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Good morning. I'm Manya Stubbs. I teach New Testament here at APTS. We're so very grateful for your presence here at our midweek, midwinter lectures.

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It is midweek too as well. I'm so fortunate today and very happy this morning to have the opportunity to introduce one of the great scholars of New Testament. I've used much of his work in my work So I'm very honored to have the opportunity to finally meet him.

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I've never met him before. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology for his final lecture to us today.

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Thank you. Thanks, Mania. Again, I want to begin by thanking everybody for the rich conversation that we've had over the last couple of days.

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There's been, I think, some really wonderful points of convergence. I thank everybody here at Austin for their hospitality, especially Bill Greenway, who's been the most generous and kind of hosts. And it's been really wonderful to confirm that Ted Wardlaw did get a job. Those of us in Atlanta were worried when he left that he might not ever get a job again, but it really is good to see that he's prospering here.

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I've shown how new perspectives within religious studies and unparalleled new knowledge have together made possible a new way of inquiring into the relations of early Christianity and Greco-Roman religions. We now know more about the ancient Mediterranean world than ever before, and we know better how to understand what we have learned. In the last presentation, I emphasized both the complexity of religious phenomena within that world and the usefulness of a form of categorizing that focused not on specific phenomena or practices, but on what I have called ways of being religious. I suggested that the four types, the way of sharing in divine benefits,

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The way of moral transformation, the way of transcending the world, and the way of stabilizing the world are not in competition, but instead represent distinct stances toward ultimate power, where it is found, what it is for. Is the point of being religious to tap into the divine power available through a variety of religious practices? Is the point becoming an agent of moral transformation through virtue? Is the point purifying the body in order to liberate the soul?

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Is the point to ensure that the structures of society remain stable and productive? In this final presentation, I propose as a kind of thought experiment to apply the same categories to nascent and subsequent Christianity. It is already a big step forward when we are able to ask not whether Christianity was a mystery religion or arose from a mystery religion, as the question was too often formed in the past, but about the ways in which the religious sensibilities attached to participation in the mysteries

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might have come into play in early Christian experiences of initiation and of meals. Since many of the earliest Christians came directly into the church from paganism, and since at least by the year 70 the majority of the members of this movement were Gentile in origin, it would be a form of religious docetism to suppose that such attitudes and experiences could not have been present among at least some adherents of Jesus Christ. And when we remember that such sensibilities have abundantly been demonstrated in Judaism, the probability of finding them in Christianity only increases.

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That possibility cannot be denied on the basis of the New Testament's polemic against idolatry and Gentiles any more than the New Testament's polemic against the works of the law and Jews, denies the Jewish sensibilities found among early Christians. Now, the way toward putting the question more appropriately has also been prepared by the change in the way that virtually all scholars now conceive of Christian origins. For all of its occasional excesses,

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as when sometimes it's proposed that forms of the Jesus movement were not only distinct from Pauline Christianity, but had absolutely no contact with it. Despite these, I think, excesses, the recognition that Christianity began in diversity is a healthy one. The diversity of genre, of theme, and of perspective, even within the New Testament, still the earliest witness to Christian experience and conviction in the 1st century, testifies to the diversity of communities, situations, and experiences that generated those writings.

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Now this recognition relieves us from having to line up a monolithic thing called Christianity and a monolithic paganism defined, let us say, by mystery cults, in an effort to determine which influenced what. But it also tremendously complicates the question of how Greco-Roman religion and Christianity are to be related. So, I will ask you to join me this morning

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In another effort to employ the categories of the ways of being religious at three stages in Christian history, first in the time witnessed to by the New Testament, second in the middle and late 2nd century, and 3rd from the 4th century on. I will then conclude with some thoughts on how these categories might actually help us figure out something about ourselves. First then, ways of being religious in the New Testament. If we read the New Testament compositions the way we have read Greco-Roman material, that is without reference to theological ideas so much as the modes of religiosity and the views of the world and the salvation that they express, then we are able to find three of the four types of being religious in earliest Christianity that we find in paganism.

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First, religion as participation in divine benefits is clearly dominant in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The portrayal of the ministry of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke emphasizes the divine dynamus, you remember that word, the divine power, at work in and through him. The rule of God that he announces in his words, he demonstrates and enacts in his deeds. His exorcisms show him to be superior to the unclean spirits that hold humans captive.

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His healings show him to be able to restore humans from every sort of ailment and alienation. His resuscitations show him to have power over even death. His multiplication of loaves and walking on water and stilling of the sea, and above all his transfiguration reveal him as a theos honor, a divine man, or even as theos phenomenos, as a God who appears among us.

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Those in turn who are touched by Jesus gain a share in the power that comes out from him. They are cleansed of spirits, healed of sickness, raised from the dead, fed at his hands, see him in radiant light. Jesus, furthermore, is himself a prophet who foretells the future and his deeds are in fulfillment of ancient prophecies.

