used Christianity like a bludgeon against political opponents, but not against
opponents of Christianity specifically; they left pagan temples intact and
priests alive. Not until Theodosius I in 392 does the emperor appear to hold
Christianity as a goal in-itself (Norwich 1995), and not again until Justinian
in the 500s. Although some subsequent emperors were personally pious, pol-
itics usually subsumed their piety.
If the emperors viewed Christianity in an instrumentally-rational fashion,
they did so as characteristically Roman patricians and as emperors – the
champion of the ruling patrician class. Far from showing Christian charity,
late Roman and subsequent Byzantine emperors crushed peasant rebellions
as ruthlessly as their pagan Roman predecessors crushed slave rebellions and
barbarian uprisings. Even for the adherents from the lower classes, Christianity
maintained the familiar social structure of Greco-Roman society in metaphor-
ical terms (Martin 1990) even as it broke from other cultural traditions, namely,
paganism. Still, Byzantium maintained the Hellenistic aspects of ancient soci-
ety (Runciman 1987) and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, intellectual
refugees carried Hellenism back to the West and reintegrated it with Christianity
to inspire the Renaissance (Runciman 1990).
Therefore, political gain and class dominance explains only the Imperial
appeal of Christianity as an instrumentally rational tool of hegemony. The
fact that numerous openly pagan beliefs and practices continued for centuries
into the Christian era indicates that paganism offered something of value
also. That is, it offered a different kind of rationality, or actually two kinds –
traditional and affectual – neither of which exists in contemporary rational-
choice theory.
The Role of Culture
Traditional celebrations in particular, especially when practiced in the face of
persecution, indicate a deeper and more profound orientation to life than
instrumental rationality. To sing, dance, laugh, feast, bathe nude, and, in gen-
eral, to enjoy being alive, indicates a happiness and gratification in being
human and alive in the world. In contrast to the dour and ascetic early
Christian theologians (Pagels 1989), the pagan communities cherished life in
this world, and through their celebrations, expressed contentment with life
and the worldview that legitimated the social order, which sociologically is
the celebration of idealized community (Berger [1967] 1990; Durkheim ([1912]
1995). If the temples were the domain of the priests, the larger pagan culture
The Concept of Choice in the Rise of Christianity • 241