After Pentecost

195:0.1The re­sults of Pe­ter’s preach­ing on the day of Pen­te­cost were such as to de­cide the fu­ture poli­cies, and to de­ter­mine the plans, of the ma­jor­ity of the apos­tles in their ef­forts to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter was the real founder of the Chris­tian church; Paul car­ried the Chris­tian mes­sage to the gen­tiles, and the Greek be­liev­ers car­ried it to the whole Ro­man Em­pire.

195:0.2Al­though the tra­di­tion-bound and priest-rid­den He­brews, as a peo­ple, re­fused to ac­cept ei­ther Je­sus’ gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man or Pe­ter’s and Paul’s procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion and as­cen­sion of Christ (sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity), the rest of the Ro­man Em­pire was found to be re­cep­tive to the evolv­ing Chris­tian teach­ings. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion was at this time in­tel­lec­tual, war weary, and thor­oughly skep­ti­cal of all ex­ist­ing re­li­gions and uni­verse philoso­phies. The peo­ples of the West­ern world, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Greek cul­ture, had a revered tra­di­tion of a great past. They could con­tem­plate the in­her­i­tance of great ac­com­plish­ments in phi­los­o­phy, art, lit­er­a­ture, and po­lit­i­cal prog­ress. But with all these achieve­ments they had no soul-sat­is­fy­ing re­li­gion. Their spir­i­tual long­ings re­mained un­sat­is­fied.

195:0.3Upon such a stage of hu­man so­ci­ety the teach­ings of Je­sus, em­braced in the Chris­tian mes­sage, were sud­denly thrust. A new or­der of liv­ing was thus pre­sented to the hun­gry hearts of these West­ern peo­ples. This sit­u­a­tion meant im­me­di­ate con­flict be­tween the older re­li­gious prac­tices and the new Chris­tian­ized ver­sion of Je­sus’ mes­sage to the world. Such a con­flict must re­sult in ei­ther de­cided vic­tory for the new or for the old or in some de­gree of com­pro­mise. His­tory shows that the strug­gle ended in com­pro­mise. Chris­tian­ity pre­sumed to em­brace too much for any one peo­ple to as­sim­i­late in one or two gen­er­a­tions. It was not a sim­ple spir­i­tual ap­peal, such as Je­sus had pre­sented to the souls of men; it early struck a de­cided at­ti­tude on re­li­gious rit­u­als, ed­u­ca­tion, magic, med­i­cine, art, lit­er­a­ture, law, gov­ern­ment, morals, sex reg­u­la­tion, polygamy, and, in lim­ited de­gree, even slav­ery. Chris­tian­ity came not merely as a new re­li­gion—some­thing all the Ro­man Em­pire and all the Ori­ent were wait­ing for—but as a new or­der of hu­man so­ci­ety. And as such a pre­ten­sion it quickly pre­cip­i­tated the so­cial-moral clash of the ages. The ide­als of Je­sus, as they were rein­ter­preted by Greek phi­los­o­phy and so­cial­ized in Chris­tian­ity, now boldly chal­lenged the tra­di­tions of the hu­man race em­bod­ied in the ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gions of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

195:0.4At first, Chris­tian­ity won as con­verts only the lower so­cial and eco­nomic strata. But by the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond cen­tury the very best of Greco-Ro­man cul­ture was in­creas­ingly turn­ing to this new or­der of Chris­tian be­lief, this new con­cept of the pur­pose of liv­ing and the goal of ex­is­tence.

195:0.5How did this new mes­sage of Jew­ish ori­gin, which had al­most failed in the land of its birth, so quickly and ef­fec­tively cap­ture the very best minds of the Ro­man Em­pire? The tri­umph of Chris­tian­ity over the philo­sophic re­li­gions and the mys­tery cults was due to:

195:0.61. Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Paul was a great or­ga­nizer and his suc­ces­sors kept up the pace he set.

195:0.72. Chris­tian­ity was thor­oughly Hel­le­nized. It em­braced the best in Greek phi­los­o­phy as well as the cream of He­brew the­ol­ogy.

195:0.83. But best of all, it con­tained a new and great ideal, the echo of the life be­stowal of Je­sus and the re­flec­tion of his mes­sage of sal­va­tion for all man­kind.

195:0.94. The Chris­tian lead­ers were will­ing to make such com­pro­mises with Mith­ra­ism that the bet­ter half of its ad­her­ents were won over to the An­ti­och cult.

195:0.105. Like­wise did the next and later gen­er­a­tions of Chris­tian lead­ers make such fur­ther com­pro­mises with pa­gan­ism that even the Ro­man em­peror Con­stan­tine was won to the new re­li­gion.

195:0.11But the Chris­tians made a shrewd bar­gain with the pa­gans in that they adopted the rit­u­al­is­tic pageantry of the pa­gan while com­pelling the pa­gan to ac­cept the Hel­le­nized ver­sion of Pauline Chris­tian­ity. They made a bet­ter bar­gain with the pa­gans than they did with the Mith­raic cult, but even in that ear­lier com­pro­mise they came off more than con­querors in that they suc­ceeded in elim­i­nat­ing the gross im­moral­i­ties and also nu­mer­ous other rep­re­hen­si­ble prac­tices of the Per­sian mys­tery.

195:0.12Wisely or un­wisely, these early lead­ers of Chris­tian­ity de­lib­er­ately com­pro­mised the ide­als of Je­sus in an ef­fort to save and fur­ther many of his ideas. And they were em­i­nently suc­cess­ful. But mis­take not! these com­pro­mised ide­als of the Mas­ter are still la­tent in his gospel, and they will even­tu­ally as­sert their full power upon the world.

195:0.13By this pa­gani­za­tion of Chris­tian­ity the old or­der won many mi­nor vic­to­ries of a rit­u­al­is­tic na­ture, but the Chris­tians gained the as­cen­dancy in that:

195:0.141. A new and enor­mously higher note in hu­man morals was struck.

195:0.152. A new and greatly en­larged con­cept of God was given to the world.

195:0.163. The hope of im­mor­tal­ity be­came a part of the as­sur­ance of a rec­og­nized re­li­gion.

195:0.174. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was given to man’s hun­gry soul.

195:0.18Many of the great truths taught by Je­sus were al­most lost in these early com­pro­mises, but they yet slum­ber in this re­li­gion of pa­ganized Chris­tian­ity, which was in turn the Pauline ver­sion of the life and teach­ings of the Son of Man. And Chris­tian­ity, even be­fore it was pa­ganized, was first thor­oughly Hel­le­nized. Chris­tian­ity owes much, very much, to the Greeks. It was a Greek, from Egypt, who so bravely stood up at Nicaea and so fear­lessly chal­lenged this as­sem­bly that it dared not so ob­scure the con­cept of the na­ture of Je­sus that the real truth of his be­stowal might have been in dan­ger of be­ing lost to the world. This Greek’s name was Athana­sius, and but for the elo­quence and the logic of this be­liever, the per­sua­sions of Ar­ius would have tri­umphed.