Conversion
A.D. Nock
Number of quotes: 83
Book ID: 70 Page: 17/18
Section: 2B2
The Idea of Conversion and Greek Religion Before Alexander The GreatAs a city’s interests expanded, the range of its cults might also be enlarged; to take an example, Athens, which had Thracian connexions, found a place for the worship of Bendis, a goddess whom Athenians had met and worshipped in Thrace. In time Bendis was, so to speak, naturalized and gave a convenient pretex for an additional torch race. There was in this nothing more revolutionary than there was in the introduction of the potato and tobacco into England from America.
Quote ID: 1899
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 18
Section: 4B
Piety lay in a calm performance of traditional rites and in a faithful observance of traditional standards.
Quote ID: 1900
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 70 Page: 19
Section: 2B2
Before Alexander the GreatIt was commonly held that the gods of different nations were identifiable, that the Egyptians worshipped Athena and Zeus and Dionysus under other names.....and there was no reason why we Greeks should desire a Lydian to sacrifice to Zeus by that name rather than to his own god, unless he happened to be staying in our city.
Quote ID: 1901
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 19
Section: 2B2
Before Alexander the GreatWhen the Athenians sent settlers to the Thracian city of Brea, shortly before 441 B.C., they ordered them to leave the consecrated precincts as they were and not to consecrate others.
Quote ID: 1902
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 20
Section: 2E7
The Greek point of view comes out very well in a legend inscribed in the temple of Athena at Lindos on Rhodes. When the Persian Datis was besieging Lindos in 490 the inhabitants came near the end of their supplies of water.....the next day abundant rain fell on the acropolis, and the Lindians had enough while the Persians came to be in need. Datis in admiration dedicated all his personal ornaments to Athena. In a Christian legend, he would have permanently transferred his religious allegiance.
Quote ID: 1903
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 70 Page: 21
Section: 4B
Before Alexander the GreatAlthough private domestic cultus was free, the city-state did not tolerate serious interference with its religious homogeneity, as we see from the prosecution of Socrates for not believing in the city’s gods and for introducing new daemonia.
Quote ID: 1905
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 25
Section: 4B
We feel for the moment in contact with a religion which could produce a church when we see in an inscription at Cumae ‘No one may be buried here except one who has become a Bacchant’.
Quote ID: 1907
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 27
Section: 2B
Orpheus would not honour Dionysus, but regarded the Sun, whom he called also Apollo, as the greatest of deities. He rose at night and would wait on Mount Pangaion to see the first rays of dawn. As a result Dionysus caused his worshippers to tear him limb from limb. Here Orpheus is the lonely prophet.
Quote ID: 1909
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 33
Section: 4B
Greeks In The East After AlexanderIn general, a Greek was very eager to come home and end his days in familiar and loved surrounding. That is why exile, even while spent in another Greek city, was so heavy a penalty, and why those who had suffered it would go to any lengths of treason to secure their return. When Odysseus preferred his return to Ithaca to immortality on Calypso’s island he was true to the spirit of the Ionian Greek, the most travelled of all the Greeks.
PJ: Fame
Quote ID: 1910
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 36
Section: 2B2
A certain amount of convergent development; the native priests commonly learned Greek and accepted equations of Egyptian with Greek deities, giving the names side by side in their calendars of festivals (there is one at Sais of about 300 B. C.) and in Greek forms of temple oaths. The Greeks in their turn built few substantial temples for their own deities outside Alexandria, Ptolemais, and Naucratis. In these and in private cult associations they worshipped Greek gods but commonly they paid their devotions to the native gods.
Quote ID: 1912
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 37
Section: 2E2
In all this development, there is no element of conversion, none of self-surrender.... The only phenomenon involving a self-surrender would be the occasional Greek who being at Hierapolis in Syria at the time of the great festival might take full part in it, like the native pilgrims, and brand himself or even in a sudden enthusiasm castrate himself and become a servant of the goddess like her local eunuch priests; Catullus (poem LXIII) tells of a young Greek who castrated himself in honour of Cybele and Attis.
Quote ID: 1913
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 55
Section: 2C
It means much that the priest is appointed by the city, as he is again at Magnesia in Thessaly. At Eretria and at Athens the priesthood was an annual office. a public officeNow this is particularly important as an indication that the cult was absorbed in the ordinary run of civic cults and also that it was not commonly in the wider Greek world at this time a mystery cult. A mystery generally demands permanent clergy.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Sarapis’s cult
Quote ID: 1918
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 58
Section: 2E5
So Isis and Sarapis held the place of two new saints, with the attraction of freshness, the power of which we see now in the popularity of the cult of the Little Flower, St. Therese of Lisiseux.
