[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s
5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely
read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is
therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand
his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his
rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]
After N.T. Wright’s long discussion of Judaism, he next
attempts to discuss the early Jesus movement. He calls this group the
“kerygmatic” church with the idea that this group was driven by a variety of preachers
who were often itinerant. To establish this group, he chooses to focus on the
relationship the church ahd with the state as “fixed points” in order to build
a map of who this group was. His approach does do a fair job discussing the
external evidence for the community with the state, but ignores one of the
largest sources of information for the communities of Jesus movement – the
gospels themselves. One assumes he ignores them because he has an idea that
these were “too early” or that there is a straight line from
Jesus-scriptures-church rather than thinking of the scriptures and the movement
as interdependent. This hypothesis is helpful to analyze because it is very
common among Christians today.
First, it is necessary to briefly sketch what Wright sees as
the “fixed points” from which he wants to build his history. He argues that
there are some things that are historically verifiable and that these elements
are the ones around which one can build a history. He lists the following
“fixed points:”
30 Jesus’ Crucifixion
49 Claudius’ expulsion of Jews from Rome
because of Christian disturbance
49-51 Paul in Corinth, Ephesus
62 Killing so James in Jerusalem
64 Nero’s persecution after the fire in Rome
70 Fall of Jerusalem
c.90 Domitian’s investigation of Jesus’ relatives
c.110-114 Pliny’s persecution in Bithynia
c. 110-117 Ignatius’ letters and martyrdom
155/6 Martyrdom of Polycarp[1]
Wright considers each of these points as points of provable
history that he can then build the rest of the church around. There are some
concerns as to the historicity of some of these accounts (e.g. the Martyrdom of
Polycarp, Ignatius, Claudius, Domitian) but rather than discussing these
concerns – which scholars disagree upon (some think they did happen, some think
they did not, others think it happened but not the way that they were
described) – this paper will focus on what he builds upon from these sources.
First, Wright correctly acknowledges the difficulty in the
historicity of this period. We know, in many ways, more about Jesus himself
than we do about his earliest followers who bore witness to him (given that
Jesus left no writings so far as we know). Wright quips, “This is ironic; as we
shall see, it is actually possible to know a good deal more about Jesus than
about most of the early church.”[2]
He correctly argues that the goal of historicity then is simply to present what
is most probable- we will never know for sure exactly what happened, “But, as
with all possible historical theses,
the crucial question is: is it likely or
even probable?”[3]
He further acknowledges the difficulty in what we do know.
Wright calls this a “jigsaw” and shows the difficulty of trying to put it
together:
The reconstruction of the history
of early Christianity must attempt to make sense of certain data within a
coherent framework. It must put together the historical jigsaw of Judaism
within its Greco-Roman world, of John the Baptist and Jesus as closely related
to that complex world, and of the early church as starting within that world
and quickly moving in the non-Jewish world of late antiquity.[4]
He is certainly correct that there are a number of key
issues that have to be taken into account. What is troubling is that his “fixed
points” one will note have next to nothing to do with these topics. For
instance, John the Baptizer is not one of his fixed points – though nearly
every scholar argues that it is nearly the most historically certain element of
Jesus’ life (the only thing possibly more certain is that Jesus was crucified).
Wright’s fixed points seem to be a way of avoiding the
problem entirely – he builds his fixed points entirely on the relationship of
the church to Rome. It is unclear why he decides to do this except possibly
through the thesis that we can have better historical information about that
due to Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny (Roman authors who were not sympathetic to
Christianity).
The “fixed points” he focuses upon are the Roman
“persecutions” of Christianity. This essay will only consider his discussion of
the Martyrdom of Polycarp and Pliny’s letter to Trajan. He also discusses the
Martyrdom of Ignatius, but its historical footing is far less secure so I will
not spend time on it. He considers the martyrdom of Polycarp as evidence of an
early Jesus movement group that was organized and opposed to following Caesar
in some way:
They do not believe in the normal pagan gods, and so have
incurred the charge of atheism that was sometimes leveled at the Jews. In
particular, they do not owe allegiance to Caesar, and refuse to swear by his
‘genius.’ Christ is seen as a rival monarch, a king to whom is due an
allegiance which allows no room for the dictatorship of the emperor.[5]
Here Wright argues that there was a fundamental idea of
mutual exclusion between Caesar and Christ. There could be only one supreme
monarch and given that choice, he argues that Christians chose Christ rather
than Caesar. He further explains in Pliny’s letter to Trajan that this same
view was supported:
Second, the litmus test for
conviction as a Christian was, as in Polycarp’s case, ritual actions and
declarations which, small in themselves, carried enormous socio-cultural
significance. These only make sense on the assumption that Christians of all
sorts in the area, who would mostly not have been trained theologians, regarded
it as fundamental that their allegiance to Christ cut across any allegiance to
Caesar.[6]
He argues that people really did see a fundamental
difference between following Christ and following Caesar.
