Davide's Notes

This post has not much directly to do with the BD. Exception made perhaps for the reference to the work of Clement of Alexandria I mentioned in the title (English translation here).

At any rate, I just read the following (taken from "La Repubblica", or "La Stampa", or "Il Corriere della Sera"), an excerpt of a press conference given today by Mr Berlusconi and Mr Blair in Rome. Mr Berlusconi was trying to prove that the Economist was wrong when it recently depicted Italy's economy as severely declining, and with characteristic wittiness he said that

La ricchezza delle famiglie supera di otto volte il Pil annuo, abbiamo una percentuale altissima di telefonini, siamo dei grandi playboy (*), quindi tutti i nostri ragazzi mandano almeno dieci messaggi al giorno alle loro tante ragazze

For those not reading Italian, here is a translation:

The wealth of our families surpasses the yearly GDP by eight times, we have an extremely high percentage of mobile phones, we are great playboys (*), therefore all our boys send at least ten SMS per day to their numerous girlfriends.

Convincing, no? Well, it may have been an attempt at being witty, but I find it extremely sad, and I am embarassed (once again) at seeing my country represented in such a way. I hope "all our boys" and "their numerous girlfriends" will feel embarassed too.

PS: Read Clement.

Update (June 23, 2005)
(*) Lest anybody thinks our Prime Minister boasted a feature he himself does not possess, when he used a collective 1st plural, saying "we are great playboys": at the opening of the European Food Safety Authority in Parma (June 21, 2005), he said

I brushed up all my playboy skills, now from the distant past, and I used a series of tender pleas to the [Finnish] president [in order to have the European Food Safety Authority set up in Parma, Italy, rather than in Finland.]

For inexplicable reasons, the Finns apparently did not like his remark and called in the Italian ambassador in Helsinki to express their disappointment. The BBC has the story here.

On the exegetical side, if you read Italian you'll certainly appreciate the powerful message behind statements like "Tutto e' andato bene anche grazie alle amorevoli cure rivolte alla presidentessa [finlandese]". (taken from this article)

This is one of the mini-summaries I wrote to prepare for the Church history exam. Some more detailed info may be present in other posts (see the Topical Index).

Jonas' Gnosticism

This is more or less a summary of ideas found in the article Hans Jonas' construct "Gnosticism": Analysis and Critique, by M. Waldstein (2000).

Jonas: an existential interpretation of Gnosticism as the expression of a unitary "Spirit of Late Antiquity" defined by Entweltlichung (acosmism). This Entweltlichung got wide acceptance: it gave some way to unify systems that were lacking some clear unity, under a generic umbrella: the "existential attitude of human beings who created the systems."

But this view is now challenged, and a complete dismantle of the term "gnosticism" has been advocated; the "common features" of the various "gnostic movements" are deemed, according to this view, less important than the fact that it is not possible to superimpose unity without being artificial.

According to Jonas, there is a central existential principle in Gnosticism: and this is Entweltlichung, a radical and revolutionary aspect of anticosmism, an attitude which "negates, ultimately, all definite and ordered being and all definite moral norms". This reflects what Jonas calls the "Spirit of Late Antiquity", with its nihilism. This is to be contrasted with an hypotethical "Spirit of Antiquity", which was "an apotheosis of what exists" (das Gegebene).
In the East, where Gnosticism would have been born, Gnosticism was "the product of powerful vitality" and it "did not emerge in a social matrix of alienation or oppression". In the West, on the other hand, we had a declining world, and there Gnosticism functioned as expression of political and cultural decay. "The socially oppressed and marginalized, especially slaves and the poor, who were mere objects of power, were receptive to the Gnostic Spirit because “in the new order they became kings, absolute subjects.”".

As Williams summarizes, the Gnostic myth would clearly be distinguishable from others because gnostics had an attitude of protest, or revolt i.e., again, an anticosmic attitude. This attitude would have been shown:

• in the way they treated scripture, reversing all values
• in the way they viewed cosmos, rejecting it
• by the fact that the did not take any interest in sociey
• in the way they hated their bodies
• by the fact that they lacked ethical concern
• by the fact that salvation was predetermined for them, so again ethics was irrelevant.