Quote ID: 1920
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 70 Page: 62
Section: 2B2
We hear of many proselytes in Antioch and we know elsewhere of many ‘fearers of God’, who conformed with those commandments binding on all mankind and participated in the sabbath worship of the synagogue without either the privileges or the obligations of the real Jew and without the social condemnation which commonly rested upon the Jew.
Quote ID: 1921
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 70 Page: 62/63
Section: 2B2
But we find also, what we have learned to expect from the contact of Greeks with an Oriental national religion, first the recognition by Greeks of the god of the Jews as a fit object of worship and as capable of equation with a deity of their own ( Zeus or Dionysus or Antis); secondly, the formation of new composite products as a result of give and take on both sides. The god of the Jews (under the name Iao) is prominent in magic papyri and in ancient curses as a god of power.
Quote ID: 1922
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 70 Page: 63/64
Section: 2B2
Late in the fourth century A.D. we hear of a sect of Hypsistarii in Cappadocia, survivors of this movement. The father of Gregory Nazianzen belonged to this before his conversion, and his son characterizes it as a mixture of Hellinic (i.e. Gentile) error and the humbug of the law, honouring fire (probably from the Persian element in Cappadocia) and lamps and the Sabbath and food regulations while rejecting circumcision. Similar believers existed in Phoenicia and Palestine, and even in the West. Again, we know in Cilicia a society of Sabbatistai, and there is evidence that a certain fusion took place between the cult of Jehovah as conceived by some of the Jews settled by Antiochus in Phrygia and the native cult of Zeus Sabazios. Such fusion was not then out of the question.
Quote ID: 1923
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 70 Page: 64
Section: 2B2
Philo had to complain of Jews who felt themselves to be emancipated. The Jews in Phrygia married Gentiles, and we later find the descendants of such marriages as priest of the Emperor’s worship.
Quote ID: 1924
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 70 Page: 66
Section: 2B2
An inscription at Puteoli dated 29 May, A.D. 79 says: ‘The god Helios Saraptenos (that is the Baal of Sarapta between Tyre and Sidon) came on ship from Tyre to Puteoli. Elim brought him in accordance with a command.’Pastor John’s Note: visions
Quote ID: 1925
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 67
Section: 2B2
The returning soldiery sometimes carried back strange cults with them, as Sulla’s soldiers perhaps carried Ma from Comana; it is said that their commander had a vision of her on his first march to Rome. Tacitus tells how as day broke on the desperate struggle before Cremona in A.D. 69, the soldiers of the third legion saluted the rising sun; ‘That is the way in Syria’ (Histories, iii.24).
Quote ID: 1926
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 67
Section: 2B2
The influence of trade appears in the fact that the Syrian festival of Maioumas became a civic celebration at Ostia and that as early as 105 B.C.
Quote ID: 1927
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 70 Page: 67/68
Section: 4B
New cults, when they came to Rome, entered an atmosphere different from that of the Hellenistic cities in which they had previously found acceptance. In those cities, indeed, as in Rome, public worship was a public concern, and we have seen occasional interference by the authorities against unwarranted innovation. In Rome this was far more systematic and thoroughgoing. The religion of the republic was a relationship between the State and the gods. The State did its part and looked confidently to the gods to do theirs. Further, the State took over the responsibility of individual citizens and freed them from religio, uneasy fear of the supernatural, and emotion always latent and liable from time to time to break out in panic. The attitude of the State towards individuals was exactly like the attitude then of the head of household to its members. The elder Cato, in his treaties on agriculture, gives this advice about the bailiff’s wife, ‘Let her not perform ceremonies or bid another do so for her without the command of her master or mistress. Let her know that her master does worship for the whole household’ (ch. 143).
Quote ID: 1928
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 70 Page: 68
Section: 2C,4B
No Roman citizen might become a eunuch priest, and we hear of the banishment of a slave who castrated himself.
Quote ID: 1929
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 70 Page: 70
Section: 2A3
But we have only to contemplate ancient superstitions regarding relics from gladiatorial contest to realize how intense was belief in the efficacy of blood.
Quote ID: 1931
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 71
Section: 2C
We see here the gradual development of a cult which the State had accepted, its full expansion being in and after the Antonine period. It belonged to the sacra publica controlled by the commission of fifteen.
Quote ID: 1932
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 70 Page: 71
Section: 4B
There was a particular zeal to prevent any sort of religious professional quack, of the type discussed earlier in connexion with Orphism, from getting a hold upon the popular imagination and disturbing the public tranquillity. The classic instance is that of 186 B.C., when a religious movement, suddenly discovered and thought to be a grave menace to public order and safety, was suppressed.
Quote ID: 1933
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 70 Page: 73
Section: 4B
The guilty were punished, all temples which could not claim antiquity were destroyed: no such meetings were held in future at Rome or in Italy.
Quote ID: 1934
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 70 Page: 74
Section: 4B
The policy of checking the intrusion of alien elements, unless sanctioned and in fact introduced by the quindecimuiri, continued. As early as 181 B.C. certain suppose books of Numa Pompilius, said to have been found on the Janiculum, were burnt in public with the approval of the Senate, since the praetor adjudged that they tended in the main to the break up of beliefs.
Quote ID: 1935
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 75
Section: 4B
Mithras alone remains private and yet fully approved.Pastor John’s Note: no threat to the State
Quote ID: 1936
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 70 Page: 76
Section: 2B2
The attempt of Elagabalus to make the worship of his god Elagabal the central worship of the Empire provoked a reaction: when Aurelian introduced the Syrian cult of the Sun it was in strictly Roman form.
Quote ID: 1937
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 70 Page: 81
Section: 2D2
Cybele....She had her public ceremonies. Lucretius (ii. 608 ff.) gives a striking picture of how ‘The image of the divine mother is carried in dread fashion through mighty lands. Various races according to the ancient custom of the rite call her the Idaean mother’.
Quote ID: 1938
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 83
Section: 2D3A,2D3B
Celsus tells of many prophets who went about in Syria and Palestine begging and moved as in prophecy.‘It is easy and usual for each to say, I am God, or the son of God, or a divine spirit. I have come, for the world is already perishing and you, O men, are going to destruction because of iniquities. I wish to save you, and you shall see me coming again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who has worshipped me now; on every one else, on cities and lands, I shall cast everlasting fire. And men who do not know the penalties which they incur will in vain repent and groan; but those who have obeyed me I shall keep in eternity’.
Quote ID: 1940
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 84
Section: 2B2
Now we possess on a papyrus of the second century A.D. the end of a short record of the type to which Aristides refers:‘He said, For your sake I will grant the water to the men of Pharos: and having saluted him he sailed out and gave the water to the men of Pharos and received from them as a price one hundred drachmas of silver. This miracle is recorded in the libraries of Mercurium. Do all of you who are present say There is one Zeus Sarapis.’
There follows the book’s title, ‘The Miracle of Zeus Helios, great Sarapis, done to Syrion the Pilot.’
Quote ID: 1941
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 92
Section: 2B2
Let us take an illustration from the third century B.C. Artemidorus of Perga settled on the island of Thera and put up inscriptions to Hecate and Priapus:‘Artemidorus set up this Hecate, of many names, the lightbringer, honoured by all who dwell in the land. Artemidorus made these steps as a memorial of the city of Thera and stablished a black stone. I, Priapus of Lampsacus, am come to this city of Thera, bearing imperishable wealth. I am here as a benefactor and a defender to all the citizens and to the strangers who dwell here.’
Quote ID: 1942
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 111
Section: 2B,2B2
But in the third century Porphyry as a young man wrote a work On the Philosophy to be drawn from Oracles, giving oracles from Apollo of Claros and shrines of Hecate which not merely prescribed cultus but also defined the nature of god and asserted the existence of one Supreme Being who is Eternity (Aion), the ordinary gods of paganism being his ‘angels: another oracle saying that the Supreme Being is Iao (that is Jehovah), identified with Hades, Zeus, Helios, is quoted by Cornelius Labeo, who probably belongs to the early part of the same century.
Quote ID: 1944
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 70 Page: 112
Section: 4B
The first century A.D., Cicero speaks of the decay of Delphi, Lucan speaks of its silence. This may be regarded as rhetorical exaggeration, but the treaties of Plutarch On the Decay of the Oracles, which is of real weight in view of Plutarch’s connexion with Delphi and the priesthood which he held there, bears witness to the reality of the decline.
Quote ID: 1945
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 114
Section: 4B
Ancient speculation never lost the conviction that there was a straight forward explanation of the universe. Men turned then to the mysteries....Logically, on the theory that the various divine names belonged to one unity, one mystery might suffice. But initiates were bound to secrecy and what was divulged was not the whole story. So if a man was to get to the heart of the matter he must be initiated in as many mysteries as possible.Pastor John’s Note: Great wealth required, but Paul said, “All hidden wisdom is in Christ.”
Quote ID: 1946
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 120
Section: 4B
From the fifth century B.C. to the end of the first century A.D. Greek and Roman thinkers had for the most part maintained a cool respect towards religious tradition...They did not, however, regard it as a source of enlightenment.... They could not pretend to themselves that they were drawing from it tenets of a way of life. This now changed, not of course abruptly or completely, but yet visibly. The path of the intellect, though it had so often seemed promising, was not leading to sure results.
Quote ID: 1949
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 70 Page: 121
Section: 4A,4B
Further, the rise of Rome to power set higher and higher values on practical gifts, on the administration of things as they were rather than on the interpretation of things. As the scope of philosophy narrowed till it became almost entirely ethical, it naturally tended to use religious sanctions....
Quote ID: 1950
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 70 Page: 123
Section: 3B,4B
Literature then, as at most times till the eighteenth century, depended on patronage....In the Empire fashion spread swiftly downward and the views of the aristocracy have dominated the literature which survives, and without doubt dominated most of the far larger literature which has perished. There were no righteous poor, no critics of society except the philosophers, and they, too, had and needed backers.
Quote ID: 1951
Time Periods: 1237
Book ID: 70 Page: 125
Section: 3B
When Claudius planned his expedition to Britain in 43, the troops were loath to leave Gual and the world which they knew. The Imperial freedman Narcissus was sent to the camp and tried to address the troops, but they mocked him, saying. ‘Io Saturnalia,’ to indicate that they regarded him as a slave, and straightway, followed their commander Aulus Plautis. After 70 we see a great change. The old senatorial nobility was now greatly reduced in numbers or financially weakened and continued to decline.PJ Note: Julian would have considered the Empire to have fallen into apostasy. But what about the loss of senatorial power? Would he have mourned the passing of that old institution?
Quote ID: 1952
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 125
Section: 2B2,3B,4B
It is therefore not surprising that the Flavian period saw a rise in the importance of the Egyptian gods. They remain outside the official city boundary, but appear on Roman coins in 71 and 73, and for the first time on the coins of Alexandria (which had an official character) Sarapis is called Zeus Sarapis.
Quote ID: 1953
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 127
Section: 3B,4B
By the Antonine age, the trend of social change has had time to bear full fruit. The governing class is now recruited from the whole Empire, East and West alike: we find men born in the province of Asia holding time-honoured priesthoods in Rome itself.
Quote ID: 1954
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 133
Section: 2D2
I need hardly say that the difference which we see between Cybele’s area of diffusion and those of the other Oriental deities does not point to any sort of competition. Cybele was early Romanized and did not seem exotic in anything like the same measure as these other cults with Oriental origins.PJ: The Romans knew Cybele as the Great Mother.
Quote ID: 1955
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 70 Page: 136
Section: 2D2
There was indeed a theology which finds expression in many of these cults. To take a striking example: we possess the short creed in verse which a soldier in the third century caused to be inserted on a stone tablet found at Carvoran in Northumbria on the Roman wall:‘Opposite the Lion in the heavenly place in the Virgin wreathed corn ears, inventress of Justice, foundress of cities, the gifts from which it has been our fortune to know the gods. So she is at one and the same time the mother of the gods, Peace, Virtue, Ceres, the Syrian goddess, weighing life and rights in the balance. Syria brought forth a constellation seen in heaven to receive the homage of Libya. Hence we have all learned. So Marcus Caecilius Donatianus serving as tribune in the duty of prefect by favour of the Emperor understood, led by thy deity.’
Here the cult is a religion in which all humanity joins and a religion communicated of favour by revelation.
Quote ID: 1957
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 70 Page: 136/137
Section: 2B2,4B
Its popularity is shown by the common ascription to various deities of the epithet pantheus and by the representations of one of them with attributes of others. The latter begin in the second century B.C., but the wildest extent of the development is from the end of the first century of our era.....It is a theology of unity and mutual understanding, and not of conflict. Adhesion to a new cult was thus made easier: it need involve no more than the devotion of Catholics to the cultus of a new saint.
Quote ID: 1958
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 70 Page: 156/157
Section: 4B
Down to the middle of the third century men relapsed into paganism: we do not hear of their embracing it. Porphyry, according to a tradition which need not be doubted, a Christian for a time, only to return to the faith of his fathers and to attack Christianity with the enthusiasm of a convert from it.
Quote ID: 1959
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 70 Page: 157/158
Section: 3C2
The best known of these conversions is that of Julian. Here we are fairly well informed on the details of the process. Julian himself speaks of the way in which the Sun’s rays and light fascinated him from childhood, and tells us of the library of George Cappadocia, to which he had access during his life at Macellum: it contains ‘all kinds of philosophers, many commentators and not least plenty of writings of every kind of the Galilaeans’. Then came the contacts at Nicomedia with Libanius, which deepened if they did not actually inspire his passion for hellenism as a cultural force. Libanius, a sympathizer who was a notable rhetorician, says in a speech delivered at Antioch to welcome him (Oratio xiii, II): ‘There was a concealment here (at Nicomdeia) a spark of the prophetic art which had with difficulty escaped the hands of the impious. This first enables thee to pursue the truth, and under the softening influence of the prophecies thou didst check thy violent hatred against the gods’. This is the most important, for it shows us Julian as an eager Christian, and his writings reveal him as throughout saturated with Christian thought. A prophecy moved him, no doubt an oracle reminding him of the devotion of his ancestors to the Sun, perhaps substantially like the words of the Sun to the young man in his myth, “We wish to purify thy ancestral house out of respect for thy ancestors. So remember that thy soul is immortal and descended from us, and that if thou followest us thou wilt be a god and wilt with us see our father.”Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Xns, wow
Quote ID: 1960
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 70 Page: 158
Section: 3C2
But in the main Julian’s conversion is due to a cultural ideal quickened by the sense of a personal and at the same time hereditary mission; this feeling came as a result of religious experience. It was an emotional and not an intellectual quest: it was therein different from that of St. Augustine, although they resemble one another in that each ends in a return to something which has all the time been in the background.It would be wrong to generalized from him or to suppose that the enthusiastic support which he received in various parts of the Empire (above all Syria, where a deep rooted local feeling centred around the great temples) represents piety of his type and earnestness, and a desire to convert humanity: men felt joy at the abolition of interference with good old customs.
Quote ID: 1961
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 70 Page: 158/159
Section: 3D
It was now possible to enter the Church without any profound changes of mental furniture and spiritual orientation, and, if Julian of Eugenius was in power, to leave the Church with equal ease.Pastor John’s Note: In Eugenius’ reign (392–394)? Christian who opposed the extreme measures of Theodosius, but lost the battle.
Quote ID: 1962
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 70 Page: 159
Section: 3C2
The two opposing forces had drawn near one another. Paganism had moved largely towards a sort of monotheism, and Julian’s revival depended on the giving to it of those features which had in Christianity been most effective, theological and moral dogma, hierarchic organization, and systematic works of charity and benevolence. Julian purposed, we are told, to adorn pagan temples with the equipment and order of Christian piety.
Quote ID: 1963
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 70 Page: 160
Section: 5D
The last pagans are known to us as students and editors of the Latin classics. At the same time, the suppression of paganism took the form of the prohibition of cultus and seasonal observances, the destruction or appropriation of temples and the exclusion of recalcitrants from office and the army. There is no persecution in the Decian or Diocletianic sense: there was nothing to persecute in that way: and there are no pagan martyrs.Pastor John’s Note: scholarly bias, says who
Quote ID: 1964
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 173
Section: 4A
Any philosophy of the time set up a standard of values different from those of the world outside and could serve as a stimulus to a stern life, and therefore to something like conversion when it came to a man living carelessly. It is said that Polemo when drunk and garlanded went into Xenocrate’s lecture room, was moved to abandon his earlier ways, and devoted himself so eagerly to philosophy that he became next head of the school.
Quote ID: 1965
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 175/176
Section: 4A
Thirdly, philosophy produced some of the most striking ideal types, the saints of antiquity. Around all the prominent figures who founded or developed schools there grew not only anecdotes but also haloes. Plato received cultus almost immediately after death and soon could be spoken of as Apollo’s son; Pythagoras acquired a legend which grew continually; Epicurus is to Lucretius a god; Diogenes is to Cercidas, a century after his death, ‘the heavenly dog’. Apollonius of Tyana soon becomes superhuman, Epictetus a pagan saint.