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Now already I can feel the nervousness in the room. Some of you will be saying, wait a minute. Are you reducing the gospels to the level of a Hellenistic eratology? Surely they are more complex than that.

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Indeed they are more complicated than that. This eratological strain in the gospels is woven into the traditions concerning Jesus' suffering and death, and his calls to a discipleship that demands walking in the path that he did. But if we look carefully at these narratives, not as theologians, but as students of religion, we can see that the passion predictions conclude with the prophecy about rising again. and that the suffering of death of Jesus leads to the promise or the reality of his new presence among his followers through resurrection.

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And if we look closely at those calls to discipleship, we can see that they also contain a promise of a return for what has been given up, a hundredfold now in this age, houses and brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life, Mark 1030. The main point here is that, as in pagan religiousness type A, the divine power is at work out here in the world, through prophecy, healing, exorcism, and other wonders. With the distinctive feature of the gospel, from the Greco-Roman perspective, is the exclusive focus of all this power in the single figure of Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles, the

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the presence of religiousness type A is especially prominent. The dynamus of the resurrected one is poured out on his followers, and they not only proclaim his message boldly, but work signs and wonders, if anything, even more impressive than those worked by Jesus. Peter and Paul also heal without even requiring physical touch, also raise the dead, also escape imprisonment.

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It is simple work to show the way in which the Acts of the Apostles weaves together literary motifs that are familiar to Greco-Roman readers to portray the apostles as wonder-working prophets and philosophers who can even, as in Ovid's lovely tale of Bausus and Philemon in the Metamorphoses, appear in Phrygia and be mistaken by the locals for Zeus and Hermes. Acts 14, 8 to 15. Paul escapes sea storm and shipwreck, and when he is bitten by a poisonous viper, he shakes it off and suffered no harm, so that, Luke says, the local populace of Malta began to declare that he was a god. Most impressively,

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The apostles conquer territories for the good news, establishing churches as colonies of a new basilei, of a new reign of God, overthrowing, in particular, the counter-kingdom of Satan in a series of mano-a-mano battles, as Susan Garrett has so brilliantly shown in her work, The Demise of the Devil. One of the instruments of Satan vanquished by Paul is the practice of magic. In Ephesus, as a result of his besting the seven exorcists, we've heard of Paul, we've heard of Jesus, who are you, remember? A number of those who practiced magic collected their books and burned them publicly, so the word of God grew mightily and prevailed.

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There is little in the Acts of the Apostles that would not have instantly been recognizable to a Gentile readership or convincing as evidence for the divine dunamis being at work in the world through this new cult. I think I got the syntax of that sentence wrong. There's little here that they would not have recognized in that way.

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In other words, there's much there that would have recognized as impressive evidence for the power of God at work in this new cult. It's not just the narratives, though, the sensibilities of religiousness type A, are present in an equally obvious way among the Gentile readers addressed by Paul, especially in the cities of Corinth, in the region of Galatia, and of Colossae. In Corinth, the Church had experienced the presence and power of the Spirit with particular energy and force.

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The Corinthians seemed especially fascinated by the gift of glossolalia. which phenomenologically appears like nothing so much as Greco-Roman mantic prophecy. Paul needs to take great pains to distinguish this powerful and legitimate gift of the Spirit from prophecy as he understood it, namely intelligible speech that built up the church. The kinship between speaking in tongues, glossolalia, and mantic prophecy is reinforced

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by the fact that Paul's entire discussion in chapters 12 to 14 is bracketed by two allusions to possible misunderstandings among pagans concerning this gift of the Spirit. He opens his discussion with a reminder, you knew that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray by idols that could not speak. chapter 12, verse 2. He does not want them to be so enthralled with this gift as to forget that paganism also had its moving spirits.

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And near the end of his discussion, he speaks of the effect on outsiders of an assembly that is filled with tongue speakers. If, therefore, all the church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say, and the RSV and NRSV, all these things translate, you are out of your mind? But that's a bad translation, because the actual Greek phrase, hoti minus tha, can better be translated that you are raving in the manner that pagan prophets are raving. Paul distinguishes this from the gift of prophecy in this same passage that convicts outsiders and convinces them that God is truly in their midst.

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We catch a glimpse of Greco-Roman type A sensibility also in the attitudes of some Corinthians toward meals. They do not seem to grasp that loyalty to Christ means an exclusive loyalty to the one God. Some in the community felt that they could continue to participate in meals at shrines dedicated to idols, as was the common practice, as we saw, in Gentile religion. Worship of 1 god and sharing in the benefits given by that god for them by no means precluded the worship of another god or goddess who could also supply benefits.

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And Paul pays Backhanded tribute to the power at work in such worship when he compares the experience of eating there to participation in. the blood and body of Christ. What pagans sacrifice, he says, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.

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I do not want you to be partners with demons. And in complete contrast with pagan sensibilities, he demands a radical choice. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

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But my point is that, of course, they could. And some of them clearly were. This is exactly what I described as religiousness type A. Why should a choice be made when all lords and all gods are part of the same system of patronage?

