Why Christianity?

Church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette considers the question why Christianity spread as no other religion had spread before it. 

There were many other religions and philosophies.  But none attracted the following Christianity did or had the impact Jesus' church did.  Why?

Inevitably the question arises: Why, from being the faith of a small, persecuted minority in competition with other religions which appeared to have better prospects of success, did Christianity eventually enroll the large majority of the population of the Roman Empire? To that outcome several factors contributed. In the disintegration of the existing order which by the end of the second century was becoming obvious many individuals were seeking spiritual and material security and believed that they could find it in the Christian faith. By the end of the third century, while enlisting only a minority, the Church was Empire-wide, was more comprehensive than any institution except the state, and gave to its members a sense of brotherhood and solidarity. Christianity assured its adherents what many in the ancient world were craving -- high ethical standards, a spiritual dynamic in which was power to approximate to those standards, and immortality. The Church was inclusive: its brotherhood included both sexes, rich and poor, intelligentsia and men and women of no intellectual attainments. Many intellectuals, including Augustine, found in the faith not only moral power but also, in the incarnation, the Word become flesh, what was absent in the highest philosophies of the time. The constancy of the martyrs awakened the admiration of thousands. So did the fact that Christianity was uncompromising in its demands. One modern scholar, T. R. Glover of Cambridge University declared that the Christians out-thought, out-lived, and out-died the adherents of the non-Christian religions.

The primary source of the appeal of Christianity was Jesus -- His incarnation, His life, His crucifixion, and His resurrection. Here was the sense of security and of meaning in a perplexing universe and in a society whose foundations were crumbling. Here were the command for and, although imperfect, the realization of a comprehensive fellowship. Here were high and exacting ethical commands and the proved power to approximate to them. Here was victory through apparent defeat. Here was the certainty of immortality in ever-growing and never-ending fellowship with the eternal God Who so loved that He had given Himself in His Son.

Because Christianity made no distinctions in the value of human beings.  Many philosophies of the time appealed to the educated.  Other religions viewed man as instrument of the gods.  Christianity was a unique religion.  God loved mankind and came in the flesh to sacrifice Himself for mankind; He didn't expect sacrifices to appease Him.  He valued all people, not for their status or education or race or sex or accomplishment, but simply because they were His creation.  And His church was to live these values as He transformed them. Christianity, unique among all religions and philosophies, was expansive in accepting people who shared their worship of Jesus as Savior.

Christianity was unique.  And its impact on the world is hard to apprehend now because we take for granted the values grounded in it.  Christians invented hospitals, orphanages, and social programs because they loved each other and others because God loved them and commanded them to.  Christianity established equal human value despite differences based on simply being God's creature. 

These kinds of values are commonplace now, but they were spawned by the Christian worldview and still find their home in Biblical values.

Comments

[scblhrm]

"Christianity made no distinctions in the value of human beings. Many philosophies of the time appealed to the educated. Other religions viewed man as instrument of the gods. Christiaity was a unique religion. God loved mankind and came in the flesh to sacrifice Himself for mankind; He didn't expect sacrifices to appease Him. He valued all people, not for their status or education or race or sex or accomplishment, but simply because they were His creation."

Amen.

[scbrownlhrm]

Why Christianity? Because all evidence points towards Love as the Ultimate Ethic.

As in:

