o The order of the empire is equally threatened by an aggressive
assertion of God’s sovereignty. These stories show emperors
and kings alike unable, despite violent efforts, to stop a
movement that subverts their authority. Even when they put an
apostle to death, power continues to emanate from the body.• There is nothing theoretical in this stream of Christianity: It is
entirely embodied, with a stress on actual and present power at
work in the bodies of believers. Not unlike the acts of the martyrs,
it sees the human body as the arena for the display of divine power
in the world.The Montanist Movement
• A second manifestation of radical Christianity was a movement
that emphasized personal experience of the Holy Spirit. This
was the “New Prophecy” or Montanist movement, named for its
founder, Montanus.
• Beginning either in 156/7 or 172, the movement claimed the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit (the “Paraclete” of John’s Gospel)
on Montanus and two female companions, Prisca and Maximilla in
Phrygia. Members of the movement were “pneumatics” (spiritual
people) and outsiders were “psychics” (merely natural people).
o Forms of ecstatic behavior were attested in Phrygia before the
time of Christianity. For example, The Golden Ass, written by
Apuleius, describes the eunuch priests of the mother goddess
Cybele in the ecstatic throes of self-mutilation and ecstasy. As
Paul’s Letter to the Galatians suggests, Phrygia was a territory
given to radical behavior: His converts in that area also sought
to cut off their foreskins as a sign of religious enthusiasm.o The impulse toward ecstatic utterance also extended a theme
of earliest Christianity: In addition to Jesus’s promise of the
Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel (ch. 16), see the portrayal of
the church prophesying and speaking in tongues in Acts
2, as well as Paul’s discussion of tongues and prophecy in
1 Corinthians 12–14.