In this chapter, Brown sketches out for us an account of a profound shift in religious perspective between the first two centuries of the Empire and the period following. I'm going to give you a few definitions and notes for each of the sections we're reading, and then follow with your questions for homework.
IV. "The New Mood." The Antonines were three emperors from the latter half of the third century: Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus. Asclepius was a pagan god who presided over the practice of medicine.
Plotinus (205-270) was an Egyptian neo-Platonic philosopher, who traveled to Rome where he established a school. He was hostile to Christianity. Hermes Trismegisthus ("thrice-great Hermes"), named after a Greek god, Hermes, was a legendary source of special mystic revelation coming from Egypt. Neo-Platonism was something in which Renaissance philsophers were deeply interested, and during the 15th century neo-Platonic Christians would suggest that Moses had received special wisdom from Hermes, thus resulting in a synthesis of the wisdom of all traditions. You already know what gnosticism is, and the cult of Mithras. Zoroastrianism is yet another import from the east, teaching the kind of strict dualism that Christianity came ultimately to reject.
I want to clarify this question of dualism more than I was able to do in class. Even though orthodox Christians such as Augustine rejected the notion of two separate sources of creation, Christianity still had a strong focus on evil as an active force in the universe. Thus the belief in demons and in the Devil himself does not conflict with a single God and creator; all these bad guys are just personifications of the evil that will be overcome by Christ.
V. "The Crisis of the Towns." Attic style refers to the Greek of Attica, the portion of Greece where Athens is located. The Athenian Golden Age ((500-400 B.C.) was famous for its excellence in literature and the arts, although the great philosophers Plato (429-348 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) came into their prime after Athens lost her independence in a massive disaster called the Pelopponesian Wars. Anything described as "Attic" is assumed to be pure, archaic (as in old), and representative of the elite kind of education that only aristocrats could have.
The Christian Apologists are the writers who defended Christianity against its detractors. An "apology" in the traditional sense of the word is not an expression of regret for having done something wrong, but a defense. Galen (129-200 A.D.) was a professor of medicine whose work remained standard among physicians for centuries.
VII. "The Conversion of Constantine." Eusebius (275-339 A.D.) was a historian of the church, who described among other things the sufferings of martyrs during the persecutions. Origen of Alexandria (185-254 A.D.) is one of the Fathers of the Church (the Patristics), who taught that all souls pre-existed in eternity, but when they fell from grace, they became imprisoned in a body as the sign of sin, death, and decay. The redeemer is Christ, the logos, a term that John's Gospel uses in its very first verse: "In the beginning was the word" (logos). According to Origen, who was a Universalist, all would ultimately be reunited with God.
Paideia is the rough equivalent of "education," in the fullest sense of the word. Note the context for this term wherever it appears in this section.