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<\/a>In Chapter 15 Johnson turns to evidence for Religiousness D in 2nd and 3rd century Christianity,\u00a0 an approach to religion that sees it as a world stabilizing force. \u00a0 The concern here is for the role of religion in society.\u00a0 In some ways it is odd to address this subject when one is talking about the pre-Constantinian church.\u00a0 After all, Christianity was still not a religio licita,\u00a0 it did not contribute to stabilizing the Roman empire, nor even to stabilizing the religious world within the Empire, so far as we can tell, unless one is talking about Christians being honest and good citizens, and doing charitable works.\u00a0 But in fact, that is mostly not what Johnson is talking about in this chapter.<\/p>\nIn analyzing what Clement, Ignatius, and Justin have to say about episcopal structures, the emerging role of bishops, liturgy and cultic language for the ekklesia <\/em>something very odd happens.\u00a0 While Johnson recognizes that Clement (e.g. in 1 Clem. 40.1ff.) is drawing analogies with the priestly praxis of Israel,\u00a0 not with Greco-Roman praxis,\u00a0 such that the bishop begins to play the role of high priest, in regard to the Lord\u2019s Supper praxis,\u00a0 (see pp. 236-37) and he recognizes the indebtedness of a document like the Didache to Jewish sources of thinking about meals and sacrifices and leadership,\u00a0 reflecting a growing suspicion of prophets and more charismatic forms of leadership, he does not make clear why exactly we should see such adaptation as evidence of an increasingly Greco-Roman character to early Christianity. <\/em> He concludes for example \u201cIt is sufficient, however, to establish that long before Christianity achieved its position as the imperial religion, bishops had emerged as local leaders, some exercising dominance over entire regions, and some met in councils to decide disputed issues. It is also sufficient to show that episcopal power was symbolized in terms of the high priesthood of the Old Testament and that the celebration of the Eucharist by bishops was characterized in terms of sacrifice.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 245). \u00a0\u00a0 Again one must ask,\u00a0 how exactly is this evidence that Christianity was, or was becoming a Greco-Roman religion? \u00a0\u00a0 If we look at Greco-Roman religion of the time, all cults were basically local.\u00a0 There was no equivalent to the bishop presiding over a region, in Greco-Roman religion unless one counts the pontifex maximus, the Emperor himself,\u00a0 but Christianity did not yet have popes in this period,\u00a0 despite anachronistic attempts by some to claim otherwise. \u00a0 They had monarchial bishops in places like Antioch, and Ephesus, and Rome.<\/p>\n Take the evidence from Irenaeus.\u00a0 As Johnson says \u201cIrenaeus\u2019 overall strategy, then consisted in establishing the tripod of Christian self-definition: the rule of faith (creed), the collection of Scriptures (canon), and the teaching office of bishops\u00a0 (council).\u201d\u00a0 (p. 247).\u00a0 This is exactly right, and it distinguishes Christianity from Greco-Roman religion or even ways of being religious in various regards.\u00a0 Greco-Roman religions had no holy books,\u00a0 nor were their creeds that people went around reciting, and as I have already said, there is no functional equivalent to the monarchial bishop in Greco-Roman religion. \u00a0 Christianity, it would seem was evolving by developing its own praxis, its own ways of being religious, its own ecclesial structures and offices. \u00a0 And where did Irenaeus think he got this threefold impetus to define Christianity?\u00a0 From the apostles and apostolic tradition and from Scripture, and from the newly recognized normative collections of Christian texts, in the first instance a collection of the four Gospels and of Paul\u2019s letters.<\/p>\n Johnson goes on to argue: \u201cLong before it became the imperial religion, Christianity appeared institutionally as a vast network of associations that had developed a distinctive politeia. <\/em>It\u2019s bishops were elected by the people, but drew their legitimacy from a narrative of apostolic succession that fundamentally identified the visible community with its leaders. Bishops, furthermore, spoke of the church in terms of a sanctuary in which they functioned as divinely ordained priests, offering sacrifices to God through Christ.\u201d (p. 253). \u00a0 He is entirely right about this, which means, you can\u2019t blame Constantine for all this.\u00a0 And notice his admission that Christians were developing a distinct politeia in fact based on a taking over of certain things from the OT itself, not from Greco-Roman religion. \u00a0 Now it is true that by that hermeneutical move, Christianity began to look more like any sort of religion that focused on priests, sacrifices, and sanctuaries, whether Jewish or Greco-Roman. \u00a0 This however doesn\u2019t make Christianity more like Greco-Roman religion any more than it was more like Jewish religion pre-70 A.D. \u00a0 And these develops all transpired before: 1) the agreement on the N T canon in the early church; 2) the Christological councils in 325 and 450;\u00a0 3)\u00a0 before Christianity became a religio licita, a legal and publicly practiced and endorsed religion in the Empire. \u00a0 If we want to see Christianity in bed with Greco-Roman politicians and those in power,\u00a0 we have to wait for the time of Constantine. \u00a0 But one cannot blame the ecclesial structures of early Christianity on him. \u00a0\u00a0 And finally the Greco-Roman associations\u00a0 are not much of a parallel to what was going on in the ekklesiae. <\/em>Whether we are talking about trade guilds, or merchant associations, or even the Mysteries, these things don\u2019t walk or talk like what we see in the churches of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.<\/p>\n Thus far in this book,\u00a0 Johnson has established that some of the ways early Christian had of being religious, one also finds in early Judaism and in the Greco-Roman world. \u00a0 There were indeed Christians who focused on divine benefits or moral transformation, and other things.