Church and Empire II: A Gentile Church

The early Church faced many grave crises and challenges, many of which can be summed up in one question: What kind of Church was it to be? In an important sense, this question was whether it was to be a Judeo-Christian Church limited to Jews, including Gentile converts to Judaism, or a Christian Church liberated from most of the peculiarities of Jewish law and custom? But a second part of this question was whether this Church was to be a sect alienated from everyday life, like the Essenes, or an institution that existed in the world, and if the latter, what was to be its relationship to the Empire, the Roman legal and political order and Greek culture.

The Master himself had provided hints that could be interpreted in various ways. On the one hand, he had declared that he had not come to change one jot or tittle of the law; but, almost in the same breath he had claimed to be the fulfillment of the law, which implies something a good deal less than Pharisaic legalism. He had also scandalized the scrupulous by picking grain and healing the sick on the Sabbath.

There are several important incidents in the Gospels that clearly indicate that his mission was directed at more people than “the lost sheep of Israel.” Returning to Galilee by way of Samaria, Jesus shows His power to a Samaritan woman and reveals He has not come to save only the Jews but also the Samaritans, a Jewish people who worshipped God not in the temple but on their sacred hill. Reminded of the differences between the two peoples, Jesus tells the woman, “the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.” [John 4:21]

Christ, early in His ministry, knew that His mission was not just to the people of Israel but to the whole world. His mission to all mankind is further revealed in His conversation with the Syrophoenician woman [Mark 7:24-30], who asks Him to heal her demon-possessed child. She is at first rebuffed as a “dog” (that is, a gentile), and not one of the lost sheep of Israel He has come to save, but her appeal is the occasion on which His mission to the entire world is disclosed. St. Luke [17:11-19 ] tells the story of the ten lepers healed by Jesus, only one of whom—a Samaritan alien—returned to give thanks.

After Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested, He is condemned by the Jewish religious leadership, who cannot execute Him but must appeal to the Roman authority, the procurator Pontius Pilate. Asked if He is King of the Jews, Jesus asks the Roman: “Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee?”
Pilate is afraid that Jesus is fomenting a revolution against the Roman Empire, but, when Jesus informs the procurator that His kingdom is not of this world, Pilate tells the Jews he finds no fault in the man and would release him. The Jews, on the point of an uprising, demand his death. This judicial murder is a defining moment in the history the Empire’s policy toward the Church.

The Apostolic Church
Following the Master’s instructions, a group of Jesus’ followers gathered in Jerusalem. The first order of business was the selection of a replacement for Judas. The method adopted shows us something of the way the Church will operate: The apostles themselves choose the most worthy candidates and then leave the final choice to chance, that is, to God. In other words, power over the Church has been entrusted to the apostles, who must use their own wisdom but also rely on divine guidance.

The apostles showed their power in many ways: by communicating to foreigners at Pentecost, by healing the sick, and by punishing those who violated the rules of their fellowship. Faithfully following the Lord's teachings, they instituted a communal life in which they voluntarily shared their possessions and ate a common meal in commemoration of the Last Supper. When Ananias and Sapphira sold one of their possessions and retained the money, they were rebuked by Peter. No one had demanded them to share their wealth, but they had thought to cheat the Holy Ghost. When confronted with their sin, each died, as of apoplexy. Once again, the Church is revealed: She can condemn but not impose death.

