In the Beginning was the Blog

The Future of the Beginning

Since moving house and therefore closing the door on chapter of my life where I dallied with the idea of returning to St Francis’ Theological College at some point to continue my Jedi training, I’ve been thinking about the future of this blog. I haven’t had the time to write about theology let alone read about it or even think about it yet I have enjoyed so much the way it has provided a launching pad for a broad range of learning.

At this stage I still intend to continue to attempt to read theology and blog about it just because i’d feel sad to walk away from it completely and because I feel the need to keep my brain active on things that aren’t so procedural as computer programming and maths. At this stage I’m not able to be more specific than that but I’d like any suggestions in the comments on ways to continue a scholarly style of learning without tutorials and assessments as motivators. Also I’d like any suggestions of introductory books to start building a library with: e.g. Good theological dictionaries and references. I’m thinking of getting McGrath’s Theology Reader and The Modern Theologians as well as an early church history text to continue that topic.

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I’m not a Filthy Christian

I had to give back the early church history book I was neglecting as we have moved interstate. As you may know, this blog is also severly neglected. More on that later. I’ll quickly note here some other chapters I covered.

In a climate where it was becoming more and more life threatening to be a Christian, it was no wonder that people didn’t want to be mistaken for one. One or the chapters I read covered some cases of mistaken identity where Jews were confused with Christians and how this may have motivated a stronger split between Judaism and Christianity.

Also as laws against Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, there was confusion about how to punish this crime: execution? Make them sacrifice to the Roman gods and recant their faith? Jail? Or just a simple flogging. Various letters between head office and the outposts were looked at in this chapter.

Finally, a chapter looked at a place of sanctuary for Christians which was ironically in the emperor’s staff. Apparently Christians were often well educated so were useful as public servants and the world of the emperors palace was fairly isolated from the public so could afford to bend the rules a bit. The only downside was an occasional purge of Christians from the staff.

So here ends my blogging on McKechnie’s book. I’ll post again on my future plans for this blog.

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Nero is not my Hero

I can’t say I know much about Nero apart from that he apparently played his fiddle while Rome burned. As far as early church history goes, he has the honour of being emperor in power when it became illegal to be a Christian in the Roman empire. There are no specific written decrees making Christianity illegal but we know that the Roman sport of executing and torturing Christians began shortly after the famous fire of Rome. Some speculate that Nero needed someone to blame the fire on because of conspiracy theories that he had ordered the fire himself. Christians were accused of being haters of people as part of the justification for their eradication. The persecution of Christians by Roman authority lasted about 200 years.

It is also believed that both Peter and Paul were executed in Rome during this time but again there are no actual records, just mentions in other documents written years later that may or may not be reliable.

I was going to write something obvious about Christians persecuting minority groups in modern times but I don’t think it compares at all to mentality or the brutality of the Roman Christian persecution. Maybe the crusades stack up.

I suppose you can draw some parallels between 9/11 and the burning of Rome with a similar flow on effect for an ethnic / religious group who were previously viewed with suspicion.

The strange thing is that Christianity continued to grow even when Christians were being persecuted, they took their religion underground and used secret codes to communicate. I wonder if the War on Terror has had a similar effect of counter-productively antagonising groups that might turn to terrorism whilst making the groups harder to track by driving them further into secrecy? It’s interesting to read the way Christians were demonised to justify their persecution. How much do we demonise those who we disapprove of today?

The next chapter looks at the secret life of Christianity during the Roman persecution.

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Taking it to Da Hood

When I started this blog I was going to write something in it every week but I now see it’s been almost a month since I managed to put fingers to keyboard. Alas, in this time I have read exactly one more chapter of The First Christian Centuries so at this rate of 19 pages per month, I should finish the book by June next year. Clearly I am going to have to deal with a motivation issue. Then again, as I typed this paragraph, my baby daughter awoke in a bout of teething agony and I realised that it’s not all to do with my motivation.