\u00a0 But frankly one could say \u2018that\u2019s just human nature\u2019\u00a0 which is self-centered and approaches all things, including religion with a what can I get out of this attitude. \u00a0 What he has not established is his key claim made on pp. 254-55:<\/p>\n Within the framework of the analysis used in this study, Christianity was a \u2018Greco-Roman\u2019 religion virtually from the start and grew increasingly closer to forms and expressions of religion found in the Greco-Roman environment. Rather, than a foreign and forced imposition, the Greco-Roman character of\u00a0 Christianity was a natural development that required no external or political assistance. As the presence and influence of living Judaism receded, moreover, Christianity\u2019s only real connection to its Jewish roots was through the reading of Scripture.\u00a0 These sacred texts from ancient Israel were being read and interpreted however, as Greek writings\u00a0 (the LXX) by people whose cultural environment, rhetorical education, and religious expectations were entirely Gentile.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n I think Johnson is right that over time we see more and more influence of Greco-Roman philosophical thought (for example at Nicea) and all along we have seen the use of the Greek language and rhetoric by early Christians.\u00a0 And he is quite right that the form Christianity took leading into the 4th century was an internal development, and in part we may put some of its shape down to the\u00a0 increasing influence of Gentiles in the church. \u00a0 A very large lacunae in this statement however is this\u2014 the symbolic universe, the narrative thought world, and the theologizing and ethicizing of Christians owed far more to their Jewish sacred texts, both those written by Jews, and later those written by Jewish Christians or God-fearers like Luke than Johnson allows.\u00a0 And indeed the influence of the Jewish content of these texts continued to be fundamental to the \u2018ways of being religious\u2019\u00a0 in early Christianity, though in the cult of the martyrs and in the monastic movement, and in the Platonizing reflections on God\u2019s nature, we can see increasing influence from the Greco-Roman thought world.<\/p>\n Buried in the footnotes is a begrudging reference to a seminal work that takes a very different tact and draws very different conclusions on this same subject\u2014 the classic study of Robert Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God, (Yale, 2003). <\/em>If you are looking for a rebuttal of some of Johnson\u2019s major claims in advance of Johnson making them,\u00a0 you should read Wilken\u2019s book in tandem with Johnson\u2019s. \u00a0 Rejecting the notion of the hellenization of Christianity, Wilken argues \u201d a more apt expression would be the Christianization of Hellenism, though that phrase does not capture the originality of Christian thought nor the debt owed to Jewish ways of thinking and to the Jewish Bible.\u00a0 Neither does it acknowledge the good and right qualities of Hellenic thinking that Christians recognized as valuable for example the moral life understood in terms of the virtues. At the same time, one observes again and again that Christian thinking, while working within patterns of thought and conceptions rooted in Greco-Roman culture, transformed them so profoundly that in the end something quite new came into being\u201d\u00a0 (pp. xvi-xvii).<\/p>\n It is pity that Johnson doesn\u2019t give due attention and critique to Wilken\u2019s detailed arguments, and I must confess that having read both books,\u00a0 it appears to me that Wilken definitely has the better of the argument,\u00a0 not denying the influence of Hellenism on Christianity, but also not making the over-sized claim that Christianity was a Greco-Roman religion from the outset. \u00a0 This, as Wilken would say is rhetorical hyperbole not demonstrable by the evidence, especially if one is talking about pre-Constantinian Christianity. \u00a0 Johnson is right that rhetoricians did become church leaders especially after Constantine.\u00a0 He is right that the evangelistic character of Christianity made it susceptible\u00a0 to the influence of Greco-Roman praxis, thought, ways and we see evidence of it. \u00a0\u00a0 But early Christianity continued to be a development of early Judaism precisely because of the ongoing influence of its sacred texts on its thought world, and its symbol system so much so, that you can tell the difference between the exegesis of the Antioch school and that of Alexandrians like Clement and Origen and it becomes clear which sort of approach is more or less in line with the Jewish substance and character of these texts. \u00a0 The fact that Philo provides a precedent for Origen and Clement ought to lead us to ask the question\u2014 would we want to say that the religion of Philo was straight-forwardly a form of Greco-Roman religion? \u00a0\u00a0 I think not, and nor should we claim this about the early Christian writers who adopted and adapted what they had learned from Greco-Roman education and philosophy and ways of interpreting texts to further their essentially Jewish monotheistic and Christocentric religion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the end, Johnson\u2019s approach to this subject is, and is intended to be a provocation.\u00a0 He is arguing a particular case.\u00a0 He argues well,\u00a0 but the case has too much neglect of evidence, too much imbalance, too much taking small or individual examples as evidence of large trends.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In our final post on this book,\u00a0 I will deal with Johnson\u2019s\u00a0 Epilogue,\u00a0\u00a0 where we learn what some of\u00a0 his real urgencies were for doing this study.<\/p>\n <\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Chapter 15 Johnson turns to evidence for Religiousness D in 2nd and 3rd century Christianity,\u00a0 an approach to religion that sees it as a world stabilizing force. \u00a0 The concern here is for the role of religion in society.\u00a0 In some ways it is odd to address this subject when one is talking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n