Quote ID: 1966
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 177
Section: 4A
Only a limited number could go to Athens or one of the other famous centres: but a great many heard some philosophy, for there were many private teachers scattered over their world and it is known that some of them were men of standing in their cities: further, we are told that there were not a few impostors in the profession, a fact which suggest that the demand was considerable: in the later Empire the profession waned but in the first century of our era it was at its height.A lecture might have on any of these men the effect which it had on Polemo: we must recall the prominence in popular philosophic teaching and writing of declamation against luxury and vice. A man who heard Musonius Rufus or Epictetus at Rome was doing the thing most nearly equivalent to hearing a Christian sermon later: the technique was in fact inherited.
Quote ID: 1967
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 178
Section: 4A
Again, a striking feature of the early Empire is the presence in rich households of philosophy.....these men were, as has been remarked, the equivalent of domestic chaplains: we find them at death beds, as for instance Demetrius the Cynic at Thrasea’s (Tacitus, Annals, xvi 34).
Quote ID: 1968
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 179
Section: 4A
We can here use the word conversion for the turning from luxury and self indulgence and superstition (another frequent object of philosophic criticism) to a life discipline and sometimes to a life of contemplation, scientific or mystic. Plato spoke of the object of education as a ‘turning around of the soul’ (Republic, 518 Dff.) The word epistrophe, later used by Christians of conversion, is applied to the effects of philosophy, meaning thereby an orientation or focusing of the soul, the turning of men from carelessness to true piety.
Quote ID: 1969
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 70 Page: 184
Section: 4A
So much for the direct contact with the philosophers. There is one famous instance of conversion by a book. St. Augustine (Confessions, iii 4) says:‘Among these people, being not yet in manhood’s strength, I was learning books of eloquence, in which I wished to shine with a purpose flighty and to be condemned, in the joy of human vanity. In the usual order of studies I had come to a book of a certain Cicero, whose speech is admired by almost all though his heart is not. But that book contains his exhortation unto philosophy and is called Hortensius. Now that book changed by affections and turned my prayers to Thee thyself, O Lord, and made my wishes and desires quite other. Suddenly all vain hopes grew cheap in my eyes and I yearned for the immortality of wisdom with a burning zeal which passes belief and I began to rise that I might return unto Thee’.
He was eighteen at the time.
Quote ID: 1971
Time Periods: 24
Book ID: 70 Page: 185/186
Section: 4A
Sporadic indications of conversion to religion in antiquity. Against them we can set a far greater body of evidence for conversion to philosophy. A mystery evoked a strong emotional response and touched the soul deeply for a time, but philosophy was able both to turn men from evil and to hold before them a good.
Quote ID: 1972
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 70 Page: 185/186
Section: 4A
When Julian initiated his attempt to revive paganism he used the one thing which could conceivably have given to it the power to hold its own, and that was the way of philosophy....on the other side, Christianity did not disregard these values, and Ambrose could use his Cicero, just as earlier, Philo and the Apologist, while regarding pagan religion as unworthy and untrue, were eager to reconcile pagan philosophy and their own teaching.
Quote ID: 1973
Time Periods: 24
Book ID: 70 Page: 188
Section: 5D
There was, however, in this movement, even from the earliest stage, an element which had in it the seeds of development in a further direction. It was that the Spirit of God had been poured out upon the community.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Good grief. In other words, I don’t know what to say about that, so I will change the subject.
Quote ID: 1974
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 189
Section: 5D
The consciousness of spirit-possession carried with it the consciousness of authority.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: They didn’t have it, In other words, I don’t know what to say about that, so I will change the subject.
Quote ID: 1975
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 192/193
Section: 2A,4B
The world as a whole did not know much of Christians as distinct from Jews till the fire of Rome in 64, when Nero seized on them as scapegoats to satisfy popular resentment and made the admission of Christianity proof of guilt. Thereafter they were in the public mind, rather than in the public eye, as the object of the general odium directed against the Jews for being an anti-social and highly cohesive body, and of the special odium incurred by their reputation as incendiaries, revolutionaries, and generally abominable. But they were not conspicuous. The works directed against Christianity do not allude to out-of door-preaching.There were no visible out-of-door ceremonials, no temples recognizable as such till much later, and no priesthood displaying its character by its dress or its tonsure, or (in the early stages) its abstinence from secular employments....the one Christian type known to the populace was that of the martyr.
