Why was Christianity unpopular with the Romans?

Briefer While Roman Laws tolerated nearly all religions, Christianity was the exception because they were not an old religion and thus not licensed atheism like the Jews with their ancient religion going back to Moses, but Christians lack this history and were thus unlicensed atheism that had to be rooted out. The pagan Celsus criticized the Christians that they were simple people who could not discuss with intellectuals. He said they were uneducated, simple, and arrogant to go against the long traditions of the fathers in each country. He said they did not respect the protective and benefits that the state provided them. Therefore, he considered them atheists. Felix about 80 years later than Celsus said that the Christians of his day do not use good body-lotion, they do not attend contests, they do not go to eat at banquets, they do not pay respect to the gods of the culture. The authors Balagangadhara and Claerhout found that authors are saying that Christians through these centuries “Anticipating the end of the world any moment and projecting the second coming of Christ onto the immediate future, the zeal of the Christians tended to ignore the cultural matrix they were functioning in. But, when it became clear that the world would not end so soon, their problem became obvious: they were a people without tradition.” The Romans had toleration for all religious traditions but not toleration for what they consider non-traditional religions just invented.

---Scholars say that Roman Criminal law

a. did not allow for testing the reality of the offence Christians were said of doing;

b. there was a lack of competence of religious tribunals;

c. Tiberius said” “the gods avenge their own wrongs”;

d.no trials in cases of suppression of religion

Source: (Guterman, ―Religious Toleration and Persecution in Ancient Rome, page 47).

---In 177 CE Athenagoras the Athenian was asked to enter a plea on behalf of Christians. It is a document addressed to the Emperor.

---In your empire...different nations have different customs and laws;

---and no one is hindered by law or fear of punishment from following his ancestral usages, however ridiculous they may be...

---In short, among every nation and people, men offer whatever sacrifices and celebrate

whatever mysteries they please...

---And to all of these both you and the laws give permission so to act, deeming, on the one hand, that to believe in no god at all is impious and wicked, and on the other, that it is necessary for each man to worship the gods he prefers .... Thus Athenagoras stressed the Tolerance Principle of the Romans for many religions.

Source: Athenagoras the Athenian, Presbeia, . Cited from: Athenagoras.  A Plea for the Christians, In Fathers of the Second Century, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 2 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition (Grand Rapids (Michigan): Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, reprinted in 1989), 129. See main source below.

--- Porphyry, the pagan philosopher in the time Jerome blamed Christians.

--- For having “the greatest impiety in taking no account of powers so manifest and so beneficent,

----but directly breaking the laws, which require everyone to reverence ancestral customs,

---and not disturb what should be inviolable, but to walk orderly in following the religion of his forefathers

---and not to be meddlesome through love of innovation.

---Because Christians was said to have no ancient tradition, but innovation, therefore they were wrong but all other religions had a long history so they were right.

Source: See: R.M. Grant, ―Porphyry among the Early Christians, in Romanitas et Christianitas, ed. W. den Boer, P. G. van der Nat, C. M. J. Sicking, and J. C. M. van Winden (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1973), 181-187; Stephen Benko, ―Pagan Criticism of Christianity During the First Two Centuries A. D., in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der Neuren Forschung, 23.2, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 1055-1118; Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (London: E. T. Batsford Ltd, 1985); A. Meredith, ―Porphyry and Julian Against the Christians, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der Neuren Forschung, 23.2, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 1119-1149. R. Joseph Hoffmann, Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains (New York: Prometheus Books,1994), 44

---Benko (1980, 1064) concluded that no one was permitted to reject the gods of cultures in their countries and Jews and Christians did. But the difference between them is that Christians were unlicensed atheists whereas the Jews were licensed atheists because their religion was old.

---The Romans hated the Christians “for they were anticipating the end of the world any moment and projecting the second coming of Christ onto the immediate future, (thus) the zeal of the Christians tended to ignore the cultural matrix they were functioning in.”

(S. N. Balagangadhara and S. Claerhout, 2024 pages 31 and 32, see source below).

---Their biggest problem was that they were a religion without an old tradition.

--- Eusebius summarizes the charges of the Romans against Christianity thus:

―”(H)ow can men fail to be in every way impious and atheistical,

---who have apostatized from those ancestral gods by whom every nation and every state is sustained?

---Or what good can they reasonably hope for, who have set themselves at enmity and at war against their preservers, and have thrust away their benefactors?

---For what else are they doing than fighting against the gods?

---And what forgiveness shall they be thought to deserve,

---who have turned away from those who from the earliest time, among all Greeks and Barbarians, both in cities and in the country, are recognized as gods with all kinds of sacrifices, and initiations, and mysteries by all alike, kings law-givers and philosophers,

---and have chosen all that is impious and atheistical among the doctrines of men?...

---(They have not adhered) to the God who is honoured among the Jews according to their customary rites, but (have) cut out for themselves a new kind of track...

---that keeps neither the ways of the Greeks nor those of the Jews.”

---After the Diocletian persecutions Galerius stopped it as follows:

--- Galerius published an edict to finally stop the persecutions, clearly explaining why the

Christians were disliked that much – not because they did not worship the gods of Rome, but

because they did not have a tradition:

―”It has been our aim in an especial manner, that the Christians also, who had abandoned the

religion of their forefathers, should return to right opinions.

---For such willfulness and folly had, we know not how, taken possession of them,

---that instead of observing those ancient institutions, which possibly their own forefathers had established,

---they, through caprice, made laws to themselves,

---and drew together into different societies many men of widely different persuasions.

