All of the church fathers and early Christian authors showed extreme intolerance towards other gods and religions. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE) told his followers to smash all visible signs of pagan religions, he’s recorded as having said,
‘That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!’ (Sermon 24.6)
The early Christians loved quoting the bigoted claim in Psalms that ‘the gods of the nations are devils’ (Psalms 96.5). As far as they were concerned, whatever the Bible said was divinely inspired and true. Augustine described Christianity as,
‘This, the only true religion, has been able to manifest that the gods of the nations are most impure demons, who desire to be thought gods’ (City of God 7.33).
He wrote of the other religions of the empire,
‘All the pagans were under the power of the demons. Temples were built to demons, altars were set up to demons, priests ordained for the service of demons, sacrifices offered to demons.’ (Exposition on Psalm 94)
Clement of Alexandria (150 – 215 CE) wrote, ‘I can then readily demonstrate that man is better than these gods of yours, who are just demons’ (Exhortation to the Heathen). Tatian (120 – 180 CE) was another important early Christian writer who abhorred paganism. He wrote, ‘Who mustn’t treat with contempt your solemn festivals, which are held in honour of wicked demons and cover men with infamy’ (Address to the Greeks 22).
Tertullian (160 – 220 CE) despised pagans and their gods and wrote that,
‘The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgement, is idolatry…set aside names, examine works, the idolator is like a murderer’ (On Idolatry 1).
He stated that, ‘In idolatry all crimes are detected, and in all crimes idolatry’ (On Idolatry 1). He too considered all the other gods of the empire to be demons,
‘We worship the one god…There are also others who you believe to be gods, and who we know to be demons.’ (To Scapula 3).
He also wrote, ‘Let us mourn then, while the heathen are merry, that in their day of sorrow we may rejoice.’ (On the Shows 28). Tertullian comes across as a crazy fanatic who sees all the other gods as devils that have tainted and corrupted the world. He saw these devils everywhere, writing,
‘Why, even the streets and market-place, and the baths, and the taverns, and our very dwelling places, are not altogether free from idols. Satan and his angels have filled the whole world.’ (On the Shows 8)
Origen (184 – 253 CE) was another prolific early Christian author who was also a deeply intolerant fanatic. He too loved quoting that unpleasant line from Psalms. He wrote, ‘All the gods of the heathen are greedy demons’ (Against Celsus 3.37), and, ‘The service of demons is the service of so-called gods, for “all the gods of the heathen are demons”’ (Against Celsus 7.69). He described the other gods of the empire with,
‘We know that they are demons, feeding on the blood and smoke, and odour of victims. Shut up by their base desires in prisons, which the Greeks call temples of the gods, but which we know are the dwellings of deceitful demons.’ (Against Celsus 7.35)
He also made the rabid claim that, ‘He who partakes of things offered to idols is worse than a murderer, for he destroys his own brethren, for whom Christ dies.’ (Against Celsus 8.24). It says something about the mindset of early Christians that they considered partaking of a religious feast to be a worse crime than murder! It also helps you appreciate just what an intolerant group of religious fanatics the Roman state had to try and deal with.
Ambrose of Milan (338 – 397 CE) was one of the most important and influential ecclesiastical figures of the 4th century. In 388 CE, he defended the destruction of a synagogue by a Christian mob, writing that he would happily take responsibility such an action,
‘I declare that I burned down the synagogue; at least that I gave the orders that there would be no building in which Christ was denied.’
Cyril of Alexandria’s (378 – 444 CE) preaching against the Alexandrian mathematician and philosopher Hypatia inflamed a mob to brutally murder her in 415 CE. The sources state that she was stripped naked, flayed and dismembered before her body parts were burned. We’re not dealing with minor Christian figures here either, Augustine and Ambrose are two of the original Doctors of the Church, the most important and revered early Christian theologians.
