Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, 14 March 2011

Prehistory of Christianity

Christianity is usually associated with Europe and the west, not with the east. Yet there are, of course, many churches in the east, usually having domes and cupolas rather than steeples and towers. Today the eastern Church is called Orthodox, and dominates in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Russia, Egypt and Ethiopia, and parts of Asia like Travancore in India. Besides the Orthodox Church, there was an extensive Church in much of the rest of Asia, spreading originally from Persia—the Nestorian Church. In the early days of Christianity, Syria, Turkey, North Africa and Egypt, Iraq and other areas were dominated by Christianity, but now are Moslem.

The old distribution ought not to be surprising, given the situation of Jerusalem, on the eastern edge of the Roman empire, facing unconquered Parthia, the country which inherited the old boundaries of the Achaemenid Persian empire, save for Anatolia, Syria and Egypt, which had been subdued by Rome. In particular, the Jews, Yehudim, those whose God was Yehouah, had emerged from the Persian empire, when it set up Judah, Yehud, as a temple state as a center of worship especially for Jews, and also a means of raising taxes from them, for they lived all over the region. They were the people conquered by the Persians, and Judaism was to be the religion which united them all. Christianity was a hybrid of Judaism and its own parent, Zoroastrianism, having many of the Zoroastrian features that had been denied to the Jews, or that they had rejected in the period of Greek and Hasmonaean rule after the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Macedonian. The wide spread of Judaism meant that Christianity had a ready made audience, and excellent channels for it to disperse easily in the whole area.

The Persians had sold Judaism to its own conquered heathens as being the religion of a race of people chosen by God—the Persians actually—who had handed down to them a law for them to live by, with the promise of rewards as long as they obeyed it loyally. After Alexander and the Hellenization of the east, many Jews began to adopt to the new culture, but only guiltily, while the rest became all the more fanatical to stick to their original traditions. Most Jews had never known Jerusalem except as a place of pilgrimage, but, though the statutes of the law were slowly abandoned by these diaspora Jews, they kept up as a religious duty the obligatory annual donation to the temple required by the Persian chancellery, and so too was the annual pilgrimage to the temple. The description of diaspora Jews implied their ancestors had all once come from Yehud, but they had been dispersed in the past.

For many Romans, the long history of the Jews described in the Septuagint and God’s devotion to his people were impressive, and these “Godfearers” attached themselves to Jewish communities. The law of the Jews, though, required male Jews to be circumcized, and this rather barbarous and dangerous operation for adult males scared off Roman men from converting fully. Christianity abolished the law, and, with it, circumcision, so opened the doors for pagans to become Jews—of the new sect of Christian Jews.

The Alexandrian conquest had turned the world Greek, so the Jews had become subject to the Greek culture. The language of the Persian empire was Aramaic, and that was the language of Jesus, but Greek had become the world language, and the Christian books were written in Greek. Greeks had a great culture, extending back over half a millennium, with a history of brilliant philosophy and literature, so although the Greek of the common people of the Hellenistic world (koine)was more mixed and less sophisticated than classical Greek, it was widespread and an excellent basis for a new religious literature:

The Church was fertilized by two Eastern traditions, Judaism and Hellenism, the latter of which had already combined Greek philosophy with oriental mystic religions.

Eastern Christianity, N Zernov

The Essenes and Early Christianity

Here, intentionally or not, Zernov seems to be implying that Christianity began as an Hellenized Jewish mystery religion, and that is just how Paul the apostle seems to have seen it. As Christianity spread, each new church was largely autonomous, being too far from the Jerusalem Church to be adequately controlled by it, as Acts and Paul’s letters show. After the Jewish War scattered Jewish Christians, the new churches were indeed autonomous. Each was a group of believers led by a bishop with the help of lieutenants called deacons and presbyters. Its core beliefs, its creed, was a mystery, a secret not to be revealed. that is why Christianity was a mystery religion. Catechumens, novices, were trained for several years before the church’s creed was revealed to them as full initiates. They were obliged not to reveal the creed to anyone.

This initiation procedure matched that of the Jewish sect, the Essenes. They too had a long novitiate, two or three years, they too had ranks equivalent to a bishop, a deacon and a presbyter, with the same roles of leadership, sharing of alms to the poor, the sick, and to widows and orphans, and instruction and baptism, respectively. Moreover, churches provided hospitality for travellers, just as the Essenes did. The parallels are too many to be accidental.

The Ebionites

Perhaps the earliest Christian group, The Ebionites, regarded Jesus as a great man, a prophet perhaps, akin to Mohammed, but not a god. They were surely Essenes, or a scarcely differentiated offshoot from them. Indeed, Essenes called themselves Ebionites, meaning the “Poor Ones” or simply “The Poor”. By coincidence, Jesus in the gospel accounts often speaks of “the poor”, read—without the benefit in the Greek of some way of distinguishing “the poor” from “The Poor”—as simply poor people. To have treasure in heaven, Jesus required followers to give what they had to the poor and follow him (Mk 10:21; Mt 19:21; Lk 18:23). The poor mentioned here, Jesus being an Essene, meant “The Poor”, the Ebionites, also known as the Essenes. He was urging them to join the Essenes of whom he was the leader.

Essenes naturally were Jews, as Jesus was, but the later gentile church accused the Ebionites as Judaizers, a type of heretic, and rejected them, whereas in reality the gentile churches were dejudaizers, and they were the heretics from the original Jerusalem Church. So it is that Truth is in the eyes of the holder of the victorious belief. The Jewish followers of Jesus the man, were defined as heretical by the actual gentile heretics who quickly made Jesus their god. The human moral leader of Jews became a God for Jew hating gentiles.

Yet Jesus had plainly enough lived among human beings as a human for at least thirty years, the gospels say. Even Paul made no divine concessions to Jesus’s birth. He was born of a woman—not even of a virgin—under the law (Gal 4:4), so was a normal human Jew, and throughout his life no one noticed he was any more than a man. Peter allegedly identified him as the messiah, but the Jewish messiah was a human leader, not a god, because Yehouah had been emphatic that He was the only God!

Given that Christians believe Jesus was a god, but to all intents and purposes, he had seemed utterly human for his whole life, at some stage something must have given people cause to think Jesus was a god. Well, in fact it is not that clear cut. Though there is no dispute about the nature of Jesus these days, it has not always been so. Christian views on this issue have been many, ranging from his being purely human, albeit remarkable, as the Jewish Christians, the Ebionites, thought, to his being purely a god with the merest shadow of humanity to make him seem human during his incarnation. And these acute differences were not just interesting debating points—Christians schemed, murdered, hated, excommunicated, defrocked, often rioted and often destroyed the Christian churches of other Christians with whom they disagreed. Philip Jenkins calls this strife the “Jesus Wars” (Jesus Wars, 2010), and they extended from the inception of the new faith until Islam subsumed its eastern branches in the seventh century.

Roman Mistrust of Christians

Essenes and Jewish Christians seem to have both fought with the Pharisees and other Jews against the Romans in the Jewish War, and so whatever Christians might now plead in their tendentious accounts of their own history, the Romans had plenty of good reasons to categorize Christians as subversive. Christians remained obsessed with the idea of an early apocalypse, and this conditioned much of their thinking. It is a curious but undeniable fact that, as Christianity grew to dominate Rome, the empire declined. It was strongest and most civilized under the second century Antonine emperors, centered on the Stoic, Marcus Aurelius. Then, Christianity had yet to make much impact, though it already seemed dangerous to Marcus Aurelius through Christians’ persistent belief that the world was coming to an end. They could see no point in defending the state—it would certainly collapse as the End—the end of the world—approached. They rejoiced at every setback, whether a military upset or a natural disaster. It proved the End was getting closer! They refused to serve in the military because that would be opposing God’s will to End the world. They were undermining the morale and the stability of the Roman state:

It was generally realized that the Church was a subversive society, the very existence of which challenged the claims of the Roman state to be obeyed in all matters civil and religious.

N Zernov

The addition of “religious” at the end of this sentence can only mean the state religion, not people’s personal religious preferences, which were of no interest to the Roman state as long as they were not practised clandestinely. Romans did not like to impose religious views on people, and were tolerant of strange, often oriental, religions. Despite the Christian exaggerations of their persecution by the Roman emperors, Roman society had become increasingly tolerant of new and strange religions since the days of the Republic, but the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century was to change all that. The mystery religions were not secret religions. They were practised openly. It was their inner ceremonies that were secret. Clandestine means being practised without anyone not invited knowing anything about it.

Romans were inclined to be legalistic. They were fond of law and how they kept world peace by a firm application of it. Christians were pleased to take advantage of this when it suited them, notably when Constantine wanted them as allies. But earlier they had refused even token acceptance of official state ceremonial symbolism—honoring the emperor. It was essentially no more than patriotism, an acknowledgement of personal loyalty to the state, represented by its head, akin to people these days standing to attention for their national anthems in front of a flag (US) or a picture of the sovereign (Britain and many others). Not doing it cast doubt on their commitment to Rome.

So, Roman magistrates often pleaded with Christians simply to burn a little incense to the emperor, that was all they required. The society was polytheistic, so in no way was the ceremony meant to transfer loyalty from someone’s preferred god to the emperor, yet they refused, allegedly for this spurious reason. Before long they were adopting with no hesitation the public holidays dedicated to other gods, like the Unconquered Sun, showing no question of principle was involved. Roman power had been built on national pride, and the morale and discipline of its soldiers. Besides Marcus Aurelius, several later emperors became alarmed at Christian intransigence in these matters, and went down in history as Christian persecutors.

