by Lance Ralston | Dec 22, 2013 | English |
This week’s episode is titled, “Keeping a Record”
The first 3 Cs of Church History are at times a difficult puzzle to sort out because no coherent historical narrative was being kept.
Luke’s account in the Books of Acts recounts a time span of about 30 yrs & roughly narrates the spread of the Faith from Jerusalem to Rome. The next narrative doesn’t come till the writings of the Christian historian Eusebius in the 4th C. What we have for a period of over 200 yrs are the writings of the Fathers whose letters give little more than a thumbnail sketch of what was happening. We have to infer & assume a lot by picking up what facts we can about what was happening. As we’ve seen, the work of the Church Fathers focused mainly on providing pastoral & apologetic support. Gaining an historical framework for this period comes from merging secular accounts of history with the commentary of the Fathers. But with the work of Eusebius at the opening of the 4th C, the narrative becomes significantly clearer.
Eusebius began compiling his magnum opus of Church History in the 290’s. Titled Ecclesiastical History, it’s an attempt to provide a narrative of the Communion of the Saints from the Apostles to his time.
Eusebius was born & raised in Caesarea on the coast of Israel. He was a student of the Christian leader Pamphilas, who was himself a student of the great Apologist Origen. Eusebius became the bishop at Caesarea in 313. He played a major role in the Council of Nicaea in 325, which we’ll take a closer look at in a future episode.
Eusebius is a key figure in the study of Church History because his Ecclesiastical History is the first work after Luke’s to attempt an historical narrative of the Faith. He’s also an important figure because of his close association with the Emperor Constantine.
I want to quote the opening of Eusebius’ narrative because it gives us a sense of the monumental nature of his work. He knew he was attempting to reconstruct a narrative of the Church from scant resources.
In Chapter 1, which he titled, “The Plan of the Work” he writes –
It is my purpose to write an account of the successions of the holy apostles, as well as of the times which have elapsed from the days of our Savior to our own; and to relate the many important events which are said to have occurred in the history of the Church; and to mention those who have governed and presided over the Church in the most prominent parishes, and those who in each generation have proclaimed the divine word either orally or in writing.
It is my purpose also to give the names and number and times of those who through love of innovation have run into the greatest errors, and, proclaiming themselves discoverers of knowledge falsely so-called, have like fierce wolves unmercifully devastated the flock of Christ. …
But at the outset I must crave for my work the indulgence of the wise, for I confess that it is beyond my power to produce a perfect and complete history, and since I am the first to enter upon the subject, I am attempting to traverse as it were a lonely and untrodden path. I pray that I may have God as my guide and the power of the Lord as my aid, since I am unable to find even the bare footsteps of those who have traveled the way before me, except in brief fragments, in which some in one way, others in another, have transmitted to us particular accounts of the times in which they lived. From afar they raise their voices like torches, and they cry out, as from some lofty and conspicuous watch-tower, admonishing us where to walk and how to direct the course of our work steadily and safely.
Having gathered therefore from the matters mentioned here and there by them whatever we consider important for the present work, and having plucked like flowers from a meadow the appropriate passages from ancient writers, we shall endeavor to embody the whole in an historical narrative. …
This work seems to me of especial importance because I know of no ecclesiastical writer who has devoted himself to this subject; and I hope that it will appear most useful to those who are fond of historical research.
Eusebius was unaware of any previous attempt to provide an historical narrative of the development of the Faith from the late 1st C to his time in the early 4th, a period of a little over 200 yrs. From a modern perspective, Eusebius’ account might be considered suspect, relying as it does on tradition & at best fragmentary evidence. What must be remembered is the importance of that oral tradition and the accuracy of such transmission over long periods of time. Because the ancient world didn’t possess cheap and plentiful means of recording information, it was dependent on oral tradition & rote memorization. With the advent of the printing press and more economic media, the priority of the oral tradition declined. Eusebius had both written and oral source material to draw from. His work can be considered dependable, while subject to question when it leaned toward the ancient penchant for using history as propaganda.
As we return to the narrative timeline of Church history we need to pick up the story with the reign of the Diocletian who presided over the last & in many ways worst round of persecution under the Roman emperors.
Though Christians remember Diocletian for that, he was in truth one of the most effective of the Roman Emperors. By the time he came to the throne, the Roman Empire was a sprawling & unwieldy beast of a realm to rule. The City of Rome was an old & decayed relic of its former glory. So Diocletian moved his headquarters eastward to Nicomedia in Asia Minor, modern Turkey. Instead of trying to exert control over the entire empire himself & solely, Diocletian appointed Maximian as co-emperor to rule the western half of the Empire from Rome while he ruled the East.
One of the persistent problems that led to so much unrest in the recent decades was the question of succession; who would rule after the current emperor? To forestall that turmoil, Diocletian appointed dual successors for both himself & Maximian. Flavius Constantius became Maximian’s successor while Diocletian took on Galerius. This established what’s known as the Tetrarchy.
While Diocletian had no warm & fuzzy feelings for the followers of Christ, it was really his successor Galerius that urged him to launch a campaign of persecution. Galerius was a military commander who thought Christians made poor soldiers. He knew their loyalty was supremely to their God and thought they made for unreliable troops. Galerius was also a committed pagan who believed in the Roman deities. He attributed any setback for the Army & any of the regular natural disasters that shook the realm, to their displeasure that so many of Rome’s subjects were turning to the new god on the block. So it was really at Galerius’ urging Diocletian approved the severe measures taken against Christians and their churches. When Diocletian retired to his villa to raise cabbages & turned the eastern half of the Empire over to Galerius, persecution increased.
Eventually, Constantius replaced Maximian in the West, just as Galerius had assumed the mantle in the East. And Diocletian’s tetrarchy began to unravel. Galerius decided he wanted to be sole ruler and abducted Constantius’ son, Constantine who’d been named successor to his father in the West. When Constantius fell ill, Galerius granted Constantine permission to visit him.
Constantius died, & Constantine demanded Galerius recognize him as his co-emperor. No doubt Galerius would have launched a military campaign against Constantine’s bid for rule of the West, but Galerius himself was stricken with a deadly illness. On his deathbed, Galerius admitted his policy of persecution of Christians hadn’t worked and rescinded his policy of oppression.
In the West, Constantine’s claim to his father’s throne was contested by Maximian’s son, Maxentius. The showdown between them is known as the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Maxentius didn’t want Constantine marching his troops into Rome so he tore down the Milvian Bridge after marching his troops across it to meet Constantine. Just in case the battle went against Maxentius, he had a temporary bridge built of a string of boats across the river.
At this point, the story gets confused because there’s been so many who’ve written about what happened and the reports are varied. On the day before the battle, Constantine prayed, most likely to the sun-god. As he did, he looked toward the sun & saw a cross. Then, either he saw the words or heard them spoken, “By this sign, Conquer.” That night while he slept, Jesus appeared to him in a dream, telling him to have his soldiers place a Christian symbol on their shields. The next morning, chalk was quickly passed round & the soldiers put what’s called the Chiron on their shields. Chi & Rho are the first 2 letters of the Greek word Christos, Christ. In English it looks like a P on top of an X.
When the 2 forces met, Constantine’s veterans bested Maxentius’ less experienced troops, who retreated to their makeshift bridge. While crossing, Maxentius fell into the water & drowned. Constantine then marched victoriously into Rome.
A year later, he and his new co-emperor Licinius issued what’s known as the Edict of Milan, which decreed an end to all religious persecution, not just of Christians, but all faiths. For Constantine, Jesus was now his divine patron & the cross, an emblem of shame & derision for generations, became instead—a kind of charm. Instead of being a symbol of Rome’s brutality in executing its enemies, the cross became a symbol of Imperial power.
Bishops began to be called priests as they gained parity with their peers in pagan temples. These Christian priests were shown special favors by Constantine. It didn’t take long for the pagan priests to realize which way the winds of political favor were blowing. Many converted.
Now à there’s been much debate over the legitimacy of Constantine’s conversion. Was he genuinely born again or was he just a savvy politician who recognized a trend he could co-opt and turn to his favor? People will disagree on this and my meager offering is unlikely to convince anyone. But I think Constantine was probably a genuine Christian. He certainly did some things after his conversion that are difficult to reconcile with a sincere faith, but we have to remember the moral base he grew up in as the son of a Caesar & as a general of Roman legions was very different from the Biblical morality that’s shaped Western civilization. Also, Constantine’s actions which are so decidedly non-Christian, like murdering those who threatened his power, may have been rationalized not as personal acts so much as attempts to secure the peace & safety of the empire. I know that’s a stretch, but when analyzing history, we need to be careful about judging people when we don’t have at our disposal all the facts they did.
If we could sit down with Constantine and say, “You shouldn’t have executed that guy.” He could very well say something like, “Yes, as a Christian, I shouldn’t have. You’re right. But I didn’t execute him out of personal anger or suspicion or mere selfishness. It really bothers me that I had to off him; but I discovered he was plotting to usurp my throne and it would have thrown the empire into years of civil war & chaos.” To which we’d reply, “Well Constance, you need to trust God more. He’ll protect you. He put you on the throne, He can keep you there.” And Constantine might reply, “Yeah, I considered that & I agree. But it’s a tough call. You see, in terms of my personal life, I trust God. But when it comes to my role as Emperor, I need to make tough choices others who don’t wield the power I do will understand.”
Let’s not forget that Constantine, while being a competent general & astute politician, was at best a novice believer.
I share this little made-up discussion because it points up something we’re going to encounter again & again in our review of the history of the Church. We look on past ages, on what they believed and the things they did, with an attitude of moral superiority because we wouldn’t do the terrible things they did, or we assume would do some things they failed to. We need to be cautious with this attitude for the simple reason that when we take the time to listen to the voices of the past and let them explain themselves, we often come to a new appreciation for the difficulty of their lives & choices. We may not agree with them, but we at least realize in their own minds & hearts, they thought they were doing what was best.
You make up your own mind about the genuineness of Constantine’s faith, but let me encourage you to spend a little time looking up what Eusebius wrote about him and some of the tough decisions Constantine had to make during his reign.
Some of the things regarded as incompatible with a genuine conversion is that he retained his title of Pontifex Maximus as the head of the state religious cult. He conceived & hatched political plots to remove enemies. He murdered those deemed a threat to his power.
On the other hand, from 312 on, his favor of Christianity was quite public. He granted the same privileges to bishops, pagan priests enjoyed. He banned crucifixion & ended the punishment of criminals by using them in gladiatorial games. He made Sunday a holiday. His personal charity built several large churches. And his private life demonstrated a pretty consistent genuine faith. His children were brought up in the Church & he practiced marital fidelity, at least, as far as we know. That of course, was certainly NOT the case with previous Emperors or even the wider Roman nobility.
Critics like to point to Constantine’s delay of baptism to shortly before his death as evidence of a lack of faith. I suggest that it ought to be read exactly the opposite. Remember what we learned about baptism a few episodes back. In that time, it was believed after baptism, there were certain sins that couldn’t be forgiven. So people delayed baptism to as close to death as possible, leaving little chance for commission of such a sin to occur. Following his baptism, Constantine never again donned the imperial purple of his office but instead wore only his white baptismal robes. That sounds like he was concerned to enter Heaven, not a casual disregard of it.
Chief among Constantine’s concerns upon taking control of the Empire was unity. It was unity & strength that had moved Diocletian to establish the tetrarchy. Decades of civil war as one powerful general after another seized control and beat down his challengers had desperately weakened & impoverished the realm. Now that Constantine ruled, he hoped the Church would help bring a new era of unity based on a vital & dynamic faith. It didn’t take long before he realized the very thing he hoped would bring unity was itself fractured.
When the Church was battered & beaten by imperial persecution, it was forced to be one. But when that pressure was removed, the theological cracks that had been developing for a while became immediately evident. Chief among them was the Donatist Controversy we recently considered. In 314 the Donatists appealed to Constantine to settle the issue on who could ordain elders.
Think about what a momentous change this was! The church appealed to the civil authority to rule on a spiritual affair! By doing so, the Church asked for imperial sponsorship.
At this point we need a robot to wave its arms manically & cry “Danger! Will Robinson, Danger!”
Constantine knew this was not a decision he was capable of making on his own so he gathered some church leaders in Arles in the S of France to decide the issue. The Donatist bishops were outnumbered by the non-Donatists – so you know where this is going. They decided against the Donatists.
Instead of accepting the decision, the Donatists called the leaders who opposed them corrupt and labeled the Emperor their lackey. The Church split between the Donatist churches of North Africa and the rest who now looked to Constantine as their leader.
As tensions rose, the Emperor sent troops to Carthage in 317 to enforce the installation of a pro-government bishop opposed by the Donatists. For the first but far from last time, Christians persecuted Christians. Opponents of Constantine were exiled from Carthage. After 4 years, he realized his strong arm tactics weren’t working and withdrew his troops.
We’ll pick it up and this point next time.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 22, 2013 | English |
This episode of is titled, “How Close?”
One of the things modern Christians want to know is how close their church is to the primitive church of the 1st & 2nd Cs. Congregations and entire movements claim their particular expression of the Faith is closest to the original. So, what were early church services like? Where did they meet and what did they do?
Until the end of the 2nd C, Christians met for services in private homes, deserted buildings, caves, near graves of martyrs, & in catacombs. Catacombs were a common feature of many cities of the Empire. Besides their primary use as burial places, they were frequent hiding places for refugees, smugglers, and groups that wanted to meet away from the watchful eye of authorities. Rome’s catacombs were a massive subterranean tunnel system.
Jesus’ Followers used these places to meet because during these first centuries they were mostly drawn from the poorer classes of society & couldn’t afford a unique place devoted solely to worship. Their meetings were often banned, requiring they meet in secret. Another reason they tended to meet in locations away from the busy streets was because of the prevalence of lewd graffiti, ubiquitous in Roman cities. Graffiti isn’t a recent phenomenon; it has a long & storied history. Much of the graffiti encountered in Rome’s streets was political cartoons & commentary. But it was also bawdy and offensive to the sensitive morality of many Christians. So they looked for places outside the city to meet where pornography wasn’t scrawled on nearby walls.
One of the points made by the Church Fathers knowns as the Apologists, who answered the attacks of pagan critics was that Christians had neither temples nor altars because their religion was fundamentally spiritual and needed no place for ritual. Their critics jumped on this lack of religious place as evidence of the silliness of the Faith. After all, if God was worthy of worship, they reasoned, wouldn’t He require a building? Origin replied eloquently to this attack by saying Christians were living statues of the Holy Spirit – and that each human being was immensely more glorious than any temple made of mere stone. In a significant remark from Justin Martyr to a Roman governor, he wrote that “Christians assemble wherever it’s convenient, because their God is not like the gods of the heathen, enclosed in space, but is invisibly present everywhere.”
The homes early Christian met in had to have been large enough to accommodate a congregation. Based on what we now know about Roman architecture, such a home had a dining hall providing the best place to assemble. In the center of the long wall an elevated chair was set where the leader of the service led the assembled. Near him was a simple table upon which the elements of the Lord’s Supper were set. If they met in catacombs, a similar arrangement was made.
The Early Church Father Tertullian was one of the first to speak of “going to church;” using the word “church” for the place where a congregation met. Clement of Alexandria who lived about the same time, makes reference in his writings to how the word “church” meant both the people & the place they met.
About AD 230, the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus granted the followers of Jesus the right to have a building in Rome dedicated exclusively to worship. What’s interesting about this is that the loudest hew & cry against the church using its own building came from the tavern-keepers. The church was going to be located in a place rife with taverns and it meant some of them would have to be relocated to build the church. They also didn’t like the moral influence a church would bring.
This Imperial permission to build a church greatly encouraged other cities around the Empire to allow the fast-growing Christian sect to build more facilities dedicated exclusively to holding services. The persecutions of Decius & Diocletian at the end of the 3rd & beginning of the 4th C put a hold on such construction, and saw many of the buildings that had been built either torn down or converted to pagan use. Diocletian began his persecution in 303 by tearing down the huge church in his capital at Nicomedia. Yet by the beginning of the 4th C, Rome had some 40 churches!
While we know the building of churches took place in the last half of the 3rd C, we have little idea of what they looked like. That changes with the acceptance of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine. It’s reasonable to assume the earlier churches were in some way similar to the basilicas Constantine built for both civil & religious use.
They were rectangular with a proportion of 3 by 4. A semi-circular niche lay at the narrow end opposite the main door. The niche was the place where the elevated seat was set for the lead pastor, AKA the bishop. Ranging down the aisles of the main hall was a colonnade where people gathered in smaller groups, or if the central floor of the nave was full, they could spill into during the service.
Christians met to hold their weekly service on Sunday, which they called “The Lord’s Day” because it’s the day of the week Jesus rose. The first Christians were Jews, who zealously observed the Sabbath on Saturday, but also gathered on Sunday, the first day of the week, so a work-day, early in the morning before work began. As the Church grew in the Gentile world, the church gathered only on Sunday. This is confirmed by ample evidence in the writings of Ignatius, Justin Martyr & the Didache.
