Christ is risen from the dead: A Paschal Hymn

Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; let those who hate Him flee from before His face.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax melts before the fire.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

So the sinners will perish before the face of God; but let the righteous be glad.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

This is the day which the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

- From the Byzantine Rite.

Growth of the Old Atheism

If you had to put your finger on what caused the rise of the church in the Roman world (and beyond) in the first four centuries AD, what would you suggest? Miracles (as Eusebis suggests)? The blood of the martyrs (as Tertullian suggests)? I'd be inclined to follow sociologist Rodney Stark's suggestion that it was through relational networks of family and friends.*

According to Emperor Julian (b.331/332, d. 363), the last pagan emperor of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity in it's first four centuries - by the end of which at least half the empire was Christian - was the distinctive behaviour of Christians (which D.B. Hart includes as temperance, gentleness, lawfulness, and acts of supererogatory kindness) which were visible and appealing to their non-Christian neighbours. Julian wrote:

"It is [the Christians] philanthropy towards strangers, the care they take of the graves of the dead, and the affected sanctity with which they conduct their lives that have done most to spread their atheism." - Julian, Epistle 22 to Arsacius, the pagan priest of Galatia. Quoted by D.B. Hart in Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its fashionable Enemies, 2009.

* Rodney Stark would also argue that it was Christian behavior that made it so attractive, particularity it's treatment of women.

Our Lost History

I recently read The Lost History of Christianity - The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia- and How It Died by Philip Jenkins (2008). It is a magisterial introduction to a rich but largely forgotten history. The lands Jenkins has in mind were well and truly the center of the Christian world for well over a thousand years, even after the Muslim invasion of these lands from the seventh century. To understand the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the center of Christian gravity at any time might now seem as natural today as arguing that the Buddhist homeland was once Buddhist. But Jenkins argues that even in 1200 AD there were 21 million Christians in Asia and the proportion of the world's Christians living in Asia and Africa was 34 per cent. These Christians are different from us, but they had a rich and vibrant church life of academia (far above anything the Western Church approached until at least the 14th century), liturgy (which may be the source of Gregorian Chants) and mission (particularly the Syrians, who quite successfully reached into India, central Asia and China). Before England had an archbishop of Canterbury - possibly even before Canterbury had a church - the Syrian church had established metropolitan sees in Merv and Herat, modern Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Before Poland was Catholic, before Good King Wenceslas ruled a Christian Bohemia, the church in Bukhara, Samarkand and Patna had all reached metropolitan status. Our mental maps of Christianity are too small, and we can't understand Christian history without Asia - or Asian history without Christianity.

Which makes the decline of these churches all the more tragic. The number of Christians in Asia in 1500 had fallen from 21 million to just 3.4 million. Most of these great churches ceased to exist, whilst the ones that did were small, marginalised and associated ethnic minorities. Churches who's leaders had once commanded the respect and obedience of at least a quarter of the world's Christians (and had prayed for the gospel of Yeshua to transform lives in Tibet and Java) was reduced to scratching out an existence in the hills.

Jenkins tells the stories of the churches and what happened to their survivors in the 20th Century. He also offers advice on what to do when churches die, particularly such large slabs of area where almost all Christian history has been totally eradicated. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Church history, particularly for those interested in the meaning of that history for today.

A Greek distraction

Some of you might find this interesting (if that doesn't work go here). It's a critical history of the Greek Orthodox Church, particuarly on how the Byzanitne Church developed under Ottoman occupation, leading up to the Greek Revolution in the 1820's, and today. It is written by my NT Greek Lecturer, Vrasidas Karalis, who formrly taught at the Greek Theological College in Sydney - that is, until they excommunicated him. (Yes, this is written after they excommunicated him).

If you would prefer the word document, just let me know and I'll email it to you. You can also listen to a talk he gave on Cornelius Castoriadis here.