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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul List" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: FW: Your article "St Ignatius ..."
  • Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 10:15:43 -0400


The following message was sent to Mike Conley late last night off-list
(actually, I accidentally left the CP address out of the message), and
Mike communicated to me this morning that he'd respond as soon as
other business is taken care of.

I am interested in the political aspects of early Christian
organization, as I feel that this question is very frequently ignored
or severely downplayed. It is not that the politics of the time is not
being investigated (Horsley, etc.) but that political motivations are
still usually denied Jesus or the Jesus movement.

My musing below, that a divine savior theology (along the lines of a
mystery religion) does not lend itself to an agenda to take over the
secular government, might suggest that the internal features of the
organization of the Christian movement that Mike refers to were
already in place before the divine savior theology developed. Then a
modern analogy might be the Marxist internationalists led by such
brilliant organizers as Lev (Leon) Davidovich Bronstein (Trotzky).
Still, some explanation for the continuation of a political agenda
seems to elude me.

Personally, I am struck by how similar the "true believer" of both
religious and political philosophies behave. If there is basis for
Mike's idea of "psycho-organizational pattern[s] that have retained
their validity throughout the millenia" it may be in this.

All this *does* actually have something to do with the Pauline corpus,
whether as propaganda (assuming the Pauline letters are fabrications)
or as offering evidence for stages of internal political and
philosophical development within the early Christian movement. I'm
interested in seeing where this thread might go.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
PS: It is not my policy to correct, or point out, spelling mistakes in
other people's posts or writings, as this serves more often than not
as a means to poke fun at opinions different than our own.

-----Original Message-----
From: David C. Hindley [mailto:dhindley AT compuserve.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 2:13 AM
To: Mike.Conley AT t-online.de
Subject: Your article "St Ignatius ..."


Mike Conley said:

>>It's good to know that you're not in a department for Theologians.
That means you've possibly no 'vested interests' to defend (like your
job in the faculty). That makes you a more apt reader for my
reflections.<<

Perhaps not the "usual" vested interests, but I have my own interests.
But anyways, here it goes:

After reading your article, "St. Ignatius, the Insidious Pragmatism of
the Episkopoi of Rome and the Rise of Christianity," I think I
understand the gist of what you say: About the time of Domitian,
Christian leadership began to take advantage of a period of relatively
lax government interference in order to more firmly establish
Christianity as an organized underground movement with a parallel
system of government (contrasted to the Roman government) and with a
recruitment/enforcement infrastructure in the form of charitable and
similar front organizations. The Ignatian epistles were fabricated to
serve as a propaganda vehicle to disseminate the newly adopted
organizational changes and reinforce the concept of martyrdom for the
cause.

From footnote #13 I gather that you had some experience in US Army(?)
counterintelligence operations. The models you are using for
comparison are clearly based on Communist style insurgency tactics
(and I hope I am not misusing the terminology) for building a cadre
and enforcing control over it. You say you are "not superimposing a
modern-day template upon an ancient society, but rather emphasizing
psycho-organizational pattern that have retained their validity
throughout the millenia." Yet what independent authorities attest to
these as universal "psycho-organizational patterns?"

Now I can see many of the points you are making, but wonder what the
Christian leadership was building it up *for*? To take over the
empire? But why? It would make more sense if Christianity was a form
of apocalyptic messianism, in which a better world (and kingdom) was
expected to come *in place of the existing system.* But a divine
savior figure does not seem to easily fit into that kind of
expectation. Although they did expect a future "new world," it was one
where no evil was permitted and thus did not need a civil government.
Like a dictatorship of the proletariat, it doesn't seem that the
system of bishops, presbyters and deacons was designed to dissolve
away once victory was obtained and the utopian age established.

I must say, though, that I too have reflected on Origin's comments to
Celsus in Book VIII of _Against Celsus_. He practically admits that
*if* Christianity fits the description of a seditious group, but also
talks as if he is tacitly admitting that as a true fact, then it is
justified in doing so by the alleged tyranny of the present
government. That is "excuse" talk on his part, the kind one makes when
one is reluctant to reveal his true motivations. Still, I do not see
how a savior cult theology could have driven a movement intent on
eventual overthrow of the established government. So I am in a
quandary.

Personally I think that the tactics you describe better fit the "holy
war" tactics of Islamic fundamentalists. However, I admit that your
article does take such groups into consideration. While they may
expect a new world order in which their religion prevails, it is a
"righteous" order with nothing to do with the "personal salvation"
that underpins the Christian religion of the second through fourth
centuries CE.

But getting back to specifics, how much *real* evidence is there that
those ranks of hospital orderlies, meal providers and monks were
actually roughing people up? Where do those cudgels come from that you
say Syrian abbots had distributed? From a source you can cite or from
interpretation of a Greek phrase that passed transliterated into
Syriac? I do not think that your pamphlet #550-106 from March 1967 is
still going to be in-print at the US Government printing office for me
to be able to check what you had to say. Could you be a bit more
specific?

One thing I think I might want to do, based on your article, is to
look closer at Lucian of Samosata's description of a Christian
community in his _The Passing of Perigrinus_. I am currently looking
into the Didache and the organization in that document seems to have
something in common with that which you outline from Lucian's book.
However, even the Didache leaves me reason to pause. The kinds of
problems you see with the Ignatian letters, I see with the Didache. It
seems almost artificial, like I also take the pseudo-Clementine
literature to be.

Of course, if one stares at or contemplates anything long enough it
becomes ugly and meaningless. So "artificiality" is too relative to
serve as a primary tool for analysis. The only meaningful way, in my
eyes, to get a comprehension for the data, is to take all this early
Christian literature, say up to the time of Justin, look at each
letter or book's internal literary characteristics, look for parallels
and contradictions between them, then with that framework in hand look
at contemporary society and its epistime in order to see if one can
fabricate a realistic historical developmental process that takes into
consideration the vast majority of these characteristics.

Isn't this what someone like Mark Nanos tries to do? While I am not a
Ph.D., I had come quite independently to many of the same conclusions
as he does about Paul as a Jew reaching out to gentiles. Frankly I was
quite impressed by his careful methodology. Yet what I detect is a
kind of anger simmering underneath some of the radicals, including
some who publish through the JHC, and it lashes out at those who move
more cautiously, like Mark. The criticisms I have seen so far from
Doherty or Price, etc., is quite selective. Everyone is chided for
just not "getting it." But I just don't get it either.

Is there actually more to this, or will it all come down to conspiracy
theories and a surfeit of sheep-like critics? Just curious...

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA





  • FW: Your article "St Ignatius ...", David C. Hindley, 08/11/2001

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