The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  The alternative, Peter sees, is to enjoy the utopian life of heaven, surrounded by flowers and all good things for eternity, in the presence of the saints, who literally glow with happiness in the midst of fantastic gardens full of beautiful trees laden with gorgeous fruit that fills the air with their perfumed fragrances.

  So: Which option will you choose?

  There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that, far more than the glories of heaven, it was the tortures of hell that convinced potential converts. The hellish vision is certainly one that obsessed a number of Christian authors, some of whom delighted in thinking how their enemies among the pagans would roast forever. Consider the Schadenfreude expressed by the early-third-century apologist Tertullian:

  What sight shall wake my wonder, what my laughter, my joy and exultation? As I see all those kings, those great kings, welcomed (we are told) in heaven, along with Jove, along with those who told of their ascent, groaning in the depths of darkness. And the magistrates who persecuted the name of Jesus, liquefying in fiercer flames than they kindled in their rage against Christians. Those sages, too, the philosophers blushing before their disciples as they blaze together.27

  This is not to mention the charioteers, the poets, and the actors who will prove to be “lither of limb by far in the fire.”

  Unrepentant pagans recognized the rhetorical force of these descriptions. Thus the second-century critic Celsus pointed out that Christians succeeded in their proselytizing because they “invent a number of terrifying incentives. Above all, they have concocted an absolutely offensive doctrine of everlasting punishments and rewards, exceeding anything the philosophers . . . could have imagined.”28 Christians too declared the effectiveness of divine terrors. As Augustine declared: “Very rarely, no never, does it happen that someone comes to us with the wish to become a Christian who has not been struck by some fear of God.”29

  In an earlier context I pointed out that most pagans appear not to have subscribed to the idea of any afterlife whatsoever. When Christians put forth their doctrines of heaven and hell, these may have come as news to many in their audience. But that is sometimes how effective propaganda works. It creates a new problem that it then resolves, eliciting a previously unknown need that it then satisfies. In his classic study of conversion, Arthur Darby Nock noted, “prophetic religion has to create in [people] deeper needs which it claims to fulfill.”30 Or, as Ramsay MacMullen has declared more recently: “What Christianity put forward was the fearful novelty of a God who would burn them alive in perpetuity for their very manner of life . . . . [T]he flames of hell illuminated the lessons of Christianity as much as the light of Grace.” Indeed: “We see these horrors used as the chief, perhaps the only, argument for conversion.”31

  The horrors of hell may have been the argument, but it was the miracles that made the argument persuasive. God had shown, and continues to show, what he can do to counteract the ravages of pain, misery, and suffering. Anyone who refused to side with him now would pay a price later. Or as one group of Christian martyrs is said to have proclaimed to the pagan hordes who were enforcing horrible torments upon them in the public arena: “You condemn us, but God condemns you.”32 The tortures experienced by the martyrs lasted but minutes, or at most hours. The tortures experienced by their tormentors would last for all eternity.

  The very point is made by one of our first recorded Christian martyrs, Polycarp, the second-century bishop of the city of Smyrna. When being threatened by torment and death, the faithful Christian declares that the punishment is mild in comparison with the alternative: “The proconsul said to him, ‘If you despise the wild beasts, I will have you consumed by fire, if you do not repent.’ Polycarp replied, ‘You threaten with a fire that burns for an hour and after a short while is extinguished; for you do not know about the fire of the coming judgment and eternal torment, reserved for the ungodly.’ ”33

  Is it possible that such willingness to experience intense pain in the form of martyrdom also contributed to the persuasiveness of the Christian message? That was certainly the claim of several early Christian writers.

  THE MIRACLE OF MARTYRDOM

  Justin Martyr earned his “last name” by being one of the earliest Christian intellectuals to suffer the ultimate penalty for his faith. At one point in his writings Justin alludes to his conversion, indicating that originally it was Christians’ martyrdom that showed him they deserved to be believed.34 They were willing to die for what they held dear. Of how many people can that be said? Or, to put it differently, how many martyrs for Zeus do we hear about?

  As a Christian, Justin claimed that the church grew precisely because it was attacked by pagan officials: “The more we are persecuted, the more do others in ever-increasing numbers embrace the faith and become worshippers of God through the name of Jesus. Just as when one cuts off the fruit-bearing branches of the vine, it grows again and other blossoming and fruitful branches spring forth, so it is with us Christians.”35

  Some decades later, Tertullian gave a fuller explanation. Tertullian’s fifty-chapter Apology (i.e., defense of the faith) is one of the clearest and most forceful intellectual justifications of the Christian faith to emerge from the early centuries. At the end of the book, Tertullian issues a challenge to rulers who persecute Christians, concluding with one of his most memorable and most frequently cited lines:

  But go to it! my good magistrates; the populace will count you a deal better, if you sacrifice the Christians to them. Torture us, rack us, condemn us, crush us; your cruelty only proves our innocence. That is why God suffers us to suffer all this . . . . But nothing whatever is accomplished by your cruelties, each more exquisite than the last. It is the bait that wins people for our school. We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.36

  Tertullian goes on to explain why Christian blood bears fruit: the Christians’ ability to endure such pains, their tough-minded obstinacy in the face of suffering, convinces others they stand for the truth: “For who that beholds it is not stirred to inquire, what lies indeed within it? Who, on inquiry, does not join us, and joining us, does not wish to suffer, that he may purchase for himself the whole grace of God, that he may win full pardon from God by paying his own blood for it? For all sins are forgiven to a deed like this.”

