simply as sojourners

[melannen]

Did not do quite so well with the Lent thing today. The laptop didn't manage to stay closed quite the whole time; but I didn't read fic or lj at least! No, it was just that as the professor was droning on about the technical difference between drizzle and rain, I suddenly remembered a word I've been trying to think of for *months*: pogonip, the-fog-that-kills. And I had to google it right away to make sure it was correct, see. Other than that, I did pretty good.

Also for Lent, I am attempting to do the Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan which frey_at_last linked to, because I am *tremendously* underread when it comes to the fathers of the Church. As in, there are only a couple of authors on that list that I know *anything* about. (St. Athanasius gets credit for the Athanasian creed, and also put out the eyes of his iconophanical prelate, for piercing his priestly ear-lobes. And I think Leo the Great was a pope.} Plus, it came in convieniently downloadable form for reading on the train, where there are always at least a couple of other people doing their daily religious study.

Today's reading (and tomorrow's) is from the Epistle to Diognetus, which I'd never heard of and has some *lovely* language - chapter five is a beautiful portrait of the dream of Christianity - "Every foreign land is as to them their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers" - or maybe I was just half-asleep when I read it. Anyway.

The earlier chapters, which seem to consist of a rather formulaic mockery of idolatry and superstition, bother me. The epistle is set up as a letter from a Christian teacher to a well-disposed pagan in the third or fourth century, but its argument against paganism seems to be, "look at those gods you worship! They're made of clay and stone! They're just man-made things! How self-evidently silly!" Which is a refrain that's repeated a lot in the Old Testament, and there, I can kind of accept it, because I read the Old Testament as being written by Hebrews to other Hebrews - they're not aiming to convince anyone who has any deep understanding of paganism, and besides, some of the early Arabic practices may *have* approached true idolatry. But in no version of 3rd century pagan Greek or Roman practice, as eclectic and syncretic as it was, have I ever gotten the impression that they believed that the images they used in worship were actual gods - or at least, the gods weren't *only* the images. So how could you expect that argument to stand up to an educated Greco-Roman audience?

Maybe my understanding of this, of idolatry as it was concieved and practiced in the early Christian era - is faulty and oversimplified - well, of *course* it is! and I ought to read up on it more, after I read up more on the bajillions of other things I need to read! - but it bothers me, and makes me think of this apology as smug self-congratulatory propaganda rather than a sincere attempt to explain Christianity to outsiders. Christians are at their worst when they're smug.

I will be at sister's apartment for SciFiFri tomorrow. Yay!

Comments

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction - either I'm missing something, or he was missing something. His refutation of idolatry is one thing, but his understanding of Judaism is even more surprising. It may be typical of Christian-Jewish relations at the time, as rival groups under the Roman empire, but I'm obviously not the best authority. The tone, which can definitely sound smug, sounds like other things I've read from that time, Christian and otherwise - I tend to chalk it up to rhetorical style and (apparent) ignorance.

(Moreover, his dismissal of "Jewish superstition" actually works *against* the idea of Christ's sacrifice, so I'm a little befuddled. The Prophets don't read that way; they condemn sacrifices without repentance and "the sacrifice of the heart," but not the (physical) sacrificial system itself, hellooo. Which makes me think he definitely wasn't a Jewish convert.)

I've been trying to date it, and the info I can find online says they estimate from the mid 2nd century into the 4th. It's hard to research anything online, because so much is not necessarily reliable or a respected interpretation.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

The dismissal of Judaism didn't really bother me as much, because I was presuming that neither the author nor his audience were Jewish. (I also have kind of gotten the impression from studying the New Testament that some non-learned Jews in that period may have been thinking of sacrifices in ways that aren't far off from the way it was described here.) You're right, though, if you condemn the Jewish sacrificial system, you're blowing away the standard interpretation of the Crucifixion.

On the other hand, one of the sources I looked up while trying to get some context suggested that the author may have been an Arian Christian, and I don't actually have any clue how the Arians interpreted Christ's sacrifice.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Ah, same here, my knowledge of the Arians is mostly limited to "they didn't believe Christ was divine." But since their heresy was grounded in the belief that to make the Father and Son consubstantial would equate God with a particular substance (even matter, since Christ was "very man"?), and be too pagan, you can kind of see that influence. The author obviously wasn't a *real* Arian, but I think the connection could explain his sort of faintly anti-matter gnosticism.

(as a last note, while I was writing this I got out my, uh, one book with Early Church writings, which includes this epistle. The editors noted that his arguments are "sometimes unfair and superficial" and must have had a "mixed effect" on pagan readers - so.)

*relooks at post* You're right, today's portion was beautiful!