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The same sensibility is evident also in the attitude of the Gentile converts in Galatia and Colossae, who are easily persuaded to seek additional initiations beyond their baptism. Because, why? Should they want to do that?

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Because it's painful? You don't get circumcised? The logic of initiation in Greco-Roman religion always involved multiple initiations, each of which represented status elevation and an advancement toward what was called teleiosis, maturity or perfection. Paul's argument that baptism is enough and that the desire for more is really a denial of what they already have may perhaps work theologically, but it does not convince religiously.

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For religion as participation in benefits does not want to remain in a state of liminality where everybody is equal. And in the end, These religious sensibilities won out within Christianity. It's true, we didn't circumcise after baptism, but we did begin to confirm and ordain as the logic of multiple initiations and status elevation within Christianity reasserted itself despite Paul's theological strictures.

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Second, religion as moral transformation is found in the New Testament among those writers whose resemblance to Greco-Roman philosophers has long been recognized. Above all, the two figures who have much more in common than not, Paul and James. What separates them is that James writes to a general readership of Jewish Christians of the diaspora, whereas Paul is writing to Gentile or mixed communities that he himself has founded throughout the diaspora.

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In Paul's letters, we can spot, as I've suggested, direct expressions of religiousness type A. In the letter of James, we cannot. But what links Paul and James is their similarity to Greco-Roman moral philosophers. and their Jewish contemporaries, who also resembled Greco-Roman philosophers, and their way of being religious.

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The similarity goes way beyond the frequently noted employment by both Paul and James of the literary forms of paranesis and deliberative rhetoric and the diatribe and their vigorous use of moral topoi dealing with envy and friendship, and it strikes at the very heart of their endeavor. Namely, what they're concerned in is not the signs and wonders, but the moral transformation of their readers. The divine dunamis is above all about this, that they change. Paul and James have something else in common, and that is, unlike

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the moral transformation that is called for by Seneca or Cicero or Epictetus, which is deeply individualistic, Paul and James more resemble the moral philosophers within Judaism who were concerned with building what Stanley Hauerwas calls a community of character. That is, it is not simply individualistic transformation, but also the transformation of the community in its moral behavior and, in real Jewish terms, it's holiness that matters for Paul. Notice that holiness for Paul, in contrast to what holiness would mean in terms of religiousness type A, always is spelled out by Paul in terms of moral behavior. So Paul, James says, purify your hearts, you double-minded people.

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And Paul says, have this mind among y'all that was in Christ Jesus. The resemblances between Paul and Epictetus have long and rightly been noted, not only at the stylistic level, but in the sort of religious sensibility they share. Both Paul and Epictetus have a strong sense of vocation from God as a messenger to other humans. Each considers the demands of that call to be incompatible.

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compatible with normal commitments to marriage and children. Each acknowledges that the power of the divine dunamis in the external world. Epictetus repeatedly praises the providence of God, manifest in the smallest aspects of life. Life is a carnival of God's providence, Epictetus says.

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And Paul repeatedly acknowledges the powerful deeds done by God through him and in his assemblies. But for Paul and Epictetus, the strongest evidence for the dunamis of God is the moral transformation of the person. Epictetus, you will recall, praises Providence above all for this, that he has been given a rational mind and the will to do what Zeus bids. And Paul thanks God above all for the power of the Holy Spirit that transforms humans into the image of Christ.

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For Paul, in fact, external manifestations of dunamis such as glossolalia that do not serve to build up the character of the speaker or that of others can be a distraction. Yet he never denies the reality of such gifts, and he celebrates the fact that he himself shares in their benefits. In James and Paul, in other words, and indeed in the other epistolary literature of the New Testament, including Hebrews and 1st and 2nd Peter and Jude, we find little attention to the signs and wonders worked in the communities or the security and success that sharing in such phenomena might ensure. Attention is constantly given rather to living in a manner worthy of the call of God through moral transformation.

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The New Testament epistolary literature clearly falls into the same kind of religious sensibility found in the Greco-Roman moralists, Philo, and the Pharisees. Third, the closest we find to the way of transcending the world in the New Testament is in the Johannine literature, especially in the Gospel of John in the Book of Revelation. It is precisely this element in John's gospel that made 19th century critics place it in the late 2nd century as a form of Platonized Christianity. Now more recent and better scholarship locates John firmly in 1st century Palestinian Judaism, but that does not, as we saw in the previous lecture, mean that it cannot also reflect Hellenistic perspective.

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In John's gospel, Jesus is the man from heaven. I think that was the ascending rather than the descending motif. He's the one who also goes up into heaven.

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This is totally parenthetic, but I've learned at lecturing at universities that the newest caution that has to be made is that students can have to shut down their laptops when the lecture begins because they're not taking notes on the lecture, they're writing notes to each other. And it's just, you know, it's just like, we are all under assault. In John's gospel, Jesus is the man from heaven who reveals his identity as the light that has come into the world.

