Few people write as well about the early church as George Sim Johnston. Motivated in part by a desire to respond to the pseudo-historical stylings of Mr. Dan Brown, Johnston shoehorned a little bit of everything, including the role of women, the centrality of the Eucharist, and the impetus for clarifying a canon of Scriptural books, into this elegant essay about the decidedly Catholic character of early Christianity:
"We live in a sea of false historiography, and so it is worth asking: What exactly happened during the first centuries of Christianity? How did a small band of believers, starting out in a despised outpost of the Roman Empire, end up the dominant institution of the Mediterranean world? What was "primitive Christianity"? John Henry Newman became a Catholic in the course of answering that question. History, he said, is the enemy of Protestantism. It is also the enemy of the newly vigorous anti-Catholicism that circulates among our cultural elites."
[snip]
"The early Church was not only hierarchical, it was liturgical and sacramental. But it was above all Eucharistic. St. Ignatius, in his letter to the church at Smyrna, attacks local heretics who "abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins...." By the year 150, when St. Justin Martyr described the Sunday liturgy in some detail, all the principal elements of the Mass are in place: Scriptural readings, prayers of intercession, offertory, Eucharistic prayer, and communion. There was no need back then to remind the faithful that Sunday Mass attendance was obligatory, since they regarded the liturgy as absolutely central to their lives as Christians. It would not have occurred to them to forgo Sunday Mass for a brunch date or ballgame."
[snip]
"Even though the four Gospel writers differ markedly from one another and have diverse agendas -- Matthew is proselytizing his fellow Jews, Luke is fact-gathering for Gentile converts, Mark relates Peter's version of events, John is responding to heresies that deny the Incarnation -- the striking thing is how strong, consistent, and identifiable the personality of Christ is in all four books. C. S. Lewis remarks that in all the world's narrative literature, there are three personalities you can identify immediately if given a random and even partial quotation: Plato's Socrates, Boswell's Johnson, and Jesus Christ of the Gospels.."
The whole essay is a gem, and time reading it is time well-spent.
POSTSCRIPT: While thinking in historical terms, don't miss this analysis of the pope's trip to Israel from Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein-- and thanks to Peter Sean Bradley for calling my attention to it. Bradley also has a great clip of Fr. Robert Barron filleting Angels and Demons.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the link. I'm still working my way through it, but had to stop and point out that this passage, with only a few small changes, could be describing the secular culture of today's Western world:
The Roman gods, practically speaking, were dead, the victims of much scoffing from intellectuals and poets. The upper orders had turned to Stoicism -- self-cultivating itself in aristocratic isolation -- but this spoke only to a small minority. Others with spiritual hankerings went to more dubious sources: mystery cults, Asiatic magic, exotic neo-Platonisms, whose goal was ecstatic visions and emotional release. There was a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo in an atmosphere of tent revivalism, with a dash of emperor worship on the side. But no matter where it turned for solace, the late classical mind was steeped in melancholy, a kind of glacial sadness; it was utterly lacking in what Catholics would call the theological virtue of hope.
Great article. If you want a meatier version, Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity is a great resource. As are all his books dealing with Christianity. There is certainly less about the origin of the canon of scripture but when it comes to how the faith grew and its impact on society, he has nailed it quite admirably.
A sociologist and agnostic to boot. Atleast no one can say he is a radical Conservative Christian.
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