A MISCHIEVOUS SUPERSTITION
I got this title from an ancient report of Nero’s persecution of Christians in A.D. 54. I quote:
“Punishment was afflicted on the Christians, a set of men adhering to a novel and mischievous superstition…”  (According to Tacitus in Documents of the
                                                                                                    Christian Church, p. 5)
I was trying to remind myself of the beginnings of the Christmas debate about Jesus. I read the traditional Christmas stories that contain the beginning creeds—the official statements of who Jesus really was—naming him “Christ,” “Lord,” “King,” “Savior,” and so on. 
Luke tries to create a divine-human connection through borning Jesus of a virgin made with child by the holy spirit. 
I read the Christmas carols, again searching for the creedal ideas about Jesus. They too tell of his holy origins. “Silent night, holy night…Round yon Virgin, mother and child. Holy infant so tender and mild.” How holy? Did they believe it?
So I went to the earliest documents I could find, some tracing to the first century. 
Here were early believers called followers of “a mischievous superstition.” They were an illegal bunch. Pliny, in 112 A.D., wrote:
“I ask them if they are Christians. If they admit it I repeat the question a second and a third time, threatening capital punishment; if they persist, I sentence them to death.” (p. 5)
He describes what these people were doing:
“On an appointed day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak and to recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ, as to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, and breach of faith…
After the conclusion of this ceremony it was their custom to depart and meet again to take food.” (p. 6)
Here is a clue that Jesus was being worshiped as a “god,” which made them subject to Roman punishment as “atheists.”
In 150 A.D., Justin writes in “An Apology,” 
“We are taught that Christ is the first-born of God…and that those who live according to the word are ‘Christians,’ even though they are accounted ‘atheists.’”
Interesting.
Justin goes on to say:
“In our account He (God) has been made man.”
That thought is echoed in the carol words, “Now in flesh appearing.”
You can see the evolution of this and the core of a debate that waged for the first three centuries, at least. Was Jesus divine? Was he the Son of God, or a son of God? Was he God in human flesh? Some said so. 
Julian, however, in 322 A.D. said:
“Neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark had the audacity to say that Jesus is God.”
I am sorry to say that the view of Justin did not prevail.
The creeds about Jesus, that first began to be declared in the preaching of Peter, then Paul, were debated and fought over and finally began to be agreed upon in church councils. I am sure that there were power struggles and minority votes.
What comes down is that they made Jesus divine. The language is strange to most of us, but it is their Christmas faith.
“He was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.”
One creed offered in Nicea in 325 A.D. has this language:
“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, Son only-begotten of the Falther before all the ages…etc.”
This didn’t satisfy some, who insisted on adding:
“…true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father…who…came down and was made flesh and became a man.”
It is the faith of these creeds that makes up most of our carols. 
To most of us, they do not reveal the face of God, but hide it.
They are a long way from our image of a humble child, born in a poor country to poor parents, whose humanity was so complete we called him divine, one in whom the image of God as love, compassion, forgiveness, healing and hope were made visible.
I wonder whether maybe Nero was right. The early Christians turned Jesus into an institution, a “mischievous superstition.”
I celebrate the wonder of the birth of Jesus. I love the poetry, the lights, the carols, the legends. His life helps me catch a glimpse of what God might be like if allowed to appear in a human being. 
I sing the carols as the faith of the ancients. I wasn’t there, but I believe they have painted over the true picture of Jesus.
— Art Morgan, Dec. 1999