Many Christian bishops and monks took great pleasure destroying temples and synagogues across the empire. In 386, the pagan orator Libanius wrote to the Christian emperor Theodosius I complaining of the intolerance shown to the old faiths,
‘The black robed tribe [the monks]…hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron…utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues and the overthrow of altars…the [pagan] priests must either keep quiet or die.’ (Oration 30)
Shenoute of Atripe (c348 – 465) was an important early monk and one of the most important saints of the Coptic Orthodox Church. He quoted the Old Testament passage stating that idolators should be killed and declared of pagan temples,
‘The present righteous emperors who rule the earth, have decreed in their edicts to demolish and to dig out the foundations of what remains until no stone among them is left on top of any other stone.’ (Let Our Eyes)
The intolerant attitude of the early Christians towards other religions is nicely summed up in a fourth century work called The Error of Pagan Religions by Firmicus Maternus. In it we read such belligerent things as,
‘It is enjoined on you by the law of the supreme God, that you severely prosecute in every way the crime of idolatry. Hear and entrust to your holy consciousness what God commands concerning this crime. God orders that neither son nor brother be spared, and directs the sword as an avenger through the beloved limbs of a wife. A friend he also persecutes with lofty severity, and all the people are roused to arms to rend the bodies of sacrilegious people. Destruction is determined even for whole cities, if they are apprehended in this crime.’ (The Error of Pagan Religions 29.1-2)
And
‘These practices must be eradicated, Most Holy Emperors, utterly eradicated and abolished. All must be set aright by the severest laws of your edicts, so that the ruinous error of this delusion may no longer besmirch the Roman world, so that the wickedness of this pestilential usage may no longer wax strong.’ (The Error of Pagan Religions 77-8)
Compare this aggressive Christian stance to the words of the pagan Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (340 – 402 CE) addressed to the emperor Valentinian, requesting tolerance for all faiths,
‘And so we ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, for the gods of our native land. It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze upon the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.’ (Relatio 3.10.41)
Ambrose of Milan fanatically responded to this supplication with,
‘Salvation is not sure unless everyone worships in truth the same true God, who is to be worshipped from the bottom of the heart; for the “gods of the heathen”, as scripture says, “are devils”.’
The Greeks and Romans had a long tradition of being generally inclusive, accepting, and even syncretic of different gods and faiths. This probably helped maintain political stability throughout their empires.
By the dawn of Christianity, many pagans already believed in a singular supreme God that ruled over and could be worshipped through all the other gods, heroes and sons of gods in existence. The heavens were seen as being ordered like the empire, the one supreme God mirroring the emperor. In the first century, Maximus Tyre wrote,
‘The one doctrine upon which all the world is united is that one God is king of all and father, and that there are many gods, sons of God, who rule together with God. This is believed by both the Greek and barbarian.’ (39.5)
In the second century, Celsus noted,
‘It makes no difference whether you call the highest being Zeus, or Zen, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Ammoun like the Egyptians, or Pappæus like the Scythians.’ (Origen – Against Celsus 5.41)
The Christians took great delight in destroying temples and statues they considered to be dedicated to false gods and demons. They inherited an intense hatred of idolatry from Judaism. The first (and most important) two commandments of Moses were not worshipping other gods and not making idols.
The fourth to sixth centuries CE saw the largest deliberate destruction of art and architecture that the world has ever seen. Many statues of the gods were smashed into rubble or melted down. Most of those that still exist and survived the iconoclastic onslaught are missing heads, limbs or noses that were deliberately hacked off by Christians, some have crosses chiselled into their foreheads.
Jews also suffered under Christian rule from the fourth century onwards. Constantine forbid the circumcision of males who were not born Jews, thus preventing Jews from proselytising and converting others. Under Christian rule, a Jew who circumcised his slave was condemned to death. Owning a Christian slave became punishable by loss of property and harming a Jewish convert to Christianity was punishable by burning at the stake. Constantine passed a law in 329 CE stating,
‘We wish the Jews, their leaders and their patriarchs to be informed, that if anyone – once this law has been given – dare attack by stoning or by other kind of fury one escaping from their deadly sect and raising his eyes to God’s cult, which as we have learned is being done now, he shall be delivered immediately to the flames and burned with all his accomplices.’
Almost every early Church Father wrote a polemic entitled ‘Against the Jews’. John Chrysostom (349 – 407 CE) referred to synagogues as a ‘dwelling place for demons…a hideout for thieves…a den of wild animals’. While the Christian emperors and bishops looked to forcibly eradicate paganism, they were happy to keep Judaism alive, but poor and humbled. They saw the Jews as the original chosen people of their god, who had throughout their history strayed and ignored his prophets, culminating in their rejection and killing of his son Jesus.