The incident is important in other ways. Many early Christians apparently thought everyone should practice communism and celibacy and observe strict dietary laws. If these restrictions had endured, Christianity would have remained an obscure sect of Jews, waiting for the End of the world like the Adventists. But as the Church grew in wisdom, these ideals were considered marks of the monastic clergy and not as rules for ordinary Christians. This was only one of many problems that were solved as the Church matured.
In fact Our Lord well knew that his followers had a need for what is now called “continuing education." He was aware that the disciples would forget some of what He told them and be confused about many things, especially as fresh issues demanded attention. He did not, as some people imagine, tell them that a book would be put together that would tell them everything. On the contrary, He told them, in His last instructions, that His suffering and death were necessary, because only then could He send them the Holy Ghost, the Comforter (“the Paraklete”), the Spirit of Truth, Who “will guide you into all truth…and he will shew you things to come.” [John 16:13].
This same Holy Ghost “shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” [John 14:26]. As time went on, Jesus’ disciples helped to establish a sacred institution that would serve as the vehicle for the operation of the Holy Ghost, and that institution is the Church.
One of the first Christian offices to be instituted is that of deacon (diakonos), a servant charged with responsibility for serving the bread and wine at the common meal. One of the first seven deacons to be chosen was Stephen, who was stoned to death by a group of Jews called together by Caiaphas, the high priest. This was, of course, a violation of Roman law, which reserved the death penalty to its own authorities. Caiaphas was shortly thereafter removed from office by the legate to Syria sent by Tiberius in 36-7.

Stephen’s killers stripped off their garments and laid them at the feet of a rabbinical student, Saul of Tarsus, who was zealous against the Christians. This Saul was a follower of the Pharisees, who stressed strict obedience to the Old Testament law. On the way to Damascus to continue the persecution, Saul was challenged by Christ and blinded. This was the revelation that converted Saul the persecutor into Paul the apostle to the gentiles. By the time of their martyrdoms in Rome, Paul and Peter would have preached the gospel throughout the eastern Mediterranean, while other apostles went as far as India and Spain.

Christian Worship—and Early Disputes
Instead of celebrating the Jewish Sabbath (the seventh day of the week), the faithful gradually broke with Jewish custom and assembled, instead, on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, which they identified with the first day of Creation. They came together to sing hymns, hear the good news preached, make common prayers, and partake of communion. Even before there were written Gospels, stories of Christ’s life and teachings as told by the apostles were recited, and letters from Paul and, later, of Clement and Barnabas, were read aloud. Some of these stories were not incorporated directly into the Gospels, but they continued to be told in the major churches that had received the teachings of the apostles.

Most of the early followers of Christ were Jewish and naturally continued to live as Jews, observing all the dietary and ritual prohibitions. The gentiles whom Paul converted were naturally reluctant to observe the same rules, much less to submit to circumcision. Troublemakers from Judea insisted that these gentiles were not true Christians unless they became Jews, while Paul and Barnabas defended their gentile converts (though Paul would later have Timothy circumcised to make him a more effective preacher to the Jews).

A council of the Church was convened in Jerusalem at which the Pharisees, who insisted on circumcision, were challenged by Peter, one of the first to have preached to a gentile (Cornelius). Peter argued that it was unnecessary to impose such a burden on gentile converts. James the Just, who presided and served as arbitrator, gave the verdict to Peter and Paul, and the apostles and elders collectively sent out an apostolic letter to other congregations, saying,

“It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things,” that is, to abstain from idolatry and fornication.
Once again, we see the model of the Church. The leaders—and not just from Jerusalem—assemble and discuss. A consensus is reached, though probably not to everyone’s satisfaction, and the decision is given by the presiding officer in the name of both the apostles and the Holy Ghost. The early Church, then, although it listened to both sides, was not democratic, nor was it local and congregational. Once the decision was made by the council, it was made for the entire Church.
The problem, however, did not go away. Judeo-Christians continued to complain that Paul was turning his back on Judaism, and the dispute became serious in Antioch. When Peter arrived, he joined Paul in common meals with gentile Christians, but when messengers came from Jerusalem complaining, Peter withdrew, and Barnabas, Paul’s collaborator, went with him. As we used to say in the South, Paul rose up and stuck it into Peter and broke it off in him. In telling this story to the Galatians, the Apostle makes a clean break with Judaism and demands the same of all Christians: “For I testify to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to the whole law. Christ is become of no effect to you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.”
Defenders of the Faith
Apart from the Gospels, the earliest Christian writings are for the most part epistles, both of the apostles and later Church leaders, directed primarily at Christians and sympathetic “fellow-travelers.” These writings include not only the scriptures of the New Testament, but also the writings of early Apostolic Fathers, who continue Paul’s work of clarifying doctrine and rectifying abuses. One of the most important of these early Fathers is Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who lived in the second half of the First Century. Ignatius emphasized the unity of the Church and the importance of respect for the bishops, who ruled over Christian communities like so many captains of ships.
Antioch was a great Hellenized city (that is, the people had adopted Greek language and culture) in Syria, where the name “Christian” was first used, perhaps because most of the converts in Antioch were non-Jewish and needed a specific name. Ignatius warned against one of the perennial temptations—to impose Jewish customs on the Church: “It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God.” [Magnesians 10] Ignatius also warned against the poison of heretics who denied the reality of Christ’s passion. [Trallians 11]