Anyway, on with the actual theology. The second chapter looks at what we know about the first fifty years of Christianity. We get most of our information from Acts and Paul’s letters that refer to events in this period. As far as historian’s can tell, Peter was the leader of the Church during this period and it was based in Jerusalem. These years represented a change in Christianity from being mostly rural to being city based and with Jerusalem having a large population of pilgrims from other countries, Christianity began to spread far and wide straight away. We don’t know exactly how it spread to all of the countries but sometimes we get mention of Paul or another apostle going to meet an existing established community in one or another country. The urbanisation of Christianity brought it into conflict with the established jewish leaders and persecution from these groups started up pretty quickly. John’s gospel describes “the Jews” anachronistically as persecuting Christians which was probably the case at the time the gospel was written rather than when Jesus was alive (since Jesus was a Jew and there were no groups that identified as Christians distinct from Jews until after his death). But this persecution seemed to be aimed at the followers of Christianity rather than the leaders probably because the leaders were held in high esteem. The effect of this seems to be that Christians were also forced to scatter throughout Judea and into other countries and Christianity soon became a religion of gentiles – the Jewish word for people who were not of Jewish heritage.

In terms of demographics, it seems that the converts to Christianity generally mirrored the social strata of society, it was not just made up of the “poor and outcast” which was traditionally thought but also had key members with wealth and social status (McKechnie spends a bit of time looking at arguments for and against this analysis of the demographics too). It is hard to estimate how many Christians there were at the end of fifty years. One historian looks at the growth rates of cults today to estimate that there must have been thousands, but others think there must have been many more than that when they look at literacy and the fact that Christians had written the Gospels: for these books to have been written there must have been a lot of literate Christians to make it worth the effort and when you look at literacy rates (noting that Christians would have had higher literacy rates because of the higher number of Jews amongst them) you tend to end up with a figure in the tens of thousands.

So at the end of fifty years, we have Christianity spreading far and wide amongst rich and poor despite and partly because of persecution by the Jews. McKechnie ends the chapter by observing that at that phenomenal growth rate, the Christians were probably only a few years off meeting their goal of bringing Christianity to the whole world but of course, the Roman empire put a stop to that and the next chapter deals with how Christianity became outlawed under Nero.

The most interesting thing for me in this chapter was the discussion of Christianity becoming an urban religion and how that changed the nature of it. The interaction between urban and rural thought is fascinating even if you think of how it works today with more educated and liberal thinkers generally in the cities. There is a mutual suspicion that results from these differing intellectual values yet the message of Christianity seemed to impress both groups equally. Also, the urban base meant that high profile people were converted which would have boosted the religion’s credibility and acceptability as well as provided some monetary resources to help establish the new community. I’m not sure of how correct I am in saying that today’s Christianity is much more popular amongst the rural (or at least the uneducated) than in the cities. Where Christianity spread exponentially in the first century through the cities, it struggles to be taken seriously today. Then again, packaged in the right way, it could be poised to re-ignite a society that is now bringing up groups of people who have virtually no exposure to it. I have heard of and read a few books over the last decade or so that express excitement about young people’s spirituality being set to take off in new ways but I see little evidence of it. Still you never know how things will unfold and maybe history can repeat.

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Is that a canon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

I mentioned last week that I was going to read an introductory text on early church history. The book I was referring to was Paul McKechnie, The First Christian Centuries: Perspectives on the Early Church, (Illinois: InterVarsity Press: 2001) which I’ve borrowed from the good brothers at The Society of Saint Francis. I’ve only read the first chapter which is full of the controversy and debate I was expecting!

This chapter deals with what McKechnie calls the source debate: how do we know which ancient texts are authoritative and how much can we trust them? In general, the texts written closest to the events are considered to most likely be accurate so there is a lot of debate about dating the texts. There is also the extracanonist debate which looks into whether books outside of the accepted canon aka The New Testament should have more authority than they are traditionally given.

