Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Saint Augustine of Hippo famously wrote, You've made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until it finds rest in you. Like Augustine, this search can lead us to false gods. Today on Breakpoint, my colleague Michael Craven, Dean of the Coulson Fellows program, offers a theological reflection on idolatry.
Here's Michael Craven. For nearly a thousand years the gods ruled the Western world. Zeus thundered from Olympus, Artemis drew pilgrims from across the Roman empire, Apollo spoke through the oracle at Delphi. Athena guarded cities, Poseidon ruled the seas, every village had its patron deity. every household its shrines, and every season its sacrifices.
The temples were magnificent, the festivals lavish, and the myths woven into every aspect of public life. Then they disappeared. Today no one offers sacrifices to Zeus. The temples remain as archaeological treasures, visited by tourists rather than worshipers. What happened is one of history's most remarkable and least appreciated revolutions.
Many assume Christianity simply gained political dominance under Emperor Constantine. But history tells a much more fascinating story. By the time Constantine legalized Christianity in AD 313, the Church had already spread throughout the Empire despite nearly three centuries of persecution. It had won converts among the poor, philosophers, merchants, soldiers, government officials, and Rome's educated class alike. Even more telling, when the pagan Emperor Julian, known to history as the Apostate, attempted to restore the old religion only a generation later, he failed.
He had imperial authority, political power, and the ancient temples at his disposal. Yet he couldn't persuade the Empire to return to its former gods. Why did a movement centered on a crucified Jewish carpenter succeed where centuries of pagan mythology and even Greek philosophy had failed? The answer is not that Christianity offered better myths. It offered reality.
The ancient religions attempted to explain the world through stories of competing gods, whose passions, jealousies, and rivalries resembled those of humans. Greek philosophers recognized the inadequacy of these myths and sought deeper explanations. Plato sought ultimate forms. Aristotle reasoned toward an unmoved mover. The Stoics prized virtue and rationality.
Their insights were often profound, but they remained incomplete. Philosophy could ask life's greatest questions. It could not fully answer them. It could describe the good life, but it could not explain why every human possesses equal dignity. why evil exists, or why history itself has meaning.
Christianity entered that world with something entirely different. It proclaimed one eternal Creator, rather than a pantheon of competing gods. It explained why the universe is orderly because it is the product of a rational mind. It grounded human dignity not in citizenship, wealth, strength, or usefulness. but in every person's creation in the image of God.
It accounted for both humanity's grandeur and its brokenness, through the Biblical story of creation and the fall. It presented history not as an endless cycle of rise and decline, but as a purposeful drama moving toward redemption and restoration. Most astonishing, it proclaimed that the Creator himself had entered history in the person of Jesus Christ. not as another myth, but as a radical claim about reality itself. As CS Lewis famously observed, Christianity is myth become fact.
The longings reflected imperfectly in pagan stories found their fulfillment not in another legend. but in the historical life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The New Testament itself records the beginning of paganism's collapse. And Acts 19 The silversmith Demetrius warned that Paul's preaching threatened the thriving industry built around the worship of Artemis, because people were becoming convinced that gods made with hands are not gods. The gospel wasn't simply winning converts.
it was dismantling an entire religious world view. Early Christian leaders recognized exactly what was happening. Writing in the fourth century, Athanasius pointed out what every one could see. the memory of the gods was fading. Christ had accomplished what neither mythology nor philosophy could.
He had exposed the impotence of the false gods and revealed the one true God. Christianity did far more than change what people believed. It transformed how they understood reality itself. Because every human being bears God's image. Infants were no longer disposable.
women possessed inherent dignity rather than treat it as property. the sick became neighbors to be cared for rather than burdens to be discarded. mercy became a virtue instead of a weakness. Forgiveness replaced vengeance. humility became honorable in a culture that admired power above all else.
These changes flowed naturally from a world view that corresponded to reality. The Christian faith did not triumph because it was politically useful or culturally fashionable. It triumphed because it explained the world more truthfully than pagan mythology or philosophy ever could. That raises an unsettling question for our own age. If Christ exposed the bankruptcy of the ancient gods, Why does every generation seem determined to create new ones?
The human heart remains as religious as ever. We no longer bow before statues of Apollo or Artemis. But we have fashioned new gods. less obvious, perhaps, but no less demanding. Those are the gods we must now learn to recognize.
That was Michael Craven, Vice President of the Coulson Center and Dean of the Colson Fellows Program. He'll continue this series on idolatry in the days ahead. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download podcasts. And for more resources or to share this with others, go to breakpoint.org.
