Review of Wilken's The Christians as the Romans Saw Them

In 2003, Robert Louis Wilken published a book entitled The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. His book has implications for eastern mission fields like Russia as well as western mission fields like America. Wilken’s book takes an interesting historical perspective to place Christians as the antagonists and Roman philosophers as the protagonists. In doing so, he surveys five Roman philosophers who viewed Christianity as a threat to the harmonious piety of the secularist religious tradition. Romans were very religious people in the sense that their religion was made up of a sincere corporate devotion to the Empire and the Emperor. Therefore, Christianity was viewed as a dangerous cult that threatened the political stability, religious harmony, and social development of society. Wilken surveys Pliny, Galen, Celsus, Porphyry and Julian for various anti-Christian viewpoints. These viewpoints still have crucial implications for missions in communist or post-communist fields today.

            Pliny most specifically advanced the charge of political instability in the Christian worldview. He had heard complaints about “Christian living in the vicinity” (p. 15), probably related to the sale of sacrificial meat. The problem was identification of who was actually Christian as “not everyone who became a Christian remained a Christian for the rest of his or her life” (p. 24–25). So he designed a test to make this determination by forcing the accused to “make an offering of wine and incense to Trajan’s statue” and “revile the name of Christ” (p. 25).  This brought about an ecclesiological understanding of apostasy and therefore led to strict codes within the church. Similar tests were executed in Russia under Stalin. In post-communist Russia today, the evangelical Church is still somewhat strict about who is a true member of the church. This leftover suspicion sometimes slows church growth and church planting.

            Celsus supported a perspective that Christians did harm to the balance within state religion. He knew that “most Christians refused military service and hence were unwilling to do their part in protecting the empire” (p. 117). They were also charged with a refusal “to participate in any way in the public and civil life of the cities of the Roman Empire” (p. 118). This led Celsus to view Christians as revolutionists and seditionists, because “it created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior” (p. 119). Thus, they had to be suppressed for the good of society. In post-communist Russia, religious groups that exist outside of the state-sanctioned Orthodox Church are considered sects or cults, and religious persecution is still prevalent. Baptists in Russia have often  been denied promotion on the job or at school, because their views are understood as antisocial. This, in turn, affects church planting and growth. The unfortunate tide of tolerance in America has placed western evangelicals on the side of antisocial stigmas as well.

            Julian the Apostate maintained the accusation that the Christian point of view was anti-Greek in its philosophical roots.  Julian’s actions were a “seemingly innocuous rescript on education” and the value of the Greek culture, but it “was the first salvo in his attack on the Christians” (p. 174). The Greek language and culture became a “weapon against the Christians” (p. 174). This accusation of anti-culture became so strong that Christians were persecuted and forced to even view themselves as foreigners in their own hometowns. Under communism in Russia, the educational system was strictly secular and humanist. In many ways, this anti-Christian system was propagated into close association with what it means to be Russian. Therefore, today many churches still face the stigma of being anti-Russian or anti-intellectual. This becomes a huge barrier to church growth when a young person has to separate himself from his national identity in order to become a Christian. Is it even possible for a Christian today, in Russia or America, to truly see his faith as greater than his partisan identity?