gstafleu

In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark makes a claim for the superiority of Christian ethics when compared to those of the pagans (my emphases):
But were they "revolutionary ideas"? I think that, with the possible exception of translating the divine sacrifice into human sacrifices, these ideas were not new, as many a discussion on this forum has shown. In fact, they match well with what Karen Armstrong argues, in The Great Transformation, that the Axial Age was all about: a realization that the wide spread of generalized misery required a more compassionate attitude towards each other. But if the ideas, for the most part, were not new, was perhaps their wide-spread implementation new? Were, during the Axial Age, these ideas anything more than well intended mutterings among some elite philosophers, at best cries in the wilderness of some ill-heard prophets? When it comes to the implementation of the ideas, Stark says the following:
I think that in general Stark may have gotten this right, although, afaict, the Mysteries did provide something a lot like salvation--but they were expensive and hence could not spread all that widely.

So, even though the ideas may (mostly) not have been new, could it be that the wide-spread implementation of these ideas was indeed new?

(MacMullen 1981 is: MacMullen, Ramsay. 1981. Paganism in the Roman Empire)

Gerard Stafleu

Ben C Smith

How widespread could this implementation have been? Christianity was a fringe cult for nearly two centuries, I think, before growing into a real social force in its own right.

(This is not at all a slap in the faces of the earliest Christians. In an empire like Rome had, if you want to buck the system, you necessarily have to do so in your own little conclave or utopia, as it were. Unless you happen to be the emperor himself.)

Ben.

gstafleu

Stark puts this in the contest of the epidemics of 165 and 251. Going by his numbers, the Christian population at those dates would have been something like 50,000 (0.07%) and 1,100,000 (2%). The widespreadness here refers not so much to widespread in the whole population, as to widespread withing the movement: if most of the people in the Christian community practiced these ideas, while most others did not, then that would be noticeable by itself. It would be demographically noticeable if these practices gave the Christians an advantage in survival rates. The estimates of mortality rates vary widely, but Stark goes with the estimate By McNeill (1976, Plagues and Peoples) that between a quarter and a third of the population died during the epidemics. One tends to notice something like that, and differential survival rates would in all likelihood be noticed as well. Stark's argument for differential mortality follows on page 88 of his book, but I haven't read it yet.

In any case, once Christianity reached a majority, around Constantine's time, "widespread" would be accurate in the population-wide sense as well. Except of course that Constantine changed Christianity from a non-state religion to a state religion, and the latter tends to favor the interests of the state and the ruling elites. So as of that time we can expect the emphasis on charity to change in the direction of emphasis on conformity and following the state's (and thus the church's) rules. It is during the first few centuries that the charity bit may have given Christianity a relative advantage over the competition.

Gerard Stafleu

Ben C Smith

Agreed. In fact, I think some of the conformity started pretty early in Christianity. We see a drop-off in the early Pauline radicality, for example, as we move into the canonical pseudo-Paulines, and I think we see a taming of the radical Jesus to go along with it.

Ben.

gstafleu

Interesting, but conformity to what? It can't have been conformity to a central creed, because there was no such thing, right? Perhaps some local chapters required conformity, but wouldn't that just have been some localized authoritarianism, i.e conformity to the local top-dog? Or are you referring to a drive towards a more central creed springing up?

Gerard

Ben C Smith

To Roman culture and the mos maiorum. Contrast the radical Paul on slavery and gender, for example, with the pseudo-Pauline Haustafel (household tables).

Ben.

ETA: I think we can trace conformity to creeds, too (think of the Old Roman creed, for example, or of the insistence against heresy in Irenaeus), but the relevance to ethics would be indirect. Conformity to Roman social praxis, OTOH, is more directly relevant to ethics.

PhilosopherJay

Hi gstafleu,

Ethics is a complicated field. There are a number of different definitions and approaches to it.

If we take ethics to be the actual practice of a group in a time and place, we see that ethics is always tied to a multitude of social practices and socio-economic factors rather than proclaimed doctrines.

Since my group, if it has been around for a few years will likely acquire hundreds of contradictorary doctrines, it is quite easy to take a few doctrines from my group and proclaim then better than selected doctrines from another group.

For example, one could say that the Judeo-Christian doctrine of loving God before all others entails betraying and destroying anybody, even your mother and father, if they go against God. In practice it led to the breaking apart of countless families and the destruction of the most advanced civilization on Earth (the Roman Empire) causing untold misery to countless millions for a thousand years.

Compare this to the Pagan doctrine of always treating a stranger with kindness because you never knew if that stranger might be a God. Did this not forster and increase universal love, travel and the arts for five hundred years before Christianity was ever invented. Compare this with the Christian doctrine that the devil can take a pleasing form or any form he wishes. Does this not promote the worst type of fear, paranoia and xenophobia, where anyone you meet may be the devil?

Or should we take the Christian doctrine so dear to the hearts of Christian Crusaders that you go to heaven if you slaughter an infidel. How many countless thousands of babies, infants and children were murdered in an attempt to put that Christian doctrine into practice after Crusaders sacked foreign cities.

How different from the pagan idea that when victorious you should thank the Gods and show mercy to your enemies, because you did not know if the Gods might favor someone else in the next battle.

Of course, one may argue that these aren't the "real" Christian doctrines, but a distortion of them, as the actual world always distorts doctrines.