---After the publication of our edict, ordaining the Christians to betake themselves to the observance of the ancient institutions,

---many of them were subdued through the fear of danger,

---and moreover many of them were exposed to jeopardy;

---nevertheless, because great numbers still persist in their opinions,

---and because we have perceived that at present they neither pay reverence and due adoration to the gods,

---nor yet worship their own God,

---therefore we, from our wonted clemency in bestowing pardon on all,

---have judged it fit to extend our indulgence to those men,

---and to permit them again to be Christians,

---and to establish the places of their religious assemblies;

---yet so as that they offend not against good order.”

Sources: Galerius cited in Lactantius, ―De Mortibus Persecutorum, 34; Cited from Lactantius. ―Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died – Addressed to Donatus, in Fathers of the Third and the Fourth Centuries, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 7 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition (Michigan: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, reprinted in 1989), 315. See main source below.

---Celsus the Pagan Philosopher gave his arguments against Christians and against Christ and Resurrection as follows:

---Celsus wonders why the supreme being‘ beautiful, good and blessed, would ascend among men and hence, undergo a change from good to evil, from virtue to vice, and from happiness to misery.

---Only mortals could wish to make such changes; the supreme being‘ would never admit of it, certainly not for the worse.

--- He asks why He who sent his son to mankind with the instruction to worship Him alone also allowed His son to be treated cruelly.

---What kind of a father would ever be that inhuman?”

---Celsus ridicules the Christian hopes for their resurrection.

---Celsus rooted the Christian God in human anthropology.

---The Christian hope for resurrection is just derived from human biology and natural processes.  

―Celsus denied the Hell.

---“It is folly on their part to suppose that when God, as if He were a cook, introduces the fire (which is to consume the world), all the rest of the human race will be burnt up, while they alone will remain, not only such of them as are then alive, but also those who are long since dead, which latter will arise from the earth clothed with the self-same flesh (as during life);

---for such a hope is simply one which might be cherished by worms.

---For what sort of human soul is that which would still long for a body that had been subject to corruption?”

Source: Origen, ―Contra Celsum, V, xxv; our italics. Cited from Origen. ―Origen against Celsus, in The Fathers of the Third Century, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 4 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition (Grand Rapids (Michigan): WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, reprinted in 1989), 553- 554; also Roberts and Donaldson pages 502; 654; 636; 549.

---In the third century Felix ridiculed the Christians in the following way:

--- Minucius Felix ridicules the Christian as follows:

―”You do not visit exhibitions;

---you have no concern in public displays;

---you reject the public banquets,

---and abhor the sacred contests;

---the meats previously tasted by,

---and the drinks made a libation of upon, the altars.

---Thus you stand in dread of the gods whom you deny.

---You do not wreath your heads with flowers;

---you do not grace your bodies with odours;

---you reserve unguents for funeral rites;

---you even refuse garlands to your sepulchres—pallid, trembling

beings, worthy of the pity even of our gods!

---Thus, wretched as you are, you neither rise again, nor do you live in the meanwhile.

---Therefore (…) cease from prying into the regions of the sky, and the destinies and secrets of the world: it is sufficient to look before your feet, especially for untaught, uncultivated, boorish, rustic people: they who have no capacity for understanding civil matters, are much more denied the ability to discuss divine.”

Source: Minucius Felix, ―The Octavius, VI; our italics. Cited from: Minucius Felix. ―The Octavius, in Fathers of the Third Century, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 4 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition (Grand Rapids (Michigan): Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, reprinted in 1989), 176.

---Celsus had more to blame the Christians for in the fourth century.

--- Celsus draws a parallel between the people invited to join and participate in the pagan cults and the Christian invitations thus.

---“The striking difference lies in the fact that the Christians invite sinners and thieves: ―…let us hear what kind of persons these Christians invite.

---Every one, they say, who is a sinner, who is devoid of understanding, who is a child, and, to speak generally, whoever is unfortunate, him will the kingdom of God receive.

---Do you not call him a sinner, then, who is unjust, and a thief, and a housebreaker, and a poisoner, and a committer of sacrilege, and a robber of the dead?

---What others would a man invite if he were issuing a proclamation for an assembly of robbers?”

---Celsus argued against their rule that it is easier for a camel to go through a narrow space that for a rich man to go to heaven.

---He said, that if rich people cannot go to heaven, what is the purpose of them to stay away from entertaining and enjoying their lives.

---If poor people are automatically saved, why not run out and enjoy yourself fully because your salvation is secure.

---In The Epistle to Diognetus, who replied to questions asked by a pagan about Christians, he said:

---“For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor

the customs which they observe.

---For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity.

---The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men;

---nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines…

---For, as I said, this was no mere earthly invention which was delivered to them, nor is it a mere human system of opinion, which they judge it right to preserve so carefully,

---nor has a dispensation of mere human mysteries been committed to them,

---but truly God himself, who is almighty, the Creator of all things, and invisible, has sent from heaven, and paced among men, [Him who is] the truth, and the holy and incomprehensible Word, and has firmly established Him in their hearts.”

---Celsus blamed Christians that they were not intellectuals. They were too simple in thinking.

---Celsus said that Christians avoided all debates and discussions with intellectuals:

---“We see that those who display their trickery in the market-places

---and go about begging would never enter a gathering of intelligent men,

---nor would they dare to reveal their noble beliefs in their presence;

---but whenever they see adolescent boys and a crowd of slaves and a company of fools they push themselves in and show off”.

---The authors Balagangadhara and Claerhout make the comment: “Anticipating the end of the world any moment and projecting the second coming of Christ onto the immediate future, the zeal of the Christians tended to ignore the cultural matrix they were functioning in.”

---“But, when it became clear that the world would not end so soon, their

problem became obvious: they were a people without tradition.”

Main Source: S. N. Balagangadhara and S. Claerhout, “Ancient Roman Culture and Early Christianity: A Pagan Perspective from India”. Ghent University Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap. Belgium.

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