  On the heels of Tertullian’s Apology came one from a Latin-speaking Christian named Minucius Felix, who stated the matter concisely. It was not possible for the martyrs of Christ to “endure torments without the aid of God.”37 In other words, Christian endurance was not only a marvel of human strength; it was a miracle.

  In the overall scheme of things, Christian martyrdoms probably inspired only a few conversions. Surviving pagan authors who noted that Christians often resisted official pressure to recant typically considered this resistance not as miraculous endurance but as sheer stubbornness. That is the judgment, among others, of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who could not understand such stupidity.38 Even more significant, martyrdoms would rarely lead to conversions because they were themselves relatively rare. The vast majority of pagans—including the millions who eventually converted—never saw a martyrdom, as recent scholarship has shown.39 As the most prolific and one of the best-traveled authors of the first three Christian centuries, Origen of Alexandria, stated in no uncertain terms: “Only a small number of people, easily counted, have died for the Christian religion.”40

  On the other hand, as was true of other miracles, divinely empowered endurance of pain would not have had to be observed in order to be known. When Christians told stories about martyrdom they particularly highlighted the miraculous abilities of the tormented faithful to withstand pain with a pleasant disposition. Miracles come in many guises and can easily be magnified in the telling. Martyr miracles may well have featured prominently in the tales of those who shared the glories of their faith with potential converts.

  INCENTIVES FOR CONVERSION: IN SUM

  Christians of the first four centuries
did not stage massive evangelistic rallies involving altar calls with thousands of people coming forward to commit their lives to Christ. They spread their religion simply by word of mouth within their various networks of personal relationships, with converts telling their families, friends, neighbors, and other associates of the “good news” they had come to believe. What persuaded people were not so much the new doctrines that were being propounded or the reports of Christian ritual activities or even the many virtues of these communities of faith. What made the difference were the amazing stories that verified the Christian message. From the beginning, starting with the astounding life and ministry of Jesus himself and continuing through the work of his apostles and then their successors, the power of God had been manifest in real and tangible ways. God was at work, and his followers could prove it through the miraculous activities they engaged in.

  Few people could claim to have observed any of these spectacular miracles of faith. But that was not necessary. All that was needed was belief that such things had in fact happened, and possibly that they continued to happen. This kind of belief could be won by Christian storytellers. These were not professional orators, just simple people telling what they themselves had heard and believed. The more the stories were told, and told with conviction, the more listeners were likely to think they might be true.

  These stories were accompanied by the insistence that God’s power manifest in the world now simply foreshadowed what was to take place in the hereafter. The people of God were about to enter an eternity of joy, peace, and glory. But those who refused to accept the message would pay an ultimate price. The sufferings of the present age were nothing in comparison with the torments that awaited those who rejected the truth and continued to worship the minions of evil. For all such people there was only the fearful prospect of everlasting agony.

  We know this was a convincing message because it eventually took over the Roman Empire. Still, it did not do so overnight. And it did not do so through massive conversions of pagan crowds at any one time, despite the legendary accounts that have survived. Individual Christians would need only to convert a family member on occasion, or a friend or neighbor. Over time, that would add up, because whoever became a Christian was lost to paganism.

  Chapter 6

  The Growth of the Church

  Nearly everyone agrees that approximately half the Roman Empire claimed allegiance to the Christian faith by about 400 CE. The empire as a whole is thought to have comprised some sixty million people at the time, making the numbers of Christians staggering. Even so, recent scholars have demonstrated that no massive conversions would have been needed for the church to attain such high numbers. All that was needed was a steady and plausible rate of Christian growth.

  EXAGGERATIONS OF OUR SOURCES

  In determining that rate, we are hampered by a number of factors, not the least of which are the exaggerations in our various literary sources, both pagan and Christian. Even today, with scientific methods of calculation, it is difficult to gauge the size of a crowd, and widely ranging estimates are often determined by an observer’s enthusiasms (“We had thousands rallying to our cause”) or fears (“Our opposition is mobilized and massive”).

  Without access to modern methods of determining demographics, ancient sources relied on generalized and often idealized superlatives. We have seen this already in Livy’s account of the suppression of the Bacchic rites in Rome in 186 BCE, where it was reported to the senate that the profane practices of the cult had infected the masses of Rome like an epidemic. From these reports one might think the entire population was imperiled. Are we talking about a fifth of the populace? A fourth? No, when Livy actually gives the numbers of those involved, it adds up to seven-tenths of 1 percent of the population of the city. Not much of an epidemic.

