So assholes will be saved as long as they believe they will be, while good people who haven't had the benefit of reading Christian teaching will all go to hell?
That's where I part company with the Christian church I'm afraid. Their doctrine makes no sense to me.
Take away the wars and hatred started by religion and yes society has benefited.
That's not quite how it is.So assholes will be saved as long as they believe they will be, while good people who haven't had the benefit of reading Christian teaching will all go to hell
That's where I part company with the Christian church I'm afraid. Their doctrine makes no sense to me.
What is given is believed.One "believes" in what exactly?
I think the teachings of Jesus love, tolerance and acceptance (rarely followed by so called church Christians) as great values but the only religion that ever made sense to me is Buddhism
Early Christians had no idea of the role they would play in history. But they turned the world upside down.
How do you react when you’re confronted with death, misery, contagion, threats to your own health, to your own life? For a group that began by having its leader publicly executed, and that was derided as contemptible, weird, incomprehensible and bizarre, the early Christians, to the astonishment and chagrin of the civil authorities, eventually earned a good, indeed stellar, reputation.
Two recurring events, periodic, dramatic, unavoidable in Roman life, caused this change.
One was the contrasting Christian and pagan response to plagues. The other was the episodic but sometimes intense persecution that Christians endured. At first, Christians weren’t very popular with the broad public at all. They just seemed too weird to credit – worshipping a crucified Jewish rabbi, talking about eating the dead rabbi’s flesh and drinking his blood, all the strange business about appealing to women and slaves. The public initially thought they were just another oddball sect of Judaism. Then they started to recruit in substantial numbers, and although they had no influence on law or politics, there was something offensive about the way they went on.
The periodic plagues that ravaged the Greco-Roman world were spectacularly deadly, destructive and terrifying. Not only did they kill so many people, they seemed to destroy the principle of human solidarity and whatever edifice of existential meaning paganism provided.
Pagan gods didn’t really care how human beings interacted with each other. They cared only that sacrifices be made to them and rituals and obeisance be performed. In exchange, they favoured Rome. The plagues blew that understanding apart.
The Galen and Cyprian plagues
There were lots of epidemics in the ancient world, but there were two major historic plagues in the first centuries after Christianity was established. The first, sometimes called the Galen plague after the Greek physician Galen of Pergamon, who chronicled it, began in 165, probably with soldiers, and killed millions. No one knows for sure how many died, perhaps 10 per cent of the entire population.
The Cyprian Plague, named after the North African bishop Cyprian of Carthage, began in 251 and also killed millions. At its height, 5000 people a day died in Rome. It ran for 20 years.
Edward Gibbon, author of the 18th-century classic The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, held Christianity and all religion in contempt as superstition. However, he acknowledged the success of Christianity and offered five reasons: Christian zeal; the belief in the afterlife and heaven; Christians’ virtues, especially charity; miracles; and Christian unity in presenting their world view.
Historian John Dickson, in his entertaining Bullies and Saints, points out that the Greco-Roman world had no principle of welfare, health policy or even universal charity among its major thought systems. Neither Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Epictetus nor Plutarch included charity as part of their major moral discourses.
The general performance of pagan society in plagues was appalling. Predominantly, people ran away whenever and wherever they could. When relatives contracted the plague, families often put them out on the street while they were still alive, leaving them to die agonisingly, alone and neglected, in an effort to keep the disease away. Bodies piled up in the street and in public houses. Food distribution broke down. The army was more than decimated.
The Christian response was the opposite. They stayed to help. They nursed each other and, when they could, nursed their pagan neighbours. Not everyone, not even a majority, who gets a plague illness dies. Their chances of survival are vastly improved if they receive even basic nursing, so that when they are most sick, some reassuring figure provides them with food and drink. Do even that much and survival rates soar. Further, Christians who got the disease early and survived often developed some immunity, and this looked miraculous.
The psychological response was radically different too. In the face of death, Christians still believed that life had meaning. Christians were psychologically and spiritually equipped to respond helpfully in the plagues because they’d already learnt to love others, to serve others. They judged human life in the perspective of eternity.
Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria, wrote: “Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves, thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ … The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.”
It might seem that Dionysius is talking up Christian commitment. But it’s almost inconceivable that a Christian leader could write a public letter to his people about an event they were all living through, and watching friends and relatives die in, and fundamentally misrepresent the truth. If he’d been lying, everyone would have known.
Survival of the kindest
In any event, Christians helped each other, helped pagan neighbours, and suffered proportionately fewer deaths. When the plague ended, Christians thus made up a bigger proportion of the society. They earned the gratitude of neighbours they helped to survive. Their whole experience seemed miraculous.
But pagan Rome wasn’t willing to give up big gains to Christians without a fight, which brings us to the savage business of the intermittent but at times murderous and sadistic persecutions that Christians endured.