The truth is that many Christians were eager to be martyred, rather as Moslem suicide bombers today are eager to be martyred. They rigidly refused to show loyalty to the Roman state knowing that ultimately the magistrate would have no choice but to grant their wish, and martyr them! Unlike Americans, though, Romans had good reason to fear disloyalty, infiltrators and fifth columnists. The Roman empire had very long and vulnerable boundaries, especially to the north where large populations of Germanic, Turkish and Hunnish tribes were massing, and east where the major power, Persia, Rome’s oriental enemy, constantly threatened.

Moreover Christians worshipped a Jewish man who had been hanged as a rebel, so they were peculiarly hard to trust. Caesar had granted Jews special privileges in the first century BC, but, in the first and second centuries AD, they had become unpopular in the same way that Moslems are in America today. The Jews of Judaea openly rebelled on two occasions that required large Roman armies to ensure victory. The Jews were on the Persian border, and had historical connexions with the rival superpower. Far from being a place of little interest to the Romans, and far away, Judaea was therefore an important Roman outpost of empire, on a crucial boundary with Parthia, the successor to Persia. Jews had a reputation of favoring Persia, the country that had set up for them a temple in Jerusalem, so Romans felt they were not to be trusted. For Romans, to lose Judaea to the Persians would put Egypt under threat, and that would be intolerable because Egypt was vital for the economy, providing wealth and sustenance for Romans. And besides all that, Jews were a large minority of the population of the empire.

The Christians began as a Jewish sect, so the distrust of Jews extended to the Christians, and their worship of a man who had been crucified as a Jewish rebel against Rome proved they were subversive. But the gentiles quickly began to dominate the new religion and used the reputation of the Jews and the rebellions in Judaea to distinguish themselves from the Jews as much as they could, and affirm their loyalty to Rome. The New Testament was therefore written and suitably edited to portray Jews as ungrateful deicides—they had killed God who had, their scriptures said, chosen them as His people.

Realizing His error, God had now chosen the Christians instead, Christians decided, but He still called them Israel so that he would not have to be constantly reminded of His mistake. In short, Christians were affirming that God was either not omniscient, or was a complete idiot, though it did not trouble any of them then, nor does it still. They have always depicted God as a buffoon while continuing to worship Him as the guarantor of their eternal bliss. But, like cleanliness, Christians, like Paul the apostle, were keen to depict intelligence as something God loathed. Of course, it was not God that was the idiot, He merely being the image of His creators. It was the latter, those whose image He was, the Christians, who were the idiots.

Meanwhile, they had an excellent basis in monophytism[†]Monophytism. The belief that Christ was purely or primarily divine, rather than being in any significant sense human—the subject of this essay. for labelling Jews as deicides, and therefore for persecuting them as soon as they were able. In the late fourth century, the golden mouthed John, John Chrysostom, openly accused Jews of the crime of murdering God, and Christian mobs took to desecrating synagogues as well as Pagan temples. The Roman saint, Ambrose, thoroughly approved. In time all synagogues had been destroyed, Jews were forbidden to hold public office, nor were they allowed to convert any Christian to Judaism if they wanted to stay alive. The “blood libel” myth—famously if wrongly revived by Sarah Palin—that Jews murdered Christian children also appeared.

All in all, Christian loyalty to the empire could not be trusted, and they proved it by their refusing to serve in the military, when the threats surrounding the empire meant a strong army was more essential than ever. Christianity was initially strongest in the east, and it was from the east that the danger of Persia threatened.

The Gnostics

From the century after the crucifixion, large communities of Christians called themselves Gnostic, and they themselves were split into sects led by charismatic teachers like Basilides and Valentinus. The various Gnostic movements hearked back more clearly to Persian dualism than Judaism which had in the interval between Alexander and Christ erased the wicked god under the influence of Hellenism.

Gnostics offered an early attempt at an explanation of the nature of Christ. What they had in common was that Christ was an envoy of the true spiritual God, the earth being ruled by a false god, a local creator god, or artificer, the Demiurgos, an inferior god—Satan. The creator described in the Jewish scriptures was actually this false god, the god of the Hebrews—Yehouah—no doubt the flip side of abolishing the wicked god. It left some people thinking the god of the Jews must have been the wicked god. The true spiritual God was the Father, spoken of by Jesus, identifiable with the Persian high god, Ahuramazda, the God of Heaven. Gnostics averred that Jesus was a man who became the Christ—the messiah—at his baptism when a spirit in the shape of a dove descended on him and a voice declared him to be the son of God. Paul, however, strongly influenced by the Gnostics, believed Jesus was a man through to his resurrection and then became a god (Rom 1:3-4). Gnosis was knowledge of these matters.

As Christianity came to dominate the empire in the third century, the important figure of Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, like the Gnostics, held that Jesus was a man who became a god, the Logos, when its spirit descended on him at his baptism. Thereafter he was Christ.

What made the change possible was the quality of his human life. By succeeding in living an essentially sinless life—as sinless, at any rate, as any human could achieve—he was able to become a god. The idea is also similar to that held later by the Cathars, who considered it was a Christian duty to live as good a life as they were able. Only by seeking to be perfect humans—living the life of a Christ—could they become eligible to be reunited with God in heaven, God being purely spiritual. Humans were born in the material world separated from God, but with a spark of the spirit within them. The spark could be fanned by pure living until it burned strong enough for the human to unite with God, leaving behind the material body that had previously imprisoned them.

Cathars did not think it was necessarily achieved in one lifetime, for they believed in reincarnation. Cathar and Gnostic ideas probably stemmed more purely from Essenism than Catholic Christianity, though their idea of reincarnation seems to be an evolution of the original idea of bodily resurrection. Perhaps Paul of Samosata being harried by the church helped preserve the notion of Christ’s humanity, Paul being regarded as a righteous man trying to uphold truth against the deprecations of the Devil, and this re-emerged much later as Catharism.

Earlier, Tertullian had argued that the death and resurrection of Christ meant little, if Jesus was not a man of flesh and blood. But the idea that Christ was actually God throughout was always popular, and in the early third century, Sabellius declared that Christ was human but with the personality of God—so God himself suffered on the cross. It was an idea that maintained a purer monotheism in that the Holy Ghost and the Son were all God, not merely parts of God, however obfuscatingly conceived. Yet it removed Christ as a role model for humanity. A Christ with God’s personality was a human with God’s will, and could have no trouble being sinless, something real human beings had to work hard just to attempt to do. The churches rejected Sabellian theory as heretical.

Christianity the Imperial Religion

By the third century, Christians were treading the corridors of power. Many courtiers and even the wives and daughters of some emperors had converted. Diocletian was one of the few who tried to make a stand against the growing pessimism about the future of the world, as Christian influence grew. He failed, and abdicated in 305 AD. Eventually Constantine, making a bid for power, decided to elicit the support of Christians. A worshiper of the Unconquered Sun himself, he realized that he could get Christian support by putting them in charge of the empire’s solar cults. Moving on Rome, he won a famous victory over his rival after the sun had given him a sign—the Chi Rho symbol of Christ in the sky. With the symbol allegedly painted on his soldiers’ shields, he conquered! Or so Eusebius, the Church’s historian, says.

The outcome was that Christian clergy were given the power and privileges of the received religion, and a few decades later it was officially declared the state religion. Thereafter Christian intolerance of other religions grew apace. All other religions were harassed out of existence, and when that work was done the harassing became internecine. To be a Manichaean could be a capital crime. Arian Christians, banned from meeting in churches, were expelled. Success in reducing the number of Arians in the empire encouraged attacks on other “heretical” or marginal groups like the Novatians. Christians began their long term habit of murdering heretics when they accused the Spanish bishop, Priscillian. They revived the old Roman superstition that gods—and God—are temperamental and jealous, and quite ready to send an earthquake or famine to kill myriads, if someone had failed to worship correctly. What God could do, it became the loyal Christian’s duty to do! The tradition of killing and burning others—very often other Christians—had started.

So, though Christians, in their early days up to the time of Constantine, were periodically prosecuted for fear of them being a cover for subversion, the main problem for Christians afterwards was other Christians. Church histories largely hide the fact that Christians were hardly, if ever, a united body, and the most persistent disagreement about doctrine dividing these churches was that of the nature of Christ—was Christ God or a man? Of the principal Christian churches, for centuries it was not clear whether any one with its doctrine would emerge dominant. In western Europe, Roman Catholicism ultimately survived while important churches in the east succumbed to Islam, but it was through good or ill fortune, rather than any merits in one church and doctrine over the others.

In the fourth century the Christians were exultant. Constantine favored them, putting the weight of the Roman state behind them, thereby doing what the Republican religious right did in the USA to support G W Bush—getting an unquestioning, and therefore reliable and solid, block of support. But the Christians themselves were not united, so Constantine resolved to force them into unity, organizing the Church in parallel with the civil structure of the state. In particular, he arranged for episcopal councils presided over by the emperor to settle doctrinal issues just as the Senate did for civil law, bishops taking the place of senators. Senators were, however, independent people who were to give their own views and vote for what they thought was best, whereas bishops were supposed to be guided by the Holy Ghost and so should come to decisions unanimously. Unanimity in a chronically divided Church could only be achieved by quite unholy and certainly undemocratic measures!

Bishops of the cities were called metropolitans, and had authority over lesser bishops in the suburbs and surroundings. In the mid fifth century, five metropolitans were raised further in status and called patriarchs—Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Rome had the leadership of the whole of the western empire, and Illyricum in the Balkans. Constantinople covered Thrace, Asia and Pontus, with 39 metropolitans and around 400 bishops. Alexandria had authority over 14 metropolitans and 114 bishops in Egypt and Africa. Antioch had 13 metropolitans and 140 bishops in Syria and Arabia. Jerusalem had 5 metropolitans and 50 bishops in Palestine.