Wright’s analysis here is quite accurate. He does not do as
good of job of explaining why this
was the case. He mentioned sacrificing to the “genius” of the emperor. The cult
of the emperor was akin to a modern pledge of allegiance – it was a token offering
to the emperor cult that was simultaneously wishing him well religiously and displaying your obedience to his
rule. In the colonies, this was the single way that all citizens expressed
their devotion to the Roman state.[7]
Given this, it makes far more sense as to why this was such a big deal.
Christians, due to their monotheism, would not sacrifice to anyone but Christ.
Further, there was one “kingdom” of God which was formally different than the
emperor’s current “kingdom” that he was propagating on earth.
Where Wright makes the mistake is to use this as a “fixed
point” – he argues that the martyrdom of Polycarp shows that this hostility
between Rome and the church goes back very far:
What is more, Polycarp refers, in
his most famous phrase, to his eighty-six years of allegiance to Christ.
Assuming with most commentators that this is accurate, and that it means he was
born into a Christian family and baptized as an infant, this puts the date of
his birth, in to an already Christian family in Asia Minor, at AD 69/70. We
must therefore hypothesize that there was an established, though probably
small, Christian church, holding allegiance to the royal figure of Jesus, and
denying the pagan gods, in Smyrna within forty years of the crucifixion.[8]
The problem with Wright’s assertion, of course, is that the
martyrdom of Polycarp – if it is even accurate – does not say that Polycarp
believed the same things throughout
his 86 years. It is quite possible that his views could shift slightly and that
this idea that this same faith in 156 was present by 70 is difficult at best.
Further, Wright does not do a good job explaining the
antipathy that Rome had for the Jesus movement. He does well showing that the
persecutions themselves were sporadic rather than systematic. He rightly notes
that Pliny does not know that there is a policy as if it wasn’t done regularly:
First, it is clear that
Christianity was already widespread in Asia Minor, beyond the area evangelized
by Paul in the early days, and that, although Pliny can assume that serious
Christians must be punished, probably with death, there was no established
procedure, no civil servants’ rule of thumb, for how to go about it. This
indicates that previous persecutions by Roman authorities had probably been sporadic
and occasional rather than systematic.[9]
While he presents this well, he does not present as well
what the nature of those persecutions are.
Each of the early persecutions of Christians are for
perpetrating a crime. Pliny
persecuted the church for refusing to sacrifice to the genius of the emperor.
Nero persecuted Christians at Rome for causing the fire (whether they actually
did or not is a different story – they were at the very least prosecuted for a
crime), Claudius drove them out for a disturbance (if the story can even be
believed), Polycarp was killed for refusing to sacrifice. There would come a
time when simply being a Christian was a crime under the period of Decius
(251-254), where if a Christian was found, that person was prosecuted. Here, though,
that is not the picture.
Wright argues that Christians embraced this antipathy – they
really did see themselves as separate from the emperor in profound ways. He
argues that while they nuanced the discussion in ways that should not have
caused a problem for Rome, they very much recognized their position:
These events form a chain
stretching across a century in which, time after time, the Roman authorities
found the Christians (as they found the Jews) a social and political threat or
nuisance, and took action against them. The Christians, meanwhile, do not seem
to have taken refuge in the defense that they were merely a private club for
the advancement of personal piety. They continued to proclaim their allegiance
to Christ who was a ‘king’ in a sense which precluded allegiance to Caesar,
even if his kingdom was not to be conceived on the model of Caesar’s. This
strange belief, so Jewish and yet so non-Jewish (since it led the Christians to
defend no city, adhere to no Mosaic code, circumcise no male children) was, as
we shall see, a central characteristic of the whole movement, and as such a
vital key to its character.[10]
Wright is certainly correct that some Christians very much
presented this idea. Where he fails is in seeing these events as cohering all
together to make one group a consistent whole.
Wright, for whatever reason, does not dialogue with a major
source of information – the gospels themselves. Had he done so, he would have
had a hard time discussing the Gospel of
Luke/Book of Acts. Luke/Acts has
as one of its fundamental tenets the Jesus movement as a politically favorable
organization. It argues that there is no necessary contradiction between Rome
and the Christians. It is possible that he did not include this discussion
because he is going to save this conversation for a later chapter; however, one
of the concerns is that by doing so, he has confused the reader. He makes it
sound like the Jesus movement never accommodated
at all to its surrounding culture.
This was certainly true in some cases – for example this is the sentiment
expressed in the Apocalypse of John –
but not so true in other cases which seems to have had the opposite argument –
for instance Justin Martyr’s Apology argues
for their careful obedience.
The reason Wright makes these mistakes is because he is
loathe to admit that there was not a single “Christianity” at this time. The
fact is that there several different groups who were followers of Jesus who had
different opinions. Some of them certainly saw their relationship with Jesus as
mutually exclusive from their relationship with Rome. Others were far more accommodating.
However, if one does not want to address that primary reality, then one is led
toward a conclusion like Wright’s – he looks at several Roman sources, largely
ignores Jesus movement ones – to create a generally consistent picture. With
only 7 “fixed points,” it is not that hard to make a consistent picture out of
anything. He has carefully removed anything that would break this coherent
pattern so that his picture would not be confused. While this might be
heuristically helpful for the religious adherent, it is not the best
historiographic method to simply ignore data because it complicates one's
thesis.
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