PZ Myers reports in
They were only athier, we're the athiest! on Kieran Healy's
The Original Atheists. He has been reading
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix’s
Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (or via:
amazon.co.uk), a collection of posthumously-published papers, including one on how the pagan Romans had treated the early Xians:
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It was not so much the positive beliefs and practices of the Christians which aroused pagan hostility, but above all the negative element in their religion: their total refusal to worship any god but their own. … I shall call this exclusiveness, for convenience, by the name the Greeks gave to it, ‘atheism’ (ἀθεότης); characteristically, the Latin writers refer to the same phenomenon by more concrete expressions having no philosophical overtones, such as “deos non colere” (not paying cult to the gods): the word atheus first appears in Latin in Christian writers of the early fourth century, Arnobius and Lactantius …
… [U]ntil the advent of Christianity no one ever had any reason for refusing to take part in the ceremonies which others observed—except of course the Jews, and they were a special case, a unique exception … [because] their religious rites were ancestral, and very ancient. … The gods would forgive the inexplicable monotheism of the Jews, who were, so to speak, licensed atheists … Matters were very different with the Christians, who had ex hypothesi abandoned their ancestral religions … The Christians asserted openly either that the pagan gods did not exist at all or that they were malevolent demons. Not only did they themselves refuse to take part in pagan religious rites: they would not even recognize that others ought to do so. As a result … the mass of pagans were naturally apprehensive that the gods would vent their wrath at this dishonour not upon the Christians alone but on the whole community; and when disasters did occur they were only too likely to fasten the blame on to the Christians. …. Tertullian sums it all up in a brilliant and famous sentence in the Apologeticus: the pagans, he says, “suppose that the Christians are the cause of every public disaster, every misfortune that happens to the people. If the Tiber overflows or the Nile doesn’t, if there is a drought or an earthquake, a famine or pestilence, at once the cry goes up, “The Christians to the lion.”
The essential point I want to make is that this superstitious feeling on the part of the pagans was due above all to the Christians’ “atheism,” their refusal to acknowledge the gods and give them their due by paying them cult.
… We must not confuse the kind of atheism charged against the Christians with philosophical skepticism … The vital difference was, of course, that the philosophers, whatever they might believe, and even write down for circulation among educated folk, would have been perfectly willing to perform any cult act required of them—and that was what mattered.
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Ste. Croix then went on to describe how the Xians became much bigger persecutors when their religion got official support, not only of pagans but of other Xians; his book description states
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This volume brings together seven seminal papers by the great radical historian Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, who died in 2000, on early Christian topics, with an especial focus on persecution and martyrdom. Christian martyrdom is a topic which conjures up ready images of inhumane persecutors confronted by Christian heroes who perish for the instant but win the long-term battle for reputation. In five of these essays Ste. Croix scrutinizes the evidence to reveal the significant role of Christian themselves, first as volunteer martyrs and later, after the triumph of Christianity in the early fourth century, as organizers of much more effective persecutions. A sixth essay pursues the question of the control of Christianity through a comprehensive study of the context for one of the Church's most important and divisive doctrinal decisions, at the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451); the key role of the emperor and his senior secular officials is revealed, contrary to the prevailing interpretation of Church historians. Finally the attitudes of the early Church towards property and slavery are reviewed, to show the divide between the Gospel message and actual practice.
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That may be a bit romantic about slavery, but I think that it's correct about property. In the Gospels, Jesus Christ was anti-wealth, calling on people to sell everything that they have and give the money to the poor, and calling the love of money the root of all evil. He was also opposed to accumulating this-world wealth and foresight -- God will take care of you no matter what, so why bother? And he apparently practiced what he preached, living simply and sponging off of his followers. Acts tells us that the early Xians held all things in common, and that Ananias and Sapphira mysteriously dropped dead after failing to turn over all their property to Church leaders.
The philosophers often expressed skepticism about the gods worshipped by the common people, preferring to believe in other kinds of gods or even no gods at all, though they nevertheless worshipped those gods:
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Originally Posted by Carneades
We Skeptics follow in practice the way of the world, but without holding any opinion about it. We speak of the Gods as existing and offer worship to the Gods and say that they exercise providence, but in saying this we express no belief, and avoid the rashness of the dogmatizers.
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One of Kieran Healy's commenters quotes Julian the Apostate:
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The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in this unique relation to its maker? Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and squeaking “for our sakes was the world created.”
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And Augustine included in his
City of God (early 5th cy. CE) a rebuttal of a common view among the remaining pagans that the fall of Rome was due to neglecting to worship Rome's traditional gods.
The Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were far from the first to blame calamities on gods pissed off by rejection.
Fast-forwarding a millennium, one commenter noted that
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Febvre’s “The Religion of Rabelais” argues that during the early modern period (ca. 1500-1700) everyone called everyone else an atheist, without anyone ever professing atheism.
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06-03-2007, 11:22 PM
The Early Christians as Atheists
