4.2 – The Effects of Christianity on Culture (25 min video)
Transcript
The following transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors in spelling and/or grammar. It is provided for assistance in note-taking and review.
– Well, today I have the privilege of walking you through just some of the ways that Christianity transformed or really you could say, redeemed culture.
Remember, and I think I’ve mentioned this somewhere before, that word culture is interesting. It doesn’t just describe, say, what a certain society chooses to do with its time or its money or what it chooses to pursue. It’s based on a Latin word, like so much of our language, called “cultus,” which is a word that literally means to worship something or describes what is worshipped. In other words, what a culture values. That’s what the word culture itself means. Philip Schaff comments on the culture of Greece and Rome. He doesn’t really spare any words. He just says, “The wisest men,” the great philosophers, you could say, “of Greece and Rome, they sanctioned, they approved of slavery, polygamy, concubinage, oppression, revenge, infanticide,” which is the killing of children already born. Or he says, “They belied their greater maxims by their conduct, meaning even if they somehow say disapproved of these in their writing, they didn’t really live up to it. That’s where the early church comes in and where it gives us such a remarkable example for how to live in an unbelieving culture. For example, the church prior to Constantine was something that practiced and argued for religious freedom. If you look at Rome, Rome probably thought of itself as having religious freedom. After all, they had numerous cults, numerous religions that could freely worship their God, so long as they were licensed and approved and sanctioned by the state.
That was how they both kept the peace and kept control. But Christianity challenged that. It challenged it because Christianity was not a licensed cult. Part of the reason it wasn’t licensed was because Christianity wasn’t restricted to a certain ethnic group, or a certain race, or a certain nation, or even a certain class of people. So the Romans didn’t quite know how to view it, so they just forbid it at much of the time. Philip Schaff comments on how early church fathers argued for freedom of religion. He actually says that Tertullian, one of the great church fathers of North Africa, boldly tells the heathen, that is unbelievers, that everybody has a natural and an inalienable right to worship God according to his or her conviction.
That all compulsion in matters of conscience is contrary to the very nature of religion and that no form of worship has any value whatsoever, except as far as it is free and voluntary, a homage of the heart.
” What he’s basically saying is that you can’t force people to believe something or not believe something. Tertullian and other church fathers argued that religion should be free. There should be a freedom of religion because people have an inalienable right to worship and believe as they feel convicted to do so. Meaning even if you try to control it, even if you try to dictate what people believe, the best you can get is people outwardly saying they believe something, but inwardly denying it.
In fact, one of the church fathers named Lactantius said this. He said, “Religion cannot be imposed by force. The matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows.” that the will may be affected. Torture and piety, actually following the true faith, he says are widely different. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion. Schaaf does note, and I should note as well, that this idea that this praising of religious freedom and following one’s own conscience was forgotten by the church in later centuries, but I would argue was recovered in the Protestant Reformation. Not only do you see Christianity transforming and really helping us to understand freedom of conscience, of which most of our greatest amendments to the Bill of Rights are based, but you also have Christianity really arguing for limited government.
We have Lord Acton, the great English historian and commentator, saying that when Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar “the things that are Caesar’s, “and unto God the things that are God’s,” Acton points out that he both gave authority to the government or recognized the authority that God himself gives the government, but he also limited its power by saying, “Only give to the government the things that are Caesar, “give to God the things that are God’s.” In other words, the church didn’t necessarily recognize a single form of government as being like, this is the way to go. But it did equally recognize that both tyranny, the application of government to things that it should not rule over, as well as anarchy, the complete abandonment of government, both of those are unbiblical just based upon that one statement by Jesus.
And of course, we also have passages like Romans 13, where Paul reminds us to obey all authorities, pointing out that they are given their authority by God and that rulers are supposed to be a terror to those who actually break the laws, not to those who follow them, that they are to serve as an avenger in all matters of justice.
Peter reminds us of this also in his letter, actually in 1 Peter 2, where he tells us that we should be subjects to all human authorities by doing good.
He says, in fact, if you do good, you will silence the ignorance of fools. And of course he has this amazing verse where he simply says, honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor. And even furthermore, we have the command in 1 Timothy 2 to pray for those who rule over us. So Christianity had a remarkable respect for the government, particularly for a limited government. But that respect stands out magnificently even when Christians were being killed by their own governments. That made Christians different than the rest of the world and made people ask, why are you different? Not only do we have this view of government in Christianity, We also have the nature of charity, generosity. In fact, one thing that Philip Schaaf points out is that love or love of others specifically was not one of the primary virtues of the ancients.
They prefer to talk about things like bravery or things like temperance or things like justice, for example. Herbert Mueller says it like this. He says, “No other religion preached so active a love as Christianity. None engaged in such extensive charitable enterprises on behalf of the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned, the sick, and the aged.” One pagan writer named Lucian commenting on Christians says, “It is incredible to see the ardor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator, that would be Jesus, has put it into their heads that they are all brothers. Tertullian reported that he heard one pagan say, “See how these Christians love one another.” This of course is what Jesus said his people would be known by. They would be known by their love. And that’s why you see Christians routinely caring for the poor, for widows and for orphans, for prisoners, for those condemned to the mines, often for their faith, to those suffering natural disasters or to famine.
We have examples of Christians providing free lodging for travelers. We even have the order of widows, which Paul first outlines in 1 Timothy 5. These are people who regularly brought meals to others. One Christian, Lucian of Antioch, noted that these widows regularly brought meals to those imprisoned for their faith. Dionysus of Alexandria, yet another example, worked alongside his church people to care for victims of the plague while writing and noting that the other people of Alexandria fled so as to not get sick, meaning Christians were willing to risk their own life even, or at least their own health in the help of others.
Tertullian, defending Christianity to those who didn’t believe in it, especially to leaders, said this, we pray for you and we do good to you. That if we give nothing for your gods, we do give for your poor. And that our charity spreads more alms in your streets and the offerings presented by your religion in your temples. That is a remarkable claim. the idea that Christians gave far more just to the poor than the pagans gave to their gods in the temple. There’s also one of the most remarkable changes Christianity brought, which is the idea that every single life of every single person you will ever meet, because they are made in God’s image, every single life is sacred. Herbert Muller and his great work, The History of Freedom. And he notes that Christianity gave a sense of persona. That’s a Latin word. It just means person. Actually could relate to a character in a play. But what he’s getting at is that Christianity showed the worth of every single individual. He then writes this, “Immediately, the person was the neighbor one should love as oneself, citing the greatest commandment there. And ultimately he, the neighbor, was the one who had been created in the image of God. That’s why we have numerous examples of Christians treating barbarians as equal, as treating both slave and free as equal, of treating wealthy and poor as equal, even treating their enemies with love and praying for them.
This is one of the most radical changes. It was a change that directly related to how the Christians viewed the gladiator games. Schaff commenting on the gladiator games said that it was murder practiced as an art form. They were found in every major city of the Roman Empire and even beyond it. I’ve already mentioned to you that when Trajan conquered Dacia, he brought some 10,000 gladiators to fight in over 100 days of games in the city of Rome alone. History tells us also that Demetian, wanting to try to find new amusements for the people, would arrange fights using female gladiators or people that were deformed or people of excessively short stature, all to somehow try to elicit entertainment.
Cicero kind of criticized the games, but ultimately said they were, quote, “schools of courage and contempt for death.” But the church uniformly condemned them because it saw every single life as sacred. Tatian the Assyrian called the gladiator games, he called them spectacles where the human soul feasted on flesh and blood. Meaning when you watch something like that, it does something to your very being. It does something to your very soul. Tertullian easily condemned the gladiator games using sarcasm. He said, “Are we to wait now for a scriptural condemnation of the amphitheater?” Meaning, do we need a specific Bible verse to say the games are wrong? He then goes on, “If we can plead that cruelty is allowed to us, which is clearly not, according to the Bible, or that if impiety is allowed, or if brute savagery is allowed, then by all means, let us go to the games.
