The Attack on Christianity

Published on: Author: Alex Dong 75 Comments

The focus on finding the explanation for the suffering is an on-going process in the history of Christianity. One of the biggest suffering Christians has to face is persecution. According to both Lynch and Ehrman, the Roman empire’s legal persecution that was held against Christians were developed over a period of the time—the violence against Christians were first acted by the mob. Ehrman added that in fact, the very first persecution of Christians were held by Jews—that would make sense because Christianity were viewed as part of Jewish traditions at first, this not only provided Christianity the relation to the bigger crowd, but also provided protection from Roman-Greco persecutions. Because Roman authority recognize Judaism as an acceptable religion. But as more Gentiles converted into Christians, the ties to Judaism started to fade away. Therefore, after a period of time, Roman society no longer admit Christianity as part of Judaism and this grand them authority to punish Christians.

The reasons for Roman empire punishing Christians are clear—Christianity as a religion, post a threat towards the ruling of Roman empire. Christians rejects to worship Roma the goddess, which is the personification of Rome empire, as well as refusing to worship the king himself. Also promoting the belief of “God’s Kingdom” was very controversial: many would claim that the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom only being presented in one’s mental state and it will not post a threat to the empire of Rome. But this still implanted a bad impression of Christianity for many Rome authorities. Even though many Christians committed no crime during that time, they are still in great danger because by simply being a Christian can be treated with imprisonment, torture or even execution. Christians were under great stress because of both conflict within the religion as well as the conflict between the outside world and Christianity.

Pliny, a Roman writer that was later sent to govern the province of Bithynia-Pontus, he decided to interrogate Christians because Christians as a group was denounced publicly, and many blames Christians for the natural disasters. In the letter he wrote to Trajan, he explained the way he interrogate: “I ask them whether they were Christians. If they admitted it, I asked them a second and a third time, threatening them with execution.” This letter was wrote concerning Pliny’s own doubts—he was doubting whether the executions of Christians were legal, or even, whether it is the right and necessary thing to do simply because he has never attend any court hearings that is actually related to a crime that Christian committed. In this letter, Pliny pointed out that during the Christian meetings, they are eating “common and harmless” foods. Which corresponds to the misunderstanding the Roman society had towards Christians in general, that, during the meetings, Christians would commit unmoral crimes such as cannibalism. This letter revealed how much misunderstanding there was between Roman society and Christian community—Many would wrongfully assume Christians are committing horrible crimes, that Christianity as a religion, promotes evilness. Christianity beliefs and practices can only be held underground during that time.

In the letter that Trajan wrote in response to Pliny, He stated that Pliny is “following the appropriate procedure” and that it is difficult to define a proper routine to interrogate Christians simply because there were no rules that are accordant to this very issue. However he did encourage Pliny and emphasized that Christians needed to be punished if “found guilty”. He continued with the statement that if the Christians worships Roman gods, he or she will be pardoned for repentance—therefore, the word “guilty” is best to understand as “being a Christian”. In other words, Trajan promoted the idea of punishing Christians because of their stubbornness, the rejection of worshipping gods from Roman cults was viewed as a crime.

In Ignatius’ letter to Romans, he was focusing on reinsuring Roman Christians’ beliefs as well as giving them instructions. Ignatius told the people that keeping silence will keep them away from the better work—that is, to convince the Christians to hold on to their faith and defeat the fear of interrogation. Also, he mentioned that “to have power inside and out”, which means that one should not be only claiming that they are Christian but also act like one. In the letter, Ignatius asks his fellow Christians to not show kindness to him—because suffering and death is the best for him in becoming a true disciple.

It is important to know that Ignatius has very complicated emotions while on his way to Rome—he did know that he is “beginning to be a disciple”, which is very honoring, yet, he knows that he is in a bad position as well: “I am not enjoining you as Peter and Paul did. They were apostles, I am condemned; they were free, until now I have been a slave…” It is very interesting to see the comparison Ignatius made between Paul, Peter and him. More importantly is that Ignatius is using himself as an example to teach the Christian in Rome how to face the suffer that lays ahead of them. It’s difficult to really explain in detail how Ignatius felt when he was going to Rome—but the sadness that was shown in the letter was undeniable.

This letter also revealed how Ignatius felt about the Roman Empire as well as world—“Nothing that is visible is good”. Similar to Gnostic worldview, he also presented the idea that the world is no good through this letter, and Christianity will be hated by the world because of its greatness. He also view that Martyrs are the blessed, they are the ones that are able to set examples of being true to follow Christianity and teaches each other to be firm in the faith of the Lord.

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