The Sixth Angel

Revelation 9: 13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. 

15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. 

16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

Many Evangelical Christians will celebrate joyously on Sunday, firm in their belief that Donald Trump is delivering to them their Rapture, Armageddon and anti-Christ – and the slaying of the third-part of men.  Trump has previously proclaimed himself the best president ever for Israel, or something like that.  Now he has taken an overt action that could lead to war with Iran – the biggest wet dream of Zionists, uniting many (but not all) Christians and Jews in the United States.

I will cite from two sources through the remainder of this post. 

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, Robert L. Wilken (all information Julian is from this book)

Christian Zionism: A Historical Analysis and Critique, John Hubers

Hubers describes Christian Zionism eschatology:

The modern state of Israel is a catalyst for the prophetic countdown. If these are the last days, then we should expect an unraveling of civilization, the rise of evil, the loss of international peace and equilibrium, a coming antichrist, and tests of faithfulness to Israel. Above all, political alignments today will determine our position on the fateful day of Armageddon.

Uniting Christians and Jews!  According to Wilken, in the first centuries of the Church such a thought would not have been considered by either Christians or Jews or Romans or Greeks.  Such a thought extended even centuries beyond this:

Medieval Christian attitudes towards Jews were largely defined by “replacement theology,” which relied on a heavily allegorical reading of the Old Testament to give credence to a belief that the Church had “replaced” Israel in God’s salvation plans. (Hubers)

Julian was emperor of Rome in the fourth century.  He was the son of Julius Constantius, the half-brother of Constantine.  He was raised with a solid education in the Greek classics and Christian Scriptures.  It was the latter that made him a most dangerous critic of the new faith – he knew the Scriptures as well as anyone.  He has come to be known as Julian the Apostate.

Julian was born in 331, eighteen years after Rome recognized Christianity as a “licit cult,” but some fifty years before Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman world, in 380 – seventeen years after his death.

Julian was one of the most effective critics of Christianity, being very well-read and having studied the Scriptures.  As Roman emperor – albeit for only nineteen months until his death – he was also in position to take strong action against the Christians.  This action would come along two paths: first, an attack on the Christian faith via the Jewish religion; second, by a curious construction project.

After the 1967 war, when Jerusalem was to pass wholly in Jewish hands, Billy Graham’s father-in-law, Nelson Bell, who was at that time editor of Christianity Today, summed up how many dispensationally-inclined evangelicals felt at the time (Hubers):

…that, for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.

Thank god (yes, small “g”) for the 1967 war.  After 2,000 years, I think many Christians were starting to lose hope.

Julian was twenty years old when he turned from his Christian faith.  “The philosopher Maximus of Ephesus was instrumental in leading Julian away from Christianity.”  Yet Julian could not announce his apostacy, as his cousin was both emperor and Christian.  He stayed in the closet for ten years.

In the meantime, he led Roman armies in victories over the Franks and Germans; Julian then presented his cousin with the reality – backed by the army – that he preferred to be emperor.  His cousin conveniently died before the two met.

Hal Lindsey would publish The Late Great Planet Earth in 1969, fortuitously on the heels of Israel’s victory over Jerusalem; it would become the bestselling non-fiction book of the decade (Hubers):

Lindsey’s book was a popular presentation of classic dispensationalist themes, beginning with what it said about Israel:

Early Christian Philosophy

About 1000 years before Aquinas, Christians had an encounter with Aristotle.  It is an interesting bit of history. 

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, Robert L. Wilken

Galen was a second century writer, studied in philosophy and medicine.  He was a native of Pergamum, located in western Asia Minor near the Aegean Sea.  Pergamum had a library second only to that in Alexandria; it was a wealthy city.

Galen would arrive in Rome at the time when the Christian community was still not very large, yet it was one of the more significant Christian communities of the time.  Several of the most prominent Christian intellectuals and apologists were in Rome, including Justin Martyr.  Galen would write what became twenty-two volumes; while never directly writing of Christians, they were often mentioned.