Waldstein argues that these points are all false or at least problematic, and takes the Apocryphon of John to show this: there is no anticosmic attitude (which is the main point of Jonas), no reversal of Jewish Scriptures, etc. and concludes saying that, rather than an expression of "Spirit of Late Antiquity", the Apocryphon of John is rather a (peculiar) product of Hellenistic Judaism.

So, the outcome of this article is that Jonas' view of Gnosticism, while handy, tends to misrepresent the actual history suggested by the Nag Hammadi texts.

Some further notes from Overcoming Gnosticism: Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World, by B. Lazier (2003):

Jonas published the first volume of his Gnosis und Spätantiker Geist in 1934 as a dissertation under Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann. The guiding principle of Jonas' gnosticism has been das Fremde, i.e. the alien, the strange, the foreign, the other, the unknown. There is alienation of the man from himself, from a fully transcendent God, from the material universe: in other words, anti-cosmism.

Hans Blumenberg, in his Legimität der Neuzeit (1966), builds on Jonas' categories to argue for a "second overcoming" of gnosticism, which would have taken place at the end of the Middle Ages; at that time there was a gnosticism "revived by the nominalism and theological voluntarism of late medieval scholastic theology, a loose confluence of thought centripetally bound by the black hole of the deus absconditus or hidden god", and its overcoming (paralleled to the "first overcoming" due to Augustine) would be "the work of an ethos of human self-assertion best instantiated by the scientific program of Francis Bacon."

Lazier maintains that we can now speak of a "third overcoming". This implies that gnosticism has returned, and as examples he mentions Karl Barth's crisis theology and an epistemology challenging the normative modes of knowledge. There is an implicit reference to this way of thinking in Blumenberg's second edition of his Legimität (1983) when he wrote

The very people who were attempting to restore the radicalness of the original religious distance from the world and to renew theology’s declarations of transcendence “dialectically” could see in the massive evidence of the manifestation of the world as “worldliness” the advantage of its unmistakable character of immanence. [...] A theology of “division,” of crisis, had to be interested in making clear the worldliness of the world rather than in overlaying it with the sacred.

(italics mine)

This is one of the mini-summaries I wrote to prepare for the Church history exam. Some more detailed info may be present in other posts (see the Topical Index).

Why were early Christians persecuted?

• First of all, define "early".
• Then, define the generic statement "Christians were persecuted": were all Christians persecuted? Only some of them? How many? And by whom? Mention the difference between persecution by Rome, and persecution by the Jews; for the latter, take e.g. the killing of James circa 62 (Josephus), the so-called flee to Pella before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 (Eusebius and Epiphanius - note the later interpretation of the destruction of the Temple as a consequence of this exile), the anathema in the synagogue liturgy (before 85), the persecution during the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135 -Bar Kochba himself was proclaimed the Messiah by Rabbi Akiva).
• Then, make sure that we understand that not all persecutions are equal. What are "the main persecutions"? For example, do we understand Nero's to be "a persecution"? If not, why not? Remember the need for scapegoats (cf. Tertullian).
• The usual suspects: Celsius' objections, misconception about the nature of the Eucharist, the love feasts, the contrasts with attested social practices (including the association with secret societies), Oedipoean intercourse (Athenagoras), Christians disrupted the pax eorum, Christians are really atheists.
• Take Suetonius' text on the the expulsion of the Jews and comment first on the words "iudaeos expulit", then on "assidue tumultuantis".
• Financial issues related e.g. to problems to commerce arising from the need to avoid impure food, or to refusal to buy idol statues, etc.
• Problems with denying the authority of the Roman emperor (echoed also in Celsus), cf. the Passion of the Scilitan Martyrs.

On the reasons for Nero's "persecution", remember that Tacitus writes that "multitudo ingens, haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis convicti sunt". Not very clear what Tacitus meant by odio humani generis; did some "Christians" nurtur this hatred? Or was the persecution somewhat organized by the Jews? Or else? Nor is it clear whether this account of Christians setting Rome on fire is original at all (the earliest manuscript we have dates from the 11th century, and no mention is made of this until the time of Sulpicius Severus, circa 408), or if it is not instead the result of Christian tampering with the original sources. (but Tertullian, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, Pliny and Eusebius do all mention that Nero persecuted Christians.)