M-Theory’s mathematically incomprehensible Triune Topography emerges fated to a fabric of Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Omniscience. Epistemology itself is laced all through with its own Triune Topography as the Self knows within the Self and within Relation and by Relation and these are so with both the Known and with the Keeps-On-Knowing. Ontology reveals its Triune Topography within Being’s singular and pleural amid the I and the You and the singular I-You for Being itself regresses to Love's embrace among the I and the You wherein the Singular-We streams uncreated. An Uncaused-Cause of the Just-Is type testifying by Self-Evidence that it just is a sort of Everlasting Free Lunch emerges as Necessary regardless of which vectors break through as No-Thing ever escapes Necessity's uncaused IS which forever shouts through all known vectors I-AM. Logic feigns a regress to Self-Evidence and is found sustained quite easily within Epistemology’s Triune Topography. Through all these windows our Uncaused-Cause is Self-Evident as a necessary Everlasting Free Lunch emerging atop a sort of terrain that has multiple yet perfect fronts all of which comprise a singular whole and all available evidence points towards the Immaterial as the source of this Everlasting IS which exacting Necessity inflexibly testifies of. We find in all this that there are strong vectors emerging from the Other and Outer which echo a staunchly Triune, Immaterial, Eternal Uncaused Cause. We find patterns of such a Triune Topography mechanized within the immutable semantics of a perpetual one-way incline in an eternal language comprised of Word’s material manifest wherein Truth precedes Corporeal. In all these things Love’s own Triune Topography casually ebbs and flows quite unobstructed and buoys up illumination of what Necessarily Exists. From Timelessness and into Time and back again into Timelessness these self-evident Triune patterns swallow up whole all of our formulas of infinities, all of our equations of pain, all of our rules of suffering, all of our blueprints of the purely human, all of our diagrams of multi-verses, and all of our prescriptions of the purely inhuman, and in all these the Triune holds fast to the satisfaction of coherence as it houses Multiple Perfect Distincts which effortlessly furnish us with their singular reality laced with ports and bays saturated with Ships that easily set sail and satisfy the demands of all these equations and serenely traverse all ad infinitums. In this set of patterns the entirety of vectors merge unhindered as all threads converge on Love’s Cross within that peculiar Eternally Sacrificed Self in Whom we find Power’s eternal merging of death and life, justice and mercy, law and liberty, wrath and ransom, suffering and joy, Word and Flesh, Truth and Corporeal, Immaterial and Material, God-In-Man and Man-In-God and in Whom both Logic and Love confirm the Triune Topography of Epistemology and of Ontology, of Will and of Love, and even of Perfection itself and thereby brings us to our Necessary End of all Ad Infinitums comprised yet again of those immutable semantics mechanized within that perpetual one-way incline assembled by the eternal language of the Everywhere and Always. Love’s embrace breaks through in the Triune God as in Him the I forever embraces the You and eternally begets the Singular-We. At an infinite speed all these vectors pierce the triad of Mind and Spirit and Body for an inescapable vacuum left in every vector’s wake reaches through eternity’s triune fabric and pulls Generation out of Timelessness and into the fated genesis of granted Will’s motion into the Created Self or into the Uncreated Other whereby the Zeal of the Created plunges The-Now into Time’s Degeneration in which Joy and Pain, Mercy and Justice are hurled into Regeneration’s return to Timelessness. The Zeal of the Uncreated withstands all Offenses for we are Dead, and not only Dead, but embalmed within Regeneration, and not only embalmed within Regeneration but also Alive in Re-Creation’s Delight and these three Ages thrice emerge in Mind, thrice emerge in Body, and thrice emerge in Spirit. Within His embrace my soul awakes to the sound of three harmonious contradictions wherein my soul’s bedrock called Existence testifies of incessant Need which itself testifies of unending Joy as it discovers that though it has but Nothing to offer, and in fact offers up Offense, the Uncreated Beloved declares this soul to be of an everlasting Value. The Uncreated Beloved here Manifests face to face and spreads His arms wide high atop that Tree called Life and pours Himself out and this He does for Love’s I and You and We. These infinite sets of triune patterns of a singular whole freely self-manifesting in these fashions fully account for all that we see, all that we observe, all that we perceive, all that we feel, all that we cry, and all that we scream out as we soar to our highest within Ivy Tower armchairs and as we descend to our lowest stumbling over corpses in all our fields of carnage. Tens of thousands of strong vectors and in fact all vectors whatsoever slice up the skies above our heads with the glaring light of the Truth of all things.