(October 24, 2019 at 4:38 pm)Vicki Q Wrote: We have clear historical evidence, albeit biased, as to the reasons that the early church gave for this belief set. The resurrection is the best explanation for the rise of the early church, with the belief set they had.
The resurrection is a claim, not a fact.
That claim / doctrine might be a key distinctive. But it is so fantastical that by itself I can't see it being the explanation for the success of Christianity.
I think it was a complex of things combined with dumb luck, shaken and stirred over a few centuries. In the end, the early church's alignment with temporal power structures, and the church being seen by those power structures as a useful fulcrum of control, is probably the closest thing we have to a discrete explanation for Christianity's enduring success (if accounting only a third of the world population as adherents after 2,000 years, and being about to lose the dubious title of "world's most popular religion" to Islam is what success looks like, anyway).
