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost was an annual Jewish festival that occurred fifty days after Passover. In this account, that would be just under two months after Jesus’s death and resurrection. In the story there are by this time a 120 believers, all gathered together in Jerusalem, awaiting the Holy Spirit that the resurrected Jesus promised would come upon them. It does so in a show of power. The believers hear the noise of a loud rushing wind, tongues of flame appear above their heads, and they all begin to speak in foreign languages they do not know. An exceedingly curious crowd gathers: Jews from around the world who are at the festival. All of them hear the gospel of Christ proclaimed in their own tongue. It is a great miracle, and the crowd is “amazed and perplexed.”
The miracle is followed by a sermon delivered by the head apostle, Peter, who explains that the onlookers have seen a fulfillment of the prophecies of Scripture. Jesus, who was killed “by lawless people” just weeks before, had been a great miracle worker. After his death an even greater miracle occurred: God raised him from the dead. The person that they, the Jews, had crucified has been made Lord of all. The Jewish crowds cry out, asking what they should do. Peter tells them all to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. They do so: three thousand people convert on the spot (Acts 2:1– 41).
From that point on we learn that “many wonders and signs were done through the apostles” (Acts 2:43). As a result, their numbers grew day after day.
The next main episode comes in the next chapter and involves another miracle. A man lame from birth is begging for alms at the Jerusalem temple. The apostles Peter and John pass by and, in response to the man’s request for money, Peter tells him he has something even better to provide. He heals him on the spot. The crowds all marvel, inspiring Peter to launch into another speech about Jesus as a fulfillment of Scripture. At the end of it all, another five thousand convert (Acts 3:1– 4:4). Needless to say, things are going extremely well for the Christian movement. Just two months in and they have won over eight thousand people. At this rate there won’t be any non-Christians left in Jerusalem.
The narrative continues with more miracles and more conversions. Some of the miracles are truly astounding, not your garden-variety healings or exorcisms. Peter becomes so powerful that his shadow will cure anyone it falls upon; needless to say, the lame and crippled line the streets of Jerusalem for the opportunity (Acts 5:14–15). Later, Paul converts and he too becomes not just an evangelist but an effective miracle worker. Even his handkerchiefs and aprons have the power of healing, leading many to flock to the faith (Acts 19:11–20).
These accounts from the book of Acts set the stage for later narratives of the apostles and their successors outside the New Testament, in noncanonical and highly legendary reports. The basic story line of these evangelistic endeavors is the same: these Christian preachers of the gospel are empowered by the Christian god to do things that mere mortals can only dream of doing. These miraculous deeds convince outsiders that the Christian god is more powerful than any other. This leads them to convert, abandoning their older practices and joining the Christian ranks.
A PAUSE FOR MIRACULOUS REFLECTION
Before looking at these tales, we need to pause. How are we to credit the Christian stories of miraculous conversions? Anyone who wants to accept them at face value will say they happened. But what about everyone else? We are confronted with three inescapable facts, all of which need to be accounted for. First, it cannot be denied that people did convert to the Christian faith, eventually in massive numbers. Second, the early Christian accounts of conversion, starting with the New Testament, attribute conversions to the great miracles being performed. Third, many people today—almost all non-Christians but a lot of critical Christians as well—do not think these miracles really happened.
In explaining all three facts, one option is simply to claim that conversions happened (since they did indeed happen) for reasons other than what our sources say. A skeptic might attribute them instead to the attractions of community or to superior health care or the like. That is a common line to take. But we should not abandon our sources too quickly. As we will continue to see, they abundantly attest that the conversions took place precisely because of miracles.
And so an alternative might suggest itself. When people believe in miracles today, it is rarely because they have actually experienced one. Some people claim they have, but not most. In fact, most people who believe in miracles have not even observed one, let alone been the beneficiary of one. What all believers in miracles do have in common is that they have heard of miracles. Often they have heard of miracles from others who claimed the miracles happened to them. More often they have heard of miracles from others who claimed they personally observed them happen to someone else—or who claimed to know someone who knew someone else who knew someone else who observed them.
Most believers in miracles today have only heard about miracles. It is reasonable to assume that this is why most people in early Christianity believed in miracles. They heard stories such as those found in the book of Acts. These are literary narratives, not disinterested historical records. They are accounts that had been told by word of mouth before someone wrote them down. Many people today believe the Holy Spirit really did come upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost and made them speak in tongues—a great miracle. They believe it because they have read the story in Acts 2.
We might suppose this is how it worked in early Christianity. People heard the stories. Most people did not believe them. Some, after hearing enough stories repeated time after time, b
egan to consider them possible. Eventually they came to believe them. They then converted. It is not necessarily because the apostles and their followers were really doing miracles. They may have been or they may not have been. But when told with enough conviction, the stories certainly proved convincing to others. And there is proof: people did convert, and the reason stated was almost always the same. The words of the Christians were backed up by stories of miracles.
APOCRYPHAL TALES OF CONVERSION
Once we move outside the New Testament, the tales of conversion-inducing miracles continue. Few are more intriguing than the conversion of the entire city of Edessa in Syria, allegedly because of miracles worked by Jesus’s follower Thaddeus.
In no small part the tale intrigues because it starts with Jesus himself, before his death, and a personal letter he sent to the king of Edessa, Abgar, in response to the king’s written request to be healed—the only piece of correspondence ever attributed to Jesus himself.12 The two letters are cited by the fourth-century church father Eusebius, who claims to have found them in the archives of Edessa and to have translated them from their original Syriac into Greek. In his letter to Jesus, King Abgar indicates that he has heard of Jesus’s miracles. He implores him to come to Edessa to heal him of his illness and, at the same time, to escape the animosity of the Jews in his homeland. In his reply, Jesus blesses Abgar for “believing without seeing” (an allusion to John 20:29), but informs the king that he cannot come because he needs to fulfill his mission (that is, by being crucified). After his ascension, however, he will send an apostle to heal the king.
Eusebius quotes both letters in full and then tells the tale that transpired later as he discovered it in the archives.13 After Jesus’s resurrection, his disciple Judas Thomas sent Thaddeus, one of the followers of Jesus during his public ministry, to heal Abgar. He does so but does not stop there. He “began in the power of God to cure every disease and weakness, to the astonishment of everyone.” Indeed: “Many other fellow citizens . . . Thaddeus restored to health, performing many wonders and preaching the word of God.” The crowds of Edessa were “amazed . . . by his wonderful miracles” and as a result “from that day to this the whole city of Edessa has been devoted to the name of Christ, providing most convincing proof of our Savior’s goodness to them.”14
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