Christians such as Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons weren’t part of the cultural elite but, following the apostles’ footsteps, worked from below and slowly and steadily guided the church through a pagan world. They didn’t sit in the prominent seats of the senate nor hobnob among the intellectuals populating the philosophical schools. Instead, they worked “organically,” beginning with sincere and robust forms of catechesis and discipleship, slowly guiding people in Christian doctrine and morality, reshaping the way they viewed the world. The church was a school for the broken, the downcast, and those longing to see a better world, and the Christian vision of life guided their way toward true human flourishing. 

“I call myself a cultural Christian, but I’m not a believer,” stated the famed atheist Richard Dawkins in a recent interview with Rachel Johnson of LBC News. “I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos,” he continued. He wants the cathedrals and parish churches that speckle England’s landscape, just without the faith nonsense that informs them. This interview is yet another signal that culture is changing. Even atheists seem to long for something transcendent.

Nietzsche quipped that “God is dead.” And in many ways, he was right; in the West, “God” is dead in the sense that Christianity’s theological and moral claims have become unbelievable and no longer unify society. The age of Christendom in the West, beginning with Constantine, saw Christianity slowly suppress paganism and establish cultural hegemony, but the tide is turning. It seems we’re back where we started.

The age of the Caesars is, once again, upon us. Like in a Percy Jackson novel, the pagan gods have taken up residence in our world, becoming the spiritual thread uniting our society and informing its moral imagination. As Christians look for ways to live faithfully in the world, the ancient church provides a helpful model for living in a world that seems increasingly pagan.

Back to a Pagan World

In his book Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us, British political commentator Ferdinand Mount draws out the parallels between modern and ancient moral diversity in striking fashion:

By the time of the Antonine emperors in the second century AD—that period which Gibbon regarded as the summit of human felicity—Rome was a ferment of religious choice. You could believe in anything or nothing. You could put your trust in astrologers, snake-charmers, prophets and diviners and magicians; you could take your pick between half a dozen creation myths and several varieties of resurrection. Or if you belonged to the educated elite, you could read the poetry of Lucretius and subscribe to a strictly materialist description of the universe. In short, this is a time when anything goes and the weirdest, most frenzied creations of the human mind jostle with the most beautiful visions, the most inspiring spiritual challenges and the most challenging lines of scientific inquiry. It is hard to think of any period quite like it, before or since—until our own time.

Mount is not alone in identifying the second century as the closest parallel to our time. Historian Carl Trueman comes to a similar conclusion at the end of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Similarly in Pagans and Christians in the City, legal scholar Steven D. Smith frames his recommendations for Christian cultural navigation with the second century church in mind.

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