One of these early attempts to defend the faith in public is the letter of the “Mathetes” (Greek for Disciple) addressed to Diognetus, a pagan intellectual. The Disciple clearly distinguishes Christians both from idolatrous Greeks and from Jews, whose dietary laws he describes as superstitious and even blasphemous. “For, to accept some of those things which have been formed by God for the use of men as properly formed, and to reject others as useless and redundant—how can this be lawful? And to speak falsely of God, as if He forbade us to do what is good on the Sabbath-days—how is not this impious? And to glory in the circumcision of the flesh as a proof of election, and as if, on account of it, they were specially beloved by God—how is it not a subject of ridicule.”
Conflicts between Jewish and gentile Christians had obviously not disappeared after the Council of Jerusalem, especially in Asia Minor and Syria. Ignatius and the Disciple were concerned to make it clear that Christianity had gone beyond Judaism. One of their reasons was the fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed. Jews had become increasingly militant against the Roman Empire, and when they rose up in rebellion in the late 60’s, Vespasian was sent by Nero to put it down. When the war was finished by Vespasian’s son Titus, Vespasian (now the emperor) had the temple destroyed. Problems continued until another major rebellion, led by a false messiah, broke out in the reign of Hadrian. Hadrian’s generals not only crushed the rebellion but expelled the Jews from Jerusalem and much of Judaea. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and it would be several centuries before the Church in Jerusalem, no longer made up of Jewish Christians, would play a major role. During this difficult period, then, Christians wanted to show that they were not Jews, but good citizens of the Empire.
This concern may explain why the Disciple is so eager to portray the Christians as good citizens who do not make trouble:

"For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity…inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. .. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted.

By the Age of the Antonines, Christianity had attracted enough attention that pagan intellectuals were able to distinguish Christianity from Judaism. Many of the same charges continued to be made: Christians were immoral, unpatriotic, and cannibalistic. The philosopher Celsus, later refuted by Origen, ridiculed the beliefs of Christians as a mishmash of lies, false history, and traditions borrowed from Jews, Greeks, and other nations. Christians, at this same time, were beginning to feel confident enough to address a series of “apologies,” that is, philosophical explanations in defense of their faith, to the emperors. The first to survive (discovered at the end of the 19th Century in an Armenian version) is from Aristides of Athens and addressed to Emperor Hadrian.

All these early defenders of the faith underlined the importance of the moral virtues. Christians are just like other citizens of the empire, paying taxes and serving in the army. Their only distinction is that they abide by their oaths and do not rob or cheat in business; they do not fornicate or commit adultery or waste time on drunken rioting. As the Disciple says, “They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy the fetuses.” In other words, they did not abort or expose their children. Aristides of Athens also points out another vice not practiced by Christians: homosexuality.
But Christian morality is not just a series of “Thou shalt nots.” It is a positive moral code. Christians, says Aristides:

“Honor father and mother, and show kindness to those near to them.. ; and whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly…and whatsoever they would not that others should do unto them, they do not to others….And their oppressors they comfort and make them their friends; they do good to their enemies; and their women, O King, are pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest…."

Christians practice charity not only among themselves but even to pagan strangers.