Alexandria

The most cultured city of the empire was the Greek foundation of Alexandria with its museum, library and philosophical academies. It attracted students far and wide to learn Greek culture, and was also a noted center of Jewish scholarship because of its large Jewish minority. It was where the Septuagint originated. Previously, the Jewish scriptures were those handed to the Jewish colonists towards the end of the fifth century, when Yehud had been set up. They were its foundation texts consisting of the Law, and a history written to emphasize Deuteronomy, based on real documentary king lists from Assyria, but expanded so as to show the Jews being punished for apostasy, then a remnant being rewarded for righteousness—the theme of the Deuteronomic history as it is called.

Philo (20 BC-50 AD) and Josephus (37-100 AD) had written their works there. It was also the place where Christianity clashed with Greek philosophy most obviously. With Christianity victorious, it degenerated from a beautiful garden of knowledge to a desert devoid of knowledge but full of prickly and harmful dogmata.

The Christian scholar, Origen, later declared an heretic, was chosen to reply to Celsus’s much earlier critique of Christianity, but which was evidently still stinging. Origen was born in Alexandria, his parents both Christians, his father a wealthy Greek, and his mother Egyptian. He had a classical Greek education and could teach Pagan philosophy as well as Christianity. A Pagan critic of Origen wrote:

Origen lived as a Christian, but thought as a Greek, and he applied the Greek arts to an alien belief.

Christians rarely chose to copy anything Pagan or critical about them, so the original critical essay by Celsus is gone, but Origen was obliged to cite whole chunks of it for his readers to know what he was refuting. And Origen’s work was, of course, copied. Celsus was one of the Romans who saw Christianity as damaging to Roman pride and patriotism, the foundations of Roman civilization. Christians, he thought, believed fables and fantasy as history, and were generally ignoramuses. Origen countered with the now old Christian chestnut that men would not suffer martyrdom for fables—lies. On this argument, Christians have to believe the Quran—plenty of Moslems are ready to die for it, so it must be true!

Arians

Even those who considered Christ as God could not agree. One of the biggest differences in the Church, at the time of the Nicene Council called by Constantine, was that between the mainstream Trinitarians and the Arians, followers of Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter. Trinitarians believed what Christians today are meant to believe, that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are three equal but different aspects of the “Godhead”, and this “Godhead” is God. Arius pointed out that the Logos, the spirit incarnated as Jesus, according to John, was a created being, made by God, so however powerful he was, Christ could not be considered equal to the “God the Father” God.

Arius did not question that Christ was the savior, simply his relationship to God. A son was less than his father, and Jesus always called God his Father. Indeed, Jesus himself argued that a son of David could not be David’s lord for that very reason. Theology is not, of course, governed by logic. It just uses it when it suits it, and it did not suit the Catholic bishops accept Arius’s logic here. They had rejected the Gnostics for believing there were lesser gods like the Demiurgos beneath the supreme God, yet they were still ready to accept lesser gods called angels and demons, and even a top demon called the Devil whose objective was to oppose God. They were even to create new gods called saints who could themselves receive and answer prayers. Logic is not a Christian strong point.

Nor was there disagreement that Christ was the Word (Logos), the instrument God used to create the universe, but Arians could not accept that the Word was of the same substance (homoousios) as God. He was merely of similar substance (homoiousios). The Trinitarian position causes problems over the nature of Christ, for it equates the Son with the Father and the Holy Ghost—humanity did not enter into it. If the Son was a powerful but lesser being than God, then humanity could somehow be a part of it, just as the Gnostics thought that God could emanate lesser aspects of Himself all the way along the spectrum from the purely spiritual to the material.

Constantine called an historic council to meet in Nicaea in Asia Minor, not far from Nicomedia whence the emperor then ruled. The first question addressed was that of an agreed date for easter. It was agreed without rancor. The next was to decide whether Arius was right about the nature of Christ. Arius had been excommunicated for proclaiming the Logos was a creation of God, and so inferior to Him. The majority of the imperial bishops thought Arius was wrong about this, but that excommunication was a harsh punishment. Excommunication was another practice carried over from the Essenes, for whom it meant spiritual death. So too it did for Christians, so it was considered the direst of punishments. In many places outside the jurisdiction of the emperor, Arius’s teaching was to become mainstream, so it was far from an absurd doctrine.

Athanasius

Athanasius (c 310-373 AD), bishop of Alexandria (328 AD) was the main spokesman for the identity of God and Christ, and agreed to a formulation that they were both of the same substance—homoousios—rather than a bald statement that the were the same. Everyone agreed to the formulation—except two! The Holy Ghost was slacking yet again, but belatedly it came up with the solution. It inspired Constantine to evict the two dissenters from the council chamber, and, Lo! a miracle, the council agreed unanimously. Unfortunately, it was a precedent that legitimized the illegitimate in the name of God, and was to lead to continuous bullying and wangled majorities by Christians determined to find earthly ways of making the Holy Ghost seem to do its job properly.

Christ and God had been pronounced to be of one and the same substance and not merely of similar substance, but that is what Paul of Samosata had declared in 268 AD, and, for it he had been condemned as an heretic. As Christ was of the same substance as God, it could not have been the same substance as human beings, so Christ must have just seemed to be human while really being a spiritual being—an angel, perhaps. No, Christ was of the same substance as God, procreated not created, of the same being, yet appeared as a human in human flesh. What then was God’s problem in appearing to human beings in the Jewish scriptures? Christ could be human but yet be God! Surely it is Sabellianism.

The view of the Essenes was that human beings could aspire to be angels, and that is what the leading Essenes did. By acting as angels they considered they were preparing themselves for God’s kingdom. It is the reason they were celibate and chaste—angels were sexless, as Jesus explained in the gospels.

Essenes retained many of the Persian ideas that Judaism had dropped, and the idea that everyone had a heavenly double was among them. Even the gospels alluded to it when Peter was hiding in a courtyard after the arrest. Essenes expected one of their leaders eventually to be the messiah, and the theology of it seemed to be that the messiah’s heavenly double was the archangel Michael. In other words, the messiah was the incarnation of the archangel Michael—leader of God’s heavenly hosts of angels on the day of the Lord’s Vengeance, when evil was finally defeated on earth. So it was that those who believed Jesus was the messiah, the Christ, still thought even after the crucifixion that he would return leading the heavenly hosts at his Parousia, his Return.

Angels could appear to human beings, as Gabriel did to Mary, and the Angel of the Lord did in the Jewish scriptures, but angels were uniformly considered as less than God. They were created beings, not of the same substance as God. Yet, to all intents and purposes, the Angel of the Lord was God, or was as near to God as humans could get. In Persian religion, it seems that Mithras had the same role of appearing for Ahuramazda, the Persian high God. Michael the angel can be equated with Mithras, and that is why Christ and Mithras, in their respective religions, have the same role, that of a God like mediator, and savior of humanity.

Of course, the Christian invention of the Trinity was meant to show that God could actually feel the suffering of Christ, the Logos incarnated. God was triune. God had so loved humanity that he had sent His own son to suffer and thereby prove that He too had experienced the worst of the human condition. Christ was meant to be God’s love incarnated, and sincere love of others was ready to suffer humiliation, pain and death for the object of that love—humanity. Since God could experience the human condition, it was up to Christians to emulate God. They too should sincerely love others. That is the entire message and purpose of Christ’s life being recorded in the gospels.

After the Nicene Council, Arianism became the Christology of the invading barbarians, eastern tribes like the Vandals, Goths and Lombards,who were not Pagan, as most Christians have been taught, but had already been converted to Christianity. The clerics have tended to be coy about revealing to their flocks that the supposed wild savages who destroyed Rome and took over the western empire were Christians too. It is just that they did not follow the view of Athanasius who prevailed over Arius at the Nicene synod. Christ was of a somewhat different substance from God, so that he could be human and not entirely divine.

Athanasius believed Christ was God’s Word, the instrument of God’s creative power, and of the very same uncreated substance as God. But “the Word became flesh”, as John put it. But Word or not Word, the substance of God could not become tainted and corruptible flesh, so the “becoming flesh” was taken by many thoughtful Christians to mean that the Word animated an otherwise empty human body. The will and personality of such a Christ was that of the Logos, the Word. Other Christians denied that this Christ was human at all, or he was not, at any rate, human enough. But too much humanity in Christ inclined towards Arianism.

Catholics wanted people to understand that God Himself had actually suffered like a human being, but that had been a moot point with Gnostics and continued to be moot. Arius thought Catholic bishops were taking up a heresy no different from that of Paul of Samosata. Having agree to the homoousios formula, many bishops began to wonder what they had let themselves in for when they returned to their own churches. Nowhere is homoousios mentioned in scripture. It had no biblical authority and sounded heretical. Consequently, some bishops changed their minds, repudiating what had been agreed, but the Holy Ghost, incarnated as Constantine, would not stand for it. He sacked them. Unity was again preserved. Well, no! Other bishops were now incensed. Two factions began to call each other heretics. The Christological cold war became a Christological hot war! It lasted for centuries.

Apollinarius, a disciple of Athanasius, took the view that as Christ was of the same substance as God, it was impossible for him to have had a human mind and personality. The body and soul of Christ were not human without a human mind, and so Christ was in effect an animal animated by the purely divine mind and soul of the Holy Word. So, Christ was almost entirely divine. Some Christians had trouble thinking what this purely divine Christ was actually saying, if it had so very little that was actually human in it. He was not even as human as the prophets. He was a “God born of a woman”. It too was condemned as heresy.

