The Theory of Decline/Anxiety If force is excluded , there remains the notion of decline/anxiety. This theory is that, in the first three centuries A.D., the Greco-Roman world fell into a terrible decline. No longer believing in itself and its values, it was ripe for salvation by any lifeline that came its way. Christianity appeared at just such a moment, as a deus ex machina. So it couldn’t be avoided. Demonstrably. The dominant Modernist approach to the Christian phenomenon is based on this very simple idea. It can be followed, step by step, in Professor E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine), The Wiles Lectures 1963, reprinted CUP ...




