He commented several times on Christians who were like physicians that wrote with no scientific basis:

“For one might more easily teach novelties to the followers of Moses and Christ than to the physicians and philosophers who cling fast to their schools.”

The arguments presented by the Christians were little more than “God commanded” or “God spoke.”  Christians had developed a reputation for appealing to faith.  This was unsatisfactory for Galen.  Despite this – and due to the virtuous living that Galen saw in them – Galen treated the Christians with respect, not referring to them as a superstition, but instead as a philosophical “school.”  It was a dignified term. 

It was also precisely at this time when writers like Justin Martyr were working to change this view.  There were other writers, such as Theodotus, who would lean on a rational foundation in the tradition of Aristotle.  This did not sit well with many of their fellow believers:

“They have tampered with the Holy Scriptures without fear. …They put aside the holy scriptures of God, and devote themselves to geometry, since they are from the earth and speak from the earth, and do not know the one who comes from above.  Some of them give all their energies to the study of Euclidian geometry, they admire Aristotle and Theophrastus, and some of them almost worship Galen.”

The use of Greek learning to interpret the Bible was frowned upon by most Christians at the time; in the few Christian sources where “philosophy” is mentioned, the word was used pejoratively. 

As mentioned, Galen gave Christianity a bump up the ladder by referring to it as a philosophical school instead of a superstition.  This was because despite the flaws, as Galen saw these, he saw that Christianity was leading men to a virtuous life, and this was the sign of a good philosophy. 

But the Christians were the simple people.  Simple people could not follow any demonstrative argument; they needed parables.  A good story beats a rational argument every time.  These Christian parables led to a virtuous way of living – and the proof of a good philosophy was if it brought people toward living a moral life, not merely a way of thinking about one.

Piety and respect toward the gods; philanthropy and justice toward one’s fellow man.  These were the hallmarks of good philosophy, and Galen saw these in the Christians of his time.

…they preached to men and women about how to live amid the twists and turns of fate and fortune. …Christians led people to embrace lives of discipline and self-control, to pursue justice, to overcome the fear of death.

It was through their way of life, not their teaching, that Christians would catch the attention of the larger society.  This was somewhat difficult for Galen to understand, as there were aspects of Christian teaching that made little sense to him.  Like others educated in the Greek tradition, he believed it was impossible to do good without knowing the truth. 

In his view, there was much truth that the Christians did not know, and much untruth that they did know.  The Mosaic view of creation falls squarely into this chasm.  Moses omitted the material cause and went straight to the efficient cause, with God creating something out of nothing merely by speaking.

What follows is the debate that continues to this day: can God do anything, even that which against nature?  I am swayed by C.S. Lewis here:

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible.  You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense.

Meaningless combinations of words cannot suddenly make sense just by adding the words “God can” to these.  I might go further and suggest that God created that which would not require Him to have to go against nature.  He is God, after all.

But at the time, the Christian view offended the sensibilities of the Romans and the Greeks.  All things are possible to God – even, it seems, the nonsensical (to borrow from Lewis).

Conclusion

Galen was the first pagan author to place the Christian religion on the same footing as Greek philosophy.  Christianity would begin to be taken seriously in intellectual circles.  Obviously, a large part of this was due to the manner in which Christians lived – a real problem today, suggesting one reason Christians are no longer taken seriously.

But returning to the purpose of this post: Aristotle might have been lost to Christianity for 1000 years, but he was there in the beginning.  One can also see, perhaps, something of the roots of the divide – even animosity – between the Eastern and Western traditions.  It was there, temporarily and due to Aristotle, in the first century after Christ.

The Early Years

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, Robert L. Wilken

How did Christianity appear to the men and women of the Roman Empire?  How did it look to the outsider before it became the established religion of western Europe and Byzantium?

These are the questions Wilken intends to answer in this book.  We know the story up until we find John on the island of Patmos, primarily through the book of Acts and through Paul’s letters.  We know the story of Constantine and his adoption of the faith – giving Christianity political authority for the first time. 

