Devout Christians want to know the history of the Church. But their interest is largely academic.
Devout, undoubting Christians have no doubt about WHY Christianity succeeded. They are sure that it was inevitable. God made it succeed.
But I am 99% atheist. I’m not uncomfortable about that. Jesus praised faith the size of a mustard seed. If most Christians weren’t mostly atheist, Jesus wouldn’t have talked about faith so much.
And it is that 99% of me that finds church history fascinating.
A devout Christian believes that Christianity’s success is very simple: God made it what it is today.
But an atheist believes that this titanic, powerful, ancient institution is built on NOTHING except a total appeal to human psychology.
If you are a student of human psychology, which every practical politician must be, you would be a real idiot not to study this greatest success in human history.
#1 by Elizabeth on 08/21/2005 - 1:13 pm
I read in one book that I’d never heard of before (and haven’t heard of anywhere) that Christianity’s early success was due to the fact that, in the terrible epidemics that hit the Roman Empire around 180 A.D., the Christians went out and cared for the sick and the dying while everybody else LEFT.
I have read about the epidemics in other sources, such as O’Neill’s PLAGUES AND PEOPLES, so I know they did happen.
No one is sure what disease or diseases hit the Roman Empire around 180 A.D. The academics argue about whether it was chickenpox or measles or both. Either one, even today, can kill an adult.
#2 by Peter on 08/21/2005 - 10:01 pm
They also were willing to die for the Cause. And they did die, which meant the (Jewish-led?) Roman authorities could claim no moral high ground. They sentenced people to die on the legal merits that they would not worship the divinity of mortal authority. When the degenerated representatives of once great Romanhood found that torture and murder did not work their ends, they found they had run out of weapons. So they closed shop and went home.
Were these early Christians were willing to die because they had made esoteric/gnostic forays into the other side first?