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thereby revealing at the same time light and darkness. He is not accepted by the world and returns to the Father from whom he was sent. His followers also will be hated by the world, and Jesus has prepared a place for them with the Father. Now, it is entirely clear that John's dualism between flesh and spirit and light and darkness is not the platonic dualism of body and soul.

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and there's not the slightest trace of salvation as purification from the body. Indeed, John affirms the reality of Jesus' body and of the future resurrection of the body. John's portrayal of Jesus, furthermore, is almost completely religiousness type A. Jesus performs signs that reveal God's glory, that is, his presence, and demonstrates that he is sent by God.

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Nevertheless, Salvation in John and in Revelation is not a matter of worldly security and success, nor is it, as in religiousness type 2, or B, Paul and James, a matter of moral agency. It's well known that in the Gospel of John, the single commandment is to love one another. It doesn't constitute a moral catechism.

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And in the Book of Revelation, the moral commandment is to endure. And salvation is being where Jesus is. And that is not in the present empirical realm. But it's just traces.

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It's just a hint of that sensibility. We'll see more. Fourth, of the 4th way of being religious in Greco-Roman culture, that of stabilizing the world, we quite naturally find not a trace in the New Testament. the circumstances of the community would scarcely give rise to that.

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The few glimpses of internal community organization in Paul's letters, especially the pastoral letters, are barely enough for us to conclude that these local assemblies had a kind of arrangement that resembled that of Hellenistic associations and Jewish synagogues. But strikingly, leadership functions in, leadership functions entirely lack any religious or theological legitimation in these earliest writings. They appear as purely pragmatic arrangements.

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That's the New Testament. Ways of being religious in the 2nd century. In the 2nd century, the Greco-Roman ways of being religious emerge in an even more sharply differentiated fashion. And now, with a definite edge of competition,

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such as we did not find within paganism. First, religion as participation in divine benefits is abundantly displayed in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and the Infancy Gospels. In the Acts of John, Peter, Paul, and Thomas, we find, as Christine Thomas has shown, the Christian version of the ancient Greco-Roman novel. And the religious sensibility is much the same.

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The apostles are well on their way toward becoming theoi andres in their own right. They work astonishing wonders, subvert the social order, draw converts, especially away from marriage. In exchange for a commitment to a celibate existence, they promise a share in the dunamis of Jesus that conquers Satan, outperforms magic, and quiets the wild beasts. In the infancy gospel of James, the birth of Jesus is literally a cosmic event, making time stand still.

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The child appears as light emanating from Mary's womb, only slowly taking the shape of a child. So holy is the birth that the gospel obsesses over the biological intactness of the perpetually virgin Mary. In the infancy gospel of Thomas, Jesus is a boy wonder worker whose astonishing capacities to throw around the divine dunamis are only slowly brought under control and made benign. We catch another glimpse of religiousness type A in Montanism.

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The prophet Montanus and his female partner, Priscilla, claim the same sort of enthusiasm as pagan prophets did, but now through the Holy Spirit, and therefore the capacity to deliver new oracles of revelation, healings, miraculous births, exorcisms, prophecies. We are in the realm of religion as participation in divine benefits. And note, in none of these compositions is there a trace either of moral command or escape from planet Earth.

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Second, the way of moral transformation, in turn, appears in those familiar texts that we sometimes call the Apostolic Fathers, Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome. In these authors, notice, it is not Peter and Paul as wonder workers that are mentioned, but rather Peter and Paul, who were the moral exemplars of faith and above all of martyrdom. The willingness to bear witness even to death is the mark of the true Christian.

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Wait a minute. That was also the mark of the true philosopher, according to Greco-Roman moralists, for whom the manner of death was the final gesture of integrity. We can see a clear resemblance between the Cleanthes, who refuses to quail before the tyrant and bites off his tongue and spits it in the tyrant's face, and the Ignatius of Antioch, who longs to become the bread of Christ when ground up by the teeth by the beasts in Rome. Ignatius, Clement, and Polycarp do not deny the wonders associated with Jesus.

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But they are less interested in the working of the dunamis outside them than in the working of the dunamis inside them and their readers. Many Pauline scholars have been dismayed by the Paulinism of Clement, Polycarp, and Ignatius because in their view, those authors lack Paul's distinctive theology and retains only his intense moralism. But I think as David Rensberger has rightly showed, this is a classic case of unconscious theological bias. In fact, nowhere are these 2nd century authors closer to Paul and truer to their Pauline heritage than in their concern for moral agency and personal transformation.

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The title of David Rensberger's dissertation was Paul the Teacher. And the line of continuity is Paul as moral teacher to these second century figures as moral teachers. The mid-second century Justin martyr is significant for the way in which he crystallizes this philosophical form of religiousness type B. In his dialogue with Trypho, Justin debates with the Jewish philosopher Trypho, who has just escaped from Palestine after the Bar Kokhba revolts, so around 135.

