In my last post, I was commenting on Dr. Paula Fredriksen’s new book “Ancient Christianities”, highlighting what I found were striking things of the early church that most believers would have never heard from the pulpit. Here are some more topics that Fredriksen covers in her book that I think are noteworthy.

How was orthodoxy established?

In a world of competing interpretations of the miraculous feat of Jesus’s death and resurrection, ancient Jewish Scriptures and traditions and Greco-Roman philosophy, how did early Christian thinkers resolve conflicts? Did they sit down at the table over tea to debate these truths in a civil manner?

Of course not.

The word of the day back then was “heresy”. Early Christian authors offered a diversity of views that were often debated by their counterparts in later years. Because it was important to the early church to establish a common body of “truths”, views that were unpopular were deemed heretical, often slandering their opponents in the process. For example, St. Justin, in the early apologetic text called Dialogue with Trypho, held no punches when he debated his Jewish opponent (it is unclear if Trypho was a real person).

Moreover, beliefs changed over time. In Fredriksen’s own words: “Orthodoxy’s true enemy is time. What is right belief in one period becomes wrong belief in a later one.” One example she quoted comes from an apocalypse belief in millenarianism (see Rev 20) held by the early church fathers St. Justin and Irenaeus, which was deemed heretical by Origen a century later for being too “fleshly”. Ironically, some of Origen’s beliefs also became deemed as heresy later on (see the Origenist crisis).

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years (Rev 20:1-2 NRSVUE)

Finally, what happened to those who were deemed to hold onto heretical beliefs? A sect that practiced asceticism founded by Mani in the third century was later persecuted by the Christian emperors Valentinian and Theodosius in the late fourth century. Among the persecuted was Priscillian the bishop of Ávila, who was executed by the Christian state. Theodosius I zealously advocated for the Nicaea position and declared opponents to be “demented and insane” and “shall be smitten, first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of our own initiative”. Whatever their ends were, it was probably not good.

Just how powerful did bishops become?

In Chapter 5 of the book, Fredriksen outlined how Christianity intertwined with Roman rule, especially when the emperor Constantine took office in the fourth century. Dismayed by the lack of unity within the church, he called for the famed Council of Nicaea in 325 AD (which did NOT settle on which books in the bible were to be canon) to settle an important theological question: What was the nature of Christ?

The battle at stake was whether Christ was equal or subordinate to the Father (Alexander – yes, since time eternal; Arius – no). The answer that placated both Alexandrian and Arian supporters was that Jesus and the Father was “of one substance” (homoousios) – whatever that meant. But Constantine was not particularly interested in arriving at the right answer; his main goal was to quell the discord in the church under his rule by declaring what was orthodoxy.

From then on, the Roman empire effectively became a Christian empire. Bishops, while not exactly wielding military or ruling power equivalent to a general or an emperor, had enormous influence and enjoyed various benefits such as exemption from taxes. In her book, Fredriksen quoted the example of the bishop of Callinicum instigating a Christian mob to destroy a synagogue. The emperor Theodosius ordered the perpetrators punished but he withdrew his orders under the opposition of the bishop of Milan, Ambrose. The same bishop would somehow later threaten the emperor with excommunication in a different incident.

In modern times, it would be like Billy Graham threatening Donald Trump with excommunication. It’s mind-boggling to think that a member of the clergy would dare pose such a threat back then.

Reflections and thoughts

Within this and my last post, I have highlighted the top five topics that stood out to me from Dr. Fredriksen’s book. As far as possible, I tried to remain as true as possible to the meaning of the text, though my wording may have inadvertently suggested a different meaning. To end off the review, I would like to end off my review with a few closing thoughts regarding the theological implications of such knowledge.

To start off, I think a greater level of intellectual humility is required when Christians discuss “truth” claims from Scripture. After taking a bird’s eye view of the historicity of Christian doctrine, I am no longer so sure that we truly arrived at the “correct” interpretation of Scripture. How do we know that our interpretation is “valid” as opposed to the sea of views others have put out over the generations? What if our forefathers were indeed right that Jesus was not “God”, but a divine servant instead (see the previous blog post on the process of the exaltation of Jesus)? What if we got our view of salvation by faith (a view first pushed by Paul) all wrong, and God judges us by our works instead (a view espoused heavily in the gospel of Matthew)? Critical doctrinal statements of faith remain at stake here and continue to divide church denominations today.

To this end, I cringe when pastors, believers and apologists recite statements such as “The Bible says it, therefore I believe it.” or “…because the Bible said so.” To me, these statements appear nothing more than vacuous proclamations, offering no insight into the context behind the verses cited nor the rationale behind the interpretative stance given. It is an extremely intellectually and spiritually lazy position to take.

If there is anything the history of Christianity can tell us, it is that there is more than one way to interpret Scripture, depending on which parts you emphasize or ignore. More succinctly, reading Scripture is a negotiation game – you cannot bypass this process. 

This may seem a very unusual take for most Christian circles today – I can’t imagine any pastor admitting to this. The truth is, for nearly all Christians today, what we believe in did not come from rigorous examination from Scripture, but from what we were taught by our pastors or parents. These beliefs then serve as an anchor for us to negotiate what we read in the bible in light of these teachings.

As an example, most Christians accept that the arrival of Jesus was foretold in the OT, often citing verses such as Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 53. The author of the gospel of Matthew did that too, citing the former as well. Yet, neither were written as messianic prophecies – the former was meant as a sign to King Ahaz that his enemy’s threat would subside; the latter was referring to Israel (see Isaiah 49:3) as the servant who suffered (note the past tense of the suffering relative to the text’s time). It was only far after Isaiah’s time that those writings became renegotiated to fit the events viewed in Matthew’s time and beyond. And it is only much, much later when biblical hermeneutics came about and proposed the idea of double fulfillment of prophecy to justify such a reading.

This isn’t to say that negotiating with the bible is inherently good or bad. It is merely an amoral exercise that all believers engage in because we are reading texts that originated centuries before our time, in a culture and language different from our own. Nevertheless, the modern version of such a negotiation process has occasionally led to suboptimal results for society. Espousing the Trinity while deriding others who subscribe to nontrinitarianism (even though the idea itself is post-biblical). Weaponizing verses in the bible to advance social agendas such as criminalizing LGBTQs (by misusing the verses in Paul’s letters without knowledge of ancient Roman sexual ethics), banning abortion (by overextending Jeremiah 1:5) and instigating moral panic over the end times (by overextending the symbolisms in Revelations). The list goes on.

While negotiating with the bible is a necessity for any reader Christian or otherwise, recognizing that 1) we are indeed in a negotiation; and 2) there are limitations to this negotiation process is key if we want to build an understanding of Scripture that is both resilient, receptive to correction and versatile enough to guide our lives in a highly polarized, modern world. In my humble view, it is futile to pretend Scripture as a stone-bound truth about God and morality that Christians are forced to comply to. Like many of our forefathers, we should not be afraid to put doctrines and claims handed down to us to the test to see if they reflect one’s reality and whether we can articulate why we believe what we believe – as opposed to proof-texting or chucking another “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

And this concludes my book review! Do have a go at Dr. Fredriksen’s book if you have the interest (and stamina) in doing so. May the Lord aid you in finding wisdom wherever you go.