The extracanonists as McKechnie calls them generally argue that the books of the New Testament only tell the story that the winners of ancient debates wanted us to know. We know that later on (like in the third and fourth century) there was a campaign against gnosticism which also sought to destroy all gnostic texts. The extracanonists say that the scraps of texts that have been rediscovered over the years represent a large body of Christians who may have been as numerous and influential in the early church as the group that became accepted by Rome.

The intracanonists argue that there is no evidence that these groups were of great influence in the early church. McKechnie puts himself in between these groups arguing that you can view the early church as being a shaggy bush: it had a general shape as described by the New Testament books but around the edges there were branches sticking out that were pruned as the church became more established (for better or for worse).

I suspect McKechnie is leaving something important out of the debate here. What is to be gained by considering these extracanonical books to have authority? Clearly the extracanonists feel these books have important content that is at odds with the agenda of the intracanonists. What are they really arguing over and does it have relevance to the arguments we are having today about the church?

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Going Back to the Start

I’ve decided to spend a bit of time in my current theological self education looking at early church history. I’ve borrowed an introductory text but before I open it, I thought I’d get down some ideas of my own with absolutely no references to speak of. Let’s see if I arrive at anything similar to what the real scholars say.

Early church history has an important place in the ongoing process of church reform. When I studied our introductory theology subject, we were told that the Protestants broadly rejected Tradition (with a capital ‘T’ to denote the authority of the traditional teachings of the church as Revelation (with a capital ‘R’ to denote knowledge of God revealed to us)). But I’m guessing it was more complicated than that, I think the Protestants were very much interested in Tradition and apostolic succession (the idea that the apostles have handed the mantle of leadership from one generation to the next) but they believed the church had become corrupt so they wanted to get back to the authentic way of being church and to them, scripture was the link back to the first christians.

Since the Reformation, the western world has of course had the Age of Reason, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, whatever you want to call it and during that period, analytical and evidence based history has developed and more recently, post-modern critiques of the analytical and evidence based histories have been produced, all of which have affected our understanding of the first christians and thus all of which have affected the way we think about church reform.

There continues to be a thread of thought in church reform that seeks to draw upon the early church as a source of the authentic christian expression of church but this way of thinking faces difficulty when it bogs down into historical critiques and alternative readings of the history upon which it is trying to lay a foundation.

With this in mind, I can see that the study of early church history is likely to be loaded with agendas and clashing interpretations of the facts and disputes over the authenticity of historical sources. A far cry from my initial feelings that it would be dry, static and mostly irrelevant – at least I hope so.

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St Patrick’s Day

Being a father of very young children, I don’t get out to party much which is probably why I didn’t even notice St Patrick’s day come and go this week. On having a quick read of the wikipedia page on St Patrick’s day I noticed a paragraph quoting a priest who feels that St Patrick’s day has become too secular. I suppose I can bear testimony to that, I had completely forgotten that the day had any religious significance at all – it has always been an excuse for a good old Australian piss-up as far as I knew.

This reminds me of an article in Eureka Street this week on secularisation of Christian festivals. In Why Good Friday should not be gambled, Andrew Hamilton argues that secularisation of Christian holidays is natural for a society that increasingly moves away from Christianity and religion. He thinks that the only hope of preserving Good Friday is as a historical holiday more like Anzac day. He makes a good point that earlier Christians didn’t have public holidays for their festivals and that:

Jesus was put to death on a weekday. The soldiers who did the job gambled their time away. He was killed shortly after he challenged the commercialisation of the Temple and the corporatisation of religious faith. His trial and executions were the day’s public entertainment.

It’s interesting to note that St Patrick was a missionary in a pagan society. He didn’t have a public holiday in which to deliver his message to the people of Ireland. He is celebrated there as someone who moved amongst the people and lead from amongst them rather than dominating and standing above.

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Lent

Tonight I read the Wikipedia entry on Lent seeing as the start of lent completely passed me by. I knew before that the practice of lent comes from the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert after he was baptised. I also knew that lent is traditionally a time of fasting but for most western Christians, we just give something up for lent rather than go without.