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And they debate over which version of the true philosophy is better, the Christian or the Jewish. Justin begins this conversation by recounting his own conversion story, speaking of testimony, which classically, in the same manner as the stories told by Hermotimus and Josephus and Philostratus, leads him wandering from one teacher in philosophy to another until he reaches the best that the Greeks have to offer, namely Platonism. But then he encounters Christianity and Justin realizes this is the best of all philosophies.

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His debate with Trifle then, remember Judaism also defined itself as a philosophy, is a debate between two philosophical schools that are rivals for the same tradition. Which school best reads its sacred texts? And so much of their argument is over the Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible. In his apology, Justin takes up the same philosophical task performed by Hellenistic Jews 2 centuries earlier, interpreting his version of Judaism to the larger world, ostensibly the emperor, to show that it only represents the best of ideals of Greek philosophy.

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And consistent to the end in his self-identification as a philosopher, Justin dies as a martyr after confessing his faith openly before his executioners. Justin is of enormous importance, not only for what he taught, but the way in which he gave definition to a specific way of being religious within Christianity, the way of moral transformation, the way of Greco-Roman philosophy. The great apologists and theologians and defenders of the faith after Justin all followed in his path. This may not always seem apparent, since their polemics and apologies seem to focus so much on doctrine and on right ideas, orthodoxy.

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But we must remember that for ancient philosophers, there was always a direct line between wrong thinking and wrong action. between bad ideas and bad morals, and an equal connection between good ideas and good behavior. So heresiologists may not always have given expression to the connection, it was so much part of their consciousness they didn't need to, but it is always implicit in their attacks on deviant doctrine. This way of thinking leads to bad practice, is the argument.

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Third, in the 2nd century, the 3rd way of being religious, that of transcending the world or perhaps escaping the world, comes to full flower within Christianity in the development of those various movements we have come to call, by the misleadingly simple title, Gnosticism. This designation covers a multitude of complexities, to be sure, but the discovery of Nag Hammadi has given us a fuller glimpse of what orthodox teachers like Irinaeus consider to be a Christian heresy. Two things at least are sure.

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The first is that those orthodox teachers who thought like philosophers also saw the Gnostics from their own perspective and described them as though they were philosophical schools. Valentinus in his school, Ptolemy in his school, Marcion in his school. They present them, indeed, as a rival set of schools within Christianity. The second observation is that despite this tidying up, the opponents of Gnosticism saw some things that are also abundantly supported by these recently discovered writings.

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Here was a version of Christianity that really was in line with that Greek tradition that we call the Orphic, and we found expression in the Hermetic literature. A version of Christianity that stressed the role of the divine revelation of secret knowledge and saving knowledge, that sought a transcendence of the empirical world and a saving of the spark of light that was alone worth saving, that expressed a path of purification through regimens of diet and sexuality, and that divided the world into the categories of saved and not saved, on the basis of such esoteric knowledge and practice. This is full-blown religiousness type C.

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Fourth, despite the emerging class of bishops, we do not yet find the 4th way of being religious in the Greco-Roman world or Greco-Roman culture, the way of stabilizing the world. That must await the adoption of Christianity as the imperial religion. To which we now turn. How are we doing?

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Not so bad, I'm. doing fine. How are you doing? Because that was such a magic moment.

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Fifteen years into teaching, it suddenly, and belatedly occurred to me, that the point wasn't how well was I teaching, but how well were they learning? And I don't know why that took so long, but It's like, because it's sort of like I coached good, but they played bad kind of thing. Or as one of my students once told me, and I blush to disclose this, I could be a much better pastor, but my people won't let me.

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Turned out he was flogging Well, I shouldn't go into detail. That's all right. Ways of being Christian after Constantine.

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After the establishment of Christianity as the imperial religion in the 4th center, we find the emergence of religiousness type 4, or D, in full glory. As in Greco-Roman religion, this type is, from one perspective, the supply side of religiousness type A. Suddenly, there is priesthood, sacrifice, and a liturgy that has expanded to fill the space and time allotted to it. The meal becomes a spectacle when enacted in temples, like the Pantheon in Rome, that formerly housed the gods of the empire.

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But the distribution of benefits also expanded temporally through the development of the sacramental system that sanctified each important moment of life, and the development of the liturgical year, which made all of time sacred, and the emergence of pilgrimages, which recognized certain places as more sacred than others. Type IV, or Type D, also begins to develop the massive and complex bureaucracy of the Church, which imitates precisely that of the empire, and the system of canon law that continues the Roman genius for jurisprudence. As religiousness type D served to stabilize the Roman imperium, so does the Christian version serve to stabilize the Christian imperium.

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And as such service enabled the ambitious people of the empire to find a place for their ambition, So did such service within Christianity provide places for the ambitious. So it was a close call as to whether or not one should be a senator or a bishop or both. This is the Cappadocians.

