Systematic Theology – The State

The “Atheism” of the Early Church

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 34

Dictation Name: 34 The “Atheism” of the Early Church

Year: 1970’s

Our third subject is The Atheism of the Early Church. The word Atheism in quotes. The “Atheism” of the Early Church.

We have seen, in previous sessions, that the early church faced a real battle with the Roman Empire. The issue was licensure, regulation, taxation, and control. Rome was ready to tolerate any and all religions, provided they were licit. That is, regulated and controlled. Christianity was, very early and steadily, charged with being an atheistic cult. Rome hated atheism as a subversive force.

Now, we cannot understand the charge of atheism unless we consider certain factors. Dostoevsky once said if there is no God, everything is permitted, a very logical, a very sensible conclusion. Rome felt the same way. People who did not believe in God were dangerous because there was no moral restraint upon them, and because the Christians in their eyes were atheists, they were ready to suspect them, and to believe they were guilty of incest and cannibalism. Previously, they had said the same thing about Jews, that the Jews were atheists. An atheist, they held, will do anything.

What shall we say about this charge? How shall we understand it? Was it merely slander? I don’t think that’s being fair to Rome, because they were not trying to slander the Christians. They were trying to fit Christianity into what they understood as religion, and what they understood atheism to be. [

Justin Martyr said, concerning that charge of atheism, “And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort (that is, of the pagans) are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness, and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity.” One of the cynics, the philosopher Crescens, had accused the Christians also of being atheists, and Justin, in answering Crescens, said, “I, too, therefore, expect to be plotted against and fixed to the stake by some of those I have named, or perhaps by Crescens, that lover of bravado and boasting, for the man is not worthy of the name of philosopher who publically bears witness against us in matters which he does not understand, saying that the Christians are atheists and impious, and in doing so, to win favor with the diluted mob, and to please them. For if he assails us without having read the teaching of Christ, he is thoroughly depraved, and far worse than the illiterate who often refrain from discussing or bearing false witness about matters they do not understand, or if he has read them and does not understand the majesty which is in them, or understanding, acts thus that he may not be suspected of being such, that is, a Christian, he is far more base and thoroughly depraved, being conquered by liberal and unreasonable opinion and fear.”

Now, this is a very interesting quote. Of all people, we would expect a cynic philosopher to be the last one to charge Christians with being atheistic, of being impious. Well, we can understand that second aspect of the charge, because piety, in the Roman Empire meant submission to the state. A pious Roman was a man devoted to and obedient always to the Roman state. Christians felt that theirs was a true and a higher piety, but to the Romans, they lacked piety, and the Greeks felt the same way about the Christians.

Clement of Alexandria tried to deal with the same charge of atheism, and he declared, “He then who is persuaded that God is omnipotent, and has learned the divine mysteries from his only begotten Son, how can he be an atheist? For he is an atheist who thinks that God does not exist, and he is superstitious who dreads the demons, who deifies all things, both wood and stone, and reduces to bondage spirit, and man who possesses the life of reason.

Now, Clement redefined atheism to give it a Christian content, which it did not previously have. What was atheism to the Greeks and the Romans. Well, we find that very clearly in Eusibius, the church historian, who gives us a document, a record of an interrogation by Æmilianus,, the deputy prefect, a Roman, of a group of Christians. One of the Christians, Anesius{?}, reported the matter in a letter to Hermano{?}, and we have therefore, an eyewitness record of the interrogation shortly after it occurred. “Dionysius, Faustus, Maximus, Marcellus, and Chæremon being arraigned, Æmilianus the prefect said: ‘I have reasoned verbally with you concerning the clemency which our rulers have shown to you; for they have given you the opportunity to save yourselves, if you will turn to that which is according to nature, and worship the gods that preserve their empire, and forget those that are contrary to nature. What then do you say to this? For I do not think that you will be ungrateful for their kindness, since they would turn you to a better course.’

“Dionysius replied: ‘Not all people worship all gods; but each one those whom he approves. We therefore reverence and worship the one God, the Maker of all; who hath given the empire to the divinely favored and august Valerian and Gallienus; and we pray to him continually for their empire that it may remain unshaken.’ Æmilianus, the prefect, said to them: ‘But who forbids you to worship him, if he is a god, together with those who are gods by nature. For ye have been commanded to reverence the gods, and the gods whom all know.’

Dionysius answered: ‘We worship no other.’ Æmilianus, the prefect, said to them: ‘I see that you are at once ungrateful, and insensible to the kindness of our sovereigns. Wherefore ye shall not remain in this city. But ye shall be sent to a place called Cephro. For I have chosen this place at the command of our sovereigns, and it shall by no means be permitted you or any others, either to hold assemblies, or to enter into the so called cemeteries. But if any one shall be seen without the place which I have commanded, or be found in any assembly, he will bring peril on himself. For suitable punishment shall not fail. Go, therefore where ye have been ordered.’”

One thing about this citation which is interesting, we see here clearly the totalitarian mentality. Æmilianus feels that he is being gracious in allowing the Christians to submit to his demands. It’s the kind of graciousness that I have seen over and over again in one state and federal court after another. Do what we say, and that’s being reasonable, and we’re so gracious that we give you an opportunity obey us. But more important, Æmilianus tells these Christians what atheism meant to Rome. It was the refusal to worship the gods of nature, that is, natural forces. His point was that the Christian idea of God was contrary to nature, and it is here that we come to the focal point.

For paganism, divinity was an inherent power in nature. This inherent power manifests itself in great men, they said, but supremely in the state. In the state, the men of the society, the rulers, the heroes, realize themselves. They become gods. A stateless man was no man at all, and a stateless god was no god. A religion sought to express itself in the life of a state. Thus, to Æmilianus, atheism was to disbelieve in the natural gods, the forces of nature, and to believe in a supernatural god. By definition, there could be no such god. Therefore, to profess such a thing was to be perverse, it was to be contrary, it was to be an atheist. You denied the power of the god in nature, the inherent force in nature.

Now, it’s very clear that atheism is a relative term. For us, the humanist is an atheist, but the humanist believes that men are their own gods. He does believe in a god: himself. The statists are not atheists. They believe the state is God walking on earth, a la Hegel, and all others are fools. They believe in nothing. In superstition. This was the attitude of the Romans. “These foolish Christians are believing in a non-existent God, in a non-existent and dead Jesus, and all this is a form of subversion. They are atheists, and all that they profess is a disguise, a mask for their atheism.” Power, a god, a force in the universe, anything worthy to be worshiped had to be inherent in nature. Thus, Rome saw Christianity as an enemy to all it stood for, because for Rome, the deity in nature came to focus in the Roman Empire.

Now, we have the same conflict today. John Dewey in his book, A Common Faith, opposed totally Christianity as illegitimate, not permissible in a democracy. Why? Because it did not believe in the people. It did not believe in anything that was democratic. It believed in a heaven and a hell, very anti-democratic, and right and wrong, and passing and failing, and the sheep and the goats, God and the Devil, totally anti-democratic, and so he said the two are not compatible. For him, with his faith in the Great Community, Christianity was a form of atheism, a belief in nothing.

And so today, the Christians, although they are not called atheists, what they believe is held to be superstitious. In the creationist trial in Louisiana, the issue raised by the scientist was that these people believe in myths, in superstition. They didn’t charge them with being atheists, but the Romans did. They said, “They believe in superstitions, myths, in nothingness. They are atheists.” For them then, the authority of the state is the ultimate and the natural order. It is God walking on earth, and for modern man, the same is true.

Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, and others like them charged Crescens and other doubters with not knowing the Bible, but some of them did. It only confirmed their belief in the atheism of the Christians, because they said, “That’s not a faith, that’s a superstition. They’re believing in nothing.” For them, the only moral force tenable for man was fear of the state. Their attitude was if you believe in Rome, then you believe in the power of Rome to enforce morality and the fear of the state will bring law and order among men, but if you believe in a God who is supposedly out there in the heavens, you’re an atheist. You’re not believing in anything, and what’s to keep people then believing in a distant God who doesn’t have a police force around, from cannibalism and atheism? And so it was they said, “The Christians are atheists. They believe in nothing. Therefore, they must be practicing incest and cannibalism.” It makes sense, doesn’t it? If you don’t believe in the power of the state, if you’re against the policeman on the corner, it’s because you want to do everything that an evil imagination can think of. They held that no remote, unnatural, supernatural God could restrain man. To deny the natural order and the state as God was, for them, atheism.

The battle is the same today. The language of the enemy is not always as honest as it was in the days of Rome, but for Caesar today, as then, the Christian is the enemy of public order, and therefore, war is waged against him.

Are there any questions now about any of these three lessons this evening? Yes, John?

[Audience] In Rome, I’m trying to work out here the thing that I think this is an example of it. When Van Til talks about man becoming progressively epistemologically self-conscious, it seems to me like, that the difference between ancient Rome and modern America, in terms of humanism and the roman Empire, is that, it seems to me as if that’s being established in that historical, what Van Til is saying is being established in a historical process. The only difference is that, in ancient Rome, they credited the gods with certain powers, and then through the state, but now they’ve eliminated the gods and now it’s just a state. I wonder am I way off base there?

[Rushdoony] No, it’s the same thing with different terminology. It’s a naturalistic faith.

[Audience] But {?} an example though of what he means when he talks about nations and civilization becoming epistemologically self-conscious?

[Rushdoony] Yes. We’re refining the issues and becoming more honestly humanistic and naturalistic. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] You talked about the way the humanists view the word, “the people.” The Bible, at least in our translation, uses “the people” in a variety of senses. One is as members of a family, of a nation, and I was wondering if it might be better instead of saying there’s no such thing as “the people,” but the humanists’ attempt to use the phrase “people” is the attempt to incorporate everybody into their family.

[Rushdoony] Well, the biblical word “people” or “peoples” usually, is goyim, the nations, literally. So it has reference to legal entities. It doesn’t have reference in the humanistic sense to the citizens and individuals collectively as somehow embodied in a general will of which the speaker is the representative and the voice. So, it’s a logos doctrine. It is a word, the word is made flesh in the state, and the word is made flesh in themselves so they speak as the people. Yes?

