The Triumph of Christianity by Bart Ehrman, Oneworld, 352pp, £20
Over the course of the first four centuries of the first millennium, Christianity destroyed the other religions of the empire. Or did it? Bart Ehrman seems a little torn. Yes, he writes of old temples and statues of polytheism being demolished, of the very core of people’s personal and spiritual being “mocked, mutilated, and destroyed before their eyes”. Christianity thrived “by killing off its opposition”. Yet in other places in his book, Ehrman replaces the language of destruction with death by natural causes, with paganism “cut off from resources and abandoned by popular opinion”.
Whichever way you look at it, no century of Christian history was “more transformative than the 4th”. It began with the emperor Diocletian declaring war on the Church and ended with the emperor Theodisius declaring all pagan practices illegal, making Christianity, in effect, the state religion.
Ehrman thus takes on the character of a man panning for gold, sifting the historical record to find facts that will shine with explanatory power. How did the followers of an obscure Jewish preacher, crucified by the Roman governor in a remote province, build a religion that drove paganism from the field?
Ehrman concludes, first of all, that the triumph of Christianity is consistent with a rate of growth that was steady, rather than spectacular, based on the faith spreading through networks of family, work and neighbourhood. These are the channels through which conversion flowed. But why did it flow at all? Why wasn’t it blocked? Why didn’t other religions survive it?
Though he hedges his bets somewhat, Ehrman does not put it all down to Constantine. He believes that, given its growth rate, Christianity would have prevailed with or without the emperor’s conversion. More conducive was the growing popularity of “henotheism” – the worship of one god to the exclusion of all others, who are nevertheless still seen to be gods. This paved the way for “the Christian declaration that there is in fact only one God and he alone should be worshipped”. Christianity, Ehrman seems to suggest, offered the best of Judaism (one God, high ethical standards, community) without its peculiarities (circumcision, kosher).
One might think that the fellowship and charity displayed by Christians had something to do with their success. Ehrman recognises that behind the religious tolerance and diversity of the empire (which he vaunts) stood a common social, political and personal ethic, summed up in the word “dominance”. Under this “commonsense, millennial-old view”, those with power were expected to assert their will over those who were weaker. Rulers were “to dominate their subjects, patrons their clients, masters their slaves, men their women”. Christianity, on the other hand, “opened the door to public policies and institutions to tend to the poor, the weak, the sick and the outcast as deserving members of society”.
But this turn towards protecting the poor and weak was not, in Ehrman’s opinion, the key to Christianity’s success. Instead, he drives home what the relatively abundant accounts of conversion from the early Church tell us pretty unambiguously: outsiders were attracted to the faith because “the Christians did amazing miracles”. The power of signs and wonders was augmented by terrifying stories of everlasting punishments. This is the potent mix that, in Ehrman’s eyes, delivered victory.
Ehrman handles splendid raw materials very deftly to produce an engrossing read: Celsus’s scathing attack on the intellectual capacities of the early Christians; Pliny the Younger’s correspondence with the Emperor Trajan on the correct punishments for Christians; the earliest Christian apologetics, including defences against charges of rampant sexual immorality. Towards the end, the pages crackle with the flames of Christian intolerance, though Ehrman concludes that the evidence for widespread coercion is scant. It did not secure the triumph of Christianity.
And then there is St Paul. Ehrman calls the shift in Paul’s understanding of his religion “astounding in its heightened self-understanding”. It transformed him from a persecutor of the followers of Christ to the planter of new churches in cities from Judea to the north-western Balkans. The picture of Paul the worker, using the practice of his trade as the occasion for preaching, is beguiling, as is the image of this “lower-class artisan and itinerant preacher” addressing Athenian philosophers on the rocky outcrop of the Areopagus.
I was not completely convinced, however, by Ehrman’s conclusions. Might not most pagans have just as easily blocked their ears to tales of unseen hellfire and stuck to the comforts of what they knew? Would they not have ridiculed or debunked or ignored miracle stories? Was something else at play, therefore?
I found myself reaching for Ockham’s razor. Perhaps many non-Christians, reflecting on someone telling them that, for example, ultimately all are one, that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, concluded that what they were being told was, in a word, true.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.