St. Paul\u27s Ideology for the Urbanized Roman Empire

No one is likely to equal the sensation which Gibbon produced with the 15th and 16th chapters of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where he viewed the rise of Christianity from the perspective of secular history. While he adhered on the surface to a pious, naive, and conventional veneration of the early church, at the same time he pierced the aura of holiness and taught his readers-in the name of philosophy-to understand religious movements realistically. It is unnecessary for us now to review the human causes which an 18th-century historian found for the success of Christianity