While Jews looked to the salvation of the whole human body in a renewed material but unpolluted and perfect world—the idea behind the physical resurrection of Christ—gentiles, including Paul of Tarsus, accepted that the body decayed and so they looked to salvation of the soul, the psyche, the vessel of the human personality. Yet this Christ of Apollinarius did not have a human soul, and its personality was that of the divine Logos. What then was the point of the drama of the Passion? Christ could not have been of a purely divine nature without dissolving the apparent purpose of his suffering and resurrection. Maybe Arius, or even the Gnostics, had been right.

Christians Exercise State Power

Following the examples of Constantine and S Athanasius at Nicaea, Christians who had refused to do what emperors had required of them as Roman citizens now used state power to close down rival religions and arrest their clergy, even, increasingly often, rival Christian churches. The recognized Church had become privileged as an arm of the state, and the previous pleas for freedom of worship were forgotten now that Christianity had it. Their attitude was, “We are the masters now”. The emperor was the guarantor of the Church. Those who infringed its rules were now the offenders, and could be, and were punished.

Bishops who had enjoyed moral authority over their flocks became agents of the state with powers of coercion. Some bishops became so monstrous that their own flocks threw them out. Others were tolerated as long as they persecuted those whom the flocks classed as heretics. Popular bishops were adored as infallible demigods, while unpopular ones were abused as satanic. This verbal hostility all too easily degenerated into gang fighting and then rioting.

Toleration was not on the Christian agenda. Every faction was certain it was right and the others were wrong, and not just mistaken but evil, and so impossible to tolerate—not a lot different from fundamentalist fanatics today. Dogmatic zealotry and charity, which is toleration, are mutually exclusive for Christians. The failure of Christianity, as for all religions where people think only they have God on their side, is that there is no place in their psychology for tolerance. Christ said, “Love your enemies”. Christians all too often could not love one another, but their founder’s words about hypocrisy never seem to enter their heads. Pauline Christians are deluded into thinking that, being destined for heaven, they are perfect, and so self criticism is pointless!

Admittedly, there were some, even in the worst years of turmoil in Christian history who tried to maintain the core moral messages of Christ, but they were rare. The Cappadocian father, S Basil the Great (329-379 AD), a man who preferred monasticism to Church politics but was obliged by his superiors to enter the war, had emphasized in his monastic rules that love of God was inseparable from love of humanity, so although he fought for the Nicene agreements he had to persuade Christians that their co-religionists who objected to the formula homoousios were nevertheless sincere Christians. Naturally, he failed. Christians continued to demonstrate physically that they would defend every insignificant iota of what they considered correct doctrine with utter disregard for the words of the man they were squabbling about, the man whom one way or another, they considered to be their God!

Basil’s friend, S Gregory of Nazienzen (330-389 AD) believed emphatically that, as the Logos, a god, could be a man and retain the two natures while being just one person, proved that a human being can aspire to the “Godhead”, to unity with God. Of course, inventing an impossible conjecture as proof does not prove anything, but it was a brave attempt to present the Nicene agreement in a way that recognized that Christ, a man could nonetheless be a god. Men like these tried to effect a compromise between the factions only to be rejected by the fanatics, or by supposedly pious politicians—emperors and their families—aiming to get the Christian mob on their side.

The Nicene Creed

Theodosius, a fanatical Christian manipulated by fanatical Christians, came to the throne and again imposed the Nicene agreement by fiat, sacking all the Arian clergy who were against it, and taking over their churches. S Gregory himself was now challenged by the monophysites, and chose to return to obscurity as a monk. He said in his valedictory speech:

No one told me I had to contest consuls, prefects and illustrious generals. No one told me I had to put the alms of the church to feed gluttony, and the poor boxes to buy luxury. No one told me I had to ride in expensive chariots with superb horses or that everyone must make way for the patriarch…

All the “hoo ha” led Theodosius to call a second ecumenical council for 381 AD in Constantinople. It adopted a creed adapted from the baptismal creed probably of the Church of Jerusalem. It was meant to reaffirm and reinforce the Nicene agreements, and is now called the Nicene Creed.

Until this time the confession of faith had been a secret revealed only to initiates who had completed a long period as novices or, as Christians called them, catechumens—from the Greek for oral instruction. The lessons were oral to preserve the mysteries from anyone who was not confirmed. As a consequence of Nicaea, a single creed was agreed which was written down, much to the chagrin of many bishops. Zernov (Eastern Christianity) writes that S Hilary, a bishop of Gaul, who was exiled to the east, had complained to his flock…

…that the creed which hitherto had been kept secret had now become the subject of public debate, and that the local confessions of faith were to be replaced by the Nicene Creed.

S Cyril of Jerusalem told confirmed Christians in his Catechetical Letters that he did not like the Creed to be written out, adding explicitly:

I wish you to commit to memory when I recite the Creed, not writing it out on paper… taking care while you rehearse it that no catechumen chances to overhear it.

In 383 AD, Theodosius ordered all the local creeds to be destroyed and forgotten because only the Nicene Creed was now legal. Anyone not willing to use it could not hold a prayer meeting. The variety of forms of the Creed preserved by different Christian churches and not made public were now cast in concrete so that anyone who dissented could be exposed, accused of heresy and made liable to severe penalties. These draconian measures were effective for a while.

Some monophysites were ready to accept S Gregory’s account, and were not willing to risk their jobs by standing against the mainstream. Moreover, following the attacks on the Pagans and the destruction of their temples, many of them judged it wiser to join the enemy rather than run the risk of Christian vengeance. Converts swelled, with the effect that the two or three year novitiate before baptism was dropped, and with it went discipline. The new Christians were mainly untaught, and the difference between a Christian and any other citizen became minimal. The result was that the ignorant mob ready to act as enforcers for some charismatic bishop multiplied, and so too did the wealth of the Church. Bishops became grander still, regarding themselves as princes, and forgetting that Christ had required humility. As the worldliness of the high clergy progressively increased, they wallowed in their luxury, and neglected their duty to instruct Christians with Christ’s morality, failing thereby to ameliorate the ignorance of the lay membership.

Rome and the Popes

Though Constantine had moved his capital to Constantinople, Rome remained the most important church in the western empire. The hierarchy of the church having been chosen to mirror that of Roman civic society, the Popes of Rome acted as religious emperors. The situation of the leading bishop in Rome being called “Pope” did not arise until around the middle of the second century. Abba is the Aramaic for “Father”, as in Barabbas (Son of the Father), and father was always an honorific title of a Christian leader. Abba, in Latin imitation, translated to papa. Leading Christian bishops and patriarchs took this word as a title, and eventually it became “Pope”, a high bishop of the Church. Not only the bishop of Rome was Pope in those times, but the title settled on to him alone, when other important popes disappeared into the Moslem empire.

The Roman bishop spoke ex cathedra Petri, from the seat of Peter, so the Popes spoke with the apostle’s authority. Rome had claimed a special position through the legend that Peter was the first bishop there, something that is manifestly untrue unless Peter was bishop of Rome when Paul arrived! Originally, each church had its own bishop, and as Rome evidently had a church when Paul arrived there, Peter was not the one. Rome was claiming authority over other churches, but achieving it was to take some time, and the arrival of Islam, before it succeeded. The bishops of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch all had their own claims to seniority, but these three were in permanent private rivalry. Rome took a stance which prevailed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, but it tended not to be embroiled in the intrigues of the east.

Though partially isolated from the worst Christian warring, the popes of Rome continued to pass edicts called decretals, which were to be used to establish Rome’s universal authority. Some were based on Rome’s self promoting interpretations of passages in such earlier documents as those approved at Nicaea, while others were forged! The Catholic Church was to become skilled at forgery and deception, hardly qualities that one can reasonably imagine God would favor. In particular, the shrewd and long incumbent Pope Leo I, the Great (440-461 AD) did much to push Rome as the principal church, and the seat of Peter.

After Constantinople became the capital city, administration of the empire went with it. But, after the collapse of the western empire, beginning with Leo the Great, popes in the west were increasingly seen as temporal as well as spiritual leaders. Before the defeat of Rome by Odovacar, Leo had been negotiating with the barbarians, and his temporal authority was increased by the forged Donation of Constantine which made out that Pope Sylvester (314-335 AD) had received from Constantine the sovereign rights over Rome. After 476 AD, appeal to the Pope was the best recourse for clergy appealing against decisions by the barbarian chiefs.

The barbarian invasions did not make it easy for the popes. Constantinople stood more in the direct line of access of the barbarian hordes pressed by the Huns moving westwards, but it was well defended by sea to the east and south, with a rocky mountainous peninsula to the west, and only the north as a realistic route of access, but with multiple lines of fortifications and the width of the river Danube to hinder the approach from that direction. The barbarians were mobile and found it easier to move straight across the Eurasian plains to the river Rhine, which only had to be bridged to give access to Gaul and Italy.

Rome was actually a more vulnerable target for the invaders, and the western empire was assailed repeatedly from the end of the fourth century after the Goths had assaulted Constantinople, winning an historic battle at Adrianople (378 AD). For S Ambrose (339-397 AD) of Milan, it was the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, Gog and Magog were coming from the north to attack the City of God, the very attitude of most Christians to disaster—it heralded the coming End. But Constantinople stood, and the barbarians moved farther west to tackle weaker targets. Incidentally, Ambrose’s contemporary, S Augustine (354-430 AD) of Hippo, contradicted him, saying, “the City of God has as much room for Goths as for Romans”!