  Pagan sources mention Christians with striking infrequency in the second century, but when they do so, they suggest frightening numbers parallel to those of Livy’s Bacchanalia. The early-second-century governor of the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus (in modern Turkey), Pliny the Younger, is the first pagan author of any kind to refer to the existence of Christians. In a letter addressed to the Roman emperor Trajan written in 112 CE, Pliny discusses the threat posed by Christians to the traditional cults and indicates that he has, as a result, initiated an official proceeding against them. These Christians, he tells the emperor, are “many of all ages, every rank, and both sexes.”1 That certainly sounds serious, as, indeed, Pliny wanted it to sound. He needed the emperor to realize that the measures taken to stamp out the cult, including judicial executions, were altogether justified.

  Just a few years later, the Roman historian Tacitus produced his famous Annals of Rome, an account of the empire from the reigns of Tiberius to Nero that was published around 120 CE. Tacitus mentions Christians in the context of the great fire of Rome under Nero in 64 CE. Nero’s actions during and after the fire raised suspicions that he was responsible for it. Possibly he wanted parts of the city destroyed so he could implement some of his own architectural designs. Those burned out of house and home were not pleased. In order to shift the blame, Nero scapegoated the Christians, rounding them up as the culprits and executing them in rather grisly ways, as we will see in chapter 7. In his reference to the Christians charged with the crime, Tacitus indicates that it was “an immense multitude” (Annals 15).

  Such comments are almost certainly exaggerations of scornful opponents. If Christianity were such a large threat at this stage of imperial history, we simply cannot explain why most Roman authors have little or, more frequently, absolutely nothing to say about them. Apart from a few other very brief references (in Suetonius, Lucian of Samosata, Galen), Christians simply do not appear, and certainly not as a sizable presence in the Roman world. On the contrary, in the rather full account of the empire from 180 to 238 CE written by the third-century Roman historian Herodian, in which he details the careers of the emperors and the threats they had to confront, Christianity is never mentioned at all. They were no threat.

  If the very occasional references to Christians in the pagan sources of our period are exaggerated, the numerous references in texts written by Christians themselves are far more so. That is true from the very beginning, starting with our first account of the Christian movement, the New Testament book of Acts. Right after Jesus’s resurrection, in Acts 1:14, we are told that the Christian cohort consisted of the eleven remaining disciples, several unnamed women, Jesus’s mother, and his brothers. But then, in the very next verse, we learn that “in those days” there were 120 believers. How did a hundred people convert in the space of a verse?

  The conversions continue apace soon after this. As we have seen, on the day of Pentecost, just fifty days after Jesus’s crucifixion, Peter converted three thousand Jews (Acts 2:41); soon thereafter, he converted another five thousand (Acts 4:4). In the next chapter, multitudes more convert (Acts 5:14). At this rate the entire empire will be Christian by the year 50.

  No Christian author is more profligate in his exaggerations than the apologist and theologian Tertullian, writing about a century after Acts at the end of the second and beginning of the third century. In his defense of the Christian faith, the Apology, Tertullian claims that pagans are aghast at the massive conversions to the faith: “The outcry is that the state is filled with Christians—that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands” (Apology 1). In another work he indicates that “our numbers are so great—constituting all but the majority in every city” (To Scapula 2).2 His most famous statement absolutely revels in the sheer dominance of the Christian religion:

  We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you—cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum—we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods . . . . For if such multitudes of men were to break away from you, and betake themselves to some remote corner of the world, why, the very loss of so many citizens, whate
ver sort they were, would cover the empire with shame . . . . Why, you would be horror-struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves . . . . You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would have more enemies than citizens remaining. For now it is the immense number of Christians which makes your enemies so few—almost all the inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ. (Apology 37)

  One counterweight to these excessive claims appears in the more sober assessment of other Christian authors who, despite also having reasons to celebrate the turning of entire populations to the Christian faith, knew that, alas, it simply had not happened. This includes such writers as the Latin apologist Minucius Felix, some years after Tertullian, who indicates that Christians “are still few” (Octavius 23) and the widely traveled and highly informed Origen, from the first half of the third century, who acknowledges that many people in the empire, let alone barbarians outside of it, had never even heard of the Christian faith (Commentary on Matthew 24:9).

  As a result, modern experts have not been swayed by the exuberant claims of authors such as Tertullian. Pagan religions of the first and second centuries were not being widely demolished by the unstoppable forces of the Christians. As British historian Robin Lane Fox has pointed out, “By c. 200, Christians still wrote polemically as if the gods had fallen silent, but they were ignoring the contrary facts at the sites to which they referred.”3 These contrary facts come by way of hard evidence—literally hard, in the presence of inscriptions chiseled in stone—that pagan religions were flourishing (indeed, resurging) in the second and third centuries CE.4 Christianity was not taking the empire by storm at the time of the apostles or in the days of Tertullian. The Christians remained a tiny fraction of the population up into the third century.