Perhaps, we should compare doctrines ideally implemented in an ideal world. But ideal worlds are ideal regardless of the doctrines we use to implement them.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Chili

. . . but it goes beyond ethics because high culture must deliver which the gutter can't other than give us more sewer to drown in. It is like trying to beat a bad habit out of a horse, or breeding the devil with force who probably won't catch and if she does you don't want to be around when it comes (ask Bush).

It is a question of beauty wherein truth is found and wherein truth will continue to be found from and arising only from the stand [off] between good and evil instead of just good and bad. This change made virtue a quality of its own in a rout created between the captial sins and cardinal virtues that raised ground zero far above human gravity where sewer had to come from a wolf to feed the lamb. It is kind of like developing the good habits of a horse to nihilate the bad and so have a good horse in the end.

More to the point may be to say that it is not good enough to love one another but rather to 'be lief' (be willing) to one another and act upon it . . . and that is where the ultimate sacrifice is a good metaphor.

gstafleu

My bold. The question of course is: can the bolded bits be shown to be true and a result of their alleged causes. I'm not saying that this is not so, just that it needs to be shown, not just stated as obvious. For example, was, during the first few centuries (i.e. before Christianity became a state religion) the idea that one should love god more than one's family, even to the extent of neglecting one's family as a result, indeed a wide spread one? Just finding it in the bible--which was written by the leaders of the movement rather than by the average follower--doesn't mean much. Can you (a) show that this belief was widely held by the average believers, and (b) that it had the consequences you ascribe it? The fact that the Roman empire fell apart roughly during the rise of Christianity does not mean that Christianity caused this fall. It might be that the fall of the empire caused the rise of Christianity, e.g. ("any port in a storm," or ideas to that effect).

Gerard Stafleu

PhilosopherJay

Hi gstafleu,

I think these propositions would be easy to argue. I could bring forward lots of documentation to prove the horrendous effects Christianity had on civilization for well over a thousand years. Nearly all the Enlightenment writers of the 18th century (Voltaire, Rousseau, Baron d'holbach)and early social scientific writers of the 19th century (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) published detailed works on it.

What I could not argue is the bizarre idea put forward by Stark that "What was new was the notion that more than self-interested exchange relations were possible between humans and the supernatural. The Christian teaching that God loves those who love him was alien to pagan beliefs."

What is all of Greek Mythology but a catalog of the love (and hate) between the Gods and men and women. This love is not a dispasionate, asexual, Platonic love that the Christian God offers, which is actually more like a pet-love between master-God and dog; but a real, passionate, physical love. Take for example the love of Psyche and Cupid. They actually engage in intercourse in his palace. He loves her so much that he brings her back from the dead after she dies. Adonis and Aphrodite share the same kind of physical love and Aphrodite also brings him back from the dead, albeit only for six months every year, as he must spend six months in Hades with Persephone.

Again, take for example the love of the God Apollo for the Princess Kyrene. He made her the founder and Queen of the city of Cyrene, gave her long life, and made their son Aristeus immortal. Here is a bit of two ancient versions of the tale:

Pindar, Pythian Ode 9. 6 ff (trans. Conway) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :

"Kyrene, she it was who once Apollon of the flowing hair seized from the windswept vales of Pelion, and in his golden car bore off the huntress maid; and of a land, most richly blessed with flocks and fruits, made her the enthroned queen, to find in this third root of earth’s mainland [i.e. to the third continent, Africa] a smiling and fertile home.
And Aphrodite of the silver feet welcomed this guest from Delos, laying the touch of her light hand upon his god-built car, and o’er the sweet bliss of their bridal she spread love’s shy and winsome modesty, plighting in joint wedlock the god and maiden daughter of wide-ruling Hypseus.

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 498 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"Folk say that once upon a time there was a shepherdess called Kyrene who used to graze her flocks in the water-meadows of Peneios. She was a virgin and she prized her maidenhood. But one day when she was tending her sheep down by the river, Apollon carried her off from Haimonia [i.e. Thessalia] and set her down among the Nymphai of the land in distant Libya near the Myrtousian Mount. There she bore him a son called Aristaios, who is remembered now in the cornlands of Haimonia as Agreus (the Hunter) and Nomios (the Shepherd). Kyrene herself was left in Libya by Apollon, who in token of his love made her a Nymphe and huntress with the gift of a long life. But he took his infant son away to be brought up by Kheiron in his cave."

How many hundreds of these tales of real and deep, passionate, poetical, and physical love between Gods and both men and women do we have? How ridiculous to say that they involved a simple something for something exchange. Compare them to the dispassionate Christian assurances that "God loves you." What Christian story even remotely indicates this with any realism? The phrase "God loves you" from the mouth of a Christian patriarch seems about as sincere as a bank clerk's "Have a nice day" at the end of a transaction. The Greeks and Romans could back up their claims of their Gods returning love for love with countless stories. In Christianity, only the stories of cold calculating exchanges represents God's love for people. For example, God says to Abraham, "Give me the foreskins of your sons and I will give you innumerable generations of sons;" or, the constant hymn of the patriarch's, "Believe in Christ and obey his priests and I will give you eternal life." In both cases, the human gives up something real and tangible, while getting a fantastic, incommensurable and empty promise in return.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay