Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:30am

The Myth of Candida Moss

Candida Moss, a Professor in the Theology Department of Notre Dame, no surprise there, has a political tract disguised as a work of history entitled The Myth of Persecution in which she contends that the early Christians greatly exaggerated their persecution at the hands of the Romans.  The book really isn’t about history, which Ms. Moss mangles, but is rather aimed at current political battles which can clearly be seen in the promo video at the beginning of this post.

The blog Seeing the Sword has a first rate response to this waste of wood pulp:

What’s most problematic is that she is engaging in special pleading to make her case appear solid. However, she’s finagling her definition of “persecution” in order to suit a preconceived verdict. Miller continues by saying,

This is not to deny that some Christians were executed in horrible ways under conditions we’d consider grotesquely unjust. But it’s important, Moss explains, to distinguish between “persecution” and “prosecution.” The Romans had no desire to support a prison population, so capital punishment was common for many seemingly minor offenses; you could be sentenced to be beaten to death for writing a slanderous song. Moss distinguishes between those cases in which Christians were prosecuted simply for being Christians and those in which they were condemned for engaging in what the Romans considered subversive or treasonous activity. Given the ‘everyday ideals and social structures’ the Romans regarded as essential to the empire, such transgressions might include publicly denying the divine status of the emperor, rejecting military service or refusing to accept the authority of a court. In one of her most fascinating chapters, Moss tries to explain how baffling and annoying the Romans (for whom ‘pacifism didn’t exist as a concept’) found the Christians — when the Romans thought about them at all.

The word “persecute” is derived from the Latin persecut- meaning ‘followed with hostility’. Persecution, or the subjection of someone to harassment or ill treatment, does not, by definition, require the use of physical violence or imprisonment. But according to Dr. Moss’s arbitrary standard, anything less than being burned at the stake or imprisoned does not count as real persecution in her book. This would include having one’s property confiscated or being the object of mockery and derision. To deny as much would be tantamount to suggesting to blacks that racial slurs don’t really count. According to Moss’s standard, in the days of the Jim Crow laws, only lynchings, rapes, and violent beatings would qualify, but being subjected to thinly veiled threats, hateful looks, and demeaning slurs should be treated as if they are inconsequential or irrelevant.

Likewise, just because Christians didn’t spend three hundred uninterrupted years in catacombs doesn’t mean that they didn’t often feel threatened or worried that the calm would dissipate and, once again, give way to another round of merciless bloodshed. It’s true that Christians were able to flourish at times, but that isn’t proof that Christian persecution was predominantly a fanciful fabrication of the early church. Again, it would be like pointing to Booker Washington, who had an illustrious career that even included advising Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, or George Washington Carver and his celebrated scientific accomplishments that, likewise, won the affection of President Teddy Roosevelt, and then deducing that blacks must making much ado about nothing

Miller continues a bit further:

Christians wound up in Roman courts for any number of reasons, but when they got there, they were prone to announcing, as a believer named Liberian once did, ‘that he cannot be respectful to the emperor, that he can be respectful only to Christ.’ Moss compares this to ‘modern defendants who say that they will not recognize the authority of the court or of the government, but recognize only the authority of God. For modern Americans, as for ancient Romans, this sounds either sinister or vaguely insane.’

I particularly liked that last bit. It’s always been the case, says Dr. Moss, that Christians who refuse to heed the sinful demands of government are “either sinister or vaguely insane.” She would have made a good Roman. This further displays her contempt toward the immutable holy nature of God (Mal. 3:6) which is exactly what the law of God reflects. Was Paul wicked or psychologically disturbed to uphold the holiness, righteousness, and goodness of God’s commandments (Rom.7:12, Rom. 3:31)? Even more importantly, given that Christ actively obeyed the entire law of God, that idolatry is a sin He never committed (Ex. 20:4, 1 Cor. 10:14), and that Christians are to be conformed to His likeness, then how is refusing to worship Roman idols a sign of wickedness or insanity?

Lack of Evidence?

However, it’s not just her arbitrary definitions that I find vexing; her insistence of there being scant evidence also seems to smack of special pleading.

The greatest evidence is that all of the apostles save Judas and John were martyred. However, even John was banished to Patmos during the rule of Domitian as punishment for his Christian convictions. Therefore, eleven of the twelve apostles were persecuted.

