It was known as the “Third Way.”

The phrase comes from the early Christian period. To my knowledge it first appeared in a second-century letter written to a Roman official, a certain Diognetus.

The author—we don’t know his name or identity—wanted to describe the peculiar nature of Christianity to a member of the Roman elite. He commended Diognetus’s curiosity and assured him that he would do his best to answer his questions about Christianity. He then referred to the Christian movement as a “new race” or “third race,” which I have chosen to identify as the Third Way.

The Greek word the author uses—genos—Is difficult to translate. It could be rendered “race,” “tribe,” “clan,” “stock,” “family,” “life,” or even “people.” It implied a deep kinship connection, a sense of belonging to a people and, as a people, living in a distinct way, which Diognetus and other Roman officials had observed to be true of Christians. The Christian movement was forming a new community of people who claimed to believe in a new kind of God and to follow a new way of life.

I have chosen to use “Third Way” for two reasons: first, because it strikes me as less charged than “race” or “clan” or “tribe”; and second, because early on, Christians were known as followers of “the way.” This translation fits well enough, but only if we understand it as conveying a larger meaning than merely following a new and trendy way of life that is here today and gone tomorrow. The early Christian movement was anything but that.

Diognetus was familiar with the phrase, implying that it might have been coined by the Romans themselves to categorize three distinct and different religious ways of life: Roman, Jewish, and Christian. The author warned Diognetus that he was going to be surprised by what he learned. He exhorted him to clear out his old thoughts about religion. “You must become like a new man from the beginning, since, as you yourself admit, you are going to listen to a really new message.”

The First Way

Of course a third way implies a first and second way. The first, as Diognetus would have known, was the Roman way, which organized life around Greco-Roman civil religion and was the most ubiquitous and popular of the three.

Civic life and religious life were virtually inseparable in the Roman world. Public officials were responsible for managing the religious affairs of a community, including maintenance of temples and performance of various rituals. People worshiped and sacrificed to the gods; they visited temples, shrines, and monuments; they participated in pagan feasts and festivals; they kept and cared for household deities at the family altar; they experimented with and sometimes joined mystery cults. Above all, they swore allegiance to the emperor as a god. They observed these and other rituals largely to secure Rome’s prosperity, and their own as well.

Rome’s religious system was largely transactional. Romans honored the gods and goddesses, and they expected those gods and goddesses to respond in kind. Their religion was based on ritual observance more than doctrinal belief and ethical behavior. Worship was supposed to bring benefits, especially to the empire. Rome was tolerant, pluralistic, and syncretistic. It exhibited an amazing capacity to absorb new religions into its pantheon, assuming that adherents, whatever they believed and however they lived, would be subservient to Rome and swear allegiance to the divine status of the emperor. It had the most trouble with the religions that demanded exclusive commitment to one God and to one way of life. Most religions of this kind, especially Christianity, were considered by definition anti-Roman.

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