Eventually, the Rhine frontier burst, leaving Rome and the western empire open to the barbarian tribes. The vandals went on through Gaul and Spain to capture and settle in north Africa, threatening Rome then from the south. The Visigoths settled in Gaul and Spain, and the Lombards actually settled in northern Italy (now Lombardy). The year 476 AD, when Rome fell to Odovacar, is taken to be the end of the western empire, although it had long been moribund. Pope Leo was the real ruler in the west until the Gothic kings established themselves. After the Synod of Nicaea, the barbarians had been converted to Arianism, but, though Rome was now occupied by the barbarians, the popes were not Arians, remaining loyal to the Council of Chalcedon, which had upheld the Nicene agreements. From the fourth century, when Christianity triumphed, to the sixth, when Narses, the Eunuch, temporarily recaptured Italy for Justinian, the population of Rome was literally decimated, falling to less than a tenth of what it had been.

Egypt and Monasticism

With the center of political power and the influence of important princes, and, notably, princesses now being in the east at Constantinople, the primacy of Rome was looking far from secure, despite the efforts and cunning of successive popes. The Christological differences in the eastern churches and the proximity of the court, together with the evaporation of Roman civilization in the west, put all the focus on the east, and although Rome remained influential in Church affairs, and in demand as an potential ally of the contending parties, it was by no means dominant. If Rome had pushed up its sleeve the valuable ace that its first post was Peter, Alexandria claimed the apostle, Mark, author of the first gospel and allegedly Peter’s interpreter. The predilection of the Christians for forgery does not give us any confidence in either “tradition”.

By two centuries after the crucifixion, even rural parts of Egypt were becoming Christian, and the countryside was to be the source of the gangs of barbaric monks the bishops of Alexandria, like Cyril, used as enforcers. Individual monks each had a cell—a hut or cave—so lived in solitude except when they met for work, worship, and bathing. These native Egyptians used their own language—later called Coptic, a word cognate with Egypt—and they evolved into the Coptic Church.

Christians have maintained that the impulse for the monastic movement came from Christ’s words to the young ruler, “If then thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor” (Mt 19:21). Zernov writes in respect of the Christians monastics:

Many recruits joined the monastic communities in search of this perfection and were encouraged by the unusual prophetic and healing gifts displayed by the ascetics, which were regarded as proof of divine approbation for this type of life.

Eastern Christianity

The word “monk” is from the Greek monachoi meaning “solitary ones”, assumed to mean that the original monks lived alone like hermits or more aptly, anchorites. But it might equally have meant that a community of monks was solitary or cut off from the world, like any medieval or modern monastery. If so, they equate with the Essene “camps”, similar self sufficient groups of ascetics like the famous one at Qumran. It means the source of the monastic movement and a reason for the strength of the early church in Egypt was pre-Christian. It was Essene or their close associates, the Therapeuts, who were established in the Nile Delta at the time of Philo and Christ.

In fact, then, Jesus in Mk 19:21 is telling the young man to become an Essene. Essenes attempted to be as perfect as God’s angels, and they called themselves Ebionites, “The Poor”. Moreover, the high Essenes in monastic communities, their camps, held all things in common, like the apostles (Acts 2:44). So “giving to ‘The Poor’” was handing over one’s possessions to the Ebionite sect, prior to joining it. Each Essene owned nothing save a few personal possessions like clothes, a purse and a shovel. A treasurer held all of the wealth of the members on behalf of the community, the job Judas had in the gospels. Zernov goes on to say some of the recruits to Christian monasticism wanted to exchange the transient joys and the more certain troubles and sorrows of the world for a well organized community, echoing the classic description of the Essenes by Pliny (Natural History):

Their assembly is born again day by day from the multitudes, tired of life and the vicissitudes of fortune, that crowd thither for their manner of living.

Zernov notes also that monks and nuns discarded their family ties and obligations, matching what otherwise seems a puzzling instruction by Jesus:

There is no one who forsook house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel, that will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the coming age, eternal life.

Mk 10:29-30

It can only mean that those who gave up their ties and obligations to join a community—the Essenes—would certainly be rewarded with companionship and charity, and ultimately eternal life. They were to exchange normal family life for an ascetic life devoted to being perfect, aiming to be angels:

The ascetics were compared to the angels.

N Zernov, Eastern Christianity

Zernov adds that the minds of the early Christian monks was obsessed with the fight against sexual temptations, just as it was for the Essenes…

…a solitary people, the Essenes, wonderful besides all others in the world, being without any women and renouncing all sexual desire, having no money, and with only palm trees as companions.

Pliny, Natural History

Zernov blames the intolerance and fear of heresy of the desert Christian ascetics on this sexual denial. If it is true, it might have applied to Essenes too because they were impatient of other Jewish sects, notably the Pharisees, to the point of intolerance. Remarkably too, the Essenes were noted healers, and were considered prophets, so the qualities of the Essene sect match closely those listed by Zernov as those of the Christian monks. It just cannot be coincidental.

The Alexandrian Church also had a Gnostic influence which also might be a result of Essene roots, the Essenes being more loyal to the Persian origins of Judaism, than the other Jewish sects which had accommodated to Hellenism to varying but greater extents. The hypothesis of Essene roots for the Alexandrine church, if sound, associates it more obviously with John than Mark, Mark, like Peter, if Acts is any guide, heading towards Rome via Antioch. Comparison with the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals John as having many allusions previously thought to have been Hellenistic that now seem Essenic.

Christian Intolerance and Hypocrisy

Gnostics favored John as did the later Cathari, and the Logos theology that introduces John, though Greek, was promoted by Philo of Alexandria when seeking to accommodate the Jewish religion to Greek philosophy. But the variety of Gnostic and imaginative gospels and memoirs that arose in Egypt was curtailed by Athanasius in 367 AD—in his authoritarian manner trying to bring, and succeeding in bringing, a unity from a diversity of Christian conjectures. It will have been in response to this harsh policy that monks hid the trove of Christian and Gnostic writings that comprised the discovery at Nag Hammadi, hoping that the policy would be relaxed and they could recover their valued library. It never was.

The persecution of variant Christian sects proceeded alongside the demolition of Pagan temples, monuments, and statues. The empire was plainly in a sorry state but the eastern empire lasted another thousand years while it disappeared in the west. It was too much of a coincidence that the decay of the empire accompanied the growth of Christianity within it, but it is also true that other contributory factors—which one would have been forgiven for thinking Christianity should have ameliorated—seemed to be significant too. Whatever the proper causes, it is a Christian failing—conditioned by their simplistic division of the world into good and evil—to find black and white answers, in this case heathen barbarians! Among more important ones were the shockingly unfair distribution of wealth, and the equally or more unfair extraction of taxes.

Rich Romans were incredibly rich, but, rather like today, were often exempt from taxes—unless they fell out of favor with an emperor like Justinian the Great, in which case they could lose their estates and their lives, while the emperor would ingratiate himself with God and the public by building a splendid new church. What taxes a rich man found himself obliged to pay, he passed on to his employees, again rather as they do today. As Christ often told his disciples to give everything to the poor, the adoption of Christianity ought to have led to more social justice. It is perceived unfairness and injustice that leads to revolution, or to the inability of a society to withstand challenges, and consequential social collapse. Towards the end of the western empire, one merchant fled the empire to take up residence and conduct his business among the Huns. He explained…

…unprincipled men inflict injuries on others because the laws are practically not valid for all classes. A transgressor who belongs to the wealthy classes is not punished for his injustice, while a poor man… undergoes the legal penalty.

J B Bing (1889), cited in Jesus Wars

The greedy rich are forever blind to injustice, and will always use religion as a tool to help to maintain the structure that favors them most in societies. In the Roman empire, east and west, there were monks and some bishops who did live genuinely ascetic lives, but were nonetheless used by the nobles and latifundia owners to keep them secure in their privileges. Yet, then as now, the reward for the suffering of the poor was pie in the sky. On their part, the Christian clergy, despite their own commitment, made few demands on the rich, and had little idea of trying to change society except by example.

The monophysite monk, Severus, a genuine ascetic, was made bishop of Antioch, and was installed into his palace. He was astonished and shocked by the luxury in which his predecessors lived, so he sacked his cooks and closed the elaborate kitchens, and resolved to continue living on the cheapest bread available and plain vegetables. He sounds to be a man of remarkable principle, but his principles went further, for he was among the growing band of Christians for whom personal hygiene was vanity. For him, filth was holy, so he closed his bath house. The great synods of hundreds of bishops packed into some basilica often in the summer heat cannot have been pleasant, quite apart from the tensions and disagreements over doctrine. Filth remained holy for a thousand years, the habit of bathing only coming back into western Christendom when the crusaders got the habit of bathing from the Turks they were fighting.

For slaves and the poor, the Church might have been a comfort but the state increasingly was the enemy, and Constantine had united the Church and state. Eventually, in the west conquest by the Goths and Vandals seemed preferable to being starved and oppressed by rich Roman landowners, and, a few centuries later in the east, the people were glad to open the cities’ gates to the Moslem Arabs. But the concessions and privileges granted by the civil authorities to secure the help of the Church kept most of the clergy onside. Unlike Severus, they were ready to suffer a little luxury for God.

In the west, this system condensed into feudalism, a collusion of counts and dukes with abbots and bishops, with the poor as little better than slaves, indeed often worse, for good slaves were treated by their owners as assets, but serfs and villeins were considered mainly liabilities by their lords. In France, it took until the end of the eighteenth century to get rid of this cruel society—the ancièn régime—in Russia until 1917.

