Cultural Sanctification in 50 AD and 2024 AD

Sometime in the early 50s AD, the ever trouble-prone Apostle Paul found himself jailed in the Macedonian city of Philippi. Originally named after Philip II, the great Macedonian conqueror of Greece and father of Alexander the Great, by Paul’s time the city was best remembered as the site of a major battle. Almost a century earlier here, in 42 BC, the armies of the Second Triumvirate, led by Octavian and Marc Antony, decisively defeated the forces of Julius Caesar’s assassins. It proved one of the final death knells for the Roman Republic. Perhaps this political history was of no import for Paul, but for the thoroughly Roman culture of the town it certainly mattered. What was this pre-Christian Roman culture like?

We forget, living in a world inescapably shaped by two-thousand years of Christianity, that many of the gentler aspects of the West have resulted from the slow but steady Christianization of culture. Read Full Article »