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Different Views on Culture Between Paganism and Christianity

Escape from our responsibility to society is not new. 1st and 2nd century paganism held that the material world is bad, but the spiritual world is good. Therefore, many ancients believed that true spirituality was achieved by separation from the material world through knowledge and passage to the new.

Wherever pagan dualism touched people it created shallow indifference to government, marriage, procreation, and and work. Parts of Ephesians, Colossians, and 1 Corinthians were written to combat this vile threat.

For Paul, and for the rest of the biblical writers, the difference between first century Christianity and the pagans of their day was not that Christianity affirmed the existence of a spiritual world, but that it affirmed the material world as good and as a viable forum for life and ministry.
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