Heresies Afflict the Church
We know a good deal about these early heresies because of a book written by St. Irenaeus, a Christian from Smyrna (in Asia Minor), who lived in Gaul in the late Second Century. Gaul was troubled by a heretical group known as Montanists, and Irenaeus was sent to Rome to discuss the problem. To his horror, Irenaeus discovered that even Rome was a hotbed of false ideas and bizarre mythologies that claimed the name Christian.
The word heresy comes from a Greek word (hairesis), which means “choice.” In other words, a heretic is someone who chooses his own belief instead of following the Church’s teachings. There are so many heresies with such ridiculous theories, it is a waste of time to study them.
However, since mankind tends to repeat his mistakes, we should look at some of the bad ideas that have returned in the past 500 years.
Since many of the heretics picked and chose their bad ideas from different heretical traditions, it is difficult to sort them out. It is simpler to look at the principal mistakes. One group of heretics, for example, were Judaizing, that is, like the Pharisees at the council of Jerusalem they wanted to maintain the Old Testament laws. They also taught, typically, that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jewish tradition, adopted by the Father at baptism, and they rejected Paul’s epistles, because he was a Jewish renegade. Very early on the Church ruled against keeping Jewish customs of circumcision and dietary laws which, they said, were superstitious and blasphemous because they declared some parts of what God had created to be unclean. Peter had had a vision that all things in Creation were pure, and later writers made this absolute.

Other Judaizing heretics went in the other direction and claimed to be entirely spiritual. They rejected most of the Old Testament, because, after the destruction of the Temple, they thought Jehovah had failed them. Because they relied only on spirit and not on good works, they felt free to eat meat that had been offered to idols and to engage in adultery and fornication. [Cf. Jude]
Many of these spiritualist heretics were also Gnostics, a Greek term (from gnosis, knowledge) that suggests Gnostics were seeking a higher former of knowledge that would liberate them from bondage to the flesh. Fantastic mythologies. Irenaeus correctly interpreted the heresies as symptoms of a general problem. The leaders (heresiarchs) were all intellectuals, individualists who wanted to make themselves the center of their own schools. They were opposed by the bishops, who did not represent their own ideas but the traditions of the Church, going back to the apostles.

Puritans
Not all heresies were as fantastic as the extreme forms of Gnosticism. The followers of Montanus, for example, took Christian moral teachings and pushed them to such an extreme that Christians would not have been allowed to serve in the army, serve in the imperial administration, or even attend public ceremonies honoring the emperor on his birthday. Montanists, who were convinced that the end of the world was near, rejected all participation in the Roman world. They and the other super-Puritans, who were expecting the Apocalypse, gave Christians a bad reputation for being unpatriotic, uncharitable, and misanthropic, and their repudiation of imperial authority and Greco-Roman culture gave the enemies of the Faith a good pretext for persecution.

Though Tertullian, one of the most important and most irascible of the early Latin Fathers, embraced Montanism later in his life, Pope Eleutherius (c. 175-80) condemned the dangerous heresy, and his decree was accepted. When Septimius Severus came to power, he grew alarmed by the apparent threat to the Empire and he issued an edict forbidding the Christians to make new converts. Sensible bishops, wishing to avoid unnecessary conflicts, did their best to calm the hysteria of the extremists, but every persecution brought with it new expectations that the world was coming to an end.

Another form of pernicious Puritanism was sponsored by Novatianus, a priest in Rome at the time of Decius’ persecution and afterwards. Novatian and his followers insisted that Christians who, under threat of death, had sacrificed to an idol, could never be readmitted into the Church. They repudiated Pope Cornelius, who insisted on showing charity to the cowardly Christians who had saved their lives, and Novatian and his followers set up their own Church. Pope Cornelius was stoutly defended by the second most important patriarch, Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, a pillar of sound doctrine. Hearing that Novatian was attempting to transfer blame for the schism (split) in the Church to the priests who supported him, Dionysius called on him to prove that he was “led on unwillingly” by giving up the schism willingly.

