Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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History: Respectable martyrs

Barnes writes, “when Christians were executed by imperial order under Decius and Valerian, crowds still openly jeered at martyrs and their sympathizers. In the ‘Great Persecution,’ however, evidence of similar hostility is almost entirely lacking; by the last decades of the third century, the Christian church had become an established and respectable institution.”

That should have been enough to alert Diocletian and Galerius that this was going to be the last of the persecutions.

Not everyone found the church respectable, Barnes notes.  Intellectuals argued, like Celsus, “that Christianity was intellectually disreputable.”  Especially Porphyry who argued that “Christianity was incompatible with civilization.  Christians were denounced as barbarians, as apostates from ancestral religion, as atheists who deserved punishment.  Specifically, Porphyry argued that the profession of Christianity ought rightfully to be considered a capital crime.  Such an argument was not an idle, theoretical, or academic exercise: Porphyry desired to encourage the imperial authorities in a policy of bloody repression.”