Those first Gentile Believers didn’t celebrate Sunday as a kind of Christian Sabbath, ceasing from work as they did later. That would have been impossible for the slaves of heathen masters who made up a large proportion of the Church in the early decades. It wasn’t until the time of Constantine that engaging in labor on The Lord’s Day was frowned on. What also was put under the ban was theatrical entertainments. Greek & Roman theaters were more often than not, places of grotesque lewdness, not fitting for the moral sensitivity of believers.
In light of the often contentious debates marking modern believers, it’s instructive that the Church Fathers never saw the Christian observance of Sunday as a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath. Sunday wasn’t regarded as a Christian version of obeying the 4th Commandment’s call to “Keep the Sabbath Day.” The Fathers DO however recognize as implicit in the teaching of Scripture the call to regular worship, and that meant specifying a day each week for gathering to worship. Ignatius, who we’ve already seen as one of the most important of the Church Fathers, specifically contrasts the Jewish Sabbath with the Christian Sunday – saying that the prior is replaced by the later. But he makes pains to point out that making Sunday the Lord’s Day is not a fulfillment of the 4th Commandment. Rather, Ignatius sees the 4th Commandment as fulfilled in the perpetual rest believers have in the death & resurrection of Christ
These weren’t the only days of the week Christians practiced specific actions as evidence of their faith. While Sunday celebrated the resurrection, Wednesdays & Fridays commemorated Jesus’ suffering & death. This was memorialized by partial fasts, till 3 PM.
When Christians gathered on Sunday, there were certain things they did that constituted a service. This order of service evolved over time but became a fairly uniform practice by the 4th C throughout the churches. In the earliest years, a portion of the OT Scripture was read and someone with skill at public speaking would explain & apply the passage. Several short such passages & homilies could be given, depending on how may skilled speakers there were. It didn’t take long before one of the elders was recognized as the God-ordained teacher & leader of the congregation and was designated as their pastor-bishop.
Soon the documents of the NT & writings of the Apostolic Fathers were also read & studied.
With the emergence of the bishop as the leader of a local church, the sermon became one of the primary elements in the service. We have the record of an ancient sermon delivered by an anonymous pastor around AD 140. It’s not very good, but the way he closes the message is interesting for the simple reason that it doesn’t sound all that different from what tens of thousands of pastors say in their churches every week to this day! It ends thus …
“To the only God invisible, the Father of Truth, who sent forth unto us the Savior & Prince of immortality, through whom also He made manifest unto us the truth and the heavenly life, to Him be the glory forever & ever. Amen.”
Prayer was a major part of church services. Since many of the letters of the Apostolic Fathers include their prayers, we get a sense of what prayers were like in the churches of this time. What’s remarkable about them is how filled with Scripture they are. Their prayers were based on the revelation of God in the Bible and are appeals to His promises. They prayed for the suffering, the needy, travelers, prisoners; they pleaded with God to save the lost, confessed their sins, and asked for the preservation of their unity. Also notable is the emphasis on praying for the Emperor, for governors and all those in authority in the civil realm. These prayers weren’t anathemas, that is – calls for divine displeasure to fall in fiery bolts on pagan heads. They were prayers for blessing, peace, wisdom and courage.
When they prayed, they stood, with hands stretched out toward heaven.
The Church also sang – a lot! Their songbook was the Psalms. Besides the Psalter, they developed hymns; songs expressing Christian belief & theology. The man or woman who finds rote memorization difficult will often easily pick up a song & be able to sing several verses from memory. Singing was a way to both worship & learn theology.
For a period of about 350 years, from the mid-2nd C to the close of the 5th, some churches divided their service into 2 parts. The first was open to all & was aimed at educating candidates for baptism. There was singing, prayer & a sermon. Then those who had NOT been baptized were dismissed and the doors were closed. Those members who’d been baptized would then engage in more prayer, singing, and finally, the celebration of Communion. Participation at the Lord’s Table was prohibited to the unbaptized.
Dividing the service into 2 parts was a minority view refuted by some Church Fathers. Justin Martyr, in his first defense of the Faith to the Emperor marks no distinction for those who could celebrate Communion. The growing hierarchical spirit that took root in the Church from the mid-2nd C on & advanced so strongly by Ignatius, seems to also have encouraged the dualism that developed in the Church; a dualism that divided the congregation between candidates & the elect; with baptism being the dividing line.
Another factor that encouraged the development of a second, closed & secretive part of the service was the challenge presented by the Gnostics. The second part of the service, closed as it was to initiates, began to be used in some churches as a time for instruction in what came to be considered deeper spiritual lessons. The Gnostics had their “secret knowledge” which proved so appealing to many. So, some churches developed their own brand of esoteric knowledge – things that were thought to be appropriate only for those who’d been baptized & could regularly partake of Communion. Those who advocated this secretive aspect of church life defended it by quoting Matthew 7 where Jesus warned His followers against giving what was holy to the dogs & casting pearls before swine. They claimed it’s what the Apostles meant when they wrote of the distinction of “milk for babes” but “meat for those of full-age” & the difference between those who were “carnal” & the “spiritual.”
Some historians hold that one reason for the secretive nature of some aspect of church meetings was the simple & practical need for modesty. Primitive baptism was full-immersion. Since Christians often went directly from a service to work, they had to remove their clothing to be baptized. This meant the need for privacy with men & women being separated.
By the 6th C, the challenge of Gnosticism was past & the church was no longer being persecuted. With the pressure off, baptism, while still important, was endowed with less significance than it had possessed during the era of persecution when the problem of the lapsed framed so much debate. For all these reasons, the division of the service into 2 parts diminished until by the end of the 6th C the vast majority of churches had just one service, though unbaptized members were told not to partake of the Lord’s Table.
Communion was the central event of each service. In that time, the Lord’s Table was called, “The Eucharist” a Greek word meaning thanksgiving. This was the climax & conclusion of the church service. I quote from Justin Martyr’s description; …
After the prayers we greet one another with a brotherly kiss. Then bread & a cup with water & wine are handed to the bishop of the brethren. He receives them, and offers praise, glory, and thanks to the Father of all, through the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit, for these His gifts. When he has ended the prayers and thanksgiving, the whole congregation responds; ‘Amen.’ … Upon this the deacons, as we call them, give to each of those present some of the blessed bread, and of the wine mingled with water, and carry it to the absent in their dwellings.
Communion was celebrated at least weekly. There’s evidence in some places it was celebrated daily as Christians gathered early in the morning to pray, sing a song or 2, take communion then disperse. They based this practice of daily communion on that part of the Lord’s Prayer which said, “Give us this day, our daily bread.”
In the earliest days of the church, they met on Sunday evening to share a common meal called the Agape, the Love Feast. The last part of the meal, which we’d call the dessert, was the Lord’s Table. For them, it wasn’t a dessert of sweets so much as a spiritual sweetness in communing with the Lord and one another. A kiss of fellowship was a part of this. Men would kiss other men on the cheek as would the women to one another. This kiss was a dear & holy mark of the celebration of their spiritual unity & familial relationship.
It also became the ground for abuse as wine was a part of the common meal & some drank a little more than they ought. Loosened inhibitions moved some to a less than holy application of the kiss when the pattern of male to male moved to male to female “fellowship.” The Apostle Paul addresses the abuse of the Agape in writing to the Corinthians & in other letters reminds the churched to keep the kiss HOLY!
The bread used for Communion was regular bread. The wine was mixed with water. The deacons handed each person a piece & they all drank from a common cup. When they ate, they stood. When the service was finished, the deacons took the elements to the homes of shut-ins & those in prison. Many of the Christians of North Africa took some of the communion bread home with them and used it for a private daily communion.
As we end this episode, I wanted to express my appreciation to all who’ve reviewed the podcast on iTunes.
For those who haven’t yet, I invite you to head to the Facebook page to give the podcast a “Like” and leave a comment on where you live. You can find it at CS – History of the Christian Church.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 15, 2013 | English |
This episode of CS is provocatively titled “The Lapsed Dance.”
In the 4th episode titled “Martyrs”, we examined the persecution Christians faced at the hands of the Roman authorities. We noted that persecution, while at times fierce, wasn’t one, long campaign of terror that lasted for a couple centuries. It tended to be spasmodic & regional, based on the whim of the current emperor, enforced in spotty fashion by governors who either agreed or disagreed with the official policy from far-away Rome. There were a couple seasons of Empire-wide persecution in the 3rd C that proved to be the most intense.
Following Trajan’s more even-handed attempt to deal with the problem of the Christians in the early 2nd C, 2 Emperors followed a more rigorous campaign of persecution & pressed its application to the borders of the Empire. In the mid to late 3rd C, Decius & Diocletian considered Christianity a dangerous threat. Their reasons for opposing the Faith were several but looming large was the concern Christianity would weaken the Army, desperately needed to protect the borders being harassed by barbarians. Also, die-hard pagans claimed the old gods who’d overseen Rome’s rise to greatness were angry so many of their worshippers had turned to the new Faith. They warned disaster loomed; the only way to stay it was to appease the wrath of the gods by slaking it with Christian blood.
To this end, some Emperors renewed an old practice: Emperor worship. While the details of this practice varied from time to time & place to place, the basic routine went like this . . .
Once every so many years, the residents of a city had to appear in the public square, where they ascended a raised platform, picked up a pinch of incense, dropped it on some hot coals and announced, “Caesar is Lord.” The exact words of the oath varied depending on who was sitting on the throne. But the point was to honor the reigning Roman Emperor as a deity, minor as that deity might be in the pagan pantheon. While pagans who already recognized a plethora of gods had no problem adding one more to the list, Christians owned a fierce repulsion to confessing anyone other than Jesus Christ as Lord. They simply couldn’t do it. As the pagan left the dais after going through this little rite, he was handed a libelli – a certificate proving his loyalty. He kept that certificate as proof of loyalty, producing it whenever an authority asked him to show his compliance with Rome’s decree. In this manner, the Christians were marked out; they had no libelli.
Now, as can be imagined, this challenge led to some memorable martyrdoms, especially in North Africa where Christianity flourished. It also led to one of the biggest controversies the Church had yet faced.
Some Christians, under the threat of death, capitulated to the pressure, burned the incense & spoke fealty to Caesar. They took the libelli and went about their business. Once the Emperor Decius was gone and persecution eased, these capitulators repented their weakness and applied for readmission to the Church. The challenge for church leaders was = What was to be done with these “lapsed” members, as they were called?
Some advocated their re-admission to the felloowship pending a review of their specific case by the local elders. Others, led by a church leader named Novatian, argued vehemently for their exclusion. For Novatian and his supporters, there was no room for any kind of negotiation. The lapsed were to be barred from fellowship. The controversy between the Novatianists and the majority of churches which by that time had made the church at Rome their unofficial headquarters became so great, it seemed there was only one way to solve it. The Novatianists were declared heretical by the majority and put outside the Communion of Saints.
The Novatianist controversy flared up again following the last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. This time it went by the name of Donatism.
During the Diocletian persecution, in order to avoid becoming martyrs, some Church leaders had not only submitted to Caesar worship, they’d surrendered sacred texts to imperial authorities, and, shamefully ratted out other believers. Such lapsed leaders were called “traditores” meaning, those who surrender. One of these traditores was Caecilian, also known as Cyprian. Cyprian hadn’t capitulated and worshipped Caesar, but he did go into hiding when the edict reached Carthage where he was bishop. His critics said he was no better than those who lapsed by this desertion of his post. When the persecution lifted, he wanted to returned to his position. The Church at Carthage was the lead church of all North Africa, a region with a large population of Christians. The Novatianist-leanings of the previous generation were most strong there and were renewed at this time, sparked by the re-installation of Cyprian. Those who refused to accept him, selected their own leader in an elder named Majorinus, whom they made a rival bishop to Cyprian. Majorinus died shortly after being consecrated. He was replaced by Donatus Magnus who advocated the same path of rejecting traditores from church leadership.
The Donatist Controversy is important because what was at stake was the Christian concept of forgiveness and reconciliation. Was the act of saying “Caesar is Lord” while burning incense to an image of the Emperor an act of idolatry that marked one as apostate? And was such a coerced act something from which there was no repentance?
Some said the betrayal by lapsed believers was a renouncing of Christ that condemned them to hell. Others said while some believers became martyrs and their faith was exemplary, those who gave in to the threat of death could not be held responsible and could be re-admitted to the fold, if they showed proper repentance. But such returned believers could not serve in any capacity of leadership in the church. Some held a view of reconciliation so far-reaching, they said even pastors who lapsed could be restored to their positions.
What emerged during this debate was the importance of baptism.
In the Books of Acts, baptism appears to have been used by the Apostles as the means by which believers identified their faith in Christ and their participation in the Community of Faith. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter called for new converts to be baptized immediately. Philip led the Ethiopian eunuch in immediate baptism. Baptism at the moment of conversion seems to be the NT pattern & the practice of the Apostolic Church.
But at some point, church leaders began delaying baptism, calling for converts to have a time of learning before being officially welcomed into the church. The reason for this delay is uncertain, but may have come as a result of seeing that some supposed converts didn’t follow through on their commitment. They fell away after a short time. By delaying baptism and preceding it with a period of instruction, it gave the convert a time to prove the genuineness of their conversion.
While conversion was a work of the Spirit in the human heart, baptism was seen as the way someone made a public profession of faith and ushered them into the Community of Christ. So baptism became a kind of definitive line in the sand. It was thought that if someone renounced Christ AFTER being baptized, they were an apostate to whom repentance was now impossible.
And as might be suspected, different regions understood all this this differently. Some held that to go apostate meant that person had forfeited salvation and was destined for hell. Other’s held that a seeming-apostate was able to repent & return to grace, but their renouncing of the Lord meant their being forever excluded from fellowship. So, they could be saved, but were barred from attending church & taking Communion.
Another position said if someone did repent of what had earlier appeared to be a renouncing of Christ, it was evidence they hadn’t really gone apostate because if they had they wouldn’t repent. Therefore, repentance and the demonstration of a desire to return to God’s grace were evidence of salvation and for that reason the repentant ought to be readmitted to fellowship.
So à the timing of baptism became a major issue once persecution broke out in a threat of martyrdom. Baptism was delayed even longer than it had been because of the line it was thought to have crossed. If a Christian caved during persecution and took a libelli before they’d been baptized, returning to fellowship would be easier. But if he/she lapsed after baptism then returning was more difficult, especially among groups like the Novatians & Donatists.
As we’ll see later, this issue of the timing of baptism extended beyond the time of Imperial persecutions. When the Church began to invest certain sins with greater moral weight and consequence, many delayed baptism lest they commit a major sin after baptism and so incur greater judgment.
For now, let’s return to the Donatist Controversy. Donatus and his followers held the view that pastors and elders who’d lapsed during the Diocletian persecutions were forever barred from leading the Church. Maybe they could be restored to fellowship but being a leader in the Church was out of the question. The majority view was that lapsed leaders could indeed be restored. As you might imagine, the debate was fierce. Many towns were divided between Donatist and non-Donatist congregations. The Donatists were particularly strong in North Africa while the Church at Rome led the non-Donatists who prevailed in Europe.
The Controversy raged for a hundred years & became one of the more contentious issues the Church had to deal with during the 3rd & 4th Cs.
What made the Donatist Controversy such a particularly heated topic was the great admiration believers held for the martyrs who’d maintained their faith & confession of Christ even at the cost of their lives. The question was, how could they be held in such high regard when those who lapsed could be so easily restored to fellowship? Were in fact the martyrs foolish to cast away their lives when a little negotiation & capitulation could have saved them?
No, martyrdom was a baptism by blood considered the utmost glory a believer could attain to. A careful record of the martyrs was kept; the days of their martyrdom celebrated each year. And with each celebration, their stories grew. Their failings were edited out and their reputation embellished until they took on a decidedly “other-worldly” quality. The martyrs were quickly morphing into “saints” – Early Christian super-heroes.
The idea began to develop in North Africa where there had been so many notable martyrdoms, that their exceptional courage achieved a kind of special grace from God that could be turned to other purposes; like, What? Well, how about we use it to forgive the sins of others? Sins like those who’d lapsed. Yeah, that’s it. The righteousness of the martyrs who’d died rather than recant was so great, it made a reserve of grace those who’d avoided martyrdom could draw from! How convenient.
Some bishops thought this a grand idea. Others opposed it, but wanting to find some means by which the lapsed could be returned to fellowship, they devised various means and forms of penance, by which repentant lapsi could demonstrate the sincerity of their desire to return to the fold.
Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage mentioned before, devised a system to allow the lapsed to be reconciled to the Church. He said that simple repentance was enough for those who’d sacrificed to the Emperor after severe torture. But those who’d caved at the mere suggestion of pain had to submit to a penance of punishments. His plan won widespread approval and the Church created a system of penance based on the severity of the guilt of the lapsed. Bishops met with repentant lapsi & prescribed their penance like spiritual doctors dispensing medicine. If and when the penitent successfully jumped thru the prescribed hoops, he/she was allowed to return to fellowship and most importantly, to partake of the Lord’s Table.
While this system of penance was proposed and installed in various places, other regions rejected it as contrary to the character of grace found in the NT. And while it went into general disuse when official persecution ended in the 4th C, the doctrinal foundation was laid for the later system of penance and the Treasury of Merit that would be practiced under the title of Indulgences.
But all that is for a much later episode . . .