Quote ID: 1976
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 70 Page: 194
Section: 4A
Socrates again, in Plato’s Apology, p. 29 c, makes the explicit statement:‘If you should say to me, O Socrates, at the moment we will not hearken to Anytus, but we release you on this condition, that you no longer abide in this inquiry or practise philosophy––and if you are caught still doing this, you will be put to death, if then you would release me on these conditions, I should say to you, you have my thanks and affection, men of Athens, but I will obey the god rather than you and, while I have breath and power, I will not desist from practising philosophy.’
Pastor John’s Note: Socrates, a turning point
Quote ID: 1977
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 70 Page: 194
Section: 4A
The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church: the death of Socrates created the type of wisdom and virtue standing in heroic opposition to a world which can kill but which does not have the last word.Pastor John’s Note: philosopher martyrs
Quote ID: 1978
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 70 Page: 197
Section: 3B,4B
Marcus Aurelius says (xi.3):‘What a fine thing is the soul which is ready if it must here and now be freed from the body and either extinguished or scattered or survive. But let this readiness come from a personal judgement and not out of a mere spirit of opposition, like that of the Christians; let it be in a reasoned and grave temper, capable of convincing another, and without theatricality.’
Quote ID: 1979
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 203
Section: 2A
A fixed form of words, followed as in Roman prayers through fear that the supernatural powers invoked would not give what was desired if one syllable or gesture was varied.
Quote ID: 1980
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 70 Page: 207
Section: 3A3,3B
Suetonius says of the Neronian persecution, which he reckons among the acts of Nero which were not blameworthy (Nero, 16. 2), ‘There were punished the Christians, a race (or, kind; genus) of men characterized by a novel and maleficent superstition.’ Both the Christians and their opponents came to think of themselves as a new people: and it is clear in the work of Celsus that his real aim was to persuade the Christians not to forget loyalty to the State in their devotion to this new state within the State.
Quote ID: 1981
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 208
Section: 4B
We have a very interesting petition from the people of Lycia and Pamphylia to Maximinus in 311-12 (in an inscription at Arycanda) asking him ‘that the Christians, who have long been mad, and still continue in their diseased state, be made to stop and not by any foolish new worship to transgress against that which is due to the gods’. The petition is probably inspired and due to men who knew that the Emperor desired to be thus entreated, but it crystallizes a popular attitude.There was much in ancient feeling to explain this: notably the idea that the welfare of the Roman State hung together with the due performance of the traditional Roman rites.
Pastor John’s Note: In 312, the year of Constantine’s conversion
Quote ID: 1983
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 70 Page: 210/211
Section: 1A,4B
The success of Christianity is the success of an institution which united the sacramentalism and the philosophy of the time. It satisfied the inquiring turn of mind, the desire for escape from Fate, the desire for security in the hereafter; like Stoicism, it gave a way of life and made man at home in the universe, but unlike Stoicism it did this for the ignorant as well as for the lettered. It satisfied also social needs and it secured men against loneliness. Its way was not easy; it made uncompromising demands on those who would enter and would continue to live in the brotherhood, but to those who did not fail, it offered an equally uncompromising assurance.
Quote ID: 1985
Time Periods: 14
Book ID: 70 Page: 227
Section: 5D
Pagani means backwoodsmen.
Quote ID: 1987
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 227/228
Section: 3B
The intending convert had to renounce the official worships of the State and of the municipality...in all these things his attitude was the same as a Jew’s. The Jew conscientious objection was recognized and allowed – in spite of the passing megalomania of Caligula and occasional outbreaks of Jew-baiting in Alexandria and elsewhere....Christians did not enjoy such privileges. Had the movement remained a sect within Judaism it obviously would have.When Pliny bade the Christians sacrifice to the Emperor, he was imposing a test and not making an ordinary requirement.
Quote ID: 1988
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 70 Page: 241
Section: 5D
On the doctrine of the Spirit something has been said. We need here only recall that the Stoics held that in all men there was a divine pneuma and that most people believed that prophetic inspiration was the product of what inspiration literally means, breathing in.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: In other words, I don’t know what to say about that, so I will change the subject.
Quote ID: 1989
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 242
Section: 4B
We have seen how little cohesion there was in any contemporary pagan cults. The Christians had something new -- the letters of introduction given to a member of one community about to visit another, the relations and mutual assistance of one congregation to another (as for instance of Rome to Corinth), the formulation of agreed tenets and of an agreed view of their own history. Apart from times of persecution, a poor man must have gained a great sense of security from the organization. He knew that care would be taken of him in and after life, and that he would not be wholly left to his own resources.Our convert could thus without difficulty acquire devotion to the Catholic Church.