Cyril of Alexandria and Theotokos

Athanasius had been an Alexandrian. He had planted the seed of the one nature theory in the fertile land of Egypt. There it prospered irrespective of the remainder of Christianity until the Moslem invasion, when it slowly evaporated as Christians took to Islam to avoid taxation. The real trouble began with Athanasius’s successor, Cyril (375-444 AD), the domineering bishop of Alexandria, whose gangs of savage Christian monks ensured he was always right. One such gang murdered the Pagan intellectual, Hypatia, even going so far as to strip the flesh from her bones to make sure she was dead beyond resurrection! Cyril and the Patriarchs of Alexandria who followed him were immovably opposed to any notion that Christ had two natures. Cyril believed that God Himself had suffered and died on the cross, so the Eucharistic wafer, as the body of Christ, was truly divine. It was Apollinarianism in all but name.

Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428 AD) was a prominent bishop whose two nature doctrines were favored in Antioch, and a bitter rivalry existed between this, the main Christian center of Syria, and its equivalent in Egypt at Alexandria. Though both Alexandrines and Antiochenes had accepted the Nicene Creed and formula of two natures in one person—just as any human person was considered a union of a body and a soul—Antiochenes emphasized Christ’s humanity, while the Alexandrines favored his divinity.

The general population, though fascinated by the disputes, did not understand them, but the monks and Christian pietists often stayed loyal to their own, or a particular, bishop whose Christology they liked, and the generality did too. Until, that is, after centuries of disorder, they were only too glad to welcome in the Moslems. By then, the average Christian in the Middle east was sick of the tension, instability, and often open warfare over the nature of Christ. So they welcomed the armies of Mohammed as being those of a down to earth and practical savior.

The controversy over the nature of the Christ manifested in the title of Theotokos or Mother of God used of Mary, the Virgin. In the one nature theory the Virgin Mary was literally the mother of God—the Theotokos. The idea was anathema to many Christians who thought it ridiculous that any mortal woman could give birth to God. If Jesus was a man who somehow was chosen or adopted by God for elevation to Christ, at his baptism or resurrection, then Mary was not actually the mother of God. She did not give birth to a God. These Christians therefore favored the two nature hypothesis—God chose Jesus for his noble and nigh on sinless life to become the messiah. He was not always a god, and actually had the full nature of a man, albeit a remarkable one. He was remarkable enough for it to be possible for the Logos to enter him, and he became Christ.

The two nature idea avoided the apparent absurdity of a human mother giving birth to God, the Lord of the Universe! Absurd or not, it was popular. The great Christian intellectual, Tertullian, had declared he believed the Christian myth because it was absurd, so absurdity per se was no problem for the Christian. Perhaps more relevant, in this instance was that Christians had purged Paganism, so all those Pagans who had worshipped Isis or the Great Mother were bereft. But, by some miracle, Mary had become associated with the same town, Ephesus, as the age old earth mother, Magna Mater, Diana of the Ephesians, and Ephesus was the location of choice for several contentious councils on this issue.

Egyptian Christians, who preferred monophytism, thought Theotokos a proper description for Mary, and bishops of Constantinople often agreed. Proclus, a follower of John Chrysostom, declared:

We do not preach a deified man, we confess an incarnate God.

Nestorius

In 428 AD, the Antiochene priest and monk, Nestorius, whose name was forever attached to the eastern churches beyond the empire, was made the Patriarch of Constantinople, only to find himself opposed by almost everyone from the mob to influential royal princes. As an Antiochene, Nestorius felt he could not bring himself to approve of the title, in despair and frustrated resignation, he eventually did. At the First Council of Ephesus, he was evicted and had to flee to Persia where he was acknowledged as the founder of the far eastern Church, the Nestorian Church.

Nestorius, basing his ideas on the gospels, was emphatic that Jesus was fully human, and he came from Antioch which generally preferred the two natures hypothesis, and which was, according to Paul the apostle, the original church beyond Jerusalem where Christians were first called by that name. Mary was the mother of Jesus, not of God, and was a human drama of human emotions, suffering and rejection which would be meaningless and pointless if Jesus were not fully human rather than a phantom, a ghost, or an immortal god. Moreover the idea that such a being, God, could suffer on a cross defied common sense and, in any case, was without scriptural authority.

The monophysite Cyril of Alexandria with his gangs of militant monks at his command was his arch enemy. Even the Roman Prefect of Egypt was intimidated by Cyril’s private army, and, through fear of his own safety was reluctant to challenge Cyril. Moreover the bishop of Rome supported Cyril against Nestorius, leaving him in an unstable situation. Cyril accused Nestorius of making Christ into a mere man, even though Nestorius accepted that Christ was more than merely a man. On his part, Cyril accepted that “the Word was made flesh” meant that “he made our body his own”, yet he still remained as he was—God. So, for Cyril, a human body was crucified but it was little more than a cloak for God, and Nestorius publicly pointed this out saying he regarded Christ as divine with nothing significantly human about him.

Nestorius also accused Cyril of several debating tricks that remain habitually in use by modern apologists of Christianity—deliberately misquoting and quote mining, dragging germane quotations out of context to set up as straw men to attack the more easily. Thus Nestorius spoke of Mary not bearing the Godhead, but a man, the inseparable instrument of Godhead, which Cyril cited as “Mary bore not God”, replacing “Godhead” by “God”, and omitting the further explanation.

Cyril issued 12 anathemata against Nestorius, and the Antiochenes retaliated by declaring Cyril to be an heretic. Eastern bishops who would have supported Nestorius were delayed en route, so Cyril took the chance to have the council excommunicate Nestorius in his absence. When the Antiochenes arrived, they excommunicated Cyril in a parallel council. The emperor then fired them both and ordered them to leave their churches. Nestorius did so, giving up Constantinople and fleeing east, but Cyril returned to Alexandria, and dug in. As Cyril’s faction and therefore council was the larger, its decisions have been accepted. Mary was the Theotokos.

Two years later, a truce was agreed between Cyril and John of Antioch. Cyril was reinstated on condition he withdrew his anathemas, the Antiochians accepted Theotokos as a title for Mary, and both parties reaffirmed the Nicene agreements. Nestorius, though, was not reinstated, and remained in exile. It was a victory for Cyril, but despite the truce, the divisions remained, and were even accentuated.

What is curious is that the point of contention was “physis”, whether the person of Christ considered of one or two natures (physis). The Nicene agreement was that Christ had two natures, which was Nestorius’s view, whereas Cyril did indeed seem heretical by that standard in positing only one—“the one nature of the incarnate Word”, was his formula. He admitted to being a monophytist. The difference was actually no difference because Cyril’s one nature was both divine and human. Christians were at war over whether Christ’s nature was singular but both divine or human simultaneously, or dual, divine and human conjoined without the suppression of either. Many were to die over this distinction that is so subtle as to be absent, given that it is all speculation anyway!

The Robber Council of Ephesus

Other clergy could be even more provocatively monophysite than Cyril. The archimandrite, Eustyches (c 378-454 AD), a venerable old ascetic monk, preached that God was indeed born of a human mother, suffered and was crucified. Christ was of the same substance as God, so the union of human and divine happened in Mary’s womb at the moment of conception, so Christ was never consubstantial with humanity. He could have had no human experiences. The old monk was deprived of his holy orders, but had admirers at court, and the emperor called another council for summer 449 AD again at Ephesus. The spokesman of the church at Antioch emerged as Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c 393-c 466 AD), who declared that the views of Eustyches combined every heresy decried by the church—Gnosticism, Apollinarianism and Arianism.

The second council of Ephesus was to address the open Christological warfare—the expression not being merely metaphorical, as the council itself was to show. The Catholic Church remembers it as the “Robber Synod”. Christians had rejected bathing as a personal vanity, and the large assembly of bishops—packed into a confined basilica on a midsummer day in what is today Turkey—stank! The monophysites had armed guards at the ready, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Flavian, was not allowed to put his views, and then was so badly beaten by a gang of monophysites that he died in a few days. Thus the council was forced to approve the monophysite doctrine of one nature—simultaneously divine and human.

The following year, the emperor, Theodosius II, died when thrown from his horse, and Marcian, a man with a different outlook succeeded him. Being a common soldier, he buttressed his royal standing by marrying the virgin princess Pulcheria, the next of kin to the dead emperor but, as a woman, unable to rule. She was a Christian devoted to the Virgin Mary whom she aimed to emulate, with a vow of perpetual virginity, but she agreed to marry Marcian to strengthen his credentials as long as he made no attempt to violate her virginity. Perhaps it was no big ordeal for him as she was by now an elderly woman, but she was well versed in court politics, and the Christological wars, that did not interest Marcian much. She favored the two natures idea and Marcian was happy to let her have her head in these matters while he dealt with securing the state from the Huns who were lining up along the Danube.

The Council of Chalcedon

Following the Robber Council, Pulcheria wanted a new one to reverse its decisions, so one was called for at Chalcedon, on the outskirts of Constantinople in autumn 451 AD. It was a place chosen so that Marcian could preside while remaining close to the capital in case Attila were to attack. Being close to the capital also meant attendance would be high, suiting Pulcheria, and in fact around 300 bishops attended together with their entourages—advisers, minders and servants—a lot of people.

Theororet of Cyrrhus, the Antiochene, had been excommunicated by the second council of Ephesus, and now was jeered at by monophysites as a “Jew”, the insult implying he was a Jewish Christian, one of the Ebionites, the remnants of the original Jerusalem Church of James—who, it seems, regarded Jesus, perhaps not surprisingly, as fully human—but also suggesting he was a murderer of God, as Christians considered the Jews to be. Held in a cooler season of the year, the atmosphere was not as oppressive, and the proceedings were more measured and orderly. As the delegates were weighted in favor of the two natures party, strong opinions could be aired without any recourse to violence, the motion being phrased diplomatically.

