It is hard for us to realize this today, but when Christianity first arose in the world it was not called a religion. It was the non-religion. Imagine the neighbors of early Christians asking them about their faith.

"Where's your temple?" they'd ask.

The Christians would reply that they didn't have a temple.

"But how could that be? Where do your priests labor?"

The Christians would have replied that they didn't have priests.

"But . . . but," the neighbors would have sputtered.

"Where are the sacrifices made to please your gods?"

The Christians would have responded that they did not make sacrifices anymore.

Jesus himself was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, and the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

No one had ever heard anything like this. So the Romans called them "atheists," because what the Chrisitans were saying about spiritual reality was unique and could not be classified with the other religions of the world. This parable (referring to the parable of the two sons, the focus of this book) explains why they were absolutely right to call them atheists.

The irony of this should not be lost on us, standing as we do in the midst of the modern culture wars. To most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moralism. The only alternative to it (besides some other world religions) is pluralistic secularism.

But from the beginning it was not so. Christianity was recognized as a tertium quid, something else entirely.

I'll be occasionally posting some of the gems from Tim Keller's book "The Prodigal God", enjoy.