“For a man ought to suffer everything for the sake of not cutting up the Church of God, and to suffer martyrdom to prevent schism is no less glorious than to suffer martyrdom to avoid idolatry, and, in my opinion, it is even more glorious. For in the one case, a man is martyred for the sake of one soul, while in the other it is for the sake of the entire Church.”
This same Dionysius was also asked to settle a thorny question that divided Christian communities in Egypt (and elsewhere). Some Christians (particularly Judeo-Christians) had become obsessed with the details of what would happen when Christ returned. During the thousand year reign predicted in Revelations, would faithful Christians have their own bodies and enjoy all the licit pleasures of the flesh? Though Christ had told the disciples that no one would know the hour of his return, some of these Christians (“millenarians”) attached a great importance to the Millennium. Dionysius, among many other Fathers of the Church, firmly repudiated the idea of a Millennium spent in fleshly pleasures and warned against the dangers of a teaching that distracted Christians from fundamental teachings.

By the middle of the 3rd Century, then, Christian bishops, when problems arose, could appeal both to the apostolic tradition and to the unity of the Church universal. There was also a body of coherent and rigorous theology, following the rules of Greek philosophy, which enabled them to defend the Church against external pagan attacks and against internal subversion of heresies that often resulted from a literalist misreading of the Old Testament.

Unity, the authority of the bishops, and the authentic teaching of the apostles, this was the solid foundation for the Church when it was about to face the severest test: the persecution of Diocletian. Christians were loyal citizens of the Empire, they served in the armies, staffed the bureaucracy.

Triumph of the Church
By the Third Century the Church was growing in many ways. The authority of the bishops was increasing, the loose network of Christian communities was being tightened into a disciplined order, and Christianity was attracting converts from all walks of life. In the first century of the Church converts were drawn primarily from the poor and uneducated classes. There were exceptions, however, and members of the highest Roman aristocracy are known to have converted as early as the First Century A.D.

Greek and Roman intellectuals took little interest in the Church, except to ridicule its “superstitions.” Christian apologists did their best, but even Justin Martyr, though a good writer and honest thinker, lacked the advanced education that he would have needed for a serious debate with trained philosophers. Justin had, however, taken one very important step: At a time when many Christians were simply repudiating Greek thought and Roman authority, he had tried to explain Christianity in the terms of Greek philosophy and literature.

Alexandria (the Greek capital of Egypt) was the most intellectual center for the Greeks, and it was at Alexandria that Christian thinkers mastered the tools of Greek philosophy and literature and put them into the service of the Faith. In the late 2nd Century, Pantaenus, who had been taught by disciples of the first apostles, achieved such prominence that he was sent to India to preach. He was not the first Christian on the subcontinent, since while he was in India he actually found a copy of Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel.

Pantaenus’s student Clement was even more famous than his teacher. Though born, probably, at Athens, Clement’s study of philosophy led him to Alexandria, where he converted and became a priest (about 190). Clement, who was well-read, not only in philosophy but in poetry, saw Greek and Roman culture as a reflection of the eternal truth that had been given to literary and religious leaders of all nations. In this way, although the Greek mind had been darkened by superstition and error, the poetry of Homer and Hesiod could be compared with the Hebrew Scriptures. Clement put strong emphasis on philosophy, which could be used to refute the errors of non-Christian philosophers and clarify Christian teaching. With no appetite for martyrdom, Clement left Alexandria to escape persecution, but he returned some time for his death (not later than 220).

Clement’s student Origen was a philosopher and literary scholar of great reputation even among pagans. Reared in a Christian family, Origen supported his family by teaching pagan literature, but he was also a teacher of the catechism. Realizing that his students had been led astray by philosophical errors, he devoted himself to philosophy and studied with a leading Neoplatonist philosopher. He wrote constantly, on Scriptural interpretation, moral exhortation, philosophy. Origen was so successful that he attracted the interest even of pagans, and the mother of Emperor Alexander Severus asked him to explain his religion to her.

Origen’s fame, even after his death, was so great that he was attacked by the Church’s most important intellectual enemy, Porphyry (232-305), a Neoplatonist philosopher who wrote a 15 volume work against Christianity. Porphyry not only rejected the central Christian truths, but he ridiculed the idea that Christianity could be reconciled with philosophy. One important part of his critique was aimed at the stories of the Old Testament: Taken literally, these stories were not always compatible with the high moral teachings of the Church. Celsus had already pointed to some of the apparent absurdities but blamed Jews who in converting to Christianity abandoned their customs.
Origen’s answer was subtle. First of all, there were Judeo-Christians who clung to the Mosaic law, and even Peter, before he was fully enlightened, took pride in his circumcision. [Contra Celsum II.ii.]But Christ message transcended the old law, and this was probably one of those things of which he spoke in predicting the coming of the Holy Ghost:
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.“ As Origen observes, because “the apostles were Jews, and had been trained up according to the letter of the Mosaic law, He was unable to tell them what was the true law, and how the Jewish worship consisted in the pattern and shadow of certain heavenly things, and how future blessings were foreshadowed by the injunctions regarding meats and drinks, and festivals, and new moons, and Sabbaths.”

Origen insisted upon a spiritual interpretation of the Law and the Prophets, an interpretation used both by our Lord and within the OT itself: “Jesus, then, is the Son of God, who gave the law and the prophets; and we, who belong to the Church, do not transgress the law, but have escaped the mythologizings of the Jews, and have our minds chastened and educated by the mystical contemplation of the law and the prophets.”
If the Church was going to continue to grow, it would have to meet the philosophers on their own ground. Porphyry himself admits that Origen had great influence and, therefore, does his best to attack him by showing that he learned his wisdom from pagan teachers and that his philosophy is incompatible with Christianity. In going beyond the crude and literal interpretations of the Old Testament made by earlier Christian apologists, Origen had showed that Christianity was not incompatible—though it was superior to—the best Greek philosophy.

There was a danger, however, that Christian thinkers would drink too deep of pagan philosophy and import alien ideas into the faith. Many heresies sprung from this mistake, and Origen himself fell into several errors, but it is important to remember that philosophical errors could never be refuted except by philosophical truth put in service of the Christian faith.

The Spread of Christianity Throughout the Empire
By the late 3rd Century, Christians, who may have made up as much as a fourth of the Empire’s population, could be found in high positions in the army and government, as teachers of rhetoric and philosophy, and even within households of persecuting emperors. In some places they were bitterly resented by the pagans. In Alexandria, the active center of Greek philosophy, and in Lyons (in Gaul), where pagan religion was very strong, Roman authorities were egged on and assisted by angry mobs. At Alexandria, they tore their Christian victims to pieces in the streets, going house to house to find neighbors they knew to be Christians. Not content with killing their “enemies,” the Alexandrian mob stole their property, destroyed their houses, and burnt whatever was not valuable in great bonfires.

Elsewhere, as in Rome and Carthage, Christians and pagans lived side by side, did business with each other, and intermarried. There are Roman houses that have rooms with wall-paintings on both Christian and pagan themes, and St. Augustine’s mother Monica, born to Christian parents, had a pagan husband, who disliked her religion and refused to allow their three children to be baptized. Late in life, her husband converted and received baptism. By this time few non-Christians, it is fair to say, were enthusiastic about the persecutions, and many were so indifferent to the competing claims of the different sects that they were willing to switch from one to the other, if it proved to be convenient.

Christianity, when it was not corrupted by heresy, had one clear story to tell, and once the Christian message was given a philosophical rigor by Origen and his successors, it also had a logical theology that could defend itself against both heretics and pagan philosophers alike. But Christians had another advantage: the moral purity of their lives. It was not that pagans had no morality. Apart from looseness in matters of sex, pagan morality was comparable with Christian: keep your oaths, do not steal, lie, or cheat, be loyal to family and friends. The difference was that while pagans were not very strict in observing the ideal, ordinary Christians took their own more demanding moral code for granted as the normal way they were to lead their lives. As they pointed out, ordinary Christians lived up to as high a standard as the most self-denying Stoic philosophers.