Then there are the numerous accounts from the Church Fathers.

For example, there’s Clement of Rome‘s first letter to the Corinthians from the late 1st or early 2nd century, where he speaks of Peter and Paul having died honorably at the hand of Nero and encourages other Christians to look to their example:

Unto these men of holy lives was gathered a vast multitude of the elect, who through many indignities and tortures, being the victims of jealousy, set a brave example among ourselves.

And there’s Marcus Minucius Felix’s remembrance from the 2nd or 3rd century of his fellow Christian, Octavius, debating the Roman pagan Caecilius. Caecilius, speaking in terms that were likely commonplace among pagan Romans, said of this nascent Christian faith,

And now, as wickeder things advance more fruitfully, and abandoned manners creep on day by day, those abominable shrines of an impious assembly are maturing themselves throughout the whole world. Assuredly this confederacy ought to be rooted out and execrated. They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another. Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name become incestuous: it is thus that their vain and senseless superstition glories in crimes.

Tertullian presciently wrote in 203/204 AD in Scorpiace, as if in anticipation of the likes of Dr. Moss, ”And if a heretic wishes his confidence to rest upon a public record, the archives of the empire will speak, as would the stones of Jerusalem. We read the lives of the Cæsars: At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith.”

 

 

 

Go here to read the rest.  Everyone is entitled to their political beliefs, no matter how inane, jejune and predictable they may be, but the next time that Ms. Moss wishes to bash her favorite bogeyman, the “Religious Right”, I hope that she will leave history out of  her vendetta.  No doubt even the Emperor Trajan would wish that she keep hands off a historical record she willfully distorts:

You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those  who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down  any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought  out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this  reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves  it–that is, by worshiping our gods–even though he was under suspicion in the  past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations  ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of  precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.

 

0 0 votes
Article Rating
50 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Darwin
Darwin
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 7:20am

Her argument is so utterly weird — especially in that she is apparently arguing that if Christians were being persecuted for something they did as Christians (like, say, not sacrificing to the emperor) that this somehow didn’t count as persecution so long as the Roman’s weren’t going after them specifically for believing in Christ.

The Romans were broadminded folks when it came to adding a few gods here or there, so obviously they didn’t mind if people worshipped Christ. Their issue was usually “only” with people acting like Christians, whether that meant not sacrificing to the emperor or ruining the profitable trade in temple offerings.

trackback
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 7:59am

[…] The Myth of Candida Moss – Donald McClarey, T.A.C. […]

Ray
Ray
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 8:12am

We should be accustomed to this by now, but it still turns our heads in dismay. To think that she is a professor of Theology at Catholic University is more than deplorable. Yet, this same school rationalized having a pro abortion politician as the main speaker at their commencement ceremony. She should not be entitled to her own set of facts on any issue, but she seems to believe she is. This same type of remaking of history is being foisted on us daily and in all facets of our lives. Thanks for calling her out!!

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 8:27am

As Ray said: “Thanks for calling her out!!”

Ted Seeber
Ted Seeber
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 8:40am

Thus she must agree with Jim Crow Laws requiring three generations of literacy to vote. After all, they weren’t *specifically* aimed at black people whose fathers were slaves and not allowed to read.

CrankyinAZ
CrankyinAZ
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 9:24am

I wonder if this goes along with that school curriculum being used in Texas (and a few other states) that teaches the early Christians were literally cannibals because of the Eucharist!

It seems to me that there is some sort of big mis-information campaign out there, to put out as many lies, and garbage as possible about Christianity (Catholicism in particulary) as possible.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 10:00am

Roman truncheon envy.

How charming.

Brian English
Brian English
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 10:51am

I often wonder what the University thinks it is accomplishing by having people like this teach there. It is not like this stupidity could not be taught someplace else and ND is making a statement in support of academic freedom.

I have always thought Notre Dame should be a place where the best Catholic minds are cultivated to defend the Church against the forces of secularism and pseudo-Catholicism. Instead of having books like this issuing from profesors teaching in the theology department, the theology department should be refuting the nonsense issuing from people like Moss. Unfortunately, it appears other alumni and the people running the school have a very different vision.

VinnyJH
VinnyJH
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 10:52am

Has anybody actually read the book?