What is the peculiarity of Decius' persecution?

Decius decided that Christians were a real enemy of the Roman order, that they must be dealt with empire-wide, with all the police power that the emperor could bring to bear upon them. At the very least this means that around 250 Christianity had become widespread enough to be perceived as a global problem. Note that this backfires, generating anti-roman sentiments esp. in the remote regions of the empire, and contributes to the appearance of the cult of the martyrs and eventually to even futher diffusion of Christianity (cf. Tertullian, saying that "The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed").
On the other hand, remember that the Roman empire during the 3rd century was subject to several destabilizing forces, for example the pressure of the Goths in the Balkans and the Sassanian Persians in the East. There was, at the same time, the desire to return to the splendor of the old Rome. Also for these reasons, Decius tries to re-unite the empire asking everybody to demonstrate their loyalty to the state gods and his divine reign through public sacrifice. And the losses that Decius suffered in military campaigns also contributed to the progressive abandonment of the persecution.

That same reason was brought about by Galerius and Diocletian: for the unity of the Empire, Christians had to be exterminated. Interesting that Diocleatian's edict against Christians were issued almost twenty years after he got in power. One of the reasons for the persecution was allegedly Diocletian's piety; Lactantius says that Diocletian became offended when he discovered numerous Christian officials of the Court making the sign of the cross at pagan sacrifices, which Diocletian considered insolence. Galerius perhaps also convinced Diocletian that Christians were refusing military service. But there is still not very much agreement on the real reasons, and on the extent, of this persecution.

This is one of the mini-summaries I wrote to prepare for the Church history exam. Some more detailed info may be present in other posts (see the Topical Index).

To what extent were the Apologists successful?

First of all, define who we consider to be the Apologists, and "successful" in relation to what. Which objections did they try to answer? See here the notes on why Christians were persecuted.

How do we judge "successfulness" then? For example, from the standpoint of the validity of their arguments? From the standpoint of subsequent history of development of Christianity?

Initially, we ought to make a distinction between arguing for Christianity negatively (rebutting charges) or positely (discussing the truth of Christian beliefs and rejecting competing thoughts). Then we want to note that apology in the second century can take several forms: To Diognetus and Theophilus' To Autolycus are open letters to an inquirer; Justin's Apologies are letters to emperors; Justin's Dialogue with Trypho is a maybe fictitious (similar perhaps to the fiction of Plato's Apology) debate with a Jew.

In general, for what regards the contribution of the Apologists, it is worthwhile to note that John Gager pointed out that it was also through them that the early church maintained internal cohesion. In particular, Moreland says that it is through philosophical apologetics that the dominant culture could be penetrated. The risk could have been for Christianity to get completely ridiculized and emargined, if this had not happened: see Celsus' objections for an example.

The motivation for apology is first and foremost dictated by an agenda of survival. We are not at the point where Christianity could offer elaborated theologies: it just had to survive.

Then remember the main themes:

• counter-argument that position that Christians do not know what they are talking about (so Celsus). Cf. 1 Pt 3:15.
• provide a credible historical framework to the faith. Cf. Quadratus, who explicitly tells us that the works of Jesus were "real" and witnessed by those who were present and that continued to testify to them even after Jesus' departure.
• define the role of Christians in the world (Diognetus); this counters the charges of disengagement and the worry that Christianity posed a threat to Roman authority (not a new charge: cf. the Jews before Pilate).
• prove that Christianity is not barbarous (against Celsus); on the contrary, it is superior to Greek philosophy (cf. Tatian and his Address to the Greeks).
• re-definition of the terms: e.g. when the Greeks says that resurrection is absurd, Tatian answers that it is Greek philosophy that it is absurd, with its meaningless cycles of production/destruction. Or Justin saying that "atheist" is not something that can be predicated of Christians, since atheism is not recognizing the one true God (so atheists are really those who call Christians atheists).
• bridge the gaps between Greek philosophy and Christianity. Here the Oriental and in particular Alexandrian school shines (e.g. Clement). Cf. Athenagoras looking at Greek mythology as pointing toward Christianity, Socrates as a pre-Christian sage (so also Justin). Rapprochment between Greek philosophy and Christianity seems to become less of an urgence the more we move away from the second century; so for example remember Tertullian's attitude to philosophy, or Origen's view of Plato as an idolater (on the other hand, Origen is to some extent a kind of greek philosopher himself).
  