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Religiousness, type D, in fact, enters into something of a collusion with types A and B. Religiousness type A continues to negotiate power wherever it can find it. And like among ancient Greeks and Romans, it tends to find it everywhere. Especially, as Peter Brown has so wonderfully demonstrated, in the saints, whose tombs become places for celebration and pilgrimage, and whose bones become relics for veneration.

00:41:56.400 - 00:42:20.720

The cult of saints always threatens to burst the bounds of propriety, within Christianity, especially when the Holy One is something of a prophet. I love the example of the Re Frigarium in North Africa. Augustine goes crazy with these Christians eating and drinking and celebrating the Re Frigarium at the tombs of the martyrs, but he can't find a single theological reason to object.

00:42:20.960 - 00:42:58.960

He just doesn't like it religiously. It ain't fitting. So religiousness type 4 or D works out a system of canonization of the holy ones that routinizes charism to all intents and purposes precisely like the elevation of ancient sages and heroes to the Greek pantheon. And the communion of saints functions in very much the same way that ancient polytheism did with patronage bestowed in response to veneration and honor.

00:42:59.600 - 00:43:18.000

It's all Mediterranean religion. Religiousness B, the way of moral transformation, continues much as it had among the monks and scholar-theologians. But these also made-up many of the episcopate. in the Constantinian era.

00:43:18.240 - 00:43:55.440

Thus, another sort of collusion was struck between religiousness type B&D within Christianity. Since monks and scholars tended to become the tenders of the sacrificial system, and thus were stabilizers of the world, they tended to bring to this task the same concern for theological consistency that was theirs as part as heirs to the philosophical tradition. Thus, Scholar-theologians served as censors for what was acceptable and non-acceptable in so-called popular religion.

00:43:56.960 - 00:45:03.120

And over the centuries, it was the scholar's theologians. theologians that proved itself to be censorious indeed toward miracles, visions, revelations, prophecies outside the beaten path of tested theology. Meanwhile, religiousness type C, the way of transcending the world, was perking along merrily, as it always had, even in Greco-Roman culture, a religiosity on the margins of the exoteric that always provided a bit of space for those esoterically inclined. Thus, whether in the form of more or less coherent movements like the Manichaeans and the Waldensians and the Albigensians, who claimed to be a more perfect form of Christianity because they were more consistently world-renouncing, or in the form of individual mystics who tended to be more affirming of the standard forms of Christianity, yet sought an ineffable union with the one who could reveal the illusory character of this world,

00:45:03.680 - 00:45:58.960

Religiousness type three remained in play, never claiming for itself a central place, but for the few in every generation, representing the very essence of Christianity. Up until the Reformation, indeed, Catholic Christianity was a complex coalition of these distinct religious types that were found already in Greco-Roman world. and in many ways resembled pagan religion, not least in this, that it allowed a place for each religious sensibility to flourish. Even if types 1 and 4 had repressive tendencies, they never succeeded, and perhaps they never really wanted to succeed, in suppressing the effervescence of religiousness type A and religiousness type C.

00:45:59.520 - 00:46:23.440

The pilgrim And the wonder worker and the mystic all had a place in the communion of saints. In this light, the Protestant Reformation might be seen as a radical effort to construct a Christianity entirely on the basis of a single religious type. That is, completely on religiousness type B.

00:46:24.720 - 00:46:39.200

The sensibility of Paul, the prophet, I mean, excuse me, the philosopher Christian. I'll leave that for you guys to debate. I see that I'm heading into my conclusions.

00:46:41.440 - 00:46:56.560

Nobody can complain, I think, about these lectures not covering a lot of ground. Let me see. Greco-Roman religion and philosophy, Judaism, and the history of Christianity until the Reformation. I think I've done my work.

00:46:59.040 - 00:47:21.040

The brush strokes have necessarily been broad. Details can and should and undoubtedly will be challenged. The weakness of all typologies will be evident in this typology as well. Nevertheless, I think that this is a new and potentially fruitful way of looking at things.

00:47:21.600 - 00:47:53.440

A way that is based on a great deal of new knowledge about antiquity, but above all, based on the premises of the comparative study of religion. It does not approach religion theologically, but religiously. If this is its weakness, for Christianity does put a lot of emphasis on theology, at least in Christianity type B, it is also its strength. By way of conclusion, I make bold to propose 5 findings.

00:47:54.480 - 00:48:25.280

The first is that organizing by means of ways of being religious enables some coherence to emerge in Greco-Roman religion that is not otherwise evident. Second, this same typology makes surprisingly good sense when applied to Judaism in the 1st century, reinforcing the hypothesis that in a real way, Judaism in the 1st century can be seen as a subset of Hellenism. Third,

00:48:27.040 - 00:49:05.520

Looking at the ways of being religious in a new and more fruitful way is a new and more fruitful way of asking about the relations between Greco-Roman religion and Christianity. It now becomes evident that those relations were multiple from the very start. And that just as Greco-Roman religion wasn't one thing, as in mystery religions, neither was Christianity simply one thing in religious terms. And it's possible to say that the patterns of Greco-Roman religiosity endure through much, if not all, of the history of Christianity.