Indeed, it was so diplomatically put that to us it again seems trivial. The question was whether Christ was “in” two natures or “out of” two natures. The monophysites did not mind Christ being considered to have been out “of two” natures, as long as they were considered to have been united into one divine nature. It was the view of the Alexandrines and many from Constantinople, but the Antiochenes and Romans wanted Christ to be “in” two natures. Trivial to us, in Greek it depended on a single letter of the alphabet—ek is “out of”, while en is “in”.

The Antioch-Rome axis could not tolerate the idea that God Himself could have suffered the pain and shame of the crucifixion, and Pope Leo had prepared in the form of a letter a long thesis arguing the two natures case. It was the Tome, actually prepared for the previous synod, the Robber Synod, but instantly rejected by it because Nestorius had welcomed it. At Chalcedon, the Tome was the center of the debate. It refuted:

• that God could suffer
• that Christ’s nature was simply a mixture
• that Christ’s life of service could only be divine, not human
• that Christ began with two natures which merged into one.

It did it by asserting that Christ was simultaneously God and man, “truly God and truly man”. Regarding his divinity, he was begotten of the father before the beginning of time, but regarding his humanity, he was born of Mary, the Virgin, the Theotokos. Emphatically, Chalcedon added that the two natures were present together “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”, bravely attempting to close off every possible loophole for argumentation. Chalcedon ended with the Tome highly praised and valued, indeed canonized, and Rome enjoying the prestige that Pope Leo had long worked for, two natures—divine and human.

The royal couple were delighted, with Marcian praised as a second Constantine, and the monophysites seemed to have been silenced at last. Then, within a few years, Vandals were trashing Rome, the emperor Marcian was dead, and so two was the old virgin princess and clever Christological schemer, Pulcheria. With the Huns still testing the borders of the empire, one would have thought everyone would have valued the agreement to allow Romans to concentrate on defense. No! Christians continued to welcome the threats to the empire as tremors that prefigured the End, and that, of course, they continued to pray for. Proper belief was more important than the defense of the realm. Debate continued! Divisions remained! The church historian, Philip Jenkins, sums up:

In the fourth century, the Arian movement preached a less than fully divine Christ, driving Apollinarius to stress Christ’s absolute unity with the Father. Reacting against that idea led Nestorius to teach a separation of the two natures. And angry rejection of Nestorius encouraged the belief in one divine nature of Christ, a belief that others denounced as the Monophysite heresy.

Jesus Wars, 2010

Was Chalcedon jinxed? Did God Himself not approve? Though the Chalcedon agreement had tried to accommodate monophysite sensitivities, many were still disappointed and dissatisfied. Chalcedon for them did not express correct belief. The heirs of Cyril still thought Chalcedon was disguised Nestorianism. Disturbances occurred even in Jerusalem, where imperial guards had to deal with rioting monks, and in Egypt, where the patriarch of Alexandria had long been treated as the de facto head of the nation, and the Chalcedon defeat was a national humiliation, a deliberate put down by Rome. The Copts separated off into a patriarchate independent of Alexandria. At least the emperors were fed up, and were ready to give up trying to impose the two natures doctrine on Egypt.

Zeno and the Henoticon

Two hundred years after Chalcedon and on occasions in the intervening years, the Chalcedon agreement looked shaky. In the east, schisms and disputes persisted, and churches broke away. The Nestorian Church separated, then different monophysite churches, then the eastern emperors successfully enforced Chalcedon. Naturally, Rome, the fount of Leo’s Tome, remained Chalcedonian, together with an area on either side of the Bosphorus subject to direct influence from the capital of the empire at Constantinople. But several large churches had broken loose, and Egypt remained doggedly monophysite. Even in Constantinople, urban gangs, supposedly supporters of the Blue and Green Hippodrome factions took sides in the quarrel using it, like modern football hooligans, as an additional reason for street fighting, rioting and general loutishness.

The emperor Zeno (474-489 AD) made a late attempt. In 482 AD, he sought to remove the grounds for dispute by eliminating the focus of disagreement, physis, although leaving intact Chalcedonian Christology. He issued an act of union of all Christians, a document called the Henoticon, which had some initial success. Many eastern bishops were sufficiently satisfied to sign it, even the patriarch of Alexandria. But Pope Felix III thought it pointedly ignored Chalcedon, reacting by excommunicating the emperor’s theological adviser. Monophysites responded typically. For them it gave too much ground to the one nature camp of the Catholics.

The emperor, Basiliscus (475-476 AD), usurped Zeno’s throne and vigorously set about restoring monophytism, getting a glut of bishops, more than had attended the synod of Chalcedon, to sign a letter condemning Leo’s Tome, and repealing the agreements of Chalcedon. Chalcedonians retaliated by persuading Daniel, a famous stylite, to climb from his pillar and travel to Constantinople to face the emperor. Stylites were revered as being particularly close to God, and were feared for it, so the emperor fell down before this strange man and apologized to the world. The Chalcedonian mob at Constantinople rejoiced at the emperor’s U-turn, calling for monophysites to be banned. Basiliscus’s indecision so weakened him that he had to yield again to Zeno, whom Basiliscus had usurped, on condition not to spill the blood of the usurper or his family. Zeno kept his promise. He starved them to death.

Meanwhile Rome gave up the ghost as a separate western Roman empire. 476 AD is considered the year of its final demise. All of the vandal kingdoms set up in its place were Christian, but Arian and they wasted no time in forcibly converting the Catholics. The loss of Rome was barely noticed in the east, the Christians there being so engaged in their habitual sport of harassing and murdering each other.

Monophysite influence reached its zenith in the early sixth century. By then, even Antioch was firmly monophysite, and although mobs in Constantinople were still ready to riot for the Chalcedonian cause, people being tortured and drowned in the Bosphorus during the disturbances, only the distant Copts seemed at all orthodox. Views were distributed still across the whole spectrum, but weighted towards monophysitism.

Justin and Justinian

From 518 AD, Justin I subdued the monophysites in favor of the Chalcedonians. Monophysite clergy were deposed and exiled, soldiers were refused rations unless they signed up to the Chalcedonian interpretation, people in Syria and Anatolia were openly persecuted for not thinking and behaving in the manner now judged to be right. To continue as priests, monophysite clergy had to be newly ordained into the Chalcedonian belief. Any who refused had the communion wafer pressed between their lips to convert them forcibly.

Those who refused were bound, dragged before the courts, tortured and thrown out of their monasteries. Any who tried to escape were hunted down. Others were burned to death, and even crucified. One who persistently resisted was remembered as “the spitter” because he kept spitting out the blasphemous body of Christ until his tormentors burnt him to death. It was a sort of prevision of the treatment of the Cathars and the inquisition six or seven centuries later, albeit far less well known. The history of Christianity began with them complaining they were oppressed, continued with them oppressing Pagans and Jews, and continued thereafter with them oppressing everyone, even other Christians.

Justin’s nephew, the emperor, Justinian, surnamed “the Great” in his pious enthusiasm for Chalcedon, again stirred up trouble. Called “great” because he built many churches, and codified Roman law, although he acted as if it did not apply to him, he fondly persecuted Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, and any Christians deemed to be heretical. Any cleric who tried to stand up to him was exiled or imprisoned, but he did not treat monophysites as heretics, perhaps because the empress, Theodora, favored them. In contrast, past bishops of the Antiochene school were posthumously condemned, though they were held in high regard in Syria and lands to the east beyond the bounds of the empire, and they had never before been criticized by the Church. Justinian judged they were all Nestorians.

In the middle of the sixth century, Jacob Baradai, travelled around the east disguised as a beggar to consecrate monophysite clergy in opposition to the Chalcedonian mainstream. These opponents of orthodoxy were called Jacobites. Another independent church was set up in Egypt, so that, by the end of the sixth century, the Church could no longer honestly claim to be catholic. Zernov wrote that, though the opposite Christological poles were of the same religion, recited the same creed, quoted the same authorities and worshipped in the same fashion…

…they fought so fiercely against each other that many preferred exile and even death to communion with their co-religionists, and were so enraged that they burned the churches and profaned the rival sacraments.

Meanwhile, the Church was growing east of the empire in Parthia whither dissident Christians had earlier fled, and enjoyed toleration and protection even though the national religion there was Zoroastrianism. Its metropolitan, Barsuma (457-484 AD), declared it independent of Constantinople because its outlook on Christology was Antiochene, a view that Constantinople was suppressing. Thereafter, Greeks called it the Nestorian Church, where exceptional teachers like Mar Babar and Ibas flourished. Its center was at Nisibis, but Nestorians had a strongly missionary calling, and Parthia served as a base for Nestorian missionaries to follow the silk route to China and also spread into India by land and sea. Eventually, the Nestorian Church had hundreds of separate churches in these places. Nestorian missionaries even ventured westwards, a certain Ivan coming to Britain, preaching Nestorianism in Cornwall at St Ives.

Failure to Separate Church and State

Part of the cause of strife, which should give pause to those who want to make Christianity a state religion today, was undoubtedly the establishment of Christianity by the Roman state. It was therefore the religion of the ruling power, and emperors tried continually to force it on to populations who did not want it, or rather, not some particular form of it. Moreover resentment of the ruling power translated into opposition to the imperial religion, however marginal it may seem to us.

Countries like Egypt and Syria had long histories of civilization before Rome appeared on the scene—the Ptolemaic and Pharaonic in Egypt, and the Seleucid and pan-Babylonian civilizations in Syria—and their people aspired, as any subject people does, to independence. Rejection of their own preferred interpretation of Christ’s nature seemed to be a deliberate slap in the face to these colonial peoples.