• a desire to be judged according to facts, not to "names" or rumours (Justin, Athenagoras). And when one goes beyond name calling, one would see that persecuting Christians is unfair.
  
• rebuttal of the charge of politheism (Athenagoras).

A non-negligible side effect of the work of the apologists is that, in order to counter argument the allegation that Christianity was a secret or in general not very well known/defined movement, they had to expound, i.e. better define, doctrinal points and liturgical practices (e.g. Justin described baptism and Eucharist in detail).

Now, let's briefly consider Justin's Logos theology. What were its advantages and disadvantages?

One obvious characteristics of Logos theology is that it encouraged philosophical treatment of faith. An easy conclusion is that this led to the Hellenization of traditional doctrines, and probably contributed to the "parting of the ways" and to the dissolvment of Jewish Christianity. On the other hand, the identification of the Logos of the philosophers and the Christ of faith greatly helped the spread of Christianity within Hellenistic intellectual circles; and the monotheism of Christianity was somewhat made more acceptable in Justin by his insistence on angelology (a form of deistic pantheon, to some extent). A direct conseguence of Logos theology is Origen's view of the immortal soul of Christ, and hence the problems caused by a monarchian view. At the other extreme, another immediate problem raised by Logos christology was the set up of some form of ditheism. Hence, we soon have some difficulties in properly defining Trinity, also in relation to the fact that Justin's theology (and the theology of the second century Apologists in general) seems more binitarian than trinitarian. Another important thing to note is that Justin seems to explicitly use his Logos theology mostly when dealing with outsiders; when describing the Eucharist, for example, he uses biblical rather than philosophical language. This is an important didactic characteristic of adaptation to different hearers, which we have seen already in his Dialogue with Trypho.

Notes on Price, "Hellenization" and Logos Doctrine in Justin Martyr (1998):

The above is stock treatment of Justin's Logos theology. But there is another important point that we need to consider, and that is that Justin himself tried to underline commonalities between Hellenistic and Jewish ways of thought, rather than marking a divide between them. The question is, is our sharp distinction between Judaism and Hellenism truly historical? Think, on the one hand, of the hellenization process of Judaism and, on the other, of the mutual influences between mediterranean cultures. The idea of Justin contrasting Hellenism and Judaism could be seen, from some Christian point of view, as a forced hegelian attempt toward a synthesis of thesis and antithesis (embodying the abstract categories of reason and revelation).
But which hellenistic doctrines did Justin employ? The standard answer is that he used the Logos doctrine of Middle Platonism. Now, it is known that Platonism did not employ the term "Logos" to mean the Divine Power (hence NT scholars maintain that the Logos in John 1 did not originate because of Greek philosophy). Price maintains that Justin derived the term Logos rather from the Septuagint, when it deals with the "word of God". Further, no clear evidence of the theory of the Logos spermatikos have been found in either Stoicism or Platonism. We find it instead in the unhellenistic Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. Also, contemporary platonists were more determined than Justin in distinguishing sharply between the "Good" and the "Demiurge" (i.e. the Son and the Father). In summary, Justin seems to draw more from Hellenistic Judaism (like Josephus' Contra Apionem) than from hellenistic philosophy. Price concludes saying that it is this derivation that could explain for the failure of the Apologists to "give specifically Christian themes such as the Incarnation or the doctrine of grace sufficient emphasis." The Apologists (Justin included) are, in particular, denied much of the originality sometimes traditionally assigned to them.

A very good advice seems to me the exhortation to consider the "subtle and undramatic gradations of the terrain". This is probably in accordance also with the predominant binitarian characteristic of the Apologists.