The plagues, which so enhanced the reputation of Christians, came in the middle of the second and third centuries. The persecution of Christians had its most gruesome episodes in the first century, though it persisted spasmodically up the fourth century.
The Roman Empire was relatively tolerant religiously. You could practice any mystery cult or ethnic religious customs you liked, provided you made occasional sacrifices to the Roman gods, acknowledged the cult of imperial divinity under which Roman rulers were designated as gods, and provided you weren’t seen as undermining the Roman Empire.
Christians would not acknowledge Roman gods as gods and would not pray to Roman rulers as if they were gods.
Once Roman persecution of Christians really got going, it was at times bloodthirsty and cruel almost beyond belief. The first great episode came under Emperor Nero. It’s true that much legend about Roman emperors is less than fully established historically, as Mary Beard makes clear in Emperor of Rome. Nonetheless, there are enough historical records of Nero to show that even by the somewhat exacting standards of Roman emperors, he was a nasty, narcissistic nut. Indeed, Beard, who tries to give the benefit of the doubt to Roman emperors where she can, says his reign is rightly described even by non-Christian sources “in chilling terms”. Nero was an exhibitionist and severely sadistic, reminiscent of some of the psychopaths in the fictional Game of Thrones, whose characters were no doubt influenced by Nero’s historical record.
At times Nero required Roman women of high birth to serve as prostitutes for a night at his famous banquets. He personally participated in sports events that required the organisers to ensure he won every event. He fancied himself a performer. He wanted to build an ever-grander palace for himself in Rome.
In AD64 Rome suffered a disastrous fire and sustained great damage. Rumours were strong even then that Nero wanted to get rid of certain buildings and had the fire set deliberately. Nero decided to scapegoat Rome’s Christians, claiming they had set the fire. No historian has ever believed that to be the case. His punishments were spectacularly cruel and sadistic. Christians would endure sporadic persecution for nearly three more centuries, but nothing was ever quite as vicious as Nero’s orgy of death.
The Roman historian Tacitus, who himself despised Christianity, wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt on a class hated for their abominations called Christians … An arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”
Remember, that’s an account of an esteemed Roman historian who held Christianity in contempt.
English novelist Piers Paul Read, in his magisterial A History of the Catholic Church, comments: “Not only did Christians refuse to sacrifice to the pagan gods, they regarded them as demons. This repudiation of the Romans’ beliefs and customs was considered a threat to the stability of the state … The Christians’ unpopularity made them vulnerable as scapegoats.”
It was a very bad time to be unpopular with the Roman authorities, not just because of Nero’s cruelty but because executions and combat in the stadiums were a popular and violent form of entertainment.
Robin Lane Fox in Pagans and Christians notes: “Christian victims were particularly appealing; they included a good proportion of women, not merely slave girls but well-born women.”
Subsequent Roman persecutions were more systematic and often more nuanced. They too were often deadly, but no one reached quite the deranged savagery of Nero. At about the same time in Rome Peter was executed, and a little later, Paul. These were thus momentous times for the young, fledgling Christian movement. It’s amazing that such a burst of savagery didn’t wipe out the early Christians.
But Jesus had made a promise to his church: “I will build my church and the gates of hell will never prevail against it.” Christians understood their faith was founded in an act of heroic martyrdom. Tertullian, a great early North African theologian, wrote: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
It’s reasonable for people to wonder if Christian accounts of these martyrdoms exaggerated the courage of the Christians. But pagan and official Roman sources tell the same story. Galen, one of the most respected men of the ancient world, and no sympathiser to Christianity, found Christians’ courage in the face of death one of their most remarkable attributes.
In their fascinating study, Christian Women in the Patristic World, Lynn Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes report a survey of all pagan works written between 110 and 210 that refer to Christians: “In every case but one, they mention the execution of Christians. They assume readers would have seen or heard of Christians dying in the arena.”
Two women who changed the world
In AD203, two women, Perpetua and Felicity were executed together in Carthage. Perpetua was a well-born young woman who had recently given birth. Felicity was a heavily pregnant slave who gave birth in prison before being executed with Perpetua. Roman law forbade the execution of pregnant women. Was this a trace of compassion? Not at all. The unborn baby belonged, under Roman law, to the father, or if the father was a slave, to the mother’s owner. To kill an unborn bay would be to destroy a man’s property. Rome was sedulous about property rights, not so concerned about human rights.
The experience of the two women leading up to execution was recorded in a document called The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. Some of it was ostensibly written, or dictated, by Perpetua. If that’s the case, it’s the first preserved writing in Latin by any woman. Before the execution a small group of Christians sustained each other in unlimited human solidarity. This solidarity was critical to Christians in everything they did.
Perpetua has converted to Christianity against the wishes of her father. He begs her to abandon her new beliefs and save her life. Four times he comes to see her and each time she refuses his request, though she grieves for his suffering. Any Christian could avoid torture and death if they prayed to the Roman gods. This they wouldn’t do. Perpetua gave up her young son to her family, Felicity’s daughter was taken in by the local Christian community.
