In the first few centuries of the Christian era, there was a widespread belief – perhaps I should say, feeling – in the Roman Empire that there was something fundamentally wrong with the world (by “world” I mean “universe”). For many, the practical implication of this belief was that we should adopt an attitude of rejection of the world. Accordingly, a number of popular religions of the time were world-rejecting religions – for example, Mithraism, Manicheism, and other varieties of Gnosticism.
This spirit of world rejection was also common among Christians. Hence the rise of Christian monasticism with its rejection of the secular world, wealth and power, and marriage and family; its rejection of the pleasures of bed and table, its deliberate embrace of a life of full-time prayer and mortification of the flesh. Read more…