From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed - Part 3

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 2 with the following:

 

(p.9) " Such convictions became the practical basis of a radical new social

structure. Rodney Stark suggests that we read the following passage from

Matthew's gospel " as if for the very first time, " in order to feel the power of

this new morality as Jesus' early followers and their pagan neighbors must have

felt it: [8]

 

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I

was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick

and you (p.10) visited me, I was in prison and you came to me....Truly, I say to

you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. "

[9]

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 1, pg. 9-10)

 

Notes:

 

[8] Stark, 'Rise of Christianity', 86-87.

 

[9] Matthew 25:35-49.

 

Here now is Part 3.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed - Part 3

 

(p.10) These precepts could hardly have been universally practiced, yet

Tertullian says that members of what he calls the " peculiar Christian society "

practiced them often enough to attract public notice: " What marks us in the eyes

of our enemies is our practice of lovingkindness: 'Only look,' they say, 'look

how they love one another!' " [10]

 

Tertullian also says that outsiders ridiculed Christians " because we call each

other brother and sister. " Yet when he writes his 'Defence of the Christians',

he adds that members of " God's family " also believed that the human family as a

whole is interrelated. Thus, he says, " we are 'your' brothers and sisters as

well, by the law of our common mother, nature, " although, he concedes,

 

perhaps it is more appropriate to call 'brother' and 'sister' those who have

come to know God as their father, and who, from the same womb of a common

ignorance, have agonized into the clear light of truth. [11]

 

The agonizing birth process he refers to is 'baptism', for to join God's family

one had to die--symbolically--and become a new person. The apostle Paul had said

that whoever is plunged into the baptismal waters and submerged, as in the

waters of death, dies to his or her former self. [12] For many Christians this

was a wrenching event that severed all familiar bonds, including, of course,

(p.11) those with the families of their birth. Tertullian describes how

non-Christian families rejected those who joined this illicit sect:

 

The husband...casts the wife out of his house; the father...disinherits the son;

the master commands the slave to depart from his presence: it is a huge offence

for anyone to be reformed by this hated name [Christian]. [13]

 

Why a " huge offence " ? Because in the eyes of their relatives, converts were

joining a cult of criminals--a choice that could be suicidal for the convert,

and disastrous for the family left behind. The Roman senator Tacitus, who

despised Christians for their superstitions, probably would have agreed that

Tertullian reflected public opinion when he said that, for outsiders, conversion

made the initiate " an enemy of the public good; of the gods; of public morals, "

of all that patriotic and religious Romans held sacred. [14] Tertullian knew

what had happened during the summer of 202 in his own African city, Carthage,

where a twenty-two-year-old aristocrat named Vibia Perpetua, recently married

and the mother of an infant son, resolved to undergo baptism along with four

other young people, at least two of them slaves. When the magistrate asked

whether she was a Christian, she said she was. She was arrested, imprisoned, and

sentenced to be torn apart by beasts in the public arena--a death sentence

ordinarily reserved for slaves--along with her fellow converts.

 

Perpetua recorded in her diary what happened when her patrician, gray-haired

father arrived at the prison:

 

(p.12) While we were under arrest, my father, out of love for me, was trying to

persuade me and shake my resolution. " Father, " I said, " do you see this vessel,

or waterpot, or whatever it is? " " Yes, I do, " he said. " Could it be called by

any other name than what it is? " I asked; and he said, " No. " " Well, so too, I

cannot be called anything other than what I am, 'Christian'{ [15]

 

Because she was repudiating her family name, Perpetua wrote, " my father was so

angry ... that he started towards me as though he would tear out my eyes; but he

left it at that, and departed. " [16] A few days later, hoping that his daughter

might be given a hearing, Perpetua says, " My father arrived from the city,

exhausted with worry, and came to see me to try to persuade me. 'Daughter,' " he

said, understandably desperate,

 

have pity ... on me, your father, if I deserve to be called your father; if I

have loved you more than all your brothers.... Do not abandon me to people's

scorn. Think of your brothers; think of your mother and your aunt; think of your

child, who will not be able to live without you. Give up your pride! You will

destroy all of us! None of us will ever be able to speak freely again if

anything happens to you. [17]

 

Perpetua wrote, " My father spoke this way out of love for me, kissing my hands

and throwing himself down before me. With tears in his eyes...he left me in

great sorrow. " [18]

 

Then, on the day when the governor interrogated the prisoners, (p.13) her father

arrived carrying her infant son and continued to plead with her, she says, until

the governor " ordered him to be thrown to the ground and beaten with a rod. I

felt sorry for father, just as if I myself had been beaten; I grieved for his

misery in old age. " [19] But Perpetua believed that she now belonged to God's

family and maintained her detachment. On the birthday of Emperor Geta, she

walked calmly from prison into the amphitheater " as one beloved of God...putting

down everyone's stare by her own intense gaze, " [20] to die with her new

relatives, who included her slave Felicitas as her sister and Revocatus, also a

slave, as her brother.

 

To join the " peculiar Christian society, " then, a candidate had to repudiate his

or her family, along with its values and practices. Justin Martyr, called " the

philosopher, " baptized in Rome around the year 140, says that he had come to see

himself as one who had been " brought up in bad habits and evil customs " [21] to

accept distorted values and worship demons as gods. He tells how he and others

had given up promiscuity, magic, greed, wealth, and racial hatred:

 

We, out of every tribe of people...who used to take pleasure in promiscuity, now

embrace chastity alone; we, who once had recourse to magic, dedicate ourselves

to the good God; we, who valued above everything else acquiring wealth and

possessions, now bring what we have into a common fund, and share with everyone

in need; we who hated and killed other people, and refused to live with people

of another tribe because of their different customs, now live intimately with

them. [22]

 

Every initiate, Justin adds, who " has been convinced, and agreed to our

teaching, " would pledge to live as a person transformed.

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas)

Chapter 1, pg. 10-14

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[10] Tertullian, 'Apology 39'.

 

[11] Ibid.

 

[12] Romans 6:3-14.

 

[13] Tertullian, 'Apology 3'.

 

[14] Ibid., 2; for Tacitus' views, see his own words in 'Annales' 15.44.2-8.

 

[15] 'Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis' 3.1-2.

 

[16] Ibid., 3.3.

 

[17] Ibid., 5.2-4.

 

[18] Ibid., 5:5.

 

[19] Ibid., 6:5.

 

[20] Ibid., 18.2.

 

[21] Justin, I 'Apology 61'.

 

[22] Ibid., 14.