Why the Wende? Peter Heinegg How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. By Bart D. Ehrman, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018. $28. Germans like to talk about the “Constantinian shift” (die konstantinische Wende) that began in 312 with the conversion of the emperor and the subsequent (313) “Edict of Milan,” which granted full religious tolerance to Christians (and others), and that culminated in Theodosius I's banning paganism and establishing Christianity as the state religion (381–392). At the time of Jesus’ death, experts guess, there may have been twenty or so Christians. By the year 400 that number had soared to something like 30,000,000, or half the population of the Roman empire. A “shift” for the ages, evidently. But why did it happen and what did it mean? If all human actions, as Freud said of dreams, are overdetermined, precisely explaining the personal and social processes that shaped the choice of so many myriads will be impossible. One might as well begin by looking to Edward Gibbon. Ehrman first naively claims that Gibbon “conceded that ultimate success derived from its (Christianity's) spiritual superiority and God's personal oversight”; but he quickly admits that the great historian meant no such thing: the key to such rapid growth lay in five “secondary causes”, which Ehrman acknowledges and expands on. Meanwhile, he agrees with Gibbon in limiting himself to non‐supernatural agencies. “The inflexible, and … intolerant zeal of Christians.” Ehrman's term for this is “exclusivity.” Pagan religions were famously accepting of other cults, had no notion of heresy, seldom engaged in persecution, and then only when the Roman authorities feared a threat to the well‐being of the state. Christian faith was an all‐or‐nothing proposition (despite some sturdy vestiges of syncretism); and, once the hierarchy acquired judicial power, it could severely punish all deviations from orthodoxy. Ehrman might have mentioned the landmark figure of Priscillian, the Spanish bishop, who was executed in 385 for promoting a version of Manichaeism. The doctrine of immortality. Pagans generally had no belief in life after death; so the prospect of a blissful eternity must have been a powerful influence on them, especially if E.R. Dodds and others were right to argue that by the fourth century paganism had fallen into “weakness and weariness.” Ehrman adds to this the negative factor of fear of hell. Lucretius (died c. 55 BCE) may have mocked the fanciful terrors of Hades; but the New Testament made a strong case for divine vengeance. Miracles. Ehrman, who went from a devout evangelical graduate of the Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College to an agnostic professor of Religious Studies at U.N.C., Chapel Hill, and the popular author of many demythologizing books about Christianity and Scripture, stresses that the miracles attributed to the apostles and early Christian saints might not have actually happened (he won't call them fabrications). But people believed they happened; and they told their friends and neighbors, and a mighty legend was launched. Stories of martyrdom too must have spread far and wide. Ehrman in fact cites simple word of mouth as a major engine of conversion that may have been as effective as preaching. Strict Christian morality. There were only casual links between paganism and ethical behavior. Sacrifices mollified the Greek and Roman gods; and, ideally won their favor. But accounts of the gods’ activities seldom made them out to be more upright than humans. Nonetheless, Zeus sometimes morphed into a henotheistic moral ruler—and people who believed in such a deity would be one step closer to the God of the Bible. (When it came to moral guidance, Ehrman says, the ancients turned to philosophy.) In any case, to the extent that they lived up, even partly, to Jesus’ stringent code and formed high‐minded communities, Christians may have set an appealing example to outsiders. Tertullian famously maintained that the pagans themselves were awed by the way Jesus’ followers loved, and were ready to die for, one another (Apologeticus pro Christianis, 39). But, since the near‐totality of converts left no written records behind, Ehrman doesn't press this point. Strong ecclesiastical organization. Pagan religions had priests, but...
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Sep 30, 2019
Blaž Božič 
Open Access
