Christian Soldiers, Part 2

God Against the Gods
by Jonathan Kirsch

(Page 6 of 6)

Now and then, a willful and hateful monarch might abandon the long tradition of tolerance that characterized the world of classical polytheism and undertake a war of his own against monotheism - the persecution of Christians in pagan Rome, of course, is the most famous example. Whether the Roman persecutions were quite as pervasive or quite as horrific as depicted in the martyrologies, however, has been the subject of hot debate for several centuries - Edward Gibbon, for example, characterized the worst atrocities as "extravagant and indecent fictions" that were invented to inspire the faithful.29 Indeed, the spectacle of men and women who went willingly and even ardently to their deaths - and, long afterward, the memory of these martyrdoms and the relics of the martyrs themselves - only stirred the fires of true belief and inspired ever greater acts of zealotry. Sometimes the pagan magistrates literally begged the Christians to make some gesture of compromise in order to save their own lives.

"Unhappy men!" cried one Roman proconsul to the all-too-willing martyrs. "If you are thus weary of your lives, is it so difficult for you to find ropes and precipices?"

What the pagans found most provocative was not the fact that the Christians chose to worship their own deity in their own way, but that they stubbornly refused to drop a pinch of incense on the altar fire or mumble a few words of prayer in honor of the Roman deities. Ironically, the word "atheist" was first used by pagans to describe Christians because they denied the very existence of the gods and goddesses whom the pagans so revered. What the Christians saw as an act of conscience, the pagan saw as an act of disloyalty and disrespect - all that was required of them was some simple demonstration of their "civic virtue," which is the phrase that was used by one school administrator to justify the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance when a California court recently ruled it unconstitutional because it includes the phrase "under God."

Whether or not the "Great Persecution" of the early fourth century, the tenth and last of the persecutions carried out against Christianity by pagan Rome, would have been successful in extinguishing or at least containing the fires of true belief, we will never know. Remarkably - and, according to Christian tradition, miraculously - the Christians were rescued from their torturers and executioners when Constantine, one of the many pagan contenders for the imperial crown, managed to prevail in battle over all the others and then put himself under the protection of the Christian god. Here is one of the rare moments when the willful act of a single human being can be said to have changed the course of history.

"Behold, the Rivers Are Running Backwards"

We are encouraged to regard monotheism as a self-evident truth that could not fail to win the heart and mind of anyone to whom it was revealed. "But nothing made its final victory inevitable," insists historian Diana Bowder. "[T]he final triumph of Christianity and extinction of paganism [were] still far from certain or obvious."31 Among the many faiths on offer in ancient Rome, all but Christianity and Judaism were polytheistic in origin - and Christianity, as historian Kenneth Scott Latourette concedes, "seemed to be one of the least of many rivals and with no promise of success against the others."32 Indeed, even after the famous conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity, the outcome could not have been predicted with confidence at any time until the ultimate victory.

"If Christianity had been checked in its growth by some deadly disease, the world would have become Mithraic," speculates the nineteenth-century historian Ernest Renan."[I]magine how the history we trace in this book would have unfolded," proposes the contemporary historian James Carroll in Constantine's Sword, "had the young emperor been converted to Judaism instead."

Indeed, as we shall see, the revolution that Constantine had set in motion was still imperfect and incomplete on his death - the ruling class, the culture and the vast majority of the population of the Roman empire were still pagan. When Julian, no less ambitious and no less visionary than Constantine, ascended to the imperial throne, he promptly revealed his intention to undo everything his uncle had done in the name of the Christian god. "Behold, the rivers are running backwards, as the proverb says!" writes Julian in one of the elegant, highly literate and often bitterly ironic discourses that were his real passion and his only enduring monument. The ancient proverb that Julian quotes was understood to signify that "all is topsy-turvy" - and thus does he acknowledge his own audacity in seeking to undo the revolution that Constantine set into motion and work a revolution of his own.

The Christian emperor and the pagan emperor, in fact, shared much in common. Both of them, like other famous makers of both religions and revolutions, were masters of self-invention. Each was convinced that blessings had been bestowed upon him from on high, although each credited a different god for his curious fate, and both claimed to have seen divine visions and received divine visitations. Yet they were both driven as much by grudges and grievances as by true belief, and intimate family politics mattered as much as the wars and conspiracies in which they were engaged. Both were so enmeshed in scandal, intrigue and betrayal that their life stories resemble something between a soap opera and a Shakespearean tragedy. Each of them was deeply and decisively influenced by the women in his life - mother, sisters, wives and concubines. Above all, each one sought to remake the world over which he reigned, and each one very nearly did so.

Julian, of course, ultimately failed to reverse the flow of the river of history that Constantine had turned in the direction of monotheism. A spear thrust ended his life, and thus ended his pagan counterrevolution, only two years into his reign. He was still a young man when he died in battle, and if he had lived as long as his uncle, the war of God against the gods - a war that has never really ended - might have turned out much differently. Indeed, as we shall see, it is tantalizing to consider how close he came to bringing the spirit of respect and tolerance back into Roman government and thus back into the roots of Western civilization, and even more tantalizing to consider how different our benighted world might have been if he had succeeded.

© 2005 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Jonathan Kirsch is a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed King David, Moses, The Harlot by the Side of the Road, and The Woman Who Laughed at God. He lectures and consults widely on biblical, literary, and legal topics and is a past president of PEN Center USA West.