I was interested to read that lent derives from the German word for spring “lenz” (or Dutch “lente”) but in Australia of course, it corresponds to the start of autumn. It is also thought that the fasting may have arisen due to the “gap” in the food cycle that occurs at the start of spring when winter stores have run out but no new crops have been grown yet. The change of season in the southern hemisphere at lent can still work with the symbology. As we move towards Easter, the weather turns colder and the leaves die from deciduous trees. In Brisbane where I live, we get colder weather and usually a month of drizzling rain at lent. But either way, the Easter becomes associated with bleak, cold and colourless days.

I also learnt today that lent is not just about fasting: there are three disciplines that are traditionally observed: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. The idea is there is a focus on reforming your self, your relationship with God and your Christian practice towards your neighbour.

Based on my previous reading of liturgical history, I would guess that the emphasis on fasting during lent arose during the medieval period since this was a time where popular theology tended towards extreme penance. The Christian world-view during this time became increasingly hierarchical and the threat of damnation and hell became a major theme in church teaching. I can’t remember the exact theory but my recollection is that this all came about as the church became increasingly intertwined with state power and needed to exercise control over its subjects (using the carrot and stick approach).

Of course, post-reformation lent is sometimes non-existent or just watered down where as it seems there is room to revive other aspects of lent such as the prayer and almsgiving. Prayer doesn’t have to gloomy when we think of it as a conversation with our creator, a rediscovery of our purpose and rekindling of our appreciation for creation and the miracle of life. Likewise, almsgiving can be just as joyful as giving presents at Christmas.

Questions in my mind now are: what do others make of the fact that lent occurs in autumn in the southern hemisphere? Are there any churches or Christian groups pushing the envelope when it comes to lent or is it a declining tradition?

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The Wreck of Western Culture

I mentioned a month or two back that I’ve been reading The Wreck of Western Culture by John Carroll. I didn’t end up finishing this book (well I skimmed the last bit) because I lost what the point of it was and then it became very overdue from the library. My recollection of it is that it is an interpretation of a kind of narrative of Humanism over the past half a century. The threads of this narrative are drawn from important cultural works, mainly paintings and writing which describe the rise and fall of the humanist ideal.

The artists mentioned and the works Carroll draws upon are all listed at the back of the book: Donatello, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Holbein, Luther, Calvin, Raphael, Caravaggio, Poussin, Valázquez, Rembrandt, Bach, Descartes, Mozart, Kant, Marx, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Henry James and John Ford.

If nothing else, I’ve had a “who’s who” style education of modern history. I think this book would have made more sense if I’d already studied this period and was aware of the conventional readings. The Wreck of Western Culture strikes me as an alternative reading that works against the traditional view of the humanist / modern / structuralist era.

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Reading and Listening

Ironically, the Christmas period affords me little time for spiritual and theological reflection because I am usually busy trying to attend to various family and social commitments! But I have been reading and listening to theology. On the listening front, I’m still subscribed to the Philosopher’s Zone on Radio National which I really enjoy (more than The Religion Report even) and also happened to be loaned a CD of Soularize talks which come from an emerging church conference.

On the reading front, I’m still plodding through John Carroll’s The Wreck of Western Culture, not because it is badly written or anything but just because I don’t get much time to read and when I do, I prefer to read science fiction so it’s difficult to crack open a theological text (even though this is kind of a sociological / historical book). The book is quite entertaining for me on some levels because Carroll uses classical paintings, sculpture and Shakespeare to illustrate his points about how culture has evolved over the last half century or so. I’ll do a more detailed post about this book at some stage.

As for Soularize, I’ve listened to the first two lectures which are by N. T. Wright looking at the book of Acts and then one of Paul’s speeches I think in Corinth where he was required to defend his faith and how he avoided being charged with preaching a new deity by appealing to the “altar to an unknown God”. Wright’s first talk was a bit of a whirlwind but tended to focus on Stephen’s speech when he was stoned to death and the context of Christianity as it started within Judaism. The second talk focussed on parallels on how Christians might address society today by identifying the places in our society where “an unknown God” is worshipped and also what modern idols can be challenged.

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