Mike Aquilina - Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World and Can Change It Again

For Further Reading

O THER B OOKS BY M IKE A QUILINA

Roots of the Faith: From the Church Fathers to You

Yours Is the Church: How Catholicism Shapes Our World

The Fathers of the Church

The Mass of the Early Christians

Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols

The Mass: The Glory, the Mystery, the Tradition (with Cardinal Donald Wuerl)

O THER B OOKS BY J IM P APANDREA

ROME: A Pilgrims Guide to the Eternal City

Trinity 101: Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Reading the Early Church Fathers: From the Didache to Nicaea

Novatian of Rome and the Culmination of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy

The Wedding of the Lamb: A Historical Approach to the Book of Revelation

Spiritual Blueprint: How We Live, Work, Love, Play, and Pray

Copyright 2015 by Michael Aquilina and James L. Papandrea

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Image,

an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,

a division of Random House LLC,

a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

IMAGE is a registered trademark and the I colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-8041-3896-3

eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-3897-0

Cover design by Jessie Sayward Bright

Cover illustration by Bridgeman Art Library

v3.1

To our friends and colleagues

who pave the way and open doors for us,

who support us, encourage us, challenge us, stretch us,

who read our work and give us good counsel.

You know who you are.

A N OTE ON THE T EXT

Many of our quotations from the Fathers are adapted from the three great nineteenth-century translation series, The Fathers of the Church, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. We have updated the language to make it readable for our contemporaries.

The bishop was led into the stadium, where death and gore were entertainment, and where the crowd was hoping to drown the harsh realities of life, and the fear of their own mortality, in someone elses blood. Three days earlier, Bishop Polycarp had dreamed that his pillow was on fire. He knew that meant soon he was going to face the flames. Now, as he entered the arena in chains, surrounded by those who hated the faith that he stood for, he heard the voice of God encouraging him, telling him to be strong and courageous. When the crowd saw him and recognized him as the leader of the Christians in their city, they cheered to see that he had been arrested.

Polycarp stood before the Roman proconsul, the man whom the emperor had sent to be the governor of the province. When asked, Polycarp confirmed that he was indeed the bishop of the city of Smyrna. This was as good as an admission of guilt. Being a Christian was not only illegal; it was considered an antisocial, even treasonous, crimeand, therefore, it was a crime worthy of death. The proconsul attempted to convince Polycarp to deny his faith to save his life. Youre an old man, he pleaded, implying that the ordeal Polycarp faced would be all the more harsh because of his age. All you have to do is take an oath to the emperor and renounce your fellow traitors. Because Christians worshipped only one God, instead of the many gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon, the non-Christians took to calling Christians atheists. The proconsul promised Polycarp that he would go free if he would only deny his faith and his Christian community by saying, Away with the atheists. In response, the bishop of Smyrna turned to the pagan crowd, pointed to them, and said, Away with the atheists!

Angered, but wishing to make an apostate rather than a martyr, the Roman proconsul pressed again, Swear the oath, and I will release you. Curse Christ! But Polycarp calmly replied, I have been his servant for eighty-six years, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King, who saved me? As the proconsul continued to rail at the bishop, Polycarp went on, If you think that I will do as you request and swear an oath to Caesar, pretending not to know who I am, then listen carefully: I am a Christian. Now if you want to learn the teachings of Christianity, set a day and give me a hearing.

Eventually, the proconsul took a different tack. He threatened that wild animals would tear Polycarp apart while the spectators cheered. But the bishop responded, Call for them. To change ones mind fromevil to righteousness is a good thing, but to go from better to worse is something we cannot do. The proconsul responded, If youre not afraid of the wild beasts, I will have you burned with fire, unless you change your mind. Polycarp replied, You threaten me with a fire that burns for only a little while and then is put out. But you know nothing of the eternal fire, the eternal punishment that awaits the ungodly at the coming judgment. Why do you hesitate? Come on, do what you will!

Members of the crowd eagerly helped gather wood for the fire, and as the bishop prayed, the fire was lit. Although the flames surrounded him, the saintly bishops body was not consumed. Finally a soldier was ordered to kill him with a dagger. The wound produced so much blood that the crowd looked on in amazement as Polycarps blood put out the fire. But the bishop was dead. The fire was lit once again, and Polycarps body was burned to prevent its veneration. But the faithful of Smyrna were able to retrieve his bones, which were treated as holy relics.

What kind of culture encourages people to cheer at the death of an elderly man who is guilty of no other crime than being a Christian bishop? And how did humanity progress from the Roman culture of Polycarps time to the kind of people we are now, feeling surprise, horror, and disgust with such martyr stories? What changed in human society to make us what we are today? And is there evidence that we as a culture could be slipping back to where we once were? This book is about seven cultural revolutions that changed human society for the better. These revolutions are the direct result of the presence of Christianity in the world, and of the influence of the Christian Church on society. But in a time when it has become fashionable once again to cheer the misfortunes of the Church, and to highlight the Churchs failures as if they overshadow its faithfulness, it is important to point out the ways in which Christianity has made the world a better place, and to demonstrate that these far outweigh the times when a few leaders of the Church have failed in their mission. The truth is, the best of human society, with its improved quality of life, and its protection of human rights, is the result of these seven cultural revolutions that came about because of the Christian Church. Specifically, these revolutions were a radical change in the way human society thought of the individual, the family, work, religion, community, attitudes toward life and death, and even government.