Many thanks to those who’ve subscribed to CS and told others about the podcast.
If you haven’t done so yet, drop by the FB page and let us know where you live. The CS family stretches literally around the world.
If you use iTunes as your podcast portal, please think about writing a review. That’s THE most important way to get the word out about the podcast.
While CS is free, we have had to include a donate feature as the costs of hosting the site have gone up.
Lastly, I’m quite stoked to announce CS is now appearing in Spanish.
You can fain all the information you want to follow up on all this at the website – sanctorum.us.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 15, 2013 | English |
This Episode is titled, “What Shall We Call Them?”
The survival of the Christian church in the 2nd & 3rd Cs is surely a testimony to the favor of God. Any objective consideration of the challenges faced by the Christian community during this time has to wonder at the tenacity of the followers of Christ. This was a 200 yr period when they faced constant challenges from heretics & false teachers, as well as intense external pressure in the form of persecution.
It was also a time in which Christian theology was still being developed & local churches improvised how they were led. Let’s take a closer look at how the leadership of the Church developed during this crucial time of formation.
Little is given in the NT by way of a design for church government. What we find is a description of the character of those who serve as elders and deacons. But precisely what these offices were to do isn’t spelled out. We can only infer their duties from the word used to describe them. Since the term ‘elder’ is synonymous with ‘pastor’ in the NT, the elders were to lead, feed & protect the flock of God. Deacons, as their title suggests, performed a ministry of practical service in attending to the physical needs of the fellowship.
In Acts, we see the Apostle Paul ensuring the churches he started had some form of pastoral leadership when he left. From his letters, we glean there were 2 classes of church leaders; itinerant & resident. One group, comprised of Apostles, Evangelists & Prophets moved from place to place, while Pastors & Deacons serviced a single congregation or tended a limited region were several smaller fellowships met.
Ignatius of Antioch gives an important insight into the maturing of church leadership that took place at the beginning of the 2nd C. In order to make sure each congregation was well served by its leaders, Ignatius argued for a single, pastor-elder to lead the church, assisted closely by a group of fellow-elders & deacons. Though the word ‘bishop’ simply means ‘overseer’ & is synonymous with the elder & pastor, the lead-elder was given the title of “bishop.” Ignatius urged churches to adopt this model of leadership.
This form of church government facilitated communication within & between churches. With a bishop in each congregation, there was now one person to ensure communication with other congregations & their bishop. Having a bishop helped ensure a consistent policy in the distribution to the poor & produced a consistent voice in dealing with the challenge of false teachers.
It was a few decades until Ignatius’ Bishop-Elders-Deacons form of church government was broadly established, but it eventually became the model most congregations adopted. Yet even when churches embraced it, they implemented it differently. For instance, in Asia & Africa, each local congregation had its own bishop. In Western Europe, a bishop of a church in a large city often exercised oversight in the smaller churches of surrounding towns & villages by appointing their elders & pastors.
By the late 2nd C, the undisputed leader in church affairs was the bishop. It was the challenge of Gnosticism that greatly encouraged this. Here’s why . . .
The Gnostics claimed an unbroken succession of specially enlightened teachers all the way back to Jesus. They claimed Jesus entrusted a secret message to the Apostles, who in turn passed it on to others & of course, the Gnostics were the latest in that succession of enlightenment, who for the right price would impart that secret knowledge to the next generation of Gnostics leaders.
In countering Gnosticism, the Church emphasized the public, rather than secret, character of the Gospel as openly taught by Jesus & His Apostles. They stressed that the tradition of the Apostles had not gone underground but that those leading the churches of the 2nd C could trace their connection to Jesus thru the Apostles by a visible line of communication & affirmation. Crucial to this argument was the role of those churches that had been established by the original Apostles & their close associates, the Apostolic Fathers. In the 2nd C, the list of those who’d served as the lead-elders wasn’t something lost to the mists of time. People knew who’d been the pastors at Corinth & Ephesus, in Rome & Smyrna, and other keys churches.
In the mid-2nd C, an historian named Hegesippus made a trip from Israel to Rome, interviewing bishops all along the route. Now—check this out because it’s super-important. Hegesippus discovered the bishops all shared the same message and viewed the Faith in the same way. They also went about their task of leading the church in the same general manner. He wrote, “In every succession and city, what the law and the prophets and the Lord preached is faithfully followed.” Hegesippus even drew up lists of bishops, showing their succession in unbroken lines going back to the Apostles.
Not long after Hegesippus, Irenaeus in Western Europe & Tertullian in North Africa filled out the succession picture for the bishops in their regions.
The point is this – By the dawn of the 3rd C, each local congregation, in the larger cities at least, had a lead-elder who functioned as what today we’d call a senior pastor, but known in that time as a bishop. This bishop was assisted by a close group of fellow elders who oversaw the spiritual needs of the congregation, while their physical needs were met by a group of deacons.
The development of this form of church government was in all likelihood encouraged by the model of the Jewish synagogue, as well as the nature of group dynamics. Whenever a group of people meet, it’s inevitable one will rise to take the lead. Even among leaders, one of them will tend to be invested with the role of taking the lead so the work of the group is more efficient. As one elder in a church was invested with this lead-role, the other elders & the church as a whole recognized the advantage of having one man who was called by God to lead them. When the threat of false teaching, such as Gnosticism, presented a challenge to the Faith, it further advanced the role of the bishop, who met with other bishops to develop a united response to the new threat.
These gatherings of bishops to address issues of interest & concern to the Faith became a crucial part of the history of the Church. Known as Councils & Synods, they will see the major issues of the day brought forward for consideration and debate.
I want to pause at this point & recognize that the emergence of the role of bishops in leading the Church is a point of major controversy; not that bishops did in fact become the de-facto leaders of the church, but what that development MEANS. Some claim the rule & role of bishops was the plan & will of God. Others see it as a tragic departure from what Christ intended for His followers. Still others would say that it wasn’t the development of this form of church government that was the problem; what became a problem was the quality & character of the men who became bishops.
Without question, what commended the faith to outsiders during the 1st thru 2nd Cs was the quality of the lives of believers. As we’ve considered in previous episodes, the rumors circulated about what Christians believed & practiced in secret were absurd, just crazy talk. Those who actually knew Christians put little stock in the rumors because of the exemplary morality they lived by. Christians understood the power of the Holy Spirit, not so much as something that manifested itself in spiritual gifts but as a moral energy that produced the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul told believers to look for as the evidence of the Spirit’s work.
The Early Church Fathers continued this emphasis. So much so that members who continued in sin were first rebuked, then removed from fellowship. But it wasn’t just Christians themselves who claimed a call to moral excellence. Outsiders gave testimony to the exemplary ethics and practice of Jesus’ people. In writing to the Emperor Trajan, Pliny, governor of a Roman province said that in his examination of Christians & their practices he was unable to find anything immoral; in all respects they were model citizens, except that they were part of an illegal sect. Justin Martyr says it was the moral attractiveness of the followers of Christ that moved him to consider their doctrine.
But something changed at the dawn of the 3rd C. The morality of the Church began to dim, not universally, but in certain places. This brings us back to the role of Baptism in both the ministry of the Church & in the individual lives of believers.
The Book of Acts presents water baptism in much the same way that some churches use an altar call today. It was a way for people coming to faith in Christ to make a public confession of their Faith. The Church used baptism as a way to give individuals a way to mark their inclusion in the Sacred Community = Communio Sanctorum. But over the next 200 yrs, that understanding of baptism morphed into a much more spiritually significant event. Baptism was thought to cancel all sins committed UP TO that moment. Following baptism, it was believed certain sins required special penance to be discharged, & if those sins were severe enough, they were beyond forgiveness. There were 3 sins that were considered especially heinous; apostasy, murder, & sexual immorality. These sins might be forgivable by God, but the Church could not restore the guilty to fellowship. Violators were excommunicated & denied access to Communion, which like Baptism had taken on more importance than as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice. The elements of the Lord’s Supper were seen as spiritual food that nourished the grace by which believers maintained their salvation. So, to be cut off from Communion meant being in jeopardy of exclusion from those who attained heaven. Ignatius referred to the bread & wine as “the medicine of immortality & the antidote of death.”
The issues of bishops & baptism came together during the 1st half of the 3rd C. This was a time of relative peace for the Church when persecution at the hands of Roman officials cooled somewhat. In several places, Christians were not only tolerated, they gained favor. This favor resulted in a loosening & lowering of the moral expectations believers held toward each other. Sins that had before incurred rebuke were left unaddressed while those which had led to dis-fellowship were forgiven.
One of the first to grant reconciliation to repentant sinners was Callistus, bishop at Rome from 217 to 222. He restored repentant adulterers. Callistus likened the church to Noah’s ark, in which was contained both the clean & unclean. It was a school where sinners learned to be saints, a hospital where the sick could recover.
But then Callistus went further. He defended his position by claiming that à as the bishop at Rome he was heir to the authority of the Apostle Peter who’d received from Jesus the keys of authority to define Church b elief & practice, not just at Rome, but the ENTIRE Church. Those keys, Callistus said, included the power to either loose or bind the guilt of individuals. This was the first time such authority was claimed by a bishop of Rome.
When Tertullian, a leading bishop of North Africa heard this pronouncement by Callistus he was appalled and said, specifically regarding the issue of what to do with people who’d been excommunicated, “We do not forgive apostates. Shall we forgive adulterers?” Tertullian’s objection had traction with the previous generation but was no longer in favor among the churches of Europe. While Tertullian voiced the majority view of North Africa where he worked, the bishops & churches north of the Mediterranean agreed with Callistus. Their reasoning went further; If adulterers could be reconciled to fellowship, why not apostates? And so we see the scene set for the Novatianist & Donatist Controversies of the 3rd C we’ll considered in our next episode.
As we end this one, let me be clear. While Ignatius of Antioch was the earliest voice we have who advocated that local churches be led by a single elder-pastor, who we can think of as a senior pastor, but was given the title of bishop – Ignatius NEVER hinted at the idea that the ENTIRE Church ought to have a single Bishop.
It wasn’t until Callistus in the early 3rd C. that someone floated the idea that the bishop of Rome was not just the lead pastor of the capital, but of the Church everywhere. The bishops of the Roman church might indeed be dynamic leaders as befitting a church of thousands, but this idea of being the spiritual heir of Peter’s authority was something new.
Now, I know this is going to fire up some, but let me use an illustration to show HOW Callistus’ claim was received by the other bishops of the time. Imagine today that the pastor of one of the older & larger churches of your city, county, or province sent out a letter or email to the all other churches in the region, saying that BECAUSE his church was older & larger, he was now THEIR LEADER; they ought to obey him and defer to his decisions. How would that be received? Probably not so well.
Well – that’s how most bishops responded to Callistus’ claim. It was a combination of factors and differing opinions between a handful of lead churches in their respective regions that would see Rome & its bishop take on a larger role than just one of many churches. But that also, is the subject for a later episode.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 8, 2013 | English |
This week’s episode is titled “Hammering out the Details. ”
That group of guys known as the Early Church Fathers for the most part were pastors. They were leaders of churches who had a pastoral concern for both the Faith & their people.
The later 1st through 3rd Cs saw the Church expand around the Mediterranean basin, in a few places up into central Europe, across North Africa, across the Middle East and into Mesopotamia and the Persian East. While believers contended with periodic outbursts of persecution in Roman controlled territory, the great threat was that presented by aberrant sects that kept rising up aiming to hijack the Faith.
It’s understandable why this was such a problem in these early centuries. Christian theology was still being hammered out. In fact, it was the threat posed by aberrant groups that forced church leaders to formalize precisely what it was Christians believed. Just as today, some new wind of doctrine blows thru the church and most Christians have little idea what’s wrong with it; they just sense something is. It doesn’t sound or feel right, but they couldn’t say precisely what it is. It takes some astute pastor, Bible student, or theologian to show HOW said doctrine is contrary to Scripture. Then everyone’s clued in and has an idea of why & how that aberration or heresy is off.
Multiply that process by many years & lots more of those winds of doctrine, and you can see how a large & detailed body of Christian theology developed. Most times, church leaders turn to the Bible to compare the new idea to what’s already known to be God’s Word & Will. But sometimes what’s needed is some new words – or at least to make sure we know what the words we’re using when we explain something mean! And we need to make sure we all mean the same thing by those words. We see how important this is today when dealing with the cults. Two people can say they’re Christians, and both believe in & follow Jesus. But while one person’s “Jesus” is the eternal Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin Jewish teenager named Mary, the other person’s “Jesus” is really just a manifestation of the archangel Michael, or à the human son of a god named Elohim who used to be a man on another planet a long time ago who ascended into being a god with a heavenly harem by which he produces spirits looking for human bodies. Believe it or not, that is what a couple prominent pseudo-Christian cults believe today.
My point is è we need to make sure we pour the same meaning into the words we use, especially when we’re talking theology, because what we believe about God is the most important thing about us.
We’ll see how complex & what a major deal this all was when we get to the debates about the trinity & the nature of Jesus in the 4th & 5th Cs. For now, realize that even earlier, during the latter 1st thru 3rd Cs, it was usually pastors who did most of the theological work as they dealt with the challenge of goofy teachings about God & Jesus confronting the people they led.
Let’s take a brief look at some of the major doctrinal challenges & groups that challenged the early church.
We already considered the threat of Gnosticism. We spent a whole episode on that topic because it was a huge challenge that a few letters of the NT addressed.
We considered the challenge Marcion presented, with his virulent anti-semitism & attempt to separate the God of the OT from the God of the New.
We took a brief look at Montanus and his, what we might call, early Charismatic Movement. Ws saw that while there were indeed some aberrant elements in Monantism, they did not rise to the level of heresy the Early Church ended up labeling them with.
A group we’ve not looked at yet was a kind of anti-Marcionist sect called the Ebionites. They emerged toward the end of the 1st Century & continued into the 4th. Their beliefs smack of the error the Apostle Paul deals with in his Galatian Epistle.
Ebionites said Jesus wasn’t the Eternal Son of God; he was just a successor to Moses whose mission was to enforce a strict legalism. They claimed Jesus was just a Jew who kept the law perfectly. And because He did, at his baptism, the Spirit of God descended on him, empowering him to be a prophet. This sounds a lot like one of the many Gnostic sects.
Ebionites were ascetics who avoided any & all forms of pleasure, assuming if it was pleasurable, it had to be wrong. They practiced poverty, ultra forms of self-denial, & elaborate religious rituals. They abhorred the Gospel of Grace. Their name, “Ebionites” comes from the Hebrew word meaning “Poor Ones.” They likely took this name to honor their founder, Ebion, who spurned his given-name in favor of the title “Poor One.”
What little we know about the Ebionites comes to us from the accounts of their opponents. The first Christian to write about them was Irenaeus who mentions them in his work, Against Heresies. Origen also mentions them, his account matching that of Irenaeus.
They rejected the NT in favor of a scroll known as “The Gospel According to the Hebrews.” Keeping the Jewish flavor of their origins, they met in synagogues. As would be imagined, they considered the Apostle Paul with his emphasis on salvation by grace through faith to be a dangerous heretic. To Ebionites, Jesus wasn’t the Savior; Moses was because he gave the Law. Jesus was nothing but a Solomon-like figure who proved people COULD obey the law.
When the Romans Titus laid siege to Jerusalem, the Ebionites join forces with the Gnostics. And a close reading of Paul’s letter to the Colossians gives a hint that it was this Gnostic-Ebionism that was troubling the church there.
Another group that presented a challenge to the Early church were the Manichaeists. I’m not going to go into a lot of depth here. Suffice it to say Manichaeism was a rather bizarre cousin to Gnosticism. Like the Gnostics, they were dualist; meaning they considered the spiritual realm to be unalterably good while the material world was hopelessly corrupt.
Their founder was the 3rd C mystic Mani. He proposed two opposing forces, light & darkness, forever locked in eternal combat. Salvation was defined as the victorious struggle of the Children of Light overcoming the darkness by a life of self-denial and celibacy. If some of this sounds a lot like the Zoroastrianism of Persia – Give yourself a gold star; you figured out where it came from!
Mani was a Parthian who’d grown up in a home that was nominally Christian. He was loath to give up the ancient Zoroastrianism of his peers and homeland, so he decided to mix the two. And once he’d begun, he decided to go ahead and add a dash of Buddhism, some Hinduism, & a sprinkle of Judaism. Mani’s religion was an ancient version of Baha’i – you know, just snag whatever seems most appealing from a handful of major religions, toss it all in a bowl, mix thoroughly, cook at 350 for 20 minutes, let cool, and serve with a cup of Koolaid.
But it’s not hard to understand WHY Manichaeism would appeal to so many people at that time. The Romans had brought dozens of different people under one political & economic system. Since religion was a crucial part of most people’s lives in that day, the diversity of faiths was a potential stress point that could lead to conflict. A religion that seemed to appeal to everyone because it contained a little bit of them all seemed a good move.
Let’s turn now to take a look at another key Church Leader; Clement of Alexandria.
Titus Flavius Clement was born in Athens to pagan parents. He became a Christian by studying philosophy. He settled in Alexandria in Egypt & attended a school there because he was impressed by the director’s interpretation of Scripture. When that director retired in AD 190, Clement succeeded him as head of the school, the same Origen would later take over.
Now, I hope you find this as interesting as I did. This school, while run by Christians & dedicated to Christ, was anything BUT a narrow-minded academy aimed at spitting out mind-numbed followers. The school reflected the cultural mixture of Alexandria. It welcomed Christians, pagans, and Jews who wanted the best education the time could field. The Christian directors of the school believed that the Christian faith, given a fair hearing, would prevail over other ideas. So among others, the non-Christian philosopher, Ammonius Saccas taught there. Among his students were both Origen and Plotinus, founder of Neoplatonism.
During his years as a teacher in Alexandria, Clement wrote most of his works. He followed the example of Philo, an Alexandrian Jewish scholar who’d used Greek philosophy to interpret the Old Testament. Clement adopted Philo’s allegorical method of interpreting Scripture, often quoting him at length.
Now, I need to pause & define a term I’ve used a lot, not just in this episode but in several previous = Pagan. Today, in popular usage the word ‘pagan’ is fraught with a shipload of negative baggage. If you call someone a “pagan” it’s an insult; you’re saying they’re godless & immoral.
That’s NOT what I mean here when I refer to someone as a pagan. I mean it as it’s come to be used by a growing number of alternative religious groups today. Pagans are those who’ve returned to a worldview that sees the forces of nature as worthy of worship. Witches & Wicca are pagan and draw their inspiration from the ancient world that believed in a plethora of gods & goddesses who controlled the forces of nature and exerted dominion over only certain regions. By pagan, I mean it in this technical sense; the worshippers of the Greek & Roman gods. People who believed the myths & legends of the Greco-Roman civilization.
I pause to define “pagan” because Clement wrote specifically to them, seeking to reason with them about why they ought to put their faith in Christ. In his Exhortation to the Gentiles he used the same arguments employed by the Apologists, but with more sophistication. By cherry-picking quotes, he showed an ascending revelation upward through poets, philosophers, the Cybeline oracle, & Hebrew prophets to the highest revelation; Christ.
Clement’s major work was titled Miscellanies. As the title suggests, Clement said that the seeker has to go through a “patchwork” of ideas to get to the truth, like winnowing wheat through a sieve. He called philosophy a “schoolmaster” to bring the Greek-thinker to Christ. He believed God used philosophy to lead pre-Christian Gentiles to a knowledge of the truth of Christ. Although the teaching of Christ was complete in itself, philosophy served Clement as a kind of “wall for the vineyard” to defend the truth of Christianity.
What’s of interest to us about Clement of Alexandria is the impact he had on Origen. It was his ready use of philosophy and allegorical style of interpreting Scripture that had a far-reaching consequence in the Early & Medieval Church.
Clement fled Alexandria during persecution under the Roman emperor Septimius Severus in 202 and died in Asia Minor.
Next up is Tertullian.
Tertullian was born in Carthage, North Africa, about AD 160. While his pre-christian life is sketchy, it seems he was a scholarly lawyer who was won to Christ in his 30’s.
Tertullian is reckoned one of the more important church fathers because he wrote a long list of apologetic and theological works in both Latin & Greek. His Apologeticus was addressed to the Roman governor of Carthage. It refuted the charges leveled against Christians, demonstrated the loyalty of Christians to the empire, and showed that persecution of Christians was foolish because they multiplied when persecuted.
Tertullian is rare among the Church Fathers in that he wasn’t a pastor as most were. He did teach at Carthage, but he remained a layman who devoted himself to writing works aimed at presenting the reasonableness of the Faith, both to believers and outsiders.
Tertullian became concerned over the way holiness was being neglected in the Church. When his appeals to church leaders fell on deaf ears, he decided to join the growing Montanist movement. You’ll remember it was their aberrant views about asceticism that got them into trouble with the Church. Well, their moral discipline appealed to Tertullian. In his mind, if it was a choice of staying in a spiritually lethargic & morally compromised but doctrinally-right church or joining a Spirit-filled, morally excellent group that held some questionable practices, he’d rather be part of the later and use his influence to bring them in line. His influence had been rejected by the apostolic church at Carthage so he jumped ship. Tertullian remained doctrinally orthodox until his death. His followers rejoined the church at Carthage several decades later.
Soon after conversion, Tertullian began a massive output of Christian writings occupying his last 25 years. A good part of these manuscripts, 31 Latin works, have survived to our time. These can be divided into 3 groups: Apologetics, Doctrine & Ethics.
In his apologetic works, Tertullian answered the charges against Christians made by their enemies. He refutes accusations of, get this à infanticide and incest.
Some of Christianity’s most time-honored sayings are quotes from Tertullian, such as . . .
- Christians are made, not born.
- See, they say, how these Christians love one another, for the pagans are animated by mutual hatred; how the Christians are ready even to die for one another, for the pagans themselves will sooner put to death.
- We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.
- Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading.
- Truth does not blush.
- Out of the frying pan into the fire.
- He who flees will fight again.
- It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.
- We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance
It’s in Tertullian that the phrases, “If God will,” “God bless,” & “God grant” make their first appearance in writing.
Tertullian helped provide a theological position others would later draw on in the looming debates that occupied the Church for generations. It was Tertullian’s treatment of the Trinity as being 3 persons in 1 substance; the divine and human natures of Christ; the subjection of man to original sin; and Christ’s virgin birth and bodily resurrection that helped later generations articulate a cogent position on these difficult subjects.
Both Athanasius & Augustine, as well as a whole host of later church fathers, look back to Tertullian for a clue how to proceed. Tertullian appears to be the first one to use the Latin trinitas as a descriptor for the doctrine of God as 3 person in 1 Substance.
The what, when, & where of Tertullian’s death is unknown. Jerome says he lived to a great age, but we have no record of him after 225 in Carthage, making him 65 at the time of his graduation to glory.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 8, 2013 | English |
This episode is titled, “Striving to Give an Answer”
In his first epistle, the Apostle Peter urged Jesus’ followers to always be ready to give a defense, an apologia, of their faith to anyone who asked. That word meaning an articulate, reasoned position. It was used of the arguments lawyers carried into court to argue their case. Peter added that the Christian must share his/her defense of the Faith, not in a combative or argumentative tone, but with meekness & respect.
If there was any Church Father who sought to embody that command, it was Origen of Alexandria.
Origen was what some might term a “religious fanatic” who gave up his job, slept on the floor, ate no meat, drank no wine, fasted twice a week, owned no shoes, & according to one account castrated himself for the faith. He was also the most prolific scholar of his age, penning hundreds of manuscripts. He was a 1st rate philosopher, & profound student of Scripture.
So outstanding in resisting all the forces that came against him, Origen was nick-named “Adamantius” = man of steel. If that sounds familiar, Adamantine is the metal that makes up Wolverine’s skeleton in the X-Men series. But no! Origen was not a 3rd C Wolverine. à Let’s not get carried away.
A child prodigy, Origen was born near Alexandria in Egypt about AD 185. The oldest of 7 children, he grew up in a Christian home learning the Bible & the meaning of commitment. In 202 his father, Leonidas, was beheaded for the faith in one of those regular rounds of persecution at the hands of hostile Roman officials during the reign of Septimius Severus. The grief stricken 17 year old Origen wanted to join his father as a martyr but his mother prevented him from leaving the house by hiding his clothes.
So; I guess he was willing to DIE in public but not go out naked in it. Sounds like your typical 17 yr old to me.
Origen quickly realized he had more to offer than martyrdom & went to work to support his family. He started a grammar school, copied texts, & instructed new believers in the basics of the faith. While engaged in all this, he himself studied under the pagan philosopher Ammonius Saccas in order to better defend his faith against the arguments of hostile pagans.
As persecution went on, Origen boldly visited the imprisoned, attended their trials, & comforted the condemned. His fame spread & the number of his students increased rapidly. The Bishop of Alexandria at this time was Demetrius, with whom Origen had a hot & cold relationship. There were brief seasons of good will broken by longer periods of antagonism between the two. Origen was by far the sharper intellect & it seems Demetrius was jealous. He demanded Origen limit himself to teaching students issues of doctrine alone. He was not allowed to preach.
Around AD 211-12, during the reign of the Caracalla, Origen visited Rome. The moral looseness he witnessed on the part of Church officials disturbed him. You see, Origen was a confirmed ascetic; committed to self-discipline & an austere lifestyle that shunned anything hinting of a weakening of moral virtue. So on his return to Alexandria he resumed his teaching with a zeal increased by his determination to not follow the example he saw in the capital.
His school had by this time outgrown the strength of a single instructor & administrator. The students clamored for more instruction, & graduates wanted materials to help them study the Bible. Origen brought on others and increasingly devoted himself to the study of the Bible and producing high quality resources. He learned Hebrew so he could get at the text of the OT more efficiently. It was at this time, about 212, that Origen became friends with a wealthy man named Ambrose of Alexandria. Ambrose was a Gnostic whom Origen persuaded to leave his errant views and become a Christian.
Their friendship continued for years, & in appreciation for Origen’s friendship & concern for his soul, Ambrose provided several secretaries to help transcribe Origen’s copious writings. A large number of Origen’s works were dedicated to this friend, Ambrose.
In 214, Origen visited Arabia & the Holy Land. The following year, a popular uprising at Alexandria caused the Emperor Caracalla to allow his soldiers to loot the city. The schools were closed & all foreigners expelled. This meant Ambrose had to leave so Origen went with him. They took refuge in Caesarea on the coast of Israel. Though he wasn’t an ordained priest, the bishops of both Jerusalem & Caesarea asked Origen to carry on a temporary preaching ministry in the local churches.
While this was in line with the practice of the churches in Israel, it was NOT allowed by the Church in Alexandria. When Origen returned there in 216, Bishop Demetrius was furious & tried to limit Origen’s on-going work.
Of his activity over the next decade little is known. He likely engaged mostly in writing & the instruction of new believers.
Origen understood the threat being posed by Gnosticism. He also knew when Gnosticism finally disappeared, another error would rise to replace it. The only way to deal with the sure coming waves of heretical challenge was to provide tools for believers to use to study & understand the Bible. To that end he produced the Hexapla, an early form of what we know today as a Parallel Bible. The Hexapla had the original Hebrew text of the OT, a Greek, transliteration & several other Grk translations. All arranged in 6 parallel columns. One of these Greek translations he found in a jar in the city of Jericho. This was a massive undertaking and required 28 years to complete. The Hexapla obviously became an important part of the development of the NT canon & helped shape scriptural translation. Unfortunately it was lost. It was so massive modern scholars doubt anyone ever copied it entirely. We know of its existence because portions of it exist, and it’s referenced in several comments by contemporary Christians.
Origen might rightly be called the 1st Bible scholar who analyzed the Scriptures on 3 levels: the literal, the moral, and the allegorical. As Origen himself put it, “For just as man consists of body, soul, and spirit, so in the same way does Scripture.” In truth, Origen preferred the allegorical because it allowed for more spiritual interpretations. There were many passages he considered impossible to understand literally.
Origen’s method of allegorical interpretation became the standard for Bible study of later church ages, and would end up leading people pretty far astray.
Origen’s main work, was De Principiis = On First Principles. It was the first systematic exposition of Christian theology ever written. He created a distinctly Christian philosophy by synthesizing Greek techniques of analysis with Biblical texts. Add to these the 2 massive works of the Hexapla & De Principiis, his homilies & commentaries, and it’s clear how he kept 7 secretaries busy and caused the later church father Jerome to say in frustrated admiration, “Has anyone read everything Origen wrote?”
While what we’ve looked at so far makes Origen out to be a pretty solid guy, he wasn’t without warts. In fact, one of the later Church Councils will go so far as to label Origen a heretic.
But hang on; as we’ll see, those councils weren’t always the most unbiased and righteous courts of discernment. Far from it!
It was Origen’s interpretation of Scripture that got him into hot water. He advocated the idea that the real meaning of a text wasn’t its straight-forward, literal reading but that Scripture had an allegorical meaning & THAT was the primary purpose of the text. Finding the allegorical key was the main point, Origen and his followers, claimed.
While there is certainly some deep allegory to some of Scripture, the vast majority of the Biblical text ought to be understood literally. But those who followed Origen took his idea of allegory too far and made allegory the main interpretive method for all of Scripture. This methodology of Bible study held sway for hundreds of years & ended up countering the very thing Origen had set out to do – make the Bible accessible to all believers. For in the allegorical method of interpretation, only those educated in the often esoteric symbols of the Allegoricalists can rightly interpret & understand the Word of God.
Another thing that Origen did which had a negative effect on the Church was his fanatical dedication to self-denial. Origen was so anxious to present himself to God as holy he engaged in practices that were surely aberrant. It was this fastidious devotion to asceticism that encouraged the monastic movement of later times. He denied himself sleep, engaged in extreme fasting, & went barefoot.
There’s one aspect of Origen’s asceticism that bears recounting because modern students of church history often hear only a partial story. A fuller report is warranted as it illustrates how more knowledge on a subject often sheds a very different light on the how & why of things the ancients did.
So – Origen’s great zeal for holiness moved him when he was young & immature to castrate himself.
Yes, you heard me correctly; he castrated – HIMSELF! è Ouch!!!!!!!
His motive was to avoid any potential for scandal because of his instruction of women. Now this is interesting, because though Origen later developed an allegorical method of interpretation, when he was younger he took Matthew 19:12 pretty literally when it said; “There are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”
The early church historian Eusebius says Origen’s self-castration was “proof of an inexperienced and youthful heart but also of faith and self-control.”
It seems Origen later thought better of his youthful act. In his Commentary on Matthew he condemned those who took 19:12 literally, and said such an action was an “outrage.” Based on this, modern skeptics contend the report of Origen’s self-castration is false. But Origen goes on in his writings to speak of the physical problems resulting from castration in a way that suggests personal experience.
This isn’t all that got Origen into trouble with later church leaders. While some of his writings were surely hypothetical, Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul; that a person’s spirit existed before conception, & that all spirits had fallen into sin before birth. Furthermore, he said these sinful spirits were then enslaved in bodies in proportion to the grievousness of the sins they committed. So some were made demons, some men, & some angels. He also believed all spirits could be saved, even satan.
But what got Origen into the biggest trouble doctrinally was his description of the Trinity. He said it was a hierarchy where Father, Son, and Spirit were NOT equal. Though he attacked Gnostic beliefs, like them, he rejected the goodness of material creation.
Three centuries after his death, the Council of Constantinople pronounced Origen a heretic. But try to file that little factoid away for later because we’re going to spend quite a bit of time on this topic of the church debates over the Trinity & the nature of Christ in upcoming episodes. The 4th & 5th Cs were dominated by these debates & while the issue is largely settled for us today, we really ought to have a better appreciation for the agony the church endured for 200 years as church elders tried to figure all this out.
The question is: Did Origen REALLY mean Father, Son & Spirit weren’t equal, thus making him a genuine heretic? Of by referring to them as a hierarchy, was he speaking of their submission to each other in the relational matrix of the Trinity?
Ah—there’s the rub. In order to answer that, we need to know what Origen and later writers meant by the WORDS they used to describe what they believed. And that’s not always an easy task – especially when someone like Origen was oblivious to the arguments and debates that would rage 2 & 300 years later.
Many scholars now contend Origen was merely trying to frame the Faith in the ideas of his day. But after the Council of Constantinople his works were suppressed; many of them being rounded up and burned, making modern evaluation difficult.
Origen’s Against Celsus is one of the finest defenses of Christianity produced in the early church. Answering the charge that Christians, by refusing military service, failed the test of good citizenship, he wrote, “We who by our prayers destroy all demons which stir up wars, violate oaths, and disturb the peace are of more help to the emperors than those who seem to be doing the fighting.”
The authorities weren’t convinced. In AD 250 the Emperor Decius had Origen imprisoned and tortured. He was deliberately kept alive in hope he’d renounce his faith. But Decius died first and Origen was set free. His health broken, he died shortly after his release.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 1, 2013 | English |
This episode is titled, “Not Really an Apology.”
Anyone who embarks on a study of church history and starts at the beginning will soon run in to a pile of church leaders known as the Church Fathers. They’re often divided into the Ante-Nicean and Post-Nicean Fathers; meaning the church leaders who lived ante–before the First great Ecumenical Church Council of Nicea in AD 315, and those who lived during & after it.; thus the prefix – post.
The Fathers can further be broken up into 3 groups, based on the primary focus of their writings. Those 3 groups are the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists and the Theologians.
While there’s some overlap time-wise, we can say that generally the period of the Apostolic Fathers was from the end of the 1st to mid-2nd C. As we saw in a previous episode, the Apostolic Fathers weren’t Apostles; they were followers & students of the Apostles & had a close relationship with them.
Then from the mid-2nd C thru the end of the 3rd is the time of the Apologists. They’re called this because their work focused on defending the Faith against attacks both from without & within.
Following the Apologists were the Theologians who provided leadership of the Church from the beginning of the 4th thru the 6th C. Their work hammered out precisely what it was Christians believed regarding some of the more complex aspects of the Faith.
In the previous episode we considered the Apologist Justin Martyr who wrote 2 important defenses of the Faith and addressed them to 2 Roman Emperors, Antoninus Pious and Marcus Aurelius.
Now we look at another important Apologist, Irenaeus.
But before we dive into his story, let me be clear for those unfamiliar with the term ‘Apologist.’
The modern English word “apology” means to say you’re sorry for having made an error. It’s an acceptance of blame and a way to restore good will. That’s not what the Apologists gave. They had nothing to be sorry for. The word comes from the Greek word Apologia – which was a formal defense of one’s position. It’s a legal word. An apologia is something an attorney would prepare going into court. It was an attempt to prove something by use of evidence and reason. That’s why today Apologetics is the term used for defending the Faith. The tradition of Apologetics goes all the way back to the earliest days of Church History when the Christian Faith was emerging into a hostile pagan world.
The Apologists were those Early Church Fathers, usually pastors of local churches, who wrote up formal works to be given to Roman officials like the Emperor or a provincial governor, explaining why persecution was an inappropriate reaction to the followers of Jesus.
One of the premier Apologists who was also one of the earliest Theologians, was Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, in France. His career was spent battling the dangerous threat of Gnosticism.
Born in Asia Minor, probably the city of Smyrna about 135, he was influenced by the Apostolic Father & student of the Apostle John, Polycarp. Irenaeus was deeply affected by his mentor, saying he wrote down what he learned from him, not on paper but on his heart.
After attending school in Rome, Irenaeus went out as a missionary to Southern Gaul. He served as an elder in a couple churches that witnessed the heavy persecution born by the believers there during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
It was during this time that the Montanist controversy broke. We talked about them in a previous episode. Here’s where we find out it was an issue many churches weighed in on. One faction thought the Montanists ought to be declared heretical and banned. Others found their theology aberrant but didn’t qualify as heresy. They thought the Montanists ought to be reined in, not kicked out.
The churches of Southern Gaul were of this second persuasion and in AD 178 sent Irenaeus to Rome to voice their opinion. When Irenaeus returned to Lyon, he learned its Bishop had been martyred. He was selected to fill his place.
From then till his death in 14 yrs later, Irenaeus stayed a busy man. He was a prolific writer and tireless pastor & missionary.
Irenæus proved to be a great asset for the Church in the later 2nd C and provided a solid foundation for the Church of the next 2 centuries. While he struggles w/the native language of Gaul, he was a master of Greek. He was adept at using Greek culture, language and thought forms in the defense of the Faith and helped lay a philosophical & theological foundation later church leaders drew on.
And don’t forget, Irenaeus’ connection back to Christ was close, though he lived toward the end of the 2nd C. His teacher was the long-lived Polycarp, who’d been the disciple of the aged John – direct disciple of Jesus!
This helps us put his emphasis on apostolic succession in perspective. This became a key concept in his writing. Irenaeus didn’t argue for some kind of dynastic principle in Church leadership so much as the idea that the Faith itself; its doctrines, tenets, values & mission where drawn from the original Apostles, passed on to their followers, then passed on to the next generation, and so forth. Church leaders obtain authority only to the degree they were loyal to the foundation the Apostles laid. Their authority was derived directly from their adherence to what was already given, it did not originate with them or merely with the office they held.
Okay è Personal Comment Alert: What follows is my personal commentary.
Church leaders today would do well to remember this when they’re pressed to compromise with the World on moral & spiritual issues. The authority of pastors and church leaders comes from one place – God. It does not adhere to some office in the Church. A title means nothing, no matter how big the hat or fancy the label. God gives authority to fulfill HIS calling and mission for that person. When they step outside that role, they possess no real authority. The authority of the minister is derived and directly proportional to their loyalty to the Apostolic message & Mission.
That’s what Irenaeus was saying in his writings. And while there was an extension of this principle into the realm of church leadership, Irenaeus didn’t advocate some kind of spiritual dynastic principle whereby Church leadership & hierarchy was bequeathed by one leader to the next.
Irenæus was a fierce opponent of error & schism, and the most orthodox of the ante-Nicene fathers. It may be of interest to some listeners that Irenaeus, along with the Church Father, Papias and most of his contemporaries, were pre-millennarian in their eschatological views. Those views were later abandoned by the Church as too Jewish in origin. While laboring hard for the spread & defense of the Faith on Earth, Irenaeus was à “gazing up into heaven,” like the original disciples, anxiously waiting for the return of the Lord and the establishment of his kingdom.
Irenæus was the first of the Church Fathers to make full use of the NT. While the Gnostics he spent much of his time refuting wanted to carve up the Bible, whittling it down to just a handful of texts, Irenaeus referred to all 4 Gospels and nearly all the epistles as Scripture.
Though he had great zeal for essential doctrine, Irenæus was tolerant toward differences over non-essentials. He urged the bishop of Rome to lighten up in his demands about how & when people could celebrate the Resurrection.
2 major works of Irenaeus have survived. Against Heresies & The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.
Against Heresies was written about 185, while he was bishop of Lyon. It’s aimed at the error of Gnosticism we’ve already considered. Against Heresies has 5 parts.
Book 1 is an historical sketch of various Gnostic sects alongside a statement of Christian faith.
Book 2 is a philosophical critique of Gnosticism.
Book 3 is a Scriptural critique of it, while …
Book 4 answers Gnosticism from the words of Christ Himself.
It wraps up with Book 5; a vindication of the resurrection against Gnostic arguments denying it.
In a quote from early in the work, Irenaeus says, “Error is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.”
Irenaeus has been called “Father of Church Dogmatics” because he sought to formulate the principles of Christian theology and provide an exposition of the church’s beliefs. That was especially clear in his other writing, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. There he laid down the premise that the Christian faith finds its revelation & authority in the Scriptures. He refers to both the Old & New Testaments to prove this and as I said earlier, quotes from all but 4 of the NT books.
Irenaeus is an important figure for the development of Christian theology because in his battle with Gnosticism, he lays down the principle of recapitulation, that is, that Jesus Christ is the core & essence of all true theology. He’s both Creator & Redeemer. What was lost in Adam is regained in Christ. What he says about Jesus, as drawn from the Scriptures, would be used later by the Theologians when they had their discussion & debates over the nature of Christ.
Besides these 2 works we know were authored by Irenaeus, there are several other fragments and some works attributed to him by people like Eusebius. We’ll skip reviewing all those except one that deserves mention. In the Epistle to Florinus, Irenaeus writes to a friend who’d at one time served with him in ministry. In fact, they’d both grown up in the Faith, side by side at the feet of Polycarp. Florinus became an elder at the Church in Rome, but was deposed when he embraced Gnosticism. Irenæus reminded him touchingly of their friendship & past. You can hear the ache in Irenaeus’ words that someone who’d been so close and so clear on the things of God, could throw it all aside for such silliness as the error of the Gnostics. Irenaeus dissects that error so skillfully, it’s difficult to imagine anyone could read the letter and not return to the faith of his youth. But we don’t know what came of Florinus.
As we end this episode, let me once again encourage you to stop by both the sanctorum.us website and the CS FB page to leave a comment. Be sure to tell us where you live so we can get an idea of where the CS family is.
If you enjoy the podcast, why not recommend it to your friends. Turns out that’s by far how most people find out about CS – word of mouth.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 1, 2013 | English |
This episode is titled, “The Spreading Tree “
Tertullian, pastor of the church of Carthage in North Africa, addressed unbelievers at the beginning of the 3rd C, saying à
“We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate and forum; we have left to you only your temples.”
That introduces our theme for this episode; the expansion of the Faith in the early centuries.
Writing in the middle of the 2nd C, Justin Martyr said,
“There is no people, Greek or barbarian, or of any other race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell in tents or wander about in covered wagons—among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things.”
Comments by other Early Church leaders like Irenæus, Arnobius, & Origen lead us to conclude that by the end of the 3rd C the name of Christ was known, revered, & persecuted in many provinces & cities of the Roman Empire. In one of his edicts, the Emperor Maximian says that “almost all” had abandoned the worship of the old gods for the new sect called Christianity.
In the absence of hard numbers, tallying the number of Jesus’ followers can’t be precise, but a reasonable assumption of the faithful stands about 10 to 12% of the total population at the beginning of the 4th C. In some places, the number was much higher as local movements saw the Gospel take firmer root. According to Chrysostom, the Christian population of the city of Antioch at the end of the 4th C. was half the whole.
While 10% of the entire Empire may not seem that impressive a number, keep in mind that 10% shared a spiritual unity that made them appear a far larger group when set over against the highly-fragmented 90% of the pagan world.
Looking back to Asia where the whole thing started, the Apostles had spread the new faith over Israel, Syria, & Asia Minor. According to Pliny the Younger, at the dawn of just the 2nd C, the pagan temples in Asia Minor were almost completely neglected & animal sacrifices hardly performed because so many pagan had converted to the new faith.
In a first step of what would prove to be a major outreach to the East, during the 2nd C Christianity took root in the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia along with several regions in Persia. In the 3rd C., it reached North into Armenia & South into Arabia.
There’s an enduring legend that the apostles Thomas & Bartholomew carried the Gospel to India. For sure, a Christian teacher named Pantaeus of Alexandria went there about 190. By the 4th C, vibrant national churches were growing in the subcontinent.
It was the moving of the seat of power from Rome to Constantinople in the early 4th C that helped ensure the migration of the Faith eastward. It also meant that all the important early Church Councils were held in or around Constantinople. The great doctrinal controversies over the Trinity & Nature of Christ were carried out mostly in Asia Minor, Syria, & Egypt.
Speaking of Egypt, Christianity in Africa gained a firm foothold first there, during the time of the Apostles. The city of Alexandria was a world center of learning & culture. It’s libraries & schools drew from all over the world and many Jews called it home. It was in Alexandria that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, 200 yrs before Jesus. This Greek Bible, called the Septuagint, opened the seemingly opaque ideas of the Jews to Gentiles seekers after truth for the first time. It was in Alexandria that the religion of Moses was set alongside the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. It was there the Jewish philosopher Philo sought to harmonize Greek & Jewish thought. Many of his ideas were picked up by later Christian apologists in defending the faith against Roman misconceptions.
Ancient tradition says it was Mark who laid the foundation of the church in Alexandria, which became one of the 5 most important & influential churches of the first Centuries. A theological school flourished in Alexandria from the 2nd C in which the great church fathers Clement & Origen taught. From Alexandria, the Gospel spread South into Nubia (modern Sudan) & Ethiopia. At a council of Alexandria in 235, 20 African bishops attended from all over the Nile basin.
During the 4th C, in a subject we’ll treat more fully in a later episode, Egypt coughed up the Arian heresy, then quickly answered it with Athanasian orthodoxy. Egypt was the birthplace of monasticism as practiced by its earliest advocates, Antony & Pachomius. Monasticism then spread across the rest of the Christian world. But that’s yet another subject for a couple later episodes.
Christianity spread from Egypt across the rest of North Africa quickly. It helped that there were numerous Roman outposts reached by 3 or 4 days sailing from Italy. The faith spread rapidly over the fertile fields & burning sands of Mauritania & Numidia, taking root in Carthage. In 258 a synod of 87 bishops met there & just 50 yrs later the Donatists held a council of 270 bishops.
It may be of interest to some listeners that the oldest Latin translation of the Bible, called the “Itala” & was the basis of Jerome’s “Vulgate”, was produced in Africa for Africans, not in Rome for Romans, because the Christians there used Greek. Latin theology also wasn’t born in Rome, but in Carthage. Tertullian was its father. Latin theology then grew in North Africa to find its zenith in the world of Augustine of Hippo, another North African city. The influence of Augustine simply cannot be overstated, as we’ll see.
After reaching Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and a narrow band of North Africa, the Expansion of the Faith stalled. Whether or not it would have renewed its reach further South becomes moot in light of the Conquest of Islam in the 7th & 8th Cs.
Tracking the expansion of the Faith into Europe, we pick up the report of the early church historian Eusebius who said by the middle of the 3rd C the Church at Rome had a bishop, 46 elders, 7 deacons with 7 assistants, 42 acolytes which we can think of as “interns,” 50 readers, exorcists, & ushers; & 1500 widows & poor who were under its care. From these numbers we guesstimate the actual membership of the Church at about 50,000 or 1/20th of the City’s population. The strength of Christianity in Rome is confirmed by the enormous extent of the catacombs where Christians were buried.
From Rome, the church spread to all the cities of Italy. The first Roman synod we know of was held in the mid-2nd C and had 12 bishops in attendance. A century later there were 60.
An official persecution of the followers of Christ in Gaul in 177 shows the church had to already be there and large enough as to raise the concern of the authorities. The faith arrived in Gaul, not from Rome, but from Asia Minor. We know that because Irenæus, the bishop of Lyons, was a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna & Irenaeus reported in to his peers in Asia Minor rather than to Rome. It wasn’t till the middle of the 3rd C that Rome sent missionaries to Gaul. One of them was Dionysius who founded the first church at Paris, then died a martyr at Montmartre to become the patron saint of France.
Spain was most likely reached with the Faith in the 2nd C. The Council of Elvira in 306 saw 19 bishops assemble to catch up and discuss the work of their various provinces. The apostle Paul once formed the plan of a missionary journey to Spain, and according to Clement of Rome he did preach there.
Irenæus reported that the Gospel had been preached to the Germans and several other Northern tribes but he likely meant just those portions of Northern Europe that had been brought under Roman control.
Although it’s a bit of a mystery why the North African Tertullian would know, he said the Faith had taken root in Britain by the end of the 2nd C. As we’ll see in a later episode, the Celtic church existed in England, Ireland, & Scotland, quite independent of Rome, long before the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons by the Roman missionary Augustine. In fact, that early Celtic church sent missionaries to Germany, France, & the Low Countries well before the Italian outreach. In the mid-8th C, the Venerable Bede reported that about the year 167 the British king Lucius asked the bishop of Rome to send missionaries. Then, at the Council of Arles in 314, British bishops from York, London & Colchester, were in attendance.
This would be a good place to talk about the Expansion of the Faith into the East but that’s a huge, important, and all too often overlooked part of the History of the Church, so we’ll save it for later. Suffice it for now – as many students of history know, the Roman Empire got stalled in the East, first by the Parthians, then later by their successors, the Sassanids.
The Sassanids gladly applied the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And that meant from the late 2nd thru 3rd C, as Christians were being persecuted in the Roman Empire, they were welcomed to the East by the Sassanids. The church sprang up and grew rapidly all over Mesopotamia & Persia in what today we know as Iran. Some of the greatest cultural achievements of the Faith during the 3rd C were in this Persian church. But when Constantine embraced Christianity and the Church moved into the position of political favor in the Roman west, you may guess what that meant for the Church in the regions controlled by the Sassanids. Still, this eastern church had developed its own unique culture, and instead of moving back west to join the church of the Byzantine-Roman world, persecution pushed it even further east, all the way to China.
Let’s finish out this episode with a look at Justin Martyr who we began with a quote from.
Justin was born in the ancient city of Shechem in the very center of Israel. But by the time he was born in AD 100, it was a Roman city called Flavia Neapolis = New Flavianberg. Raised by pagan parents, he sought life’s meaning in the major philosophies of his day. But his pursuit of truth resulted in nothing more than a series of bitter disappointments.
Justin was too sharp to swallow the shallow reasoning & logical inconsistencies of pagan thought. Whether it was religion or philosophy, his keen intellect cut through the silliness that was the hallmark of the pagan worldview.
His first teacher was a Stoic who “knew nothing of God and did not even think knowledge of him to be necessary.” After that Justin followed an itinerant philosopher, who was more interested in collecting his fee than the pursuit of truth. Next up was a Pythagorean, but his course in music, astronomy, and geometry was too slow for Justin’s voracious mind. Finally, he applied himself to Platonism which was more intellectually demanding, but proved once again to hold too many inconsistencies.
Then, at about the age of 30, after a long conversation with an elderly gentleman, Justin’s life was transformed. He said, “A fire was suddenly kindled in my soul. I fell in love with the prophets and these men who had loved Christ; I reflected on all their words and found that this philosophy alone was true and profitable. That is how and why I became a philosopher. And I wish that everyone felt the same way that I do.”
Justin was determined to reconcile faith & reason. His work took him first to Ephesus in AD 132 where he held a debate with a Jew named Trypho about the correct way to interpret Scripture. The book which came out of this debate is aptly titled, The Dialogue with Trypho & teaches 3 main points:
1) The Old Covenant has passed away to make place for the New;
2) The Logos is the God of the Old Testament; AND à
3) Believers in Christ constitute a New Israel; that is, the new covenant people of God.
Justin then moved to Rome, founded a school, and wrote 2 bold Apologias = formal defenses of the Faith, intended to be read by pagan officials persecuting Christians. Think of an Apologia like a legal brief.
Justin’s First Apology published in 155 was addressed to Emperor Antoninus Pius. It was an attempt to explain the Faith, which as we saw in an earlier episode was so badly misunderstood by unbelieves of that time. Justin showed how Christianity was not a threat to the State and should be treated as a legal religion.
He reasoned with the Emperor that Christians are his “best helpers and allies in securing good order, convinced as we are that no wicked man … can be hidden from God, and that everyone goes to eternal punishment or salvation in accordance with the character of his actions.” He made an eloquent case for why Christianity was superior to paganism, that Christ fulfilled prophecy, and that paganism was in reality a poor imitation of true religion.
Justin’s First Apology has become an important record for students of history in that he gave a detailed description of early Christian worship to prove to unbelievers the Faith wasn’t some kind of subversive movement. The most famous passage is this:
On the day called Sunday there is a gathering together in the same place of all who live in a given city or rural district. The memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. Then when the reader ceases, the president in a discourse admonishes and urges the imitation of these good things. Next we all rise together and send up prayers.
When we cease from our prayer, bread is presented and wine and water. The president in the same manner sends up prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people sing out their assent, saying the ‘Amen.’ A distribution and participation of the elements for which thanks have been given is made to each person, and to those who are not present they are sent by the deacons.
Those who have means and are willing, each according to his own choice, gives what he wills, and what is collected is deposited with the president. He provides for the orphans and widows, those who are in need on account of sickness or some other cause, those who are in bonds, strangers who are sojourning, and in a word he becomes the protector of all who are in need.
Justin’s Second Apology was written soon after Marcus Aurelius became emperor in 161. In these writings, Justin showed that the Christian faith alone as genuinely rational. He said the Logos; which was an important philosophical concept of the time, became incarnate to teach humanity truth and to redeem people from spiritual deception. Since Marcus Aurelius was a true philosopher Emperor, Justin sought to appeal to his love of truth with this Second Apology.
But the Emperor was more enamored of Greek thought than the new-fangled innovations of the Christians. 4 yrs after penning the Second Apology, Justin and his disciples were arrested. The prefect asked him to denounce his faith by making a sacrifice to the gods. Justin replied, “No one who is rightly minded turns from true belief to false.” It was an easy answer for Justin because he’d spent his adult life discerning the true from the false.
He was taken out and beheaded. Since he gave his life for “true philosophy,” Justin was surnamed Martyr.
by Lance Ralston | Nov 24, 2013 | English |
This week’s episode is titled “Buy One, Get One Free.”
In the last episode we touched briefly at a heretic named Marcion. He was one of the first to introduce a false teaching that would evolve into a major challenge to the emerging Christian Faith; that errant movement was known as Gnosticism.
Marcion was the son of the pastor of the church in Pontus, on the Southern coast of the Black Sea. He was a ship-owner sailing passengers & shipping cargo throughout the Empire. Around AD 140, Marcion’s father disfellowshipped him from the congregation. This was the result either of Marcion’s seduction of a young woman, his increasingly heretical ideas, or both. Whatever the reason, he relocated to Rome where he was unknown & his reputation was untarnished. When he made a large contribution to the church at Rome, it greased the wheels of his acceptance as a member in good standing.
But Marcion soon began espousing ideas that diverged from what the elders taught. In his previous travels, Marcion had been influenced by a teacher named Cerdo, an early advocate of what today is known as Gnosticism.
Now, let me be clear, Gnosticism was more a religious trend than a united movement with a settled set of doctrines. While Gnostics held a common set of core beliefs, they interpreted them widely. This makes describing Gnosticism difficult. Generally, we can say it was a mash-up of à
- Greek philosophy,
- Eastern mystery cults, and
- Christian terminology.
From Greek philosophy, Gnostics borrowed the idea that all physical matter was inherently an unalterably evil, while the spiritual realm was equally, inherently & unalterably good. From esoteric & occult Eastern mystery sects they took the idea there was a secret body of knowledge that when understood granted enlightenment. This enlightenment was the Gnostic equivalent of salvation because it liberated one’s consciousness from mere physical existence into a kind of permanent spirituality.
Gnosticism took its name from this idea of “salvation thru enlightenment.” The Greek word ‘gnosis’ means ‘knowledge.’
Because the Christian movement was growing rapidly, Gnostics adopted Christian forms & terms as a sneaky marketing ploy, hoping to pawn off their ideas as an elite form of Christianity. The ploy worked & Gnosticism took root in several congregations just as winds of false teaching do in every generation.
Marcion was one of the first to introduce Gnostic elements in his highly-edited form of Christianity. Drawing from Cerdo, he proposed 2 different gods; an angry, vengeful OT deity, & a warm, fuzzy father-figure of the NT. Toting the Gnostic line, Marcion said the physical body was evil & promoted a rigorous asceticism that denied all physical pleasure. Marcion’s followers took communion by drinking water because wine was too tasty. They went so far as to say even marital sex was taboo.
Marcion claimed Jesus was not born of Mary. He said Jesus appeared at Capernaum in AD 29 as a grown man. Note that = Jesus only appeared. Marcion said Jesus didn’t have a literal body. He couldn’t since being physical, the body was evil. Jesus only appeared, or seemed to have a body; in truth, he was more phantom than tangible.
This is called Docetism; one of the earliest forms of Gnosticism. Docetism comes from the word meaning to seem. Marcion said the death & resurrection of Christ weren’t literal; they couldn’t be since Jesus wasn’t corporeal. They were just a phantom demonstration of God’s love and sacrifice. Though the church at Rome quickly became hip to Marcion’s theological shenanigans & declared his ideas heretical in 144, they gained some traction and Marcion set up a counterfeit church in both Italy & in Asia Minor where the Eastern mystery cults were popular. Marcionite fellowships reached as far as Arabia & Egypt & were still operating well into the 4th Century.
Marcion’s was only one of several streams of Gnosticism that developed during the 2nd & 3rd Centuries to challenge Christian orthodoxy. The main feature of all the Gnostics was their sharp dualism, splitting up the physical & spiritual into utterly divergent realms. They believed the spiritual realm contained a hierarchy of spiritual beings who were layered upward toward a transcendent & ultimate spirit. This transcendent god had given rise to a lower deity, which had done likewise, & so on over thousands of spiritual emanations until there was a spirit distant enough from the origin to be so low as to be able to create the physical universe. Some Gnostics like Cerdo & Marcion, said this lowly creator spirit was the Jewish God of the OT.
Gnostics believed that sparks of divinity, little portions of pure spirit were locked inside some, but not all, humans. Those who had them, they said, would become Gnostics. Another clever marketing ploy; after all, who doesn’t want to think they have a little spark of something special? So, they were tempted to go Gnostic to prove they did. The next step was to pay one of the Gnostic teachers the requisite fee to learn the Gnosis, that is, the secret knowledge, so they could have their divine spark fanned into full flame.
Voilà = Enlightenment!
It was an ancient version of, “The first lesson is free, but if you want to go deeper, well, that’s going to cost you. Oh, & by the way, if you’re smart, you WILL join us – because that’s what smart holders of the divine spark do. You want to be one of the special one’s don’t you? Well, sign up, pay the fee & you’re in! Oh and BTW – if you sign up today, it’s half off.”
Okay, I obviously made that last part up, but once you realize what the Gnostic teachers were all about, you wouldn’t’ really be surprised if they did have ancient versions of all the modern sales gimmicks. Family & group plans, Buy One; Get One Free, No Shipping.
For the Gnostics, Enlightenment equaled Salvation. It was the realization they weren’t mere humans devoid of the divine spark, so little better than animals. They were earth-bound spirits destined to re-emerge with the divine hierarchy, that series of emanations from the supreme, transcendent God. Gnosticism was a stepped progression of spiritual growth whereby members increased their rank by paying their Gnostic guides more & more to learn increasingly powerful gnosis. If this sounds similar to a modern religious group that calls itself by a similar name = Something like, uhhh à Knowledgeology = Well there really is nothing new under the sun.
Gnosticism presented a challenge to the Church for a couple of reasons.
First = Gnostics used many of the same terms Christians used. This confused novices and those not properly taught. It’s something pseudo-christian cults do to this day. They use orthodox vocabulary but pour different meanings into the words.
Second = It’s human nature to be attracted to that which is secret, hidden & mysterious; and that’s what the Gnostics were all about.
Third = The Gnostics believed they were superior to others. This appealed to ever-present pride. The Bible teaches that humans were created in the image of God & originally destined for glory. There’s a latent sense of a call to glory that lingers in the soul. Greatness beckons us all. Gnostics said this was the divine spark & only they could activate it.
Fourth = Human nature assumes something as important as salvation has to be costly. There’s no such thing as a free-lunch. The Christian Gospel says while salvation is by God’s grace & free to us, it’s supremely costly to God because it cost the Life of Christ. But many miss this & think grace is utterly free. The Gospel’s message of salvation by grace seemed thin & weak to those convinced there had to be work involved, compared to the Gnostic campaign of “Pay to Play.”
What comes as a surprise is to realize the first real doctrinal challenge to Christianity was not over Jesus’ deity. It was over His humanity. Today, most controversy is over Jesus being God. It’s easy to see Him as a man. What’s more difficult is to understand how the human and divine come together in the Incarnation, so this becomes one of the main points of contention with non-Christian and the cults. The Docetism of Marcion and other Gnostics maintained Jesus’s divinity but denied his humanity.
And let me just give a bit of a teaser for some of our later episodes when we get to the 4th & 5th Centuries. Turns out the battles that went on in the church over how to understand the dual nature of Christ became a bloody & contentious period of Church history. One of the Church Councils is nick-named the Gangster Synod because the church leaders who attended it beat each other up over this issue. è Fun times!
Back to Gnosticism . . .
Other branches of the Gnostics taught Jesus & Christ were 2 separate entities. Jesus was just a man with a human mother & father while Christ was a spirit that descended on the man Jesus at his baptism, ministered thru him for 3 yrs, then departed in the Garden of Gethsemane. So the man that died on the cross was just a spent shell; his death accomplished nothing in terms of salvation. These Gnostics claimed that the Christ-spirit or Christ-consciousness continued to inhabit their leaders & could come upon anyone who showed sufficient enlightenment.
Like Marcion with his abbreviated list of approved books we considered in the previous episode, the Gnostics edited portions of the NT that spoke of Christ’s physicality. They couldn’t have Him writing in the dust of the ground or eating after the resurrection because, well, spirits don’t do those kinds of things. They also had to insert episodes into the Jesus-story that gave an opening for their aberrant theology. The recent spate of alternative Gospels that have made the news are for the most part Gnostic Scriptures known to the early church but rejected for their spurious origin and dubious Gnostic purpose. They weren’t included in the NT canon because they didn’t meet the strenuous criteria used to validate accepted writings.
As I mentioned, there were several branches or streams of Gnosticism. They differed in all sorts of ways. One of the major divisions was on how to deal with their core-belief in the inherent evil of all matter. One group believed the proper way to respond was by a strict asceticism that avoided physical pleasure. They ate only the most bland foods , drank tasteless beverages, wore uncomfortable clothes, abstained from sex & avoided any stimulation of the senses deemed pleasurable.
The other tendency was a 180° reversal of asceticism. These Gnostics immersed themselves in physical pleasure. They said asceticism was pointless because whether it was pleasurable or not, contact with the world was unalterably evil – so it didn’t matter! If it was all evil, might was well enjoy it! These Gnostics made it their aim to so immerse themselves in pleasure, and this often meant indulging in the grossest kinds of immorality, that they’d experience enlightenment anyway, and this would prove that their consciousness was divorced from the body. These Gnostics said their divine spark was like a pearl that could not be stained by the muck of the world. Of course, this was quite appealing to people who wanted to continue in sin and believe they were going to heaven when they died.
Spread between these extremes, were other branches of Gnostic thought & teaching.
Until the 19th Century most of what we know about the Gnostics came from Christian leaders like Irenaeus & Origen who refuted their ideas.
Here’s what the Early Church Father, Irenaeus, wrote about the Gnostics in his preface to his work; “Against Heresies.”
These men falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation. They also overthrow the faith of many, by drawing them away, under a pretense of superior knowledge, from Him who rounded and adorned the universe; as if they had something more excellent and sublime to reveal, than God who created the heaven and the earth, and all things therein. By means of specious words, they cunningly allure the simple-minded to inquire into their system; but they nevertheless clumsily destroy them, while they initiate them into their blasphemous and impious opinions . . . and these simple ones are unable, even in such a matter, to distinguish falsehood from truth.
As I said, until recently, pretty much all historians knew of ancient Gnosticism was what it’s opponents said about it. Then, several decades ago, ancient Gnostic manuscripts began to surface. The more notable of these are the Codex Askewianus, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Wisdom of Jesus, & the Acts of Peter. In 1946, a collection of Gnostic manuscripts was discovered near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. They were dated to the late 4th Century.
Simon Magus, mentioned in Acts 8, was labeled by early Christians as the originator of Gnosticism and may indeed have had a hand in blending Greek philosophy, Eastern mysteries, & Christian lingo into a home-spun spiritualism. After Simon, another Gnostic teacher named Menander followed up on & elaborated on Simon’s work. Saturninus brought Gnosticism to Antioch in Syria where a thriving Christian community already existed.
Cerinthus spread Gnosticism in Asia Minor & as we’ve seen Cerdo & Marcion brought Gnostic ideas to Rome.
Where Gnosticism thrived was in the North African city of Alexandria, the Roman Empire’s 2nd largest & a highly-influential city. Alexandria was a center of culture & learning & Gnosticism’s presence there greatly advanced its reach.
The arid conditions of North Africa facilitated the preservation of documents, so some of our most ancient manuscripts of the NT come from that region. Some conservative scholars believe these manuscripts bear evidence of Gnostic tampering in that they tend to exclude portions of the Gospels that reference Jesus’ corporeal existence, as well as those parts of the NT epistles which speak of the life of Faith affecting the physical world.
But the net result of Gnosticism on the Church was the clarification of what Christians believe about the humanity and deity of Christ & the nature of faith. Gnostic challenges moved Church leaders to identify which books were Scripture as well as what makes for essential doctrine. Though the cause of orthodoxy was advanced by confronting Gnosticism, Gnostic ideas became entrenched in some churches and by the early 4th Century, when Christianity was finally removed from under the heel of Imperial persecution, Church leaders were split over some of the ideas Gnosticism had inserted.
But that’s a matter for a latter episode.
by Lance Ralston | Nov 24, 2013 | English |
This episode is titled “Writings.”
The history of the Christian Faith & Church inevitably has to deal with the importance of Books. From its earliest days the Faith has been intimately linked to the Scriptures. At first, Scripture was the Hebrew Bible or what is known today as the Old Testament. But other writings were added to the Church’s Bible as the years passed.
The question of what writings to include in the Bible was one of the major topics of discussion during the first 4 centuries. But the question of what ought to be included or excluded is not nearly the contentious debate skeptics claim. With rare exception, church leaders generally agreed what texts comprised Scripture. Their reluctance to make an official pronouncement was because humility prohibited them claiming the authority to do so. Still, by the 4th Century, Church leaders recognized time was running out on those who were in a position to make the needed determination.
Following the age of the martyrs, the next period of Church history was marked by theological challenge. It was crucial local congregations have a standard to go by, an authoritative body of doctrine by which to evaluate what was being taught. That authority was the Bible.
Christians started with those Scriptures the Jews already revered as God’s Word, the Tanach, or as Christians referred to it, the OT. To this base of 39 books, believers added another set of writings they called the New Testament. Together, these 2 Testaments comprise what’s called the “Canon of Scripture.”
Canon means a measuring rod, as in a ruler. The Canon of Scripture is the standard for measuring if something is straight, if it aligns with truth. The Bible was esteemed Truth because it was regarded as God’s inspired & inerrant Word.
And that’s what proved such a daunting challenge to Church leaders as they considered what to include in the NT Canon. Who were they to decide what was inspired by the Holy Spirit & ought to be regarded as the standard by which to evaluate all else? Still, the task was necessary so they developed a criteria by which to decide what ought to be included in the Canon. Their reasoning went like this . . .
First was the OT canon of Jewish Scriptures. Then Jesus came as the Word of God made flesh. Though Jesus wrote no books, His life and words were written on the hearts and minds of the Apostles, whose teaching in both oral & written form was accepted as authoritative.
Early evidence makes it clear that letters from the Apostles were circulated & read in the churches, being accepted as laying down the norms of Christian belief and practice. A ravenous hunger for stories of Jesus moved the Apostles to develop a standard oral tradition that we see today forming the core of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, & to a certain degree, Luke.
But how do we get to the 27 books that form today’s NT canon? What criteria did Church leaders use when they finally identified those books?
1St – A candidate writing for inclusion had to have a self-identifying quality about it as having been inspired by God. It had to possess a certain power to affect the lives of readers toward God.
2nd – A candidate writing had to have a long reputation among the churches for having been used in worship to the edification of believers.
3rd – A writing had to have a close connection to an Apostle. If not written by the Apostle himself, was the author a close associate of an Apostle & did it bear the mark of the Apostle’s influence?
For example . . .
Luke wasn’t an apostle but his Gospel and the Book of Acts are included in the NT because he was a close associate of the Apostle Paul and had interviewed the other Apostles in researching Jesus’ story.
Mark wasn’t an apostle, but received his information about Jesus from the Apostle Peter. He was also a companion of Paul’s; sort of. But that’s another story.
On the other side of the issue, in the late 1st Century, Clement, the 2nd or 3rd pastor at Rome, wrote a letter to the church at Corinth. That letter was read often at Corinth in the years that followed and proved of great benefit. But because Clement wasn’t deemed to have an Apostolic connection, his letter wasn’t included in the NT canon. There wasn’t even much debate if it should be. It didn’t pass the test, so it wasn’t included.
Because the test of Apostolic origin was crucial to canonical books, the Church leaders of the late 2nd Century realized time was running out on reliable witnesses who could confirm a writing’s Apostolic authority. The pressure was on to put their imprimatur of acceptance on those works connected to the Apostles.
Since we’re speaking about the writings that made it INTO the NT, let me mention a couple of influential works that didn’t but were nevertheless crucial in shaping the early understanding of the Faith.
One of the most important extra-Biblical writings of the early church was the Didache. We don’t know when it was written but it was in use as a manual for church life by the 1st decade of the 2nd C. The Didache gives instructions for how to conduct services, worship, baptisms, Communion, and what was turning into a growing problem, how to exercise church discipline. The Didache also had instructions for how to discern heresy. The last section contains instructions for how to live in light of the Lord’s return – which lends tremendous weight to the idea of imminency.
Pardon me for a little personal comment here but it’s hard to resist.
But even before I make that comment, I need to comment – on my comments. And I need to – because I got a great email from a faithful subscriber who told me he’s recommend the podcast to a lot of friends & acquaintances. A few of them told him they enjoyed the podcast, until my particular bias came out. Then, I guess they stopped listening. And he was bummed, because he likes the podcast and puts up with my occasional personal commentary, because well, he mostly agrees with it, but also because the rest of the podcast steers a pretty unbiased course through the subject matter.
We had a nice little email dialog and I shared WHY I DO make occasional comments. I realized while writing him that I ought to share that here. He thought it was a good idea. So here goes . . .
I share infrequent remarks & personal opinion for 2 reasons . . .
1) You get to know me a little better. With my favorite podcasts, after I’ve listened for a while, I find myself wanting to know more about the author. So when they share little tid-bits about themselves, it’s fun & makes the whole experience more relational. I don’t want to hear a whole podcast about their cat, but hearing they have one makes the author more real, rather than just a formless voice.
2) It’s good for us to hear the opinions of those we differ with, in their own voice, rather than told what they said or believe by those of our own persuasion. The followers of Jesus ought to be aimed at relational maturity, & that means accepting there’s a big world out there filled with people who don’t all agree with us. Learning to respect them and let them speak, without feeling like I’ve betrayed some kind of loyalty to God is crucial. I can listen w/o agreeing. In fact, I need to, because often times, by listening, I realize what others TOLD me they believed, ISN’T! And even if it is; persuading them isn’t going to be furthered by shutting them off & turning away because I don’t agree.
If you’ve gone to the sanctorum.us website, you probably know I’m a pastor of an Evangelical non-denominational church called CC in Southern CA. So my comments will be what can generally be called a conservative, Protestant position. If you’re interested in more detail, you can visit our church website, which you can track down by going to the sanctorum.us website. When I do make one of those comments, I’ll try to remember to preface it with a disclaimer, a notice, so you can make whatever mental adjustment you need to. I would just ask that you hear me out. You don’t have to agree. I don’t expect everyone will. But please don’t toss the rest of the podcast for the sake of what I really do think is an important part of making this podcast better by being more personal.
So, with all that preface – now to it. We were talking about how the last section of the Didache is instructions for how to live in light of the Lord’s return – which lends tremendous weight to the idea of imminency.
I’m rather tired of hearing that “No one believed in a pre-tribulation rapture until Margaret MacDonald & John Darby made it up in the 1830’s.” The vast majority of people who say that do so because they heard someone else say it. They haven’t done any historical work to see if it’s true. It isn’t. And even it if WAS – it makes as much sense as saying Sola Scriptura & Sola Fide were made up by Martin Luther & John Calvin in the 16th C. That’s absurd! Does the neglect of a Biblical reality for hundreds of years make it any less true? All John Darby did was restore much needed attention to a neglected belief of the Apostles & Early Church. A belief amply supported by the sense of urgency found in the Didache.
Okay, end of commentary; back to the history . . .
Another writing early Christians used to amplify their faith was called The Shepherd of Hermas. This work from the late 1st to mid-2nd C was written by Hermas, a former slave who says an angel appeared to him in the form of a shepherd & dictated the contents of the book.
It contains 5 visions, 12 commands & 10 parables. It’s highly allegorical and addresses problems that divided the Church, calling the faithful to repent.
The Shepherd was so influential that a handful of the Early Church Fathers thought it ought to be included in the NT. But its failure, like Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians, to hold a clear Apostolic connection precluded its inclusion.
Another event, a highly unfortunate situation, forced the hand of the Church leaders in moving to complete the canon.
A heretic named Marcion [Mar-key-own] set up a counterfeit church that paralleled the Apostolic Faith. But he proposed 2 gods; A wrathful, angry, violent God of the Jews & OT, and a loving, kind, benevolent Father-God of the NT & Christians. Marcion rejected the OT and those NT books he considered too Jewish; books like Matthew, Mark, Acts, Hebrews, 1 & 2 Timothy, & Titus. Marcion’s Bible was a highly-edited Gospel of Luke & a handful of Paul’s letters.
Though the Church excommunicated Marcion in AD 144, his rejection of all things Jewish carried a certain resonance with some Gentile believers persecuted by Jews. Marcion formed his counterfeit church from their ranks. It was the heretical Marcion’s pre-emptive move of identifying which books were Scripture that forced Church leaders’ hand to provide an official list of genuine Christian Scripture.
The OT was retained & reaffirmed as God’s Word, & for the most part the books we recognize as the NT Canon today. I say, “for the most part” because there were a few books that continued to be debated until the Council of Carthage closed the Canon in 397 with the 27 books of our NT. If this sounds like a late date to complete the Canon, know that the list the Council settled on had been in circulation for many years prior to the official statement at Carthage.
A couple of decades after the heresy of Marcion, another challenge to orthodoxy arose. Around 160, 2 women and a man joined forces in Phrygia, a region of central Turkey. They formed a new movement based on what they claimed was the prophetic voice of God. Maximilla, Prisca, & Montanus led what we could call an early hyper-Pentecostalism that split the church.
The Montanists’ central message was the soon return of Christ & the need for believers to get ready. They were to do so by a strict asceticism that included much fasting, eating only dry foods, (I guess moist food was sinful because it was too easy to chew) and the requirement to abstain from sex, even including marital sex. Montanists were encouraged to relish persecution; holding it to be a badge of genuine faith and loyalty to God.
The Montanists presented such a challenge that Church leaders convened some of the Church’s first councils, known as “synods”, to decide how to respond to its growing popularity. It was decided that the excesses of the New Prophets were too extreme and they were excommunicated, though the specific reasons for doing so have been lost to us. All we know is that an official split occurred between the Montanists and the Apostolic Church. The split was so clear, when Christians and Montanists were both executed in the same arena, they died for the same God but tried to avoid being eaten by the same animals, lest their remains mingle in the belly of the beasts.
Yeah, I know! It’s amazing how far Christians will go to carve themselves up into different groups. It’s nothing new. It’s been going on since their earliest days.
If you live in an urban or suburban community, you likely drive around town and see several church buildings with different signs & labels. Christianity is a religion composed of not dozens à but hundreds of sects. And while services may be similar in many of those local churches, the can also differ widely in style, culture, values, & doctrine. For instance, some are sedate & composed, putting more emphasis on rationality and the centrality of the sermon or the practice of a liturgy. Others allow and may even encourage a more emotional encounter with God, so music & worship take a more active place in the service. I’m generalizing widely here. My point is that both churches may be packed with people attending because while they’re culture is on opposite ends of the spectrum, each appeals to a certain group of people. It isn’t that one is right & the other is wrong. They may both be either. The point is – people are different, so there are places for them to go to be brought closer to God.
In studying the Montanists, I wonder if there isn’t a bit of this dynamic that happened with their success in certain places. You see, their leader, Montanus, before coming to faith in Christ was a priest either of Apollo or Cybele. The worship of both gods was marked by their priests & priestesses being given to ecstatic trances & urges. Whether these altered states of consciousness were induced by hallucinogenic drugs, extreme meditative rituals, or outright demonic activity – the person in ecstasy would enter a trance where the eyes would roll up into the head, their bodies would go rigid, their voice would alter, & they’d make solemn pronouncements as though by the voice of a god.
This was Montanus’ background. There’s a question about the genuineness of his conversion. Did he really come to faith or like some of the other aberrant groups at this time, did he see the rising popularity of Christianity and simply adopt some of its terms and forms while carrying on under his old practices? Did he just rebrand his demonically-induced ecstasies?
That’s what some historians conclude. Some of what Montanus, along with Prisca & Maximilla went on to prophecy was goofy. But some of the charges leveled against Montanus reflected his practices BEFORE his conversion. It was his critics who accused him of making his post-conversion prophetic announcements in the old Cybelline trance-like state. Others said that he did NOT operate that way after coming to faith; that he renounced his pagan past. But that he, like his supporters, was someone who yearned for a more emotionally engaged & experiential faith & that the work of the Holy Spirit, so prominent in the earliest church, must not be forfeited. It was in danger of that very thing as the Faith had to contend with hostile government officials and an emerging mix of aberrant groups. All the energy by the church’s brightest leaders seemed to be going into the cerebral, the doctrinal, the apologetic – and this emphasis on the mind was numbing the heart of the Faith. The Montanists wanted to see the Holy Spirit active & present in the Church’s midst. Sadly, their claims to being the ESPECIALLY anointed led to excesses, and a discrediting of their movement – just as has happened in more recent times with the wild pronouncements & false prophecies of some of the hyper-charismatics.
The decision to excommunicate the Montanists was anything but unanimous among Church leaders. Many believed that while the New Prophets had indeed gone too far in their excessive emphasis on asceticism, their renewal of the use of spiritual gifts was a return to the primitive version of Christianity practiced by the Apostles & described in the Book of Acts. The early Church father Tertullian, pastor of Carthage, began as a Montanist.
What brought the Montanists into the greatest disrepute was the failure of some of their prophecies about impending events. This and their ultra-strict legalism earned them the label of being highly aberrant, if not heretical.
Though it was right for Church leaders of the late 2nd Century to censure the Montanists for their excesses, they may have gone too far in labeling them “heretics.” Because the Montanists put such emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit, rejecting Montanism tended to put a damper on the exercise of spiritual gifts. An unfortunate turn at a time when Christians needed every bit of help they could get.
In our next episode, we’ll consider what was probably the greatest doctrinal challenge to the Early Church; the heresy known as Gnosticism. This is an important subject because while Gnosticism was eventually defeated by orthodoxy and went into a long hiatus, it’s seen a revival in recent years due to the combined influence of modern novelists and some recent discoveries of their literature which critics of Christianity have latched on to in an attempt to muddy the waters on what original believers really believed.
by Lance Ralston | Nov 17, 2013 | English |
This 4th Episode is titled, “Martyrs.”
Modern marketing tactics first produced, and now feed contemporary culture’s obsession for “the latest thing.” The slogan & label “New & Improved” is a frequent feature in packaging.
The opposite was the case in 1st Century Rome. That Eternal City, and really most of the ancient world, was suspicious of anything new and novel, especially when it came to ideas. They had tremendous respect for tradition, believing what was true had already been discovered and needed to be preserved. Innovation was grudgingly accepted, but only in so far as it did not substantially alter tradition.
The religion of the Greeks and Romans was sacrosanct precisely because it was ancient. Judaism, with its fierce devotion to only one God was incompatible with the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods, but it was tolerated by the Romans precisely because it was ancient.
Also, while Jews were fiercely loyal to their religion & became violent when attempts were made to convert them to paganism, they were not, as a rule, engaged in making converts of others. Judaism is not, by nature, a proselytizing faith.
Christianity’s early struggle with Rome began in earnest when Judaism officially denounced the Christians and banish them as a movement within Judaism. This took place shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Until that time, followers of Jesus were considered as a kind of reform movement within Judaism. But toward the end of the 1st Century, Rome realized the Jews had divorced themselves from the Christians. Christianity was something new; a religious novelty; so, under suspicion.
And whereas Judaism tended not to proselytize, Christians couldn’t help winning others to their Faith. This brought Christianity into close scrutiny by the authorities. The more they investigated, the more concerned they grew. Like the Jews, Christians believed in one God. But their God had become a man. Christians had no idols, practiced no sacrifices, & built no temples. These were yet more religious innovations that fired suspicion. The Christians seem to be so reductionist in their practice they were suspected of being, get this à Atheists.
As we saw in the previous episode, the paganism practiced by most people of the Empire in the 1st & 2nd Centuries wasn’t so much a heart-felt devotion to the gods as it was a sense of civic duty. “Respect the gods by visiting their temples with the proper offerings, or, suffer their wrath.” à Well, every new convert to the Christians meant one less pagan throwing their appeasing bones to the watchful & increasingly upset gods. People began to worry the growing neglect of the gods would lead to trouble. And indeed, whenever a drought, flood, fire, or some other catastrophe ensued it was inevitably blamed on “Those atheists = the Christians.”
“Christians to the lions,” became a frequent solution to the ills of the world.
The concern of the pagans was ill-attributed, but well-founded. Not because their gods were angry, but because in some places so many had become Christians the pagan temples were nearly empty. Acts 19 tells us this happened in Ephesus and a letter from the Governor of Bithynia in the early 2nd Century repeats the concern. This led to a growing call for punishment of the Christians. A few would be rounded up and put to death to prove to the gods the earnestness of the pagans to appease them.
Other factors that encouraged hostility towards believers was their secrecy. A description of Christians by Pliny, the Roman governor of Bithynia, to the Emperor Trajan in AD 111 is enlightening. Pliny had already executed some Christians based on little more than their scandalous reputation. He’d given them an opportunity to recant but when they refused, Pliny saw this rebuff of his mercy as a provocative stubbornness worthy of punishment. But after a flurry of executions, Pliny had 2nd thoughts: Was the mere reputation of Christians dangerous enough to warrant their arrest and trial? So he wrote his friend, the Emperor Trajan, asking for advice. Here’s a quote from Pliny’s letter. After describing some ex-Christians who recanted their faith, Pliny gives their report on what their practice had been when they were still Christians.
“They affirmed the whole of their guilt was that they were in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a God, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to commit any wicked deeds; no fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it. After which it was their custom to separate, then reassembled later to partake of food — but food of an ordinary an innocent kind.”
A little later in the letter Pliny adds that to verify this report he secured through the torture of 2 slaves that this was an accurate description of Christian meetings and that nothing more needed to be added. Pliny called Christianity a “depraved and excessive superstition.”
Emperor Trajan replied to Pliny’s request for guidance on how he wanted the growing Christian-crisis in Bithynia handled. Trajan replied . . .
“You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out. If they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it–that is, by worshiping our gods–even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.”
Though seemingly harmless to us, it was Pliny’s reference to the Christians “meeting before dawn” that proved a problem. While it looks to us a commendable reference to their diligence & earnestness, it was highly suspicious to Romans. As a rule, meetings during the dark hours were forbidden. Day was the time for meetings. To meet at night was suspect. No good could come of it. You met at night because you had something to hide.
So why DID Christians meet before daylight if it raised suspicions?
The answer lies in the composition of their Fellowship; that is, who attended. For the most part, they were commoners and the poor who had jobs they had to begin early. The only time available to meet was before the workday began.
These early meetings of the church were only open to Christians. Secrecy tends to breed gossip. It didn’t take long till wild rumors were going round about the abominable things the Christians must be doing. Their communal meal, called the Agape or Love-Feast, was recast by gossip as a wild and debauched orgy. Communion was said to be ritual cannibalism. But the real shocker was that when Christians met, social distinctions like rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, were subsumed under an appalling equality. Many critics of Christianity saw this as a dangerous subversion of the natural order. Christians were cast as radical revolutionaries out to turn the entire world upside down.
For a society that lived in constant fear of a slave uprising, anything seen as encouraging slaves to think independently was deemed perilous. Don’t forget that for the Romans, the 3 Servile Wars, the last & most perilous led by the famous Spartacus, were still potent in the collective memory, though it had ended over a century before.
Another source of trouble for Christians was their Jewish origin. Even though Judaism worked hard to distance itself from the followers of Christ, in the mind of the average Roman, the Church was a Jewish thing. In many places, Jews were the main accusers of Christians to the authorities. But this failed to dislodge Christians from their Jewish roots. The bloody and troubling Jewish Wars of the 1st & 2nd Centuries created great hostility between Romans and Jews, which spilled over onto Christians.
During the 2nd & 3rd Centuries, believers were arrested and executed on no worse crime than being accused of being a Christian. Hauled before a judge, they were given the opportunity to recant. They could do so by invoking the names of some pagan deities, offering a sacrifice to the image of the Emperor, and cursing Christ. If they refused this threefold evidence of being a pagan, they were led off to execution.
One story is illustrative. In the mid-2nd Century during the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, a woman became a Christian. Marital problems led to her divorce. Resenting her, the ex-husband accused her of being a Christian. She was arrested, along with her pastor, for being a co-conspirator with her in causing the changes that caused the divorce. The pastor’s name was Ptolemaeus.
The jailer was cruel & tried to force Ptolemaeus to turn from his faith. Ptolemaeus resisted and the day of his trial arrived. The judge, Urbicus, put it straight to him, “Are you a Christian?” Ptolemaeus admitted he was. Urbicus pronounced him guilty and Roman justice being swift, he was led off to immediate execution.
