Only the cause of bringing them to God, he argued, could possibly justify Spain’s rule of the New World; and only by means of persuasion might they legitimately be brought to God. ‘For they are our brothers, and Christ gave his life for them Cajetan, stupefied that an obscure monk should think to place his … Read more
Revolution of a new and irreversible order was brewing in the Latin West. Humanity, lost to sin, had been redeemed by Christ. But how? Some had cast Christ’s death as a ransom paid to Satan; others as the resolution of a lawsuit between heaven and hell. Abelard, following in Anselm’s wake, had been more subtle. … Read more
Christianity, in Origen’s opinion, was not merely compatible with philosophy, but the ultimate expression of it. ‘No one can truly do duty to God,’ he declared, ‘who does not think like a philosopher.’ The need was urgent. The gospel proclaimed by Paul, the conviction that had animated him and all the first generation of Christians, … Read more
Marcion was a Christian from the Black Sea coast, a wealthy shipping magnate whose arrival in Rome some four decades before Irenaeus travelled there had generated a sensation. Outraged that the churches in the capital refused to accommodate his teachings, he had indignantly turned his back on them and founded his own. Marcion, like numerous … Read more
Here was a question, as Irenaeus knew all too well, infinitely more unsettling than any that a Roman governor might think to demand. For some Christians, the teaching within Paul’s letters, and within the four earliest gospels – that Jesus, a man tortured to death on a cross, was also, in some mysterious way, a … Read more
Paul brought a totally different perspective. How could any man, knowing his limbs consecrated to the Lord, think to entwine them with those of a whore, mingle his sweat with hers, become one flesh with her? But Paul, by proclaiming the body ‘a temple of the Holy Spirit’, was not merely casting as sacrilege attitudes … Read more
Nero was like some figure sprung from tragedy, he killed his mother; he kicked his pregnant wife to death; he was married, dressed as a woman, to a man. Such it was to live as a hero of myth. Along its edge, Rome’s brothels were staffed with whores ranging from the cheapest street-walkers to the … Read more
Paul lived among people who revered only the best. But Paul announced that God had chosen the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong. In a world that took for granted the hierarchy of human chattels and their owners, he insisted that the distinctions between slave and free, now that … Read more
When God praised Job as blameless and upright; a man who fears God and shuns evil, the Satan responded mockingly that it is easy for the prosperous to be good. But if you take away everything man has, he will curse you. God accepted the wager and delivered Job into Satan’s hands. Job’s children were … Read more
For the Jews, who were humiliated by conquerors, a problem was raised. If God was good, why would he allow such things to happen? Jewish scholars arrived at a somber explanation: the entire history of humanity was one of disobedience to God. Making man and woman, he had given them a garden named Eden to … Read more