PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS POST! IT IS MERELY MY ESSAY FOR CLASS
Stevie Williams
09-09-04
CLAS 220-01
Prof. Williams
Discussion Paper #2 9/9
In Response to Wilken Reading
“What is said critically by pagans in one generation will be mirrored positively by Christians in the next.” An interesting observation; perhaps if the pagans had not said erroneously that they venerated their prophet as a god, the Christians would not have reached the point of worshipping Jesus rather than following his teachings of how to worship God.
The early Christians seem like teenagers in love, pushed closer together by their parents’ disapproval of the relationship. When the pagans told them that their beliefs were superstition and not philosophy-i.e. that theirs was puppy love and not real love-the Christian apologists went about proving that not only was their religion philosophy, it was better philosophy than that of the pagans (“you’ve never been in love like this”). Understandably, anytime one’s beliefs are challenged, one must defend them; but it seems that in this case Christians chose a path of blind stubbornness rather than one of rational argument as a means of defense.
Athenagoras does make a valid point that the pagans are unnecessarily hard on the Christians, choosing to fear and condemn belief systems different from those sanctioned by Rome. “If we are impious because our religious devotion has nothing in common with theirs, all cities and nation are impious, for all men do not recognize the same gods.” Interesting that Christian Europe did not heed this argument in their later Crusades to “save” the holy land from the supposedly heathen Moslems.
“By presenting Christianity as a philosophical school… Christian apologists formed a self-understanding which diverged sharply from the self-understanding of the rand and file of Christians and from earlier Christian thinking.” It seems to me that Christianity would have remained a fringe cult had not the apologists brought philosophy to the table and made their religion a contender with other major belief systems. Had the religion remained at the stage of “Don’t ask questions, just believe,” it would have been too easy to write off amid the Greco-Roman need to know why to become the superpower it is today-a position which has allowed its followers to revert to the earlier mindset of blind faith.
09-09-04
CLAS 220-01
Prof. Williams
Discussion Paper #2 9/9
In Response to Wilken Reading
“What is said critically by pagans in one generation will be mirrored positively by Christians in the next.” An interesting observation; perhaps if the pagans had not said erroneously that they venerated their prophet as a god, the Christians would not have reached the point of worshipping Jesus rather than following his teachings of how to worship God.
The early Christians seem like teenagers in love, pushed closer together by their parents’ disapproval of the relationship. When the pagans told them that their beliefs were superstition and not philosophy-i.e. that theirs was puppy love and not real love-the Christian apologists went about proving that not only was their religion philosophy, it was better philosophy than that of the pagans (“you’ve never been in love like this”). Understandably, anytime one’s beliefs are challenged, one must defend them; but it seems that in this case Christians chose a path of blind stubbornness rather than one of rational argument as a means of defense.
Athenagoras does make a valid point that the pagans are unnecessarily hard on the Christians, choosing to fear and condemn belief systems different from those sanctioned by Rome. “If we are impious because our religious devotion has nothing in common with theirs, all cities and nation are impious, for all men do not recognize the same gods.” Interesting that Christian Europe did not heed this argument in their later Crusades to “save” the holy land from the supposedly heathen Moslems.
“By presenting Christianity as a philosophical school… Christian apologists formed a self-understanding which diverged sharply from the self-understanding of the rand and file of Christians and from earlier Christian thinking.” It seems to me that Christianity would have remained a fringe cult had not the apologists brought philosophy to the table and made their religion a contender with other major belief systems. Had the religion remained at the stage of “Don’t ask questions, just believe,” it would have been too easy to write off amid the Greco-Roman need to know why to become the superpower it is today-a position which has allowed its followers to revert to the earlier mindset of blind faith.