00:49:06.240 - 00:49:45.840

So that for all of its roots in Judaism, it is legitimate to say that Christianity is also thoroughly A Gentile religion. The 4th finding is perhaps the most important, and is in fact the key to the entire analysis, Namely, defining the Greco-Roman moral philosophy of the early empire as a way of being religious. This is an insight owed entirely to a functional definition of religion developed within the field of religious studies, which understands that language about God need not be used for behavior to be religious in nature.

00:49:46.880 - 00:50:35.520

Once one sees the way of moral transformation as a distinct element within Greco-Roman religion, then the other modes come into clearer focus by means of comparison and contrast. And once one sees that the New Testament writers like Paul and James bring this same sensibility with them into Christianity, probably mediated by their Hellenistic Judaism, then detecting that same stream within the history of Christianity also becomes possible. The 5th and final finding is that these categories have a heuristic value even for Christianity today. To some extent, this study was impelled by and has helped me to understand something that has always puzzled me.

00:50:36.800 - 00:51:27.780

Why is it that I, and of course I am, like all y'all, and everybody in schools of theology, and our religiousness type B, we all know that, right? We're fundamentally, you know, Pauline. or possibly one of us is Jacobian in our outlook. So why is it that I so intensely and viscerally dislike Benny Hinn and Jimmy Swaggart and other wonder-working televangelists, even if I acknowledge their sincerity?

00:51:27.780 - 00:51:46.000

I mean, you know, if they're frauds, then I don't like them because they're frauds, but if they're like Alexander, the false prophet, that's one thing. But even if they're sincere Christians, why do I detest them? If I am asked whether I believe that people can be healed in Jesus' name, I must answer yes, I do think that.

00:51:47.720 - 00:52:03.760

And if I'm asked whether people can speak in strange tongues through the Holy Spirit, I have to say yes. In fact, I've seen it and heard it. And if I'm asked whether I think Jesus will share in God's future triumphs, again I say yes. Inspiration of the Bible?

00:52:03.760 - 00:52:23.280

Yes. Divinity of Christ? Yes. In fact, on virtually every point, I'm much closer to the televangelists theologically than I am to Bishop John Shelby Spong.

00:52:26.320 - 00:52:54.360

with whom I've had words in the past. Because Bishop John Spong would say no to much of that foregoing list. So if I'm closer to them theologically, why does Benny Hinn irritate me? Indeed, offend me in a way that Spong does not, most of the time.

00:52:57.840 - 00:53:31.920

And to just get this out of the realm of televangelists, I mean, the same thing, the woman in Conyers, Georgia, who, has visits from the Blessed Virgin every other week, or, Catholics in my parish who found it absolutely necessary as an expression of the Catholicity to make a pilgrimage to Magigoria, you know, to see the Blessed Virgin. I mean, all of those kinds of things. And I just, it irritates me, so creeps me out. Why would I rather have lunch with Spong than Swaggart?

00:53:38.720 - 00:54:04.800

And thinking through this, and all of these lectures have had the goal of clarifying my thinking on that point. I've come to the conclusion The very simple conclusion is that I, and all of my cohorts in the academy, and most of my colleagues in ministry, belong to a single type of religiousness. Religiousness type B.

00:54:06.960 - 00:54:21.840

We may agree theoretically with the proposition that God is at work in the world out there, but we're not interested. It's just not our way of being religious. For us, it is moral transformation. that counts.

00:54:23.520 - 00:54:49.440

So, for Catholics of my brand, it's neither the Pilgrimage of Magigoria nor the Vatican that counts as real religion. It's this, you know, prophetic, philosophical strain in Christianity. That's real Christianity. Now, I just want to conclude by saying, yes, it is real Christianity, to be sure.

00:54:50.720 - 00:55:24.490

But is it the only real Christianity? And who made us type 2 people referee? Anyway, thank you for your attention. Thank you.

00:55:24.570 - 00:55:35.760

Dr. Johnson has agreed to take a few questions, so if there are any. If anybody has any, I don't know, I think I cleared up everything pretty well. Perfectly lucid, covered everything.

00:55:40.640 - 00:56:04.000

Certainly, the question was, does the same typology work for Orthodoxy or the Byzantine Church? Certainly, religiousness type A, religiousness type B, certainly religiousness type D, with the whole sort of Caesaropapism, kind of thing that goes on. Russian Orthodoxy exemplifies that tremendously.

00:56:04.640 - 00:56:42.320

And then in the Hezychastic tradition of spirituality, you've got a bit of it. But of course, the iconoclastic controversy in Orthodoxy so conditioned that via negativa and that Hezychastic tradition to affirm the incarnation that I think in some ways the sort of mystical stream in the West was wilder. But one of the things, I mean, I remember arguing with my colleague Sam Preuss and I, Sam Preuss at India University, and I used to have these arguments over biblical interpretation.