As we all know, Christians themselves had suffered from persecution at times during the first, second and third centuries, but this was never without reason. The Roman authorities often saw Christians as subversive fanatics, who were a threat to the stability of the empire. This dislike of Christians was due to their aggressive intolerance towards other faiths, and their refusal to honour the emperor, or any god other than their own.
Christianity wasn’t born into a hostile world, far from it in fact. Similar oriental mystery cults were immensely popular in the first and second centuries CE. If Christians had accepted their god and son of god as one of many in the Roman pantheon, and shown tolerance towards the other faiths of the time, there never would have been any persecutions against them.
Many early Christians had the mindset of a fundamentalist doomsday cult. Both the gospels and the Book of Revelation assert that the world was imminently going to be destroyed by a great conflagration. This would lead to the Final Judgement at which Christians would be raised to heaven and everyone else would be destroyed by fire.
Early Christians weren’t the peace loving hippies that television and film has often portrayed them as. There were many radicals and fanatics who believed that theirs was the only true god, and all other deities were devils. The church father Tertullian (160 – 220 CE) wrote the following on the joy he would feel at seeing non-believers suffering in the flames of damnation,
‘You are fond of spectacles, expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgement of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ.’ (On the Shows 30)
The Church has always portrayed the martyrs of Christendom as holy men and women who died in the name of a true faith. The reality is that many were religious fanatics who hated other faiths and non-believers.
Several ancient sources portray early Christians as fanatics with a fervour for martyrdom and death. The Cynic philosopher Epictetus (50 – 130 CE) wrote that Christians were driven to martyrdom by blind fanaticism, often in a desire to die in a similar manner to their saviour Jesus. Tacitus (56 – 117 CE) and Pliny the Younger (63 – 113 CE) were the first Roman writers to take notice of Christianity, both described Christians as superstitious fanatics. Arrius Antoninus, a governor of Asia, is reported to have said about Christians who came to him demanding martyrdom, ‘Unhappy wretches. If you want to die, do you not have ropes and precipices?’ (Tertullian – To Scapula 17).
Many church fathers openly praised and promoted martyrdom in exactly the same way that many Islamists would today. The third century bishop Cyprian wrote extensively encouraging Christians to die as martyrs in order to gain entrance to heaven. He wrote of the ‘sublime, the great, the acceptable spectacle’ of ‘flowing blood which quenches the flames and fires of hell by its glorious gore’. The Roman governor’s report of Cyprian’s own martyrdom records that he said “thanks be to God” when he was sentenced to death. A crowd of zealous Christians then cried out “let us too be beheaded with him!”
Tertullian wrote that ‘the soul key to unlock Paradise is your own life’s blood’ (De Anima 55), and believed that only martyrs would go straight to heaven after death. He also stated that Christians were ‘happier on being found guilty than when we are dismissed’ (To Scapula 2). Clement of Alexandria wrote, ‘We call martyrdom perfection’ (Stromata 4.4). Basil of Caesarea (329 – 379 CE) saw the blood of martyrs as key to aiding the growth of Christianity,
‘Then the people grew more numerous by being attacked. Then the blood of the martyrs, watering the churches, nourished many more champions of true religion, each generation stripping for the struggle with the zeal of those that had gone before.’ (Letter 164)
Minucius Felix was an early Christian apologist, and he portrayed the Christian god as one that revelled in the martyrdom of his followers,
‘How beautiful is the spectacle to God when a Christian does battle with pain. When he is drawn up against threats, and punishments, and tortures. When mocking the noise of death, he treads underfoot the horror of the executioner… when he yields to God alone, whose he is.’ (Octavius 37)
Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch in the early second century, and he too displayed a disturbing desire for a violent death as a martyr,
‘May I enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray they may be found eager to rush upon me. Indeed I will entice them to devour me quickly, and not deal with me as with some, whom, out of fear, they have not touched. But if they be unwilling to assail me, I will force them to do so. Pardon me [in this]: I know what is for my benefit. Now I begin to be a disciple. And let no one, of things visible or invisible, envy me that I should attain to Jesus Christ. Let fire and the cross and crowds of wild beasts; let tearings, breakings, and dislocations of bones; let cutting off of members; let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me: only let me attain to Jesus Christ.’ (Letter to the Romans 5)
The Bible and Mythology 