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 11:34am

“They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another;” These Christians commit the crime of LOVE. The absence of LOVE in this statement is appalling. Defamation, discrimination and false witness.
Candida Moss’ book and teaching therein is her particular opinion. The fact that the author did not attempt to get an “imprimatur” or “nihil obstat” is very telling. Moss, her father and Notre Dame need to get the teaching approved by the Vatican to call it teaching. Perhaps it will suffice that for the University to use the name CATHOLIC, the teaching books ought to bear the “imprimatur” and the “nihil obstat”. It is not censorship as much as quality control. After all, the CATHOLIC needs to be CATHOLIC, as the government’s laws for truth in advertizing demand, impose and proclaim.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s opinion in his painting of The Last Supper was hijacked, elaborated and used as fact by Dan Brown in his film The Da Vinci Code. Based on the opinion of a deceased Da Vinci, who could no longer testify as to why he painted as he painted, Brown’s interpretation of Da Vinci’s opinion is scurrilous. What proof of fact is there to assert except by asking: who, what, when and where?
The Catholic Church has the writing of the witnesses, their bones and their testimony and Jesus Himself said “You will be hated”.

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 11:34am

It is quite obvious where Moss is going with this: If the Church doesn’t get on board with the Obama agenda regarding the HHS Mandate, same-sex “marriage”, and the like, and thereby suffers government or legal sanctions as a consequence of not getting on board, not only would it NOT be persecution, but the Church would just be reverting to it’s past “persecution myth” – once again “crying wolf” – by calling it persecution.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 11:48am

“It is not like this stupidity could not be taught someplace else and ND is making a statement in support of academic freedom.”
An education teaches a person how to think, not what to think. How to cheat the truth and plagiarize Satan, Candida Moss’ Catholic students need to get their money back.

Darwin
Darwin
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 3:32pm

The post from her father is pretty rich.

Among other bits, I’m particularly struck by:

“Moss tracks the evolving Roman response to the spread of Christianity. She doubts that Nero (contrary to Tacitus) made Christians the scapegoats for the great fire of Rome, since he probably did not know who they are. ”

Tacitus is the classical (pagan) author here. Where exactly does Moss get to question Tacitus’ account of Nero’s actions? Just because she thinks that two millenia’s remove she can better imagine what “really” happened?

I’m hesitant to waste money (or time) on the thing, but I’m half curious to read it just to see how she tries to put some of this together.

vinnyjh57
vinnyjh57
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 4:55pm

Actually, Moss says in the book that Eusebius got the story from Irenaeuos.

Darwin
Darwin
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 8:40pm

Yeah, it’s arguable that Tacitus could have been passing on untrue stories that made Nero look bad (though why bother when there were so many true ones that made him look bad) but it’s unclear why Tacitus himself would have seen the Christians as unusually sympathetic. I’d be curious to know why she claims Tacitus would make such a thing up, and what evidence she provides.

I suppose this might be one of those trumpted up textual claims were you just pick the bits you don’t like and claim they were later interpolations, but unless there’s a really good explanation, that’s basically assuming your answer.

If you pick up a copy, let me know.

Darwin
Darwin
Tuesday, March 12, AD 2013 8:58pm

Ah, Amazon’s “search inside this book” feature is my friend. Her discussion of Tacitus is on pages 138-139, and it’s basically hand waving. (Search for “Tacitus” and you’ll get these pages viewable online.) She announces that “We need to exercise some caution when it comes to dealing with Tacitus” and then bases her argument on Tacitus’s use of the term “Christian” which she claims only started to be used by Christian authors in “the very end of the first century”. From this she jumps to saying that if Christians were not yet calling themselves Christian, it’s unlikely that they were well known enough for Nero to single them out as scapegoats. Then she theorizes that perhaps Tacitus was taking the persecution of Christians under Trajan (when Tacitus was writing) and projecting it back to Nero because… Well, she never gives a reason.

The slight of hand becomes complete when she says:

“In popular imagination as well as some scholarly literature the Great Fire of Rome and Nero’s subsequent persecution of ‘Christians’ begins the so-called Age of Martyrs. Our earliest martyrdom stories date to this period, between the Great Fire and the persecution of the emperor Decius. Yet with the exception of Nero’s tempestuous accusations against Christians, there’s no evidence to suggest that Roman emperors themselves were that interested in the Christians during this period. For almost all of the first century, it’s unclear that Roman emperors even knew that Christians existed.”

