“The Heart Has Its Reasons”: Predicaments of Missionary Christianity in Early Colonial Peru
ROM New Testament times, Christian thinking about what is entailed in conversion to Christianity has followed divergent patterns. On the one hand, it was thought, conversion occurs according to an inner understanding within the individual, in which the missionary is merely a helper. Thus, Paul, in his address to the Athenians, suggested to his listeners that the god whom he preached was in some way already known to them, as witness their altar to the "unknown god."' All that he would add was a more specific understanding of a truth already familiar. This model of conversion had many advocates in early Christianity. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius, among others, argued that pagan religion and philosophy enshrined much of what was to be learned more concretely in Christianity, and that potential converts should study their own non-Christian philosophers as an introduction to specifically Christian teaching.? In the early fifth century, Augustine took up and elaborated this argument in the City of God. On the other hand, Paul asked in the second letter to the Corinthians, "what is there in common between justice and injustice?"3 and