This is one of the mini-summaries I wrote to prepare for the Church history exam. Some more detailed info may be present in other posts (see the Topical Index).

Some reasons for the diffusion of Christianity in the ancient world.

The background: pantheism in the ancient world, with creature-worship. The striking difference here is Israel. A bit less striking is Christianity (according to Celsus, Christians worship "to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently").

See the comparisons made by Harnack between the diffusion of Mithraism and Christianity. Commonalities first:

• both were Oriental religions
• both entered the Roman empire at about the same time
• both were propagated at first among the lower classes
• both agreed in several important features

But Mithraism did not enter into the domain of Hellenism, e.g. Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Bithynia, Asia, the central provinces of Asia Minor (apart from Cappadocia), Syria, Palestine, and Egypt (apart from Alexandria). These were the civilized countries.

On the other hand, these regions were where Christianity was immediately welcome.

Who were the supporters, or the missionaries, of the religion?

For Mithraism (in the West especially), they were soldiers, in Dacia, Moesia, Noricum, Rhaetia, and Germany (note: always on the boundary of those provinces). Then there were Syrian traders, esp. Oriental slaves. But these methods of diffusion were negligible: even if Mithraism was in the end known in most of the Western empire, it never became a universal religion. An important change happened only in 180 with emperor Commodus (said to be one of the worst Roman emperors), and later with, among others, Aurelian, Diocletian and Julian (to so-called "aposthate"). At that point the Roman emperor legitimized its rule by divine right, rather than by heredity or vote of the Senate, and Mithra became the giver of authority.

Remember that Commodus was promptly condemned, as soon as he passed away, by the Senate (through the damnatio memoriae), and the sloppy morality of his reign did not contribute to his popularity.

A serious disadvantage in Mithraism: it allowed only male initiates.

Mithraism basically disappeared after Theodosius' decree in 191 prohibiting paganism.

From the abstract of Runciman, WG, "The diffusion of Christianity in the third century AD as a case-study in the theory of cultural selection" (2004):

Recent game-theoretic research shows how a strategy of unconditional altruism such as Christianity formally enjoined can, under certain conditions, resist invasion by defectors, free-riders and cheats. It is accordingly plausible to suggest that in the particular environment of the third century Empire this uniquely distinguishing feature of Christianity accounts for much of its otherwise surprising degree of success.

Ruse, also, defends the position that ethics may be closely linked with the biological theory of evolution (ethical naturalism, or evolutionary ethics), but does not think that Christianity is compatible with evolutionary ethics. On the other hand, see Christianity and Evolutionary Ethics by Patricia A. Williams, who answers Ruse. Some notes from this article:

• early Christian theologians were aware that a message packaged for Jewish audiences would not convince Greeks because of cultural differences (cf. Paul preaching in different ways in the synagogue and before the Greeks of Athens). Such relativistic treatment of cultures and images has long been a necessary staple of successful biblical translators who must supply a cross-cultural meaning. (think e.g. Origen and perhaps more importantly Jerome).
• cf the distinction between the weak and the strong form of the Golden Rule

Then, keep in mind the factors that favored Christianity compared e.g. to gnostic thought. Once again, success at the lower strata of the population was fundamental.

So:

• evolutionary ethics (unconditional altruism, esp. linked to the "weak" form of the Golden Rule)
  
• diffusion into the centers of power (Hellenistic regions, and Rome, of course)
• not a "new" religion, at least initially (mixed with Judaism), so already partially known
  
• willingness by missionaries/religious leaders to try adaptation to different cultures. Removal of some (perhaps psychological) barrier, e.g. no demand for male circumcision.
  
• diffusion through large (initially, uneducated) strata of the population. Important influence of women. No exclusiveness (against e.g. "the selected" of the gnostics).
• simplicity of the faith taught
• Christianity initially (until times were "more mature", one could say) avoided the aversion that Mithraism generated when embraced by emperors like Commodus to justify their raise to power. Constantine only comes in the fourth century.
  

