Christian survival vividly drawn

Review by GLEN ARGAN
WCR Editor

The book, A Pinch of Incense, AD 70 to 250, From the Fall of Jerusalem to the Decian Persecution, aims to provide a standard history of Christianity of that lengthy period, basically avoiding contested points among historians. It is a book for the faithful Christian who simply wants to know more about the history of his or her faith.

Volume 2 draws its title from devil's bargain persecutors of this new religion held out to potential martyrs - just offer a pinch of incense to the deity or "genius" of the Roman emperor and your life will be spared. Some took the bargain: Many more, it would seem, did not, heroically giving their lives in the faith that would join Christ in heaven.

With the judgment of two millennia, we have learned to honour the martyrs. But the Christianity of the early centuries was devoid of much of the structure of belief and institutional structure we possess today. There were hundreds of books, all claiming to be holy writ, which contradicted each other.

As well as orthodox believers, there were Gnostics who proclaimed a belief in Jesus, but did not take the Incarnation seriously. Jesus, to them, was God who only appeared to be human. Gnostics lived out this belief in one of two ways - either with an extreme asceticism through which they tried to imitate an otherworldly Jesus or, more commonly, through a libertine dismissal of moral constraints which they saw as irrelevant to their spiritualized Jesus.

Despite all the confusion, thousands of people were willing, when pressed, to give their lives for the faith.

"Clearly, there was deep hunger for something else, a way out of the pain of despair and oppression, and just as clearly the Christians offered it."

It was their heroic sacrifices which led many people to convert to this new religion. In the year 110, there were an estimated 8,000 Christians in the empire of 60 million. But the numbers doubled every couple of decades, so that 100 years later, the most conservative estimate of the Christian population was 217,000. Probably, there were many more than that.

A Pinch of Incense is almost as much a tale of the almost unimaginable degeneracy of the emperors and their families as it is of the Christians themselves. But the two are connected: "In place of the noble virtues of the old Roman republic, a general moral squalor had become a tedious way of life for the populace.

Adultery, prostitution, idolatry, self-seeking and uncaring cruelty were the order of the day. . . . Clearly, there was deep hunger for something else, a way out of the pain of despair and oppression, and just as clearly the Christians offered it. They worshipped a God who, they said, had breached the chasm separating the human from the divine" (pp. 266-67).

It was martyrdom that led many to see the goodness and integrity of the Christians, if not the truth which they spoke.

A Pinch of Incense also deals with the first attempts to give some intellectual structure to Christianity. St. Polycarp, Tertullian, Origen, St. Irenaeus and St. Justin Martyr - all the early Christian intellectuals - are present, warts and all.

This is but volume two of what is slated to be a 20-volume history of Christianity, written by journalists with academics in the background to keep the story accurate and complete. The series is intended to appeal to Christians of all denominations.

In fact, Catholics may well decide that having an accurate history of the past 2,000 years will show the continuity of Christian belief, the central role of the Church in validly interpreting Scripture and the importance of the Church in separating orthodoxy from charlatanism.

A Pinch of Incense is lavishly illustrated with original artwork and its writing is accessible to many who would struggle with more scholarly tomes. It - and the larger project of which it is a part - are telling the important story of our faith, the story that needs to be passed on from generation to generation.

(A Pinch of Incense is not available at bookstores. It is available by phoning 1-800-853-5402 or on the Internet at www.christianhistoryproject.com.)

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