understand them, they infer that maybe Christianity's High God understands them too. Brendan Lehane identifies other contextual factors conducive to a Christian movement in fifth-century Ireland.19 For perhaps one thousand years, no outside religion had penetrated Ireland, so without a tradition of suspicion, the Irish gave Christian advocates a willing hearing. Philosophically, the Irish were accustomed to paradox, which prepared them to appreciate some of Christianity's central truth claims. Their