Chapter 3 of Why You Think the Way You Do:
Christianity and the Transformation of the Pagan World
In AD 303, the Roman emperor Diocletian began a sever persecution of an unpopular religious minority in the Empire - Christians. It started with the destruction of churches and the burning of Christian books and was followed by attacks on the clergy, who suffered imprisonment, torture, and sometimes death. By the following year, these attacks were extended to the laity as well. Yet just ten years after the persecution began, in 313 Christianity was decriminalized with the empire. As time went on, it became the majority religion and eventually succeeded in transforming Rome politically, socially, economically, and culturally.
Jews and “God-Fearers”
All of the pagan religions had origin stories for the gods. Not Judaism. The God of
Israel simply was and is and will be forever. Our unique place in the created order gives us special value before God, so that attacking a person is tantamount to attacking the God in whose image she or he was made. Thus the Jews adamantly rejected infanticide because it was murder, a position that the Roman historian Tacitus described as “Sinister and revolting”.
God is not simply a personal, transcendent creator; he is holy and righteous as well, and he expects the same from humanity. In most of the pagan world, ethics was part of philosophy, not religion.
Many Jews believed that their unique status as descendants of Abraham and recipients of
God’s law made them superior to the people around them, and they had no mandate from
God or other motivation to try to convert the foreigners to Judaism. This meant they were no threat to the status quo, and so Rome allowed them their own practices and left them alone.
Christian Origins:
Early Christians were like the Jews, but unlike mainstream Jews, Christians also had a missionary zeal to bring the message of “salvation through Jesus Christ” to the entire world.
Since Christians were increasingly Gentiles, not Jews, their refusal to worship the emperor meant that they were guilty of treason. This was at least the official reason the
Romans used most often to justify persecuting Christians.
Christians did not rebel against Rome. They did not use force or defend themselves when the Roman authorities came for them. Nonetheless, they were an unpopular minority in the Empire. The idea of using a cross as a symbol of hope was absurd. Crucifixion was the ugliest, most degrading, and most painful form of execution the Romans could devise.

Christians asked the Romans to believe that their eternal destiny depended on putting their trust in a Jew (unpopular minority) living in Judea (considered the worst province in the Empire) who had been crucified as a rebel. This collided with not only “the offense of the cross” and anti-Jewish bigotry, but the very thing that, for a culture that prided itself on its cosmopolitan, broad-minded outlook, was the unforgivable sin: the claim of exclusivity – the claim that Christianity is true and everything that contradicts it is false.
As in any society that makes tolerance its principal virtue, there were limits, and
Christianity’s claims of exclusivity clearly crossed them.
The Early Christian Worldview and Lifestyle:
Christians rejected gladiatorial games, abortion, and infanticide. It also meant that the church believed that sex was reserved for marriage as port of the creation order established by God in Genesis.
Not only are people created in the image of God, but all people are spiritually equal before God. Jews, Gentiles, men, women, slaves and free, Romans and barbarians, all were welcome in the church as equals.
Christianity initially had a much more favorable attitude toward women. The rise of
Christianity had a very positive effect on the place of women in society.
The notion of spiritual equality also meant that slaves were not just “living tools” but were equals before God with even the most exalted members of society. Christians were the first people in history to oppose slavery systematically.
Even more striking was the reaction of Christians to people with contagious diseases.
Most people ran the other way. Christians nursed the sick at great personal risk.
From the 50’s AD on, Christians were sporadically persecuted, tortured, and killed, using the legal argument that they were subversives because they refused to burn incense to the emperor, and atheists because they did not acknowledge the Roman gods.
Christians went to their deaths without a fight, singing hymns, preaching, and otherwise refusing to be cowed or intimidated by the abuse they were suffering. Tertullian, an early
Christian writer, said that the blood of martyrs was the seed of the church.
Constantine and the Legalization of Christianity:
Christianity’s legal situation in the Empire changed in AD 313 when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. The year before, just prior to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge,
Constantine claimed to have had a vision from God, and after which Jesus appeared to him in a dream an explained what he needed to do. Constantine had his soldier’s paint
Christian symbols on their shields, and when he won against his opponents superior forces, he took it as a sign from God and converted to Christianity. This edict simply

legalized the Christian church. It did not outlaw paganism or make Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
A great deal of ink has been spilled over weather Constantine’s conversion was genuine or the product of political calculation.
In terms of dealings with Christianity, Constantine got involved very early in settling problems in the church. He convened a meeting of bishops from around the Empire at
Nicea in modern-day Turkey. The meeting helped to decide orthodox positions in the church.
At Nicea, Constantine actually came up the bishops who had been tortured by his predecessors and kissed their wounds. He was probably trying to determine the true doctrine and to unify the church around it.
Another element of his genuineness is the fact that he sent his mother Helena to
Jerusalem and the surrounding areas to try to find historical evidence and artifacts from
Jesus life.
No matter how we evaluate Constantine himself, his actions had a profound effect on both Christianity and the Empire. The transition from being a persecuted minority religion to being the favored faith of the emperor inevitably forged ties between church and state that have been a driving force in Western political life ever since.
Prior to Constantine, people actually courted martyrdom as a way of proving the genuineness of their faith.
Christianity is a religion founded more on ideas than on practices. Yet the bible does not directly answer a number of questions that arise naturally from its teachings, and nowhere does it include a systematic statement of doctrine or even a list of the essentials of the faith. As a result the church historically has valued study, logic and reason as religious activities in a way that differs significantly from paganism and even Judaism and Islam
(which are religions based primarily on practice, not doctrine).
Gladiatorial matches also came to an end, largely because a courageous monk named
Telemachus went onto the floor of the arena to try to stop the killing and was himself killed in the process.
Notes:
Telemachus was a monk who, according to the Church historian Theodoret, tried to stop a gladiator fight in a Roman amphitheatre, and was stoned to death by the crowd. The
Christian Emperor Honorius however was impressed by the monk's martyrdom and it spurred him to issue an edict banning gladiator fights. The last known gladiator fight in

Rome was on January 1, 404 AD, so this is usually given as the date of Telemachus' martyrdom.
Caesar Constantinus Augustus (27 February – 22 May 337), commonly known in
English as Constantine I, Constantine the Great , or (among Eastern Orthodox,
Oriental Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Christians) Saint was Roman emperor from
306, and the sole holder of that office from 324 until his death in 337. Best known for being the first Christian Roman emperor. Constantine reversed the persecutions of his predecessor, Diocletian, and issued (with his co-emperor Licinius) the Edict of Milan in
313, which proclaimed religious toleration throughout the empire.
Constantine had returned to Nicomedia from the eastern front by the spring of 303, in time to witness the beginnings of Diocletian's "Great Persecution", the most severe persecution of Christians in Roman history
His most famous building projects include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Old
Saint Peter's Basilica.
The First Council of Nicaea is commonly regarded to have been the first Ecumenical council of the Christian Church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform
Christian doctrine, called the Creed of Nicaea. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy— the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom. The council did not invent the doctrine of the deity of Christ as is sometimes claimed. This idea had long existed in various parts of the Roman empire. It had also long been widely endorsed by the Christian community of the otherwise pagan city of Rome. Instead, the council affirmed and defined what it had found to be the teachings of the Apostles regarding who Christ is; that Christ is the one true God in Deity with the Father.