Well, of course, she’s just admitted there is evidence that the Roman state in the late 1st century was in some sense interested in persecuting Christianity — she’s related Tacitus’ account of Nero accusing the Christians and also admitted more vaguely that Christian accounts of persecution also date from this same period. But then she waves her hands and announces that once you leave all the evidence aside, there’s no other evidence that the Roman’s were persecuting Christians in this period.

And it’s true: Once you make a point of discounting all contemporary evidence, all you have left is your own conjecture, which in this kind of “scholarship” is generally what the author prefers.

Sylvia
Sylvia
Wednesday, March 13, AD 2013 5:23am

I encounter persecution everyday, it is called state university. I not only encounter age discrimination, but also religious persecution, if I let it occur. Usually after I answer with my beliefs’ succinctly stated, the person or person goes away, but it is there on campus.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, March 13, AD 2013 6:45am

The Roman persecution of the Christians throws a strong light on the nature of the early Church.

The Imperial authorities were largely indifferent to the religious opinions of their subjects, but they were deeply suspicious of associations of all kinds. Following the disastrous fire in Nicomedia, Pliny wrote to the Emperor Trajan, asking permission to establish a volunteer fire brigade. The Emperor’s response is instructive:

“You have formed the idea of a possible fire company at Nicomedia on the model of various others already existing; but remember that the province of Bithynia, and especially city-states like Nicomedia, are the prey of factions. Give them the name we may, and however good the reasons for organization may be, such associations will soon degenerate into dangerous secret societies.”

To the authorities, the Church was, first and foremost a “collegium illicitum,” an illicit society, organized and disciplined, and one that included men and women, free and slave, from every rank of society, who met in nocturnal assemblies, with branches in every city of the Empire, in close correspondence with each other. No wonder that magistrates harked back to the Senatus Consult against the Bacchanals of 186 BC or that they should accuse the Christians of similar practices.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, March 13, AD 2013 8:14am

Donald R McClarey

That may well be right.

Some scholars have suggested that Juvenal’s references to Jewish proselytes among the upper echelons of Roman society may, in fact, mean (or include) Christians, whom he never mentions. If that is right, then as late as the early 2nd century, Christians were still seen by some Romans, at least, as a Jewish sect.

I don’t find that suggestion very persuasive myself, but I thought it worth mentioning.

LarryD
Wednesday, March 13, AD 2013 8:47am

The fact that USCatholic is promoting the book (along with one by Call-to-Action sponsored group “Young Adult Catholics”) is enough of an endorsement to tell me that the book’s premise and purpose is less than credible.

http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201303/book-marks-new-releases-persecution-justice-and-irrepressible-hope-26971

Dave W
Wednesday, March 13, AD 2013 11:01am

Another sad attempt at rewriting history to accommodate one’s political agenda. At least hers is so blatent that we can point to it as say ….”see, this is what we are talking about … “. Fortunately, on what appears to be the back cover “endorsements” … none are “real” catholics.

Ronald, suggest you post a “customer review” on Azom … to refect a more truthful review.

Redge Le Crisp
Redge Le Crisp
Wednesday, March 13, AD 2013 5:06pm

In all of the back and forth concerning Professor Moss’s work, how is it that no one has pointed out the Miller’s review is dated 2/26. “The Myth of Persecution” did not go on-sale until 3/5 (see any online retailer as evidence). As such, Miller is responding to an un-read book.

Darwin
Darwin
Thursday, March 14, AD 2013 8:08am

I wasn’t sure if it would be repetitive to put the post up at TAC when Donald already wrote such a good post on it, but I did a post today digging into the book in a bit more detail:

http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2013/03/bad-history-was-persecution-of.html

Brandon Watson
Thursday, March 14, AD 2013 9:34am

Anyone with serious critical thinking skills should have alarm bells ringing all the way through: it’s a sweeping thesis, under an inflammatory title, on the basis of no new evidence, pitched directly to the populace, of a ‘ myth’ that does not seem to be widely held in the form she characterizes it. (It’s fascinating reading excerpts of the book and seeing how often Moss characterizes the ‘myth’ as three hundred years of nonstop, unrelenting, violent murder, which is not what anyone I have ever known, Catholic or Evangelical, has meant by the ‘Age of Martyrs’. I was taught exactly the opposite in Sunday School growing up Southern Baptist in a small town — it was necessarily a part of standard discussion and criticism of preteritist accounts of Revelation.) Any intelligent person would go in skeptical; this is not how serious arguments are made.