But what of the story in-between?  How was this sect seen by those in power: a military threat, a political threat, a source for revolution…or no threat at all?  Wilken will answer the questions not by examining the works of Christian authors, but through the observations of pagan observers of Christianity (albeit, we often only have excerpts of these writings captured in rebuttals offered by later Christian apologists).

Pliny called Christianity a “superstition”; Celsus wrote that Jesus was magician and sorcerer.  Porphyry, Julian, Galen and Lucian are also considered.  These authors cover a period of almost three hundred years – from the early second century into the late fourth century.  Wilken does not address if the criticisms are true or not; he is only after presenting the Roman view of Christianity (and “Roman” is meant to include both Roman and Greek authors).

In the earliest years, Christianity went virtually unnoticed:

For almost a century Christianity went unnoticed by most men and women in the Roman Empire.

Pliny the Elder (Pliny’s uncle and, later, adopted father) wrote his Natural History a generation after the death of Jesus; in the section on Palestine, there is not a single mention of Christianity.  The first mention of the sect by a Roman writer occurs about eighty years after the beginning of Christianity.  To the extent the Christians were noticed, non-Christians saw the Christian community as “tiny, peculiar, antisocial, [and an] irreligious sect…” 

As mentioned, much of what Wilken would find from these authors regarding Christianity comes from Christian apologists in response – these Christian texts have been better preserved.  The debates at the time are the debates many still have today (albeit without even understanding the earlier arguments): creation out of nothing; faith vs. reason; the status and relation of Jesus to God; the historical reliability of the Scriptures.

Early in the second century, Pliny was sent as provincial governor of Bithynia-Pontus, on the northern coast of Asia Minor.  His assignments were numerous: look into irregularities in the handling of funds, examine the municipal administrations, put down potentially political disorders, deal with pending criminal cases, and investigate the military situation.  As can be seen, the sect of Christianity would be considered among a couple of these assignments.

When Pliny wrote of the Christians, he used the same term for club – hetaeria – as he used to described a firemen’s association.  The concern in both cases: would these clubs restrict themselves strictly to professional or social concerns, or would these turn political – eventually revolutionary?

Somewhere between the cities of Amisus and Amastris, Pliny wrote his famous letter regarding Christians.  It is not clear in which city the activities described were occurring – it can only be said that it was one of the coastal cities of northern Pontus.

A group of local citizens approached him to complain about the Christians in the vicinity.  The precise complaint is unknown, but it is possible to infer that the charge was brought by the local butchers: the Christians refused to buy meat for the sacrifice.  Whatever the specific trouble, this was unusual: in most areas of the Empire, Christians lived peaceably among their neighbors. 

Although [Pliny] expected to find evidence of Christian crimes, he found none.  He discovered instead that the rites were innocuous. …All Pliny found was a superstition, a foreign cult.

They would meet to chant verses in honor of Christ as if to a god; they would bind to each other by oath – but not for any criminal purpose, as they would abstain from theft, robbery and adultery; to commit no breach of trust.

With all this, he still summoned the accused Christians to confess: a yes answer would result in execution: per Wilken, “Christians were culpable for the sake of the name alone.”  He did not have authority to execute those Christians who were also Roman citizens; their fate is unknown.  Pliny would write: “Whatever the nature of their admission, I am not convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished.”

Charges would increase in other cities; anonymously authored pamphlets were circulated, listing dozens of “suspects.”  Pliny would devise a method to better test the confessions: repeat the formula of invocation to the gods; make an offering to Trajan’s statue; revile the name of Christ.  Such a test had few, if any, precedents in Roman history. 

Trajan would concur with this formula, and add: “…pamphlets circulated anonymously must play no part in any accusation.”

Conclusion

From such beginnings, Christianity would eventually be able to conquer – for all of the good and bad that came with this – the largest empire in the western world.  But there are still a couple of centuries before this occurrence; these will be reviewed in subsequent posts.