Quote ID: 1990
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 70 Page: 246
Section: 4B
The concrete expectations of the Christians had no doubt an attraction for many who found life heavy and unjust and who looked for conditions under which its inequalities would be set right. The century which preceded the remaking of the Roman world by Augustus had seen several abortive attempts to initiate a social revolution. The firm government which followed did much to humanize life and certainly left to such movements no chance of success...the men who might have been expected to make uprisings did in fact display rather a sullen resignation...their outlook appears in the epitaph so often found over the remains of slaves and gladiators, ‘ I was not. I was. I shall not be. I do not care.’None of these men, unless they had fallen under Christian influence, expected divine intervention to change things.
Quote ID: 1991
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 70 Page: 249
Section: 5D
The issue is after all the doctrine of grace. The genius of Christianity lies on the side of Augustine, the genius of paganism on the side of Pelagius. The one built on a consciousness of sin and on revelation, the other on a consciousness of goodness and on common sense. On this issue we must all take sides.
Quote ID: 1992
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 250
Section: 4A
The effectiveness of early Christian propaganda as we know it turns largely on two further points. First, the apologists were without exception men who were not the sons of Christians but had been converted to Christianity themselves. The apologia of each of them was therefore in a measure an apologia pro vita sua. Secondly, they all represented Christianity as something which had come not to destroy but to fulfil. They maintained that its essential principles were what humanity at its best had always held or sought. They went back to their Jewish sources, but they claimed that Plato drew from these same sources. For them the whole wisdom of the past was in support of their position, even if few went as far as Justin and held that all who had lived with reason (logos) were Christians.
Quote ID: 1993
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 70 Page: 254
Section: 4B
The book of Acts describes various types of conversion...it is clear that the two most important factors were prophecy and miracle.
Quote ID: 1994
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 70 Page: 258
Section: 4A
The substance of the book which Arnobius wrote shows proportions very different from those of earlier apologist. The weight is thrown on an exposure of the errors of paganism...but it is clear that Christianity was for him a deliverance from what had been burdensome and stupid and unworthy.
Quote ID: 1995
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 70 Page: 259
Section: 4B
Augustine’s father was a pagan who lived in harmony with a Christian wife and did not prevent his son from being marked with the sign of the cross or veto the idea of his being baptized in a serious illness (i.II).
Quote ID: 1996
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 70 Page: 260
Section: 2B
The paganism of educated men was largely philosophical and monotheistical in character. Pagan worship was for it a way of approach to the central mystery of the universe, not the only way but the time-honoured way. As Symmachus had said in his speech on behalf of retaining the Altar of Victory in the Senate-house, ‘There cannot be only one way to so great a secret.’For many who shrank from becoming Christians, the deities of paganism had ceased to matter as individual and personal figures. An exchange of letters between Augustine, when bishop, and one Maximus, a scholar of Madaura says, ‘Which of us is so mad or mentally blind as to deny that it is most sure that there is one supreme God without beginning or physical offspring, a great and magnificent Father? We invoke by many titles his virtues, which are spread throughout the universe, because we do not know his own name. For God is a name which all religions share’...to such a man monotheism was obvious.
Quote ID: 1997
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 70 Page: 261
Section: 4B
In his treatise On the Catechizing of those who are Unversed, he explains how the Christian scheme of faith should be set forth. It is all done on the values of the thing in itself. There is no emphasis on the renunciation of heathen beliefs and practices.Pastor John’s Note: Augustine
Quote ID: 1998
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 70 Page: 270
Section: 5D
All of them we know in part and understand in part. Which of us has any accurate idea of what is going on in the mind of the average churchgoer? How far does he himself know? And if this is so with the present, how much more so is it with the past...our interpretation must be in a considerable measure a personal interpretation, based on a balance of probabilities but informed by the spirit which we bring to it.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Amen
Quote ID: 1999
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 70 Page: 272
Section: 4B
Religion in Greece and Rome was not a distinct and separate aspect of life, but something which ran through all its phases. We have therefore an abundance of literature about religion. We have, however, very little religious literature, in the sense of works written by devotees for devotees. This is a natural consequence of the absence of hierarchy and theology.Ancient literature was produced by a small class of educated persons who wrote for their like. It shows us the high points of ancient religious thinking.
Quote ID: 2000
Time Periods: 0
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