Darwin
Darwin
Thursday, March 14, AD 2013 9:37am

Thanks, Donald. Posting it now, in that case.

trackback
Thursday, March 14, AD 2013 9:39am

[…] Donald McClarey has a well deserved barn-burner of a post up at The American Catholic about a new bo…. I’d seen a couple articles on this book before it came out and more or less passed over them as yet another fluffy work of pop scholarship intent on telling us that “everything we know is wrong” in relation to Christianity. However, the book appears to be getting a certain amount of press and is climbing the Amazon sales ranks, so it’s worth giving it a bit of attention as the politically motivated pop-history that it is. […]

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, March 14, AD 2013 10:10am

I have a few suggestions for sequels. Ms. Moss may have a “franchise” here.

Debunking the myth of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.

Debunking the myth of the (Irish) Great Famine.

PS: Pacem, gentlemen, I never had a Theo prof that looked like her. I may go back to skool.

CrankyinAZ
CrankyinAZ
Thursday, March 14, AD 2013 1:34pm

Maybe she’s looking for a job as a “Persecution Czar” in the Obama Administration? Never know when that one will be opening up….

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, March 15, AD 2013 5:13am

Brandon Watson

You are right. The church has traditionally counted ten persecutions, in the two and a half centuries from Nero to Diocletian and many of these were local and sporadic. The first universal and organized persecution was that of Decius (249-251) and created the problem of the “libellatici,” people who purchased false certificates of conformity to Imperial worship and the Donatist schism.

Donald R McClarey

Persecutions did occur under “good” emperors – The third, fourth and fifth persecutions occurred under Trajan (98-117), Marcus Aurelius (161-180) and Septimus Severus (193-211) and the ninth under Aurelian (270–275), all generally considered good emperors. The only persecutions that took place under really “bad” emperors was the first, under Nero (54–68), an almost comical narcissist, the second under the gloomy, suspicious and really sinister Domitian (81–96) and the eighth under the incompetent Valerian (253–260), until he was captured by the Persians.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, March 15, AD 2013 5:27am

Donald R McClarey

I know you did; I was just enlarging on the point.

Darwin
Darwin
Friday, March 15, AD 2013 9:52am

Interestingly, there’s a medieval myth that Pope Gregory the Great so admired Trajan for his justice and mercy that he prayed that Trajan would be restored to life so that he could be converted and thus saved. According to the legend, God did in fact grant this request, the emperor accepted Christianity, and this is why in Dante’s Paradiso the emperor Trajan appears in the heaven of the just rulers.

trackback
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 12:02am

[…] Cthlc Answrs Major Catholic Herald Shareholder: Change Contraception Teaching – C. Olson Univ of Notre Dame Prof: Early Christian Persecution a Myth – D. McClarey JD If Two Lesbians, Why Not Two Sisters? – Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet […]

Tito Edwards
Admin
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 9:40am

Darwin,

What a great story!

Are there any links for this story? I’d like to read more.

DarwinCatholic
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 10:09am

I’d read about it in a set of notes to the Divine Comedy. Here are a couple links:

http://ecclesiasticalephemera.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/gregory-the-great-and-the-emperor-trajan/

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden173.htm (near the bottom of the page)

http://www.umilta.net/gregory.html (bottom section)

Tito Edwards
Admin
Monday, March 25, AD 2013 4:56pm

Thanks!

Joel
Joel
Monday, March 25, AD 2013 7:25pm

It deeply saddens me that an instititution bearing the identity of ‘Catholic’ would retain such a professor. Whether an early Christian was put to death for merely being a Christian, or in acting upon beliefs as Christian – beliefs that ran counter against the laws and society of the Roman Empire – a Christian was still put to death for their lived out Christianity. It is of no surprise that she is a consultant for various secular portrayals of Christianity – hardly ever is there an orthodox Christian on such shows; on occasion there might be an evangelical fundementalist, but mostly as a ‘straw man’ in which to show forth how ‘enlightened’ the ‘experts’ in religion / biblical studies are.

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top