“Lucian also wrote a satire called The Passing of Peregrinus,[12] in which the lead character, Peregrinus Proteus, takes advantage of the generosity and gullibility of Christians.”
I like Lucian because he recognized the goodness and unique virtue of Christianity, even though he was personally skeptical of both religion and philosophy. I marvel at the way that Christianity, without violence or open defiance, conquered the Roman Empire. What these early Christians had was so appealing and contrasted so well with the hopelessness of the pagan world that pagans would choose an ‘illicit religion’, punishable by death, over the approved Roman religious systems.
I suspect that we should draw from their success in dealing with the new, secular, state approved religions. My personal belief is that we must find ways of presenting real Christianity to the secular world in a fashion that makes contact with their fallen state. Much as the Apostle Paul did when he quoted pagan poets as a point of connection for his ‘Greek’ audiences.