I took the exam today. This is one the courses I enjoyed the most so far, and one that in my opinion should be core rather than elective. It is true that in the BD studies you have to sit at least one of the three available Church history courses, but I would make this one compulsory. I can't imagine a theology graduate not knowing (even in a somewhat generic way) what happened to the Church in its first five centuries of history.

I will shortly post some of the mini-summaries I wrote to review part of the material. Very rough things, but they were useful to me.

I kept on with the habit of entering a bookstore after exams; in this sense, it is good (for finances) that I'm done with the exams for this year. This time I came out of the bookstore with a copy of Gibbon, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (a classic I had been wanting to buy for quite some time), and MacCulloch, "Reformation". But to be honest, perhaps to offset the efforts of these last weeks preparing for the exams, I sense now the need to focus for a while less on academic readings and more on spirituality, so I won't probably start reading them tomorrow.

As usual, if I were able to sit exams also this year, I owe it a lot to my wife, Michela, and to my little daughter, Irene, who have allowed me to study even when they would have liked me to be more present with them. Grazie, famiglia.

Last year, about this time, I wrote about a possible study plan for this year. I have since then changed plans a bit, deciding to focus more on biblical languages and on related biblical studies, and out of the planned three or four exams I was able to sit only two. But, given my time constraints, that's not too bad, and the important thing for me is to keep on enjoying each and every moment of this degree.

We'll see what next year will bring. It will certainly see us returning, after 7 years spent between California and the Netherlands, to Italy; we are all looking forward to that. In terms of exams, I would like to take Christian Doctrine, New Testament with Greek Texts, and if at all possible Foundations of Biblical Hebrew.

This morning I sat the NT Greek exam. Once again, regardless of the marks (for which, as I wrote already, I relatively care, ego apart), I think that having to sit an exam is for me an effective way to study a subject. (now, it would be quite ironic if after this statement it turned out I did not pass!) My knowledge of NT Greek is obviously still fairly limited; nevertheless, I believe that without the exam I would have not achieved in a relatively short time even that limited knowledge.

A quick post mortem, then: this subject is definitely worth studying! In the remote case you read this post, you are a U London external student, and you are considering whether to sit this exam or not, my suggestion is, go for it! Reading texts (these texts in particular) in the original tongues is one of the most rewarding experiences, and this is what encouraged and encourages my practice. I found the study notes I got from the University quite good, and you could study for the exam based on those notes only, without any additional textbook; this is not what I did, and that was probably not a wise move from the viewpoint of getting the highest possible marks, but I knew that from the start (I perhaps got a bit detoured by things that were not extremely relevant to the questions asked in the exam, but that's how I am). The study notes are very much tailored to the exam itself, focusing almost exclusively on the grammar found in the prescribed texts, and they skip explanations on several points, presenting many things as a given (Mounce is probably at the other end, pretending that almost everything can be explained in a simple and linear way), but they are full of valid and above all clear remarks. I certainly appreciate the effort that was put into them, and I think they are very useful. (my reservations about the whole point of studying subjects in such an anonymous way obviously remain.)

Sitting an exam also gives you (the student) some means to assess where you are and where you should improve. Myself, I still certainly need to consolidate much of the material (and this NT Greek subject covers a lot of material) and review several grammar points. I found this exam fairly difficult, and I basically ran out of time; for my current NT Greek fluency level, three hours to translate six NT pieces (taken from the prescribed texts, Mark 8-10 and John 18-21), answer three questions on each of them, then, without translating, read another two NT pieces, answering another 4 more advanced grammar questions for each of these two, and all this without a Greek lexicon, were somewhat not enough to do things in the way I would have liked to do. But I think that, given my personal study circumstances, I did what I could do. Now that the exam is over it is important to keep on practising.

Finally, the fact that the exam is over was immediately followed by the insight that it was about time for me to buy a few new books (like other people in the biblioblogdom, I am also a book addict). So right after the exam I entered into the Scheltema bookstore here in Amsterdam, and promptly bought "One Bible, Many Voices", by S.E. Gillingham, "Relativism" by M. Baghramian, and the Edición del IV Centenario del Don Quijote de la Mancha por la Real Academia Española y la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (in Spanish).