” This Christian condemnation of the games and refusal to participate in them, which is why when Christians were thrown in there as gladiators, they often refused to fight and suffered death for it.
This idea that the games were completely corrupt led the first Christian emperor, Constantine, to completely ban them in the year 325. Not only does Christianity transform something like the gladiator games, but it also began to transform an institution that appears to be as ancient as nearly history itself, and that is slavery.
Slavery is something you’ll find in every single ancient culture. It was common to enslave those who were poor. It was common to enslave those who were captured in war or those who had been abandoned as infants. Aristotle argued that any barbarian, any non-Greek was a slave by birth, meaning it was fine to capture them and take them as slaves. He also referred to slaves as quote unquote, “living tools.” In Roman law, slaves had no right to marry. Slaves could be abused by their master, sexually, emotionally, physically, they had no legal recourse. They could be tortured, they could be killed by their master even, and there would be no consequence for that. We’re told that one of the great Roman leaders, Cato the Elder, for example, was known for expelling any slave who reached too old of an age to be useful to him from the house to go die in the wilderness.
It’s entirely in contrast to how slavery was treated in the Old Testament law, where slavery was something that was temporary, where slavery was something that was highly regulated, and the slave was clearly seen as a person and not as property.
Now when we get to the gospel or the New Testament, we don’t see an outright condemnation of slavery or a call for emancipation, something that sometimes frustrates Christians and understandably so. But what we do see is we see Paul telling slaves to be obedient to their masters. But we also see, for example, Paul addressing slavery and one of the shortest yet most interesting letters, the letter to Philemon, where Paul is sending back a slave by the name of Onesimus.
Evidently, Onesimus had run away from his master and had come to Paul. And when Paul returns him saying, “You need to go back to your master,” he tells his master Philemon, “I’m sending him back to you, quote, ‘no longer as a slave, but as a dear brother.'” In fact, Paul calls Onesimus his own heart and he asked Philemon to return Esymus for the sake of the gospel. Philipschaf points out there’s no parallel to this. There’s nothing else in all of pagan literature that treats a slave as such an equal as the letter of Philemon. This is where the change began. As slaves and masters alike came to the same communion table and they saw each other as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. In fact, F.F. Bruce says it like this. He says to the Christian, “The slave equally with the freemen was a brother for whom Christ died.” Lactantius says, “God would have all men equal. With him there is neither servant nor master.” In other words, slaves were seen as equal to masters before the eyes of God. and they sometimes suffered the same fate. Nesimus was probably martyred. Various bishops came from slaves, such as Callistus of Rome. One of the most remarkable things is that under Christianity within the churches of the Roman Empire, slaves and those who were freeborn or had been freed, were allowed to marry.
It was something that was not just sanctioned by the church, but actually conducted by the church. We also know from the ancient cemeteries that slave and free were buried alike. One was not granted a more elaborate burial than another. And then of course we have remarkable records of the freeing, the emancipation of slaves. For example, we have a prefect by the name of Hermas who freed over 1,200 slaves upon being baptized one Easter. Or we have Chromatius, another prefect, who freed 1,400 slaves upon his baptism. We have a woman by the name of Melania who freed 8,000, and another character by Ovidius who freed 5,000. In fact, it became a common practice to free one’s slaves upon becoming baptized and becoming a Christian. This is part of the reason why Celsus complained in the second century that Christianity was largely a religion of slaves and basically losers. He also complained that Christianity was attractive to people who thought irrationally, people he sometimes simply referred to as women. And in fact, that’s our next topic, how Christianity transformed the view of women, of children, and the family. If you look at Plato, for example, writing in, of course, the ancient Greek time, he makes children a property of the state, argues that wives should be given to the greatest warriors for the purpose of having the best children.
