Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

The feat of Irenaeus, labouring in the wake of their deaths, was to give substance and solidity to these convictions. Already, within his own lifetime, his achievements and those of Christians who thought like him were becoming apparent even to hostile observers. They led an organisation that, in its scale and scope, was not merely one among a crow

Yet Irenaeus, even as he sought to repudiate Marcion’s influence, could not help but betray it. In what role, after all, was he casting Jewish scripture, if not as an ‘old testament’? What hope of finding treasure in it, except by the light of a new?

Beliefs, after all, did not patrol themselves. They had to be promoted, and upheld against their rivals.

a momentous discovery was being put into effect: that to be a victim might be a source of strength.

Certainly, the notion that light and truth were synonymous was not original to John. It reached back at least to Darius. Yet what followed had no parallel in the utterances of Persian kings, nor of Greek philosophers, nor of Jewish prophets. The Logos – the Word – had become flesh.

Yet nothing was remotely as uncanny as the character of Jesus himself.

Not as a leader of armies, not as the conqueror of Caesars, but as a victim the Messiah had come.

If Roman power upheld the peace that enabled him to travel the world, then he would not jeopardise his mission by urging his converts to rebel against it. Too much was at stake. There was no time to weave the entire fabric of society anew. What mattered, in the brief window of opportunity that Paul had been granted, was to establish as many churche

Yet even as Paul urged this, he did not push the radicalism of his message to its logical conclusion. A slave might be loved by his master as a brother, and renowned for his holiness, and blessed with the gift of prophecy – but still remain a slave.