It was exacerbated by the fact that their erstwhile rulers had opted for Roman citizenship, so no potential pretenders to their national thrones remained, and the closest thing was the local patriarchs, and they enjoyed fanatical devotion. Their patriarch’s views over a vanishingly subtle metaphysical difference became a proxy for national pride.

Even so, these people were supposed to be Christians who had accepted Christ as their Lord, and that meant the morality that he had taught and demonstrated in his own life, yet none of it had much effect on most of the contending armies. Already Christianity as a moral religion had catastrophically failed. Gangster bishops of that time are still Christian saints!

In the seventh century, the idea arose that the persistent fighting over the nature of Christ was futile because what mattered was not physis but thelema, will. Christ was of one will whatever his nature. It seemed to bring a pause to the hostilities, while the contenders gave it thought, but then both the monophysites who remained, mainly in Egypt, and the Chalcedonians rejected it. The usual disturbances, riots, tortures, murders and martyrs followed, most notably in Egypt. The conquest of Egypt and Syria by the Moslems solved the problem.

Remnants of the Ebionites had most likely survived independently in Arabia, and, from their own direct experience of Jesus, had influenced the Moslems to regard him as a man, an inspired prophet, not a god. Indeed, the centuries of fighting over the issue in Egypt might have suggested it was a bad idea to believe otherwise. Chroniclers reported that Egyptians welcomed the Moslems with gratitude, and the relief from taxation granted to Moslems was sufficient to win over Christians in the new regime to the new religion which had much in common with practical Christianity, and eschewed theological squabbling in favor of direct submission to God.

Elsewhere the centers of Christianity were left as Constantinople in the east, where the Church called itself Orthodox, and Rome in the west as the center of Catholicism. Christian myth has it that they survived from the providence of God, and as “the providence of God” amounts to good luck, that is true. The churches that were closest to the Arab invaders succumbed easily, largely because the people were exhausted from all the years of constant warfare over theology. Rome and Constantinople survived because Rome was far removed from the invaders, and because Constantinople was so well fortified that it took another 1000 years before the Moslems took it.

Few historians will deny that the Graeco-Roman world was civilized, and was the basis of our modern civilization, yet Christianity had a major role, if not the major role, in its demise. We have seen that Christianity has always had at its heart the apocalyptic notion of the End, when Jesus would return to cleanse the world of sin and pollution, and start a new world as pure as the original creation of God, an idea that comes directly from Persian Zoroastrianism. Christians expected the End to be soon, and evangelicals and fundamentalists still do—soon! The End is always imminent and has been for 2000 years. It was that expectation that demoralized the Roman people, leaving them with no will to win against the Huns and Goths.

Christian Morality

The collapse of the west was the collapse of civilization in the west, and the start of the 1000 years of the Dark Ages. Yet this eschatological expectation utterly demolished the moral code that the earliest Christians had understood Jesus taught. He did teach it, but for Jews because none of them could be saved while being sinful, and Jesus did expect the End. The first Christians were Jews and took up the Christian morality in the hope of being fit to enter God’s kingdom at the Final Judgement at the End. Jesus was wrong, the End did not come when he expected it in the Garden at Gethsemane, and he was crucified. The hopes of his followers was dashed until they heard that the tomb was empty.

Then they sprang to the belief that their leader had risen up as the first fruit of the prophesied general resurrection that marked the restoration of God’s perfect kingdom. After all, the End was still on the cards. Jesus had risen and was now expected to return himself at the head of the hosts of heaven rather than the angel, Michael, who had previously been expected. Michael was the Messiah’s alter ego in heaven, his heavenly double, so the arrival of Michael at the head of God’s armies was now the return of Jesus.

The Nazarenes still had the duty urged on to them by Jesus of remaining sinless to be able to be admitted to the kingdom. So Christian morality was still the principle requirement of Christian Jews hoping to be saved. The trouble was that Paul changed it so that gentiles could the more easily consider themselves Christian. All they had to do was have faith that Christ would save them, and they would be saved! It is what you might call wishful thinking. James, the leader of the Jerusalem Church, after the death of Christ wrote an epistle showing that Paul was wrong, but the gentiles preferred Paul’s easy way, to Christ’s difficult way.

Paul was the anti-Christ, as Christians called it, and yet gentile Christians followed Paul, not Jesus. Pauline Christianity only had morality as a secondary phenomenon of faith. The faithful Christian would automatically be good, but the history of Christianity shows how false that is. It is Christ’s teaching on morality that marks out a Christian, not mere faith. A human Christ is a role model for Christian behavior, but a divine Christ cannot be. Paul acknowledges that Christ was born a human, but Paul’s Christology is of a divine Christ. He must have held the Gnostic belief that Christ became divine by choice or adoption by God. Apollinarius and Eustyches were monophysites with a similar view. Pauline Christianity amounts to a magic belief—the divine Christ will magically save those who believe in him, and so there is no urgent need for Christians to be moral, and Christ’s life and teaching become irrelevant in practice.

Despite the fact that the Chalcedon agreement still binds modern Christian churches, most modern Christians regard Jesus as divine—he is God—and they pay no attention, or little, to his ministry on earth as a man. It is the consequence of the Pauline heresy that makes faith in Christ, and not Christian morality, the criterion of salvation. No man, even your pastor, has the power that eternal life requires for its implementation, so Christ, for Pauline Christians, is necessarily God. His ministry is therefore just an impressive fairy tale to get attention for the magical conversion to faith—a sort of marketing scheme to sell the idea. Despite the humanity of Jesus that emerges particularly in Mark, the modern view is that Christ was too perfect to have been a man, and therefore too perfect for any human being to be able to aspire to. No real life man can be perfect, but God can be, and the life and teaching of Christ cannot have been meant as a model for humans. Faith only requires nothing besides the magical charm of faith.

Yet not all Christians felt this way, even among monophysites. The Gnostics and their later successor like the Albigensians, thought the whole point of Christ was that people should aim to emulate him whether he was perfect or merely almost perfect. Salvation came to those who aspired to be a Christ, to live as morally and as compassionately as it was possible for human beings to do. It does not imply being perfect. God is the Judge and no one else, not Paul, and certainly not television evangelists.

If Christians believe in God the Father, then they had better consider that no omniscient and omnipotent being can be thought of as an idiot, yet that is what modern Christians do. They think the omnipotent Creator God can create man, and expect him to try to be perfect, but fail him at the Judgement because he is not perfect. The being with the qualities Christians give to God obviously knows that no human being in an imperfect, polluted and corrupt world can actually be perfect, any more than you can distinguish the imperfect uncut diamond from the perfect cut one when they are both seen through mud.

The point of Christ, God or human, is that he cannot have been perfect in an imperfect world, but he still did his duty, and aimed to be as perfect as it was possible to be. That, the secular Christian considers, is what we have to do. Follow Christ’s morality to the best of our ability, and believers in the omniscient God know that God knows when they are not trying their best!

All humans will fall short of perfection in the material world, just as Mark shows that Christ did. The idea is that as long as you feel you could not have tried harder, then a being with the qualities attributed to God must know it. The idea expressed in Revelation is that everyone has a heavenly record—a Book of Life—into which good deeds and bad deeds are entered as if in a ledger. Only those whom God judges as having a sufficient balance of good assets over wicked liabilities can enter His kingdom. Cathar “Perfects” were people who had done their utmost to emulate Christ, to be a Christ, so as to be judged admissible. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, favored the salvific powers of sacraments—magic—to save its vast flock, though Christ has little or nothing to say about them in this context.

Christian morality metamorphosed from loving your neighbor to not lusting after your neighbor’s wife or daughter. Christ’s view on this is given clearly in Mark. Angels have no need of sex—they are immortal—so sex is not necessary in heaven, and those on earth who aspire to God’s kingdom will choose to forego sex in preparation for it. Sex itself is not a sin because it is necessary for human procreation, but some sexual acts are illicit not in themselves, but because they cause distress and dislike in society. A man should cleave to his wife because they have a mutual responsibility towards their children and therefore towards each other, but the restriction of sex here is not because sex is wicked but because not supporting your children is.

When the world is about to End, and a Judgement Day is in the offing, one might imagine everyone could have whatever sex they liked with anyone else, but remember that there is no sex in heaven, and anyone that desperate for it will not be good candidates for a quiet life in a sexless environment, or so, it seems, thought the Essenes. They wanted to show to God that they could be angels because they were doing there very best to be angelic on earth. Cathar “Perfects” gave up sex, as Christ did, but they did not proscribe sex for others who were not yet ready to give it up.

The advantage of believing that Christ had a human as well as a divine nature is that his whole life and teaching is relevant to us as human beings. Christ is then a realistic role model for us all. Morality, what Christ urged of his followers, loving one another, is the core of what makes us human—our sociality, our social nature. Being social is only beneficial to each of us in society when people protect and help each other—show each other compassion, kindness and love. When people feel insecure, cannot trust others, and do not care for them, the purpose of society is lost to them. Morals are therefore essential to a good society, to civilization and to humanity.

We know this from the study of evolution, why we have evolved as social and not solitary beings. To keep our humanity is a good enough reason to want to be moral, but for those who find this an insufficient reason, then religion gives a stronger one—the hope of staying alive forever. Either way—whether the benefits are only on earth or only in heaven—we have to love others. No one should imagine it is easy, whatever you pastor says with his hand out. Christ said it was not.

• Jesus Wars, Philip Jenkins
• Eastern Christianity, N Zernov

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