Aristotle said that man was primarily a political animal and that his duty to the state trumped his duty to women. Aristotle equated women with slaves, which means he thought of them as being quote-unquote living tools and even argued that women had no capability of virtue.
They could not actually perform as men could in terms of, say, choosing righteousness. Now, of course, we do have some exceptions to this. If you see the character of, say, Penelope in the Odyssey, she seems to be a glorious exception to how Aristotle viewed women. But then again, Homer probably wrote centuries before Aristotle. As for the Romans, based upon what I taught you in antiquity, they had a higher view of the family, and yet they regularly practiced sexual relationship with their slaves.
They regularly visited prostitutes or practiced homosexuality. We’re told, for example, that chastity, that sexual ethics, or just simply being faithful to one spouse was rare. One historian says there were no vestal virgins found under the reign of Augustus. Both Juvenal and Seneca comment on divorce being frequent. In fact, Edward Gibbon, writing in more modern times but commenting on ancient Rome, says that divorce was not just common, but it was easy and therefore it was frequently done.
Writing more recently, the historian Kyle Harper says that history shows, quote, “a vast gulf between Christian standards and contemporary sexual practice that was shaped by an expansive slave trade and a flourishing sex industry.” What he means is that Christians lived uniquely different lives when it came to the issues of sex, marriage, and children. Justin Martyr comments that slaves and frequently abandoned children were used in the sex trade, both male and female. That’s why when you look at the gospel, you get a very different story. You see that women play key roles in the gospel story, whether it’s Mary as the mother of Jesus or Mary Magdalene who witnesses Christ resurrected, as well as the other women that are present. Keep in mind, Celsus complained that Christianity was entrusted to women. That’s why he called it “an irrational faith” or that it just appealed to what he called women and children. He didn’t think that Christianity was truly satisfying or intellectual, and he had a low view of anybody who wasn’t a Roman man. One of the things we see in the early church is a whole history of female martyrs as well. martyred for their refusal to give in to the sexual advances of pagan men. A Libanius commenting on this simply says, “My, what women these Christians have.” Well, it’s remarkable because women had equality with men before God. That’s something that’s very clear because they’re also made in God’s image. There’s also commands for husbands to love their wives and treat their wives as Christ loves the church. When it came to things like adultery, adultery was seen as being equally heinous if committed by the husband as by the wife. And Christianity specifically addressed issues of sexual purity. We have Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount saying that if you even lust after another, you are breaking the law to not commit adultery.
Or we have Paul, for example, using the Greek word pornea, which was a word that meant any form of sexual sin, that was any kind of sexual act outside of marriage.
But that would also include, say, homosexuality. It’s there in the Gospels that Paul makes it very plain that sex is something that’s guarded by marriage. In fact, it can properly be celebrated in there because it makes the two, husband and wife, one flesh. He says things like, “Your body is a temple to the Holy Spirit,” and that we are all members of the body of Christ, and that sexual sins are a little bit different than other sins because they’re sins against our own body. Pliny the Younger was confused by the lack of adultery amongst Christians, thought it was a strange thing. And yet Christians lived differently. We have Clement of Alexandria saying, quote, “The mother is the glory of her children. “The wife is the glory of her husband, “and both are the glory of the wife. “God is the glory of all of them together.” Or you have this beautiful statement by Tertullian in which he comments on marriage amongst Christians saying, “What a union of two believers exist. “One hope, one vow, one discipline, and one worship. They are brother and sister, two fellow servants, one spirit and one flesh. Where there is one flesh, there is also one spirit. They pray together, they fast together, they instruct, exhort, and support each other. They go together to the church of God and to the table of the Lord. Psalms and hymns they sing together, and they vie with each other in singing to God. Christ rejoices when he sees and hears this. He gives them his peace. Where two are together in his name, there is he. And where he is, there the evil one cannot come. That is a remarkable affirmation of marriage that the ancient world never understood.