As he was being led away, a spectator, Lucius by name, rose to speak. He challenged Urbicus’ decision. Lucius asked, “Why did you pass such a sentence? Was this man convicted of a crime? Is he an adulterer, a murderer, a robber? All he did was confess that he was a Christian!”
The judge replied, “It seems you are also a Christian.”
Lucius answered, “Yes, I am.”
Urbicus had the guards seize & haul him off to be executed along with Ptolemaeus.
At this, a 3rd man rose, issuing a similar challenge. When Urbicus asked if he was also a believer the man admitted both his faith and disbelief that death could ensue for no more reason than identifying w/a name. But the point is this: Urbicus believed he was well with in his authority to execute all 3 of these men for no more reason than that they claimed to be Christians.
This story, duplicated thousands of times throughout the Empire during the 2nd & 3rd Centuries drives home the fact that Christianity was poorly understood by the pagan world.
There’s no sure way to know how many believers were put to death during the first 3 centuries. Rome didn’t follow a consistent policy of persecution. Some emperors were lenient while others practiced virulent opposition. Ten of the emperors enforced an official policy of oppression & persecution; from Nero in AD 64, to the worst under Diocletian & Galerius in the opening years of the 4th Century. And even though some emperors enforced opposition to Christianity, their policies were rarely empire-wide. It was up to the provincial governors to implement the rule; many simply ignored it, seeing it as bad policy.
Though estimating the number of martyrs is difficult, we can set it somewhere between 1 & 3 million over a period of about 250 years.
Despite the threat of death, the Church continued to grow. As one oft-quoted church father put it, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” While the authorities remained ignorant of what Christians believed, many of the common people discovered what it was from conversation with them à and found it attractive. More than attractive, it was convincing, compelling, persuasive. They also came to faith, knowing that doing so might lead to the ultimate test.
As the years went by and Christians were made the object of public shame by using them for entertainment in the gladiatorial games, more & more began seeing their neighbors and friends on the sand, waiting to be ripped apart by wild beasts. It became personal. And pagans who knew the martyrs to be level-headed, reasonable people of solid moral standing began to question the policy of Rome to hunt such people down.
Slowly but surely a sea change began to swing public opinion away from persecution. By the dawn of the 4th Century, sympathy had eased the hatred of Christians whose resolute faith in the face of prolonged suffering had recast many as heroic.
Shifting back in time now to the late 1st Century, let’s take a look at 3 Church leaders who followed immediately after the Apostles; Clement of Rome, Ignatius, & Polycarp. These 3 come from a group of Church leaders known as the Apostolic Fathers.
Toward the end of the 1st Century, the passing of the original Apostles created a problem: Who would now lead the Church? Christians understood Jesus as the true head of the Church; but His lead was expressed through His direct disciples & those who’d been witnesses to His resurrection. Though recurring persecution was a consistent theme, the Church continued to grow. Who would guide it after the Apostles? A group now known as “the Church Fathers” provided that crucial next phase of leadership.
Though Jesus warned His followers against giving any man the role of being a spiritual authority in contest with God, the label “father” was given to elders & leaders as a term of endearment & affection. The Apostolic Fathers weren’t Apostles; they were just, you know = apostol—ic. Or may I make up a word and say they were apostol—ish. This came of their being the followers & students of the original Apostles who enjoyed a close relationship with them.
The writings of the Fathers reveals a remarkable devotion to the Jewish Scriptures of the Tanach; what Christian now refer to as the OT. Reflecting the influence of the original Apostles, the Fathers understood Christianity, not so much as a new religion but as the fulfillment of the Faith of the Jewish Patriarchs & Prophets. They took this as a given; so there’s little attempt to define new doctrine in their writing. Their purpose was more to provide edification, correction, and comfort. We could say their work was devotional in flavor. It was pastoral, seeking to bolster the hope, faith & practical holiness of those they addressed.
The Apostolic Fathers served at a time when the Church was growing dramatically & provided a radical alternative to the tired paganism that still dominated, but was slowly losing its grip on the Roman World. Their writings often honored martyrdom, occasionally elevated celibacy & laid great emphasis on baptism which the Early Church used as the singular mark of identifying as a follower as Jesus.
The first Apostolic Father we’ll look at is Clement of Rome.
Clement was born about ad 30 & served as the pastor of the church at Rome the last 9 years of his life, dying in the year 100. Paul mentions a Clement in Phil 4:3 and there’s a good chance this is the same man. Though he’s listed in the official records of the Church at Rome as the 2nd or 3rd Pope, that early in Church history there simply was no Pope, just the pastor of the church there.
Clement is best known for the letter he sent the Corinthian church, dealing with some of the same problems the Apostle Paul spoke to in his correspondence with them. The Corinthian church was fractured into warring camps Clement tried to reconcile by reminding them of the priority of love, along with the call to patience & humility. What’s notable about Clement’s letter is the strong emphasis he placed on the need for Christians to honor & comply with their spiritual leaders as a way to maintain unity.
Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians is the earliest piece of Christian literature outside the NT. For that reason, it’s of great importance to scholars as it gives us an idea of the mindset of Christian leaders and their view of the emerging faith.
Clement quotes the OT often. He also makes numerous allusions to the writings of Paul, revealing how influential and well-accepted Paul’s letters were even at this early date. In his insistence that believers honor their spiritual leaders, he bases his appeal on a line of reasoning, the subtext of which, points to a widely accepted spiritual principle. It was this à Pastors & Church leaders had received their authority from the Apostles, who’d received their authority from Christ. Much later, the Church at Rome would greatly expand on that idea of succession. But nothing in Clement’s letter gives substance to the idea that the church at Rome had jurisdictional power over other churches or over the Faith in general.
The next Father is Ignatius, considered a giant among the Apostolic Fathers because of his martyrdom. Though the pastor of the church at Antioch in Syria, he was arrested & taken to Rome. During the journey, Ignatius passed through several cities where he was allowed to address the believers. In about AD 110 he wrote letters to 6 of these in which he stressed unity & how to combat heresy. The heresy Ignatius spoke of was an early form of Gnosticism. The remedy for dealing with heresy, & the surest support for unity, Ignatius said, was the presence of a strong pastor who could provide spiritual leadership.
It’s a fairly reliable tradition that Ignatius was a student of the Apostle John & was affirmed in ministry by him. Ignatius was martyred in Rome, in the Colosseum by being fed to the beasts, during the reign of Trajan, in AD 108.
What makes Ignatius’ writings important is his emphasis on the role of a single elder-pastor as the one to lead a local church. While there are hints at this in the NT, there’s also a picture of multiple-elders who jointly share leadership. It’s more by inference drawn from Paul & Timothy’s ministry that one may see the emergence of a lead elder who becomes what we might call the senior pastor. Ignatius’ letters spell this out and make a strong case for it. He called the elders & deacons to follow the lead of that one among them God had set His anointing on to lead the church.
The 3rd Apostolic Father we’ll look at sounds like a plastic fish.
Polycarp’s story is fascinating. He also was a student of the Apostle John who became the lead-pastor at Smyrna, one of the cities to receive one of the 7 letters dictated by Jesus in Revelation. Polycarp wrote a letter to the Philippian church about ad 110 that’s filled with quotations from the OT & references to several other books that would later be included in the NT canon. Polycarp’s reliance on these books as describing the norms & beliefs of Christians indicates the early acceptance of those books that would later be made a part of the Bible. His use of them helped later Christians decide which books ought to be a part of the NT.
Polycarp was arrested & put to death in AD 155. The manner of his death was so exemplary he was honored for generations as an example of martyrdom. When officials came to arrest him, he welcomed them into the house, asked if they’d like something to eat, and while they enjoyed a meal, went into another room where he composed himself thru prayer. When he rejoined the officers, his kind treatment shamed them in the task they’d been assigned.
One of the many remarkable things about Polycarp was his advanced age. At 86, he was quite old for those days. At his execution, the magistrate pleaded with him, based on his age, to recant & save himself. Earlier I said that recanting Christians had to go thru a 3-step process to prove their sincerity. At Polycarp’s trial, the official tried to make it easier for him & told him to simply say, “Away with the atheists!” meaning Christians, who because they believed in only 1 God, were considered god-less compared to the pagans who worshipped dozens of deities. But Polycarp knew the official’s intent & pointed at the crowd that had gathered to watch him burn saying, “Away with the atheists.”
When the magistrate pressed, pleading with Polycarp to recant his faith, Polycarp replied, “80 & 6 years I have served Him & never once did He wrong me. How then can I blaspheme my King Who saved me? Come, bring what you will.”
The official couldn’t believe his offer of leniency was being rejected & grew stern. He warned, “Bless Caesar!” Polycarp replied, “Since you vainly strive to make me bless Caesar, pretending you don’t know my real character, hear me clearly – I am a Christian! If you desire to learn of the Christian faith, assign me a day, and you shall hear.”
Now enraged, the proconsul threatened, “I have wild beasts; and will expose you to them, unless you repent.” Polycarp replied, “Bring them on.”
The magistrate fumed, “Since you despise the wild beasts, unless you repent I will tame you with fire.” Polycarp said, “You threaten me with a fire which burns for an hour, and is soon extinguished; but the fire of the future judgment, and of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly, that — you are ignorant of. But why do you delay? Come, do what you please.”
At that, the wood that had been heaped around him was set ablaze.
The story of Polycarp’s martyrdom became a popular tale Christians shared for the next few centuries as countless more faced the prospect of dying for the Faith. Truth be told, a perverse veneration of martyrdom took root in the Church that saw not a few aspire to being put to death. When martyrs were elevated as heroes, it wasn’t long before some aspired to the station of hero and considered martyrdom a price worth paying. Sadly, they weren’t dying for Christ, so much as their own reputation & fame.
by Lance Ralston | Nov 17, 2013 | English |
This week’s episode is titled “Strategic.”
We ended the last episode with a look at the different perspectives of 1st & 2nd Generation Christians. The debate centered on what role the Jewish law held for Jesus’ followers. Culturally-immersed 1st Generation Jewish believers tended to cleave to the law, while the more Greco-Roman acculturated 2nd & later generations adhered to the Gospel as articulated by the Apostle Paul.
Keep in mind that Paul’s arrival at the Gospel of Grace through Faith wasn’t an easy journey. He began as a strict Pharisee, fanatically loyal to Moses & Jewish tradition. It was Paul who presided at the execution of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. And Stephen was put to death precisely because he dared to say that the new covenant Jesus inaugurated superseded the old covenant installed by Moses & represented by the Temple & priesthood in Jerusalem which were now effectively obsolete in God’s plan. This drove the Jewish ruling council into a literal rage that led to Stephen’s death.
Paul well understood the arguments of the Judaizing legalists who advocated adherence to custom. He understood them because he’d once held them. But he came to realize faith in Christ alone bestowed the righteousness God requires. Salvation was not the product of human work; it was a gift God bestows, a gift received by faith.
Amped by this realization of salvation by grace through faith, Paul was compelled to take the Gospel were ever he could. The book of Acts describes 3 journeys he took to spread the Faith & plant churches.
On his 1st journey he and his friend Barnabas went to the island of Cyprus & the urban centers of the mainland north of there, a province called “Galatia” in modern-day Turkey.
On his 2nd adventure Paul went back over the fledgling fellowships begun on the previous journey, then travelled to the West coast of Asia Minor. Taking ship, he sailed across the Aegean Sea and landed in Macedonia. The Gospel had arrived in Europe, possibly for the first time.
Then Paul swung south into Greece where he visited Athens & other key Greek cities. Returning to his home base at Antioch in Syria, he didn’t stay long before once again setting out on a 3rd mission with the aim of planting churches in strategic locations.
Paul had a plan. He didn’t just go wherever the winds of fancy drove him. He was strategic, recognizing the need to plant congregations in influential cities. He knew if healthy churches could be set up in the urban centers of the Empire they’d act as jumping off points for mission work to their surrounding provinces. The strategy worked & Christianity spread rapidly.
We’re not unaware of the religious and philosophical environment the early Christians lived in. Outside Israel, much of the Roman Empire was a spiritual hodgepodge. The Greek & Roman pantheon was ubiquitous, with most commoners paying homage to the gods, not out of any genuine piety or devotion so much as out of a sense of civic duty. “Respect the gods or pay the price” was the attitude of the common people. Everyone had a duty to throw the gods their proverbial bone now and then, lest they get angry & withhold the rain-or-send floods. No one wanted to be the cause of disaster, so most went through the forms to pacify the gods & keep them off the collective back. But heartfelt devotion to the gods was rare.
Living alongside this kind of generalized respect for the gods was a much less common, but far more devoted adherence by some to the philosophies of a handful of Greek sages. Guys like Epicurus & Zeno. The concern of such philosophies was how to have the best life. Though their ideas often contradicted the demands of the gods, many who held to Epicureanism, Stoicism or one of the other philosophies saw no tension between their beliefs & religious practices.
But by the 1st Century, many across the Romans world had grown disillusioned with the old gods & old ways. Desiring something new, mystery cults from Egypt & the Far East took root. Though the official stance of Rome was to oppose these cults, there was something enticing in what was considered forbidden. Secret knowledge, imparted only to an elite stimulated curiosity. The cults of Isis & Mithras grew.
One message that appealed to some pagans throughout the empire was Judaism with its radical proposition there was only One, all-powerful, all-knowing God. The Jews had taken their Faith out of the merely religious realm & developed a comprehensive and coherent philosophy with it. It convinced many Gentiles who began attending Jewish synagogues located all over the empire. Not willing to fully convert to Judaism with its kosher requirements & circumcision, these “God fearers” as they were called, believed in the God of Israel & renounced the pagan deities of their neighbors.
When the Apostle Paul visited a new city he typically went first to the local Jewish synagogue where he systematically showed Jews & God-fearing Gentiles that Jesus of Nazareth was the long hoped-for Messiah and that faith in Him brought salvation. While a few Jews believed, it was from among the God-fearing Greeks Paul had his greatest response. When unbelieving Jews rejected & opposed him, he left their synagogue, taking the new converts with him and starting a church.
On Paul’s 3rd journey he spent about 3 years in the city of Ephesus in Western Asia Minor. His work there was probably the most fruitful of his career.
When he returned to Jerusalem after this 3rd church planting foray, he was arrested by the authorities & carted off to the Roman administrative capital of Caesarea on the coast. He spent the next couple years in prison as a political pawn between Jewish & Roman officials. To end the stalemate, Paul appealed his case to Caesar, which as a Roman citizen he had the right to do. A tumultuous sea journey saw him finally deposited in Rome where the book of Acts ends with him under house arrest, awaiting trial.
There’s some question as to whether Paul stayed in Rome until his execution by Nero or if he was released and later re-arrested & executed. There’s good reason to believe the initial charges against Paul were dropped, he was released, visited the churches he’d planted earlier, then came back to Rome where he was arrested in Nero’s round up of Christians after the great fire that destroyed a large part of the City. Paul was then executed in AD 64.
Let’s end this episode with a look back at Jerusalem & the church there.
Even though the 1st Generation believers adhered to the Mosaic law, the opposition of the Jewish authorities to the followers of Jesus grew until it broke out in official persecution.
About AD 41 John’s brother James was murdered at the order of Herod Agrippa, the Roman-installed ruler who was forever trying to curry the favor of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Herod knew the Council wanted to crush the new movement of Christians and thought to gain their good-will by getting rid of James. When he saw the favorable reaction of the Sanhedrin, he had Peter arrested as well. But before Peter could be executed, a miraculous prison-break set him free. Peter then left for an extended missionary journey through Syria, Asia Minor, Greece & eventually Rome where, along with Paul, he was also swept up in Nero’s purge.
What comes as a bit of a surprise is to find in the NT that the church at Jerusalem was led by Jesus’s brother James rather than one of the original Apostles. That the church leadership was assumed by James gives us a clue that the church was originally cast in the form of the Jewish synagogue, where leadership was usually passed to a relative.
In AD 62, James was bludgeoned to death at the command of the high priest who was furious the Church kept growing despite the increased persecution coming against it. James’ death left the Jerusalem church leaderless & discouraged.
During the mid-60’s, things in Israel became increasingly sketchy as tension between Jews and Romans grew. The completion of the Temple in 64 turned thousands of workers into an unruly & discontent mob. One inept decision after another by the Romans sparked a major revolt in 66. Though the Jews were able to pull off several astounding early victories over the Romans, the Emperor’s response was a brutal war of annihilation that crushed all opposition over the next several years.
From the Jewish perspective, AD 70 was the year Christianity and Judaism officially broke. At the outset of the Jewish revolt, the Christians of Jerusalem were warned in a vision to flee the city. They did. But their fellow Jews considered this an act of high treason. Shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jewish leaders used the Christians’ flight from Jerusalem as the basis to ban them from all synagogue services. Any Jew who wanted to remain faithful to his religion could no longer follow Christ. The break was now complete.
As the Church became increasingly composed of Gentiles with little to no background in the Jewish roots of Christianity, this break would devolve into an antagonism that became hostile and violent. That historic hostility remains a blot on the Church to this day – and in the mind of many Jews, sadly hinders the message of the Gospel.