00:56:42.320 - 00:56:57.600

And Sam Preuss was a wonderful historian of biblical interpretation, among other things. But he... you have histories of biblical interpretation which are sort of evolutionary and developmental. First there's this, then there's that, then there's that.

00:56:59.440 - 00:57:29.360

And we sort of came to the view that at any given moment, any given time in history, there are probably all of those moments present. So there's always going to be apocalyptic readers of the Bible. at the same time that there are something like enlightenment readers of the Bible and political readers of the Bible. At the same time, Locke was doing his enlightenment reading, Hobbes was doing his apocalyptic reading, and so on.

00:57:29.760 - 00:58:03.120

So I think that these types are not distinctive to Christianity or exclusive to Christianity. I've already suggested that we can find them in Judaism But I think what's also interesting is that certainly rabbinic Judaism suppressed elements of different religiousness types, which came bursting out, for example, in the Hasidic and Kabbalistic movements. In the Hasidic movement, religiousness type A just goes wild.

00:58:04.560 - 00:58:32.000

Holy men, the Zadiq, the miracle working, the frenzied dances, all of these things. And of course, in Kabbalism is purely a form of Gnosticism. So I'm suspecting that these types of religiosity have deep cultural but also psychological and temperamental roots. It may be one of the reasons why Protestants drift from place to place.

00:58:32.360 - 00:59:13.920

until they finally find a mooring in a particular place, whereas Catholics just drift. Other questions? Yes. I don't, I mean, I'm the last person, literally, to ask that question.

00:59:16.960 - 00:59:50.800

I mean, it's one of the little small miracles of contemporary Christianity that a reformed institution asks a Roman Catholic to speak. It's because, really, at the theological level, we're the two parties. I mean, Methodists and Episcopalians and Lutherans, they don't count they just fall into different places, but the really... really dramatic different constructions of the human condition and grace and so forth are really the reformed tradition and Catholicism.

00:59:52.320 - 01:00:23.040

But I ought not to speak on that subject. Yes, sir, over in this corner. Yes, the question is, the influence simply that of religion, or is it also of the poetry, the tragedies, and the philosophy of the Greco-Roman world? Certainly.

01:00:23.440 - 01:00:42.880

My topic was simply the religious and that which has been neglected, namely the Greco-Roman moralists. It has long been recognized, as in that, what was that famous line where the guy says, Last week when I said St. Paul, I meant Aristotle, and where I said Aristotle, I meant St.

01:00:42.880 - 01:01:07.160

Paul. You know, the fact that Paul, for example, in Romans 12, when he talks about phronesis, you know, about prudence and discernment, is really using Aristotelian categories. And Aristotle's moral categories become so widely pervasive in antiquity. I mean, somebody like Plutarch, who considers himself a Platonist,

01:01:07.520 - 01:01:36.720

is using Aristotelian definitions of vice and virtue and so forth. So yes, and the scene of prison, I mean, there's prison escapes in Acts is clearly echoes Euripides, Bache, and so forth. And so there are elements of Greco-Roman literature and philosophy that go beyond what I've said. The difference is that already Tatian

01:01:37.840 - 01:02:04.720

for example, who is just vicious in his denigration of Greco-Roman religion, demonizing it, and of course he wasn't just unique in that because everybody demonized Greco-Roman religion, allowed that the poets spoke truly about God. What they meant by the poets were the tragedians. And that the philosophers also found some true things about God. So there's always been a bit more positive

01:02:05.920 - 01:02:24.800

embrace of the philosophers and the poets within Christianity. If you read somebody like Clement of Alexandria, you can't tell where Hellenism leaves off and Christianity begins. He's so thoroughly enmeshed in that culture. Yes, over here.

01:02:34.480 - 01:02:59.520

I think that I think that they would fit in religiousness type C. They don't bring all of the kind of cosmological dualism and so forth to bear. But insofar as mystical traditions and so forth have tended to be pretty profoundly anti-institutional and highly individualistic and emphasize spirit over body,

01:03:01.120 - 01:03:19.840

Those kinds of tendencies, I think, fit into that. I wrote an article recently for Commonweal, well, it was last year now, on the new Gnosticism and made some of those connections. I'm spiritual but not religious kind of thing. I actually had an amazing experience this last spring.

01:03:19.840 - 01:03:45.160

I lectured at Princeton on the Da Vinci Code, the new Gnosticism, and the culture wars. and managed to offend everybody. It's one of the few cases in which Elaine Pagels found it necessary to stand up and rebut me, and somebody from Opus Dei found it necessary to stand up and rebut me. So, you know, I've got to be doing something right if I can find enemies in those camps.

01:03:45.520 - 01:04:01.120

I think we need to get on the road. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I don't know, are there any announcements that need to be made before we adjourn?

01:04:01.200 - 01:04:10.480

Are there any announcements that need to be made before we adjourn? If not, thank you so much for your time. Once again, please give a round of applause to Professor Johnson. Thank you.

01:04:14.480 - 01:04:16.800

It's good to meet you.