The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries

By the time Christianity became a political and cultural force in the Roman Empire it had come to embody a new moral vision. This wise and eloquent book describes the formative years-from the crucifixion of Jesus to the end of the second century of the common era-when Christian beliefs and practices shaped their unique moral order. Wayne A. Meeks examines the surviving documents from Christianity's beginnings (some of which became the New Testament) and shows that they are largely concerned with the way converts to the movement should behave. Meeks finds that for these Christians the formation of morals means the formation of community; the documents are addressed not to individuals but to groups and they have among their primary aims the maintenance and growth of these groups. Meeks paints a picture of the process of socialization that produced the early forms of Christian morality discussing many factors that made the Christians feel that they were a single and "chosen" people. He describes for example the impact of conversion; the rapid spread of Christian household cult-associations in the cities of the Roman Empire; the language of Christian moral discourse as revealed in letters testaments and "moral stories"; the rituals meetings and institutionalization of charity; the Christians' feelings about celibacy sex and gender roles; and their sense of the end-time and final judgment. In each of these areas Meeks seeks to determine what is distinctive about the Christian viewpoint and what is similar to the moral components of Greco-Roman or Jewish thought.

In a vigorous historical analysis, Meeks (Biblical Studies/Yale; The First Urban Christians, 1983) offers new perspectives on the early days of Christian morality. Conventionally, Christian morals are understood as a set of principles to which each believer must adhere, or at least struggle toward, in the depths of his or her conscience. But Meeks redefines morality in the first Christian centuries as a communal activity in which members of the new faith adopted not only a creed but a way of life with its own revolutionary language, customs, and stories. To be a Christian was to undergo a thorough conversion of moral and social dimensions--a transformation in which a new kind of human being was forged. This conversion, Meeks shows, produced an ambiguous relationship toward the world at large, ranging from gnostic rejection by Valentinus to ambiguity on the part of St. Paul and his followers. To help converts, moral directives were promulgated in the form of maxims, rules of thumb (``gnomes''), teaching tales, letters, testaments, and lists of virtues and vices. A new ``grammar'' was developed through rituals like baptism and the Eucharist, as well as through the practice of almsgiving and hospitality. Evil became personified in Satan and his demons; a hierarchy of fallen creatures warred with God's ministers for human souls. Complex views of the body evolved, leading to a ``democratized asceticism.'' Perhaps the most dramatic innovation was the struggle ``to do God's will,'' often through suffering--a radical surrender that lay at the heart of Christian morality. Learned and lucid: an important piece of sociohistorical research. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.