Perpetua’s mysticism provides her with moments of sublime joy in her captivity, notwithstanding every grievous thing happening to her. Perpetua’s interactions with her father are one of the most radical elements of the whole account. Although The Passion is not hostile to the father, his pleadings are not entirely without self-interest: “Do not destroy us all. Give up your pride. For, if you are punished, none of us will be able to speak freely again.”
Perpetua cares for her father but adamantly refuses his request. This is a complete inversion of the structure of the Roman family. Here is a daughter defying her father because she is serving a higher purpose. Here are two women, one a slave, defying the Roman state. The two are glorified before God, praised and immortalised in the whole Christian world. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity was reproduced, read and heard among Christian communities all over the Roman Empire.
Felicity wanted to give birth quickly so she could die with Perpetua rather than alone. The Romans often sexualised the execution of Christian women, bringing them to the arena naked, often in nets.
‘The world will despise you for my name’s sake’
We ought to acknowledge two balancing realities. Lots of Christians couldn’t be as courageous as the martyrs and made whatever minimal gesture was required to avoid persecution and death.
Second, most of the time Christians were not actively persecuted. It tended to happen when there was a new emperor trying to restore old glories. It also varied regionally. Sometimes a local governor would launch his own persecutions to gain favour with some party in Rome, for local political reasons or who knows what other motivation.
There were compromises proposed, such as adding Jesus to the pantheon of pagan gods so long as Christians would make a ritual sacrifice to the Roman gods. Christians couldn’t accept that. The last great Roman persecution came under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius at the start of the fourth century. It was a savage last attempt by central Roman authorities to restore the old order, which by then had lost almost all its animating qualities.
Many of the early Christians who suffered death for their faith didn’t think of themselves as especially heroic or even especially devout. Almost no Christian ever sought martyrdom. Christians wanted the right to live peacefully, practice their faith and spread the good news. They didn’t seek martyrdom but there were red lines they wouldn’t cross.
Modern Western Christians live in an unsympathetic culture but face nothing like the persecutions of early Christians. These are faced by Christians in some other parts of the world, in parts of Asia and Africa especially. Jesus himself, though he brought the good news, predicted these persecutions: “The world will despise you for my name’s sake.”
The early Christians had no idea of the role they would play in history. But they turned the world upside down. Their charity in plagues, their courage in persecution, their relationship with Jesus and their solidarity with each other, and with all human beings, were the secret formula.
Greg Sheridan’s latest book.
How Christians Can Succeed Today by Greg Sheridan is published on September 2 by Allen & Unwin.
Each Denomination has a catechism/confession/articles of faith, but the first order of faith in all, comes back to the Apostle's Creed and/or the Nicene CreedOne "believes" in what exactly?
The argument that humans are good and God is not good is precisely the problem that the Gospel addresses. People need forgiveness for thinking they can be good apart from God. If there is no God then there is no measure of goodness, everyone can do as they see fit.So assholes will be saved as long as they believe they will be, while good people who haven't had the benefit of reading Christian teaching will all go to hell?
That's where I part company with the Christian church I'm afraid. Their doctrine makes no sense to me.
The Catholic Church?Each Denomination has a catechism/confession/articles of faith, but the first order of faith in all, comes back to the Apostle's Creed and/or the Nicene Creed(don't worry it's a 30 second read).
The Nicene creed and Apostle's creed are universal to all Christian denominations from the 4th century.The Catholic Church?
What about the others? Are they evil?
Didn't you notice I used an Anglican (ie Protestant) link?The Catholic Church?
What about the others? Are they evil?
Didn't you notice I used an Anglican (ie Protestant) link?
I don't know about those people. Nor you nor I can know the mind of God. But God is not unjust, so I sure there is a plan for that (personal opinion).Well, I think I may leave it to you. I think there are many bits of Christianity that are good, very few that are not ( on a balanced interpretation), however I think that the doctrine has gone a bit astray when it says Jesus is the only way to Heaven.
What about all the people who have never heard of him or died before he was born? Are they in Hell, or just nowhere?
Other than that said, I wish you the best in your Faith.
Of course, Christianity implies that all Jews, for whom you have a high regard will not end up in Heaven.I don't know about those people. Nor you nor I can know the mind of God. But God is not unjust, so I sure there is a plan for that (personal opinion).
Chapter and verse please, in context, then we have a discussion.Of course, Christianity implies that all Jews, for whom you have a high regard will not end up in Heaven.
Have you tried convincing them of that?
Great content here too:some convince themselves
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Mark 16:16Chapter and verse please, in context, then we have a discussion.
I'll kick off - Romans 9-11.
So now you're cherry picking?Mark 16:16
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