[Audience] Again, on this “people,” the comment{?} is claimed to be speaking for the people, he wants power to the people, but then they define the people as the members of the communist party.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] So maybe the humanists have a different definition of people than what we think it is.

[Rushdoony] Well, for the Marxist the dictatorship of the proletariat is the infallible voice of the people. For the humanists, some of them, it’s the democratic consentious{?} which is the expression of the general will, and the intellectual, the philosopher kings of the society. So, they speak for the people because they somehow incarnate the people with their wisdom. In either case, it’s a kind of incarnation of the people in a class, a party, or in an elite philosophical group. Yes?

[Audience] That’s vox populi vox dei.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Vox populi vox dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God, which is a philosophy that Rousseau developed, although the proverb goes back to ancient Rome. Yes?

[Audience] I’ve got a question regarding the Æmilianus, referring to the gods of nature, and you were saying that that was natural forces, and they were worshiping, I’d assume storms, and expressions of nature of that kind. But, the question is, we know the Romans also worshipped Zeus, and Neptune, and gods that they made idols to, and built temples to worship them in.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Was it not those gods?

[Rushdoony] The gods of the Greeks and the Romans like Zeus, and Athena, and Mars, and so on were really deified persons. In the case of Zeus, the Greeks actually could tell you and boasted that, “Well, he was born in this city, and he lived here and he died here.” In other words, he was a divinized man, and this was true of all the other gods and the goddesses. They believed that men could incarnate the power in nature and become gods. So, it was the Roman senate, for example, who proclaimed who was a god. They weighed the matter and they said such and such an emperor really incarnated these forces in such a way and therefore, he is a god. Well, as a result, what these gods represented was nature coming to focus in something. Now, it wasn’t necessarily the storms or the sun as much as the forces behind them, and reason, for example, was a key aspect of the divine natural force, and if you lived a life of reason, you lived a life of divinity, and power and force, like a great hero in battle, also was a manifestation of that divinity and nature coming to focus in a man. This was the way they viewed it. Yes?

[Audience] Well then, their particular view of deity would have no room for any concept of supernaturalism. Is that true? Totally materialistic then.

[Rushdoony] Right. The supernatural was, totally, their position was totally naturalistic, yes. Now, we would tend to think that because their heroes, and their gods, and goddesses did certain things that, to us, look miraculous, that they were anti-naturalistic, and supernaturalistic in their opinion, but they didn’t see it that way. It was just their view of what constituted the naturalistic forces was not as refined as that of say, the modern scientist. Yes?

[Audience] I was interested in knowing why you may think that in Calvin’s Institutes, Calvin said that the procession of the Holy Spirit wasn’t important and it was a big waste of time to argue over it. Can you give us an understanding on that statement?

[Rushdoony] I don’t recall his statement, so I couldn’t comment on it without rereading it. Well, he certainly stressed the doctrine and the procession in other ways. It could be he was just striking at a particular expression of it, but I don’t know.

[Audience] With regard to the lecture on process, or processions, evolution is referred to by the name “process.” This is a process world view, and the whole point of the process is that apotheosis, or deification of men, and Arthur Lovejoy in his book, The Great Chain of Being talks about the temporalizing of this point of being in the modern times, and an interesting footnote to that is that we have a friend who is doing doctrine studies at Cambridge, and he was told by his leader that process theology and liberation theology were O-U-T out these days, and what was very “in,” according to this man, in Northern Pittinger{?} was the Great Chain of Being. So they’ve gone beyond process and they are now talking about their deism, so it’s complete.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] What is the theology behind the procession where you find a jog-a-thon, of a thousand people in San Francisco going from one side of the Bay to the other? Is there a concept of this parade or procession in the minds of the people?

[Rushdoony] The commuters, you mean?

[Audience] No, no. Once a year in San Francisco, they have a big marathon jog across San Francisco.

[Audience] Bay to Bridge

[Rushdoony] Oh, no. That’s different. That’s athletic.

[Audience] Has nothing to do with a parade-type of procession?

[Rushdoony] Not to my knowledge. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] How about the wedding processional?

[Rushdoony] Well, the wedding procession is a church processional, because it’s a processional to the altar, or the pulpit, or the front of the church to seek the blessing of God upon a relationship, and therefore, it celebrates an event which is blessed by God since the Garden of Eden in which they seek a special blessing upon themselves individually in the institution of marriage. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that, as we face the powers of darkness, of humanistic statism and unbelief, we have the blessed assurance that ours is the victory in Jesus Christ. We thank thee for the procession of power from thee and from the Son unto us, by the Holy Spirit, whereby we are made more than conquerors, are given the blessed assurance that thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us so that we may boldly say I shall not fear what man may do unto me. Make us victorious in the days ahead, and make us effectual in thy kingdom. Now, Lord, give us travel mercies on our homeward way, a blessed night’s rest, and joy always in thy service. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape