The History of the Christian Church

This week’s episode is titled “Hermits.”A few episodes back when I introduced Athanasius, I mentioned the religious hermits he visited in the wilderness near Alexandria in Egypt, bringing them food. As a young man, Athanasius honored these men who'd forsaken the ease of city life to pursue an undistracted but difficult life of devotion to God.Who were these hermits, and what moved them to such a radical departure from the lifestyle modeled by Jesus and the Apostles?While the theology of monks & monasteries evolved over many generations, its earliest foundation rested on the example of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ who was something of an ascetic. His normal haunt was the Judean wilderness where it intersected the Jordan River. He wore a less than a fashion-conscious wardrobe and ate a strict organic diet grudgingly provided by the wilderness.The earliest hermits put great weight in Jesus's counsel to the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, giving it all to the poor, & following the Lord. They embraced the New Testament’s frequent idiom that the flesh is in a battle with the spirit & vice versa. They concluded flesh & spirit are irreconcilable. Hermits literally renounced the world by leaving the cultured life of the city to live in a primitive setting in the wilderness. This lifestyle of deprivation and discomfort was regarded as the truest route to unhindered communion with God by the hermits and a growing number of their admirers.The first time we see a written expression of this emerging mindset is in the Shepherd of Hermas about AD 140. This early Christian document defines a higher & lower route believers can take in their devotion to God. Faith, hope, & love are the lower route required of all Christians. But for those who aspire to closer intimacy with God, self-denial is required. This denial of the self took many forms with celibacy & renouncing marriage one of the more radical, yet popular.The practice of penance became common with believers moved to dramatic acts of charity and bravery in order to prove their devotion to God. When persecution was a frequent threat, Christians used penance as a way to compensate for moments of weakness & fear. And of course, the martyrs were luminous heroes even some pagans admired! But with the repeal of persecution, the Church needed new heroes & found them in the hermits who engaged in extreme acts of self-denial.The earliest monks were hermits; individuals who took refuge in the desert, hinting at where they got their start; in Egypt, where the desert is plentiful outside the fertile strip of land along the Nile. The word or hermit comes from the Greek word for desert.About AD 250, a 20-year-old named Anthony took Jesus’ command to the rich young ruler to sell his possessions & follow him -- literally. Anthony sold everything & went to live in an abandoned tomb. Legends quickly grew up about his battles with temptation that took visible form in attacks by demons, seductive women, & wild beasts. Anthony emerged from each battle with a greater sense of devotion to God that inspired others to follow his ascetic example. Soon, hundreds made their way to the wilderness to pursue a life of rigid self-denial. Anthony was Athanasius’ favorite. Since Anthony lived to be over a hundred, he was alive when the future bishop of Alexandria was taking supplies to the desert monks. Athanasius wrote a biography of Anthony, which became widely popular. This book, more than any other factor helped boost the esteem & appeal of the hermetic life.Monasticism grew apace with the new-found imperial favor under Constantine and his successors. It's not difficult understanding why the number of ascetics jumped & monasticism became popular at the same time the Church & State were buddying up. Being a Christian was no longer dangerous, so the sincerity of many new members declined. When people realized belonging to a church was a social & political plus, the sincerity factor dipped even further. Genuine believers noted the sagging quality of faith among so many of the church’s fair-weather friends & chose responded by embracing a more rigorous path. The models of that era were the monks; those standout Christian heroes who’d attained an honor similar to that given the martyrs of the previous era-and hey! I don't have to get my head chopped off. Cool.So the monks of this time weren't so much fleeing the world as they were protesting a worldly church.Part and parcel of the hermetic life was an isolated individualism that stands in contrast to the communal life modeled by Jesus and the Apostles and urged in the New Testament. You don’t have much of a Body of Christ when it’s just one guy in a cave. Hermits found refuge in the wilderness an easy way to avoid the temptations of the external world but what of the far more dangerous inner temptations of the soul = things like pride & envy?The temptation to pride is obvious. After all, it was easy for the desert ascetics who'd taken the supposed “higher path” to consider themselves better than others. But how could envy be a problem when they lived alone? Well, they lived alone but they had plenty of visitors. Pilgrims made their way out to meet them and catch a few moments with those considered living saints. As these pilgrims made the rounds of several hermits, they reported to each hermit the extreme acts of penance and piety of the others. Not wanting to be outdone in a show of devotion, hermits endeavored to outdo each other. They went on extreme fasts, ate bizarre foods, lived in trees, on tops of pillars, & refused to bathe. As their acts became more bizarre, their fame grew & soon thousands flocked to see them. One hermit named Simon Stylites was so put out by the crowds who came to see him, he erected a pillar he lived on the top of for 30 years. People sent up food via a rope & basket.As with any extreme, it didn't take long before a calmer and more reasoned way challenged the decidedly non-biblical ultra-individualism of the desert hermits. About AD 320, someone remembered Genesis 2:18 à People shouldn’t be alone. Hey, maybe these hermits we’ve made into living saints aren’t really hitting the mark after all.An ex-soldier named the Pachomius formed the first monastery. It was a place where Christians could pursue devotion to God in a communal setting. Instead of each monk deciding for himself how to live and what to do, drawing on his experience as a soldier, Pachomius set rules for the community. All members wore the same uniform, engaged in similar manual labor, and kept the same schedule.While Pachomius’ monastery was the first we know of for men, women already had their own version of communal life. This had been necessary since women were not allowed to be hermits. Their isolation would've made them a tempting target for criminals and brutes. Nonnus is the feminine form of the word monk so the women who pursued the communal life were called nuns; their cloistered commune was a convent.The monastic movement spread north out of Egypt into Syria, then West into Asia Minor which at that time was the most spiritually dynamic region of the Faith. Once monasteries took root in Asia Minor they spread rapidly across Europe.When Athanasius died in the Spring of 373, 3 bishops from Cappadocia in Asia Minor picked up and continued to carry the standard of loyalty to the Nicaean Creed. Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. These 3 greatly promoted the monastic movement. Basil was especially important as he authored the Rule of Discipline that framed monastic life for generations after and does to this day in the Eastern Orthodox Church.Throughout the 4th & 5th Centuries, monasticism gained popularity and infiltrated every level of society. The communal life of the monks re-infused the Church with a sense of purpose and a return to the piety that had marked the Church’s early years. Martyrdom was replaced by a whole-hearted devotion to God thru renouncing a career of worldly success in favor of one lived in the imitation of Christ. In order to obtain this ideal within the context of communal life, monks took vows of obedience, poverty, & chastity. These were attempts to limit the battle-line of temptation and sin by renouncing possessions, self-will, & the sexual urge. Monasteries helped put an end to the problems common to the earlier hermits: idleness & eccentricity. They became centers of social renewal & scholarship. By the 6th Century, most church leaders were monks.One of the most notable monks from this period was Jerome, who lived from about 340 to 420. He began as a hermit in the Syrian wilderness. Despite best intentions, Jerome was plagued by sexual temptation. The only relief he could find was when his mind was preoccupied by an overwhelming intellectual challenge. Someone suggested he learn Hebrew which proved to be an effective prescription against temptation. Once he’d mastered Hebrew, he traveled to Rome where he became the tutor of one of a leading bishops and met a couple brilliant women who under his training became as skilled as he in teaching the Bible.When Jerome fell out with some other monks at Rome, he moved to a monastery at Bethlehem where he spent the next 22 years translating the Old & New Testaments into Latin.At first Jerome's translation was criticized because he used the street-language of his day rather than the more refined classical Latin of antiquity. People considered his Bible vulgar but it didn't take long before opinions changed & the Latin Vulgate was widely and wildly popular. The Roman Catholic Church used the Latin Vulgate as their official Bible until recent time.The man who had the most significant impact on monastic life was Benedict of Nursia not far from of Rome. Benedict was educated in the capital but when he was exposed to the extreme asceticism of the hermits, cut short his schooling in favor of a solitary life in a cave 80 miles south. He spent 3 years studying the Scriptures when local monks came for a visit. Impressed with his learning, they asked if he’d be their abbot, a monastery’s leader. He agreed, but when the discipline he required proved too rigorous, they tried to poison him. He fled. Benedict took little more with him than a wisdom born of failure. Instead of chalking up his ouster from the monastery as a sign he wasn't cut out to lead, he refined his ideas on how to conduct community and began a new monastery at Monte Cassino south of Rome in 529. When Benedict died 13 years later he left behind a pattern for monastic life that became the standard for hundreds of monasteries and helped safeguard European civilization during the intellectual declension of the Middle Ages; something we’ll return in a later episode.It was at and for the Monte Cassino monastery Benedict wrote his famous "Rule." The Rule was a brilliant merging of pragmatism and psychology. Benedict had learned how to administrate a commune of believers to enforce necessary discipline without being harsh. He began by taking the basic monastic forms already in place, then installed a system of discipline that weeded out the lazy and insincere. He knew the only way to accomplish the aims of a monastery was by maintaining authority and discipline, but the required obedience had to be such that an ordinary person could give. Benedict failed in his earlier attempt because he’d expected the monks to follow his own level of discipline, which he realized was greater than all but a few could emulate.Benedict's Rule established the role of the monastery’s abbot as sole-authority to whom the monks owed unwavering and unquestioned obedience. But this authority couldn’t be arbitrary, so he made the selection of the abbot a choice for the monks themselves. His rule for the abbot was that any major decision must be made after consulting the monks for guidance. He warned that going against their counsel was both unwise and unsafe. He cautioned abbots against an unchecked exercise of power.In a move that seems prescient, Benedict advocated each monastery become a world unto itself. Work of both a manual & mental nature was seen as crucial to monastic life and central to devotion to God. So each monastery became a self-supporting community, dependent on the outside world for little. What this meant was that as the Roman Empire dissolved, the scholarship of the ancient world was preserved in the Benedictine monasteries where it was read, studied, & copied for generations. They became the storehouses for the knowledge that would reemerge in the Reformation & Renaissance, lifting Europe out of the Middle Ages.As we end this episode, here are some lines from the Rule of St. Benedict.The first degree of humility is prompt obedience.Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times. At others, in devout reading.The sleepy like to make excuses.The abbot ought ever to bear in mind what he is and what he is called; he ought to know that to whom more is entrusted, from him more is exacted.He should know that whoever undertakes the government of souls must prepare himself to account for them. To both casual listeners and subscribers of CS, thanks for joining us.If you haven’t done so yet, please drop by the Facebook page and give it a “like.” If you access CS through iTunes, please rate the podcast and leave a review. Thanks.

This 17th episode is titled “What a Difference a Century Makes.”During the mid-4th Century, the history of the Church walked apace with the history of the Roman Empire. With the death of Constantine the Great, the rule of the Empire divided among his 3 sons, Constantine II, Constans, & Constantius. In the power-hungry maneuverings that followed, they did their upbringing in a Christian education little honor. They quickly removed any challenge by their father’s relatives, then set to work on one another. 3 years after their father’s death they went to war in a struggle for sole supremacy. Constantine II was slain by Constans, who was in turn murdered by a Gallic commander of the Imperial guard named Magnentius. After the defeat and suicide of Magnentius, Constantius became sole Emperor & reigned till his death in 361.Constantius departed from his father Constantine’s wise policy of religious toleration. Constantius was greatly influenced by the Arian bishop of Constantinople Eusebius who inspired him to use the authority of his office to enforce the Arian-brand of Christianity not only on the pagans of the Empire but also on those Christians who followed the Nicene Orthodoxy. Paganism was violently suppressed. Temples were pillaged and destroyed with the loot taken from them given either to the Church or Constantius’ supporters. As Christians had earlier been subject to arrest & execution, so now were pagans. Not unexpectedly, large numbers of former pagans came over to Christianity; their conversion feigned. A similar persecution was applied towards Nicaean Christians. They were punished with confiscation and banishment.Constantius meddled in most of the Church’s affairs, which during his reign was fraught with doctrinal controversy. He called a multitude of councils; in Gaul, Italy, Illyricum, & Asia. He fancied himself an accomplished theologian and enjoyed being called Bishop of bishops.Constantius justified his violent suppression of paganism by likening it to God’s command to Israel to wipe out the idol-worshipping Canaanites. But intelligent church leaders like Athanasius argued instead for toleration.  Athanasius wrote,Satan, because there is no truth in him, breaks in with ax and sword. But the Savior is gentle, and forces no one to whom He comes, but knocks on and speaks to the soul: ‘Open to me, my sister?’ If we open to Him He enters but if we will not, He departs. For the truth is not preached by sword and dungeon, by the might of an army, but by persuasion and exhortation. How can there be persuasion where the fear of the Emperor is uppermost? How exhortation, where the contradictory has to expect banishment and death?The ever-swinging pendulum of history foretells that the forced-upon faith of Constantius will provoke a pagan reaction. That reaction came immediately after Constantius during the reign of his cousin, Julian the Apostate. Julian had only avoided the earlier purge of his family because he was too young to pose a threat. But the young grow up.  Julian received a Christian education and was trained for a position in church leadership. But he harbored and nurtured a secret hatred for the religion of the court, a religion under which his family was all but exterminated. He studied the banned texts of Eastern mystics & Greek philosophers; all the more thrilling because they were forbidden. Julian became so immersed in paganism, he was made the leader of a secret order devoted to keeping the ancient religion alive.Despite his hostility toward Christianity, Julian recognized the Faith was too deeply entrenched in the Empire to turn back the sundial to a time when Christians were persona non grata. He decided instead to simply pry loose the influence they’d established in the civil realm. He appointed non-Christians to important posts & reclaimed some of the old pagan temples that had been turned into churches back to their original use.Julian enacted a policy of religious tolerance. Everyone was free to practice whatever faith they wanted. Make no mistake, Julian wanted to eliminate Christianity. He felt the best way to accomplish that, wasn’t by attacking it outright. After all, 200 years of persecution had already shown that wasn’t effective. Rather, Julian figured all the various sects of Christianity would end up going to war with one another and the movement would die the death of a thousand cuts, all self-inflicted. His plan didn’t work out, of course, but it was an astute observation of how factious the followers of Christ can be.When Julian was killed in 363 in an ill-advised war against the Sassanids, the pagan revival he’d hoped for fizzled. The reasons for its demise were many. Because Paganism is an amalgam of various often contradictory beliefs and worldviews it lacked the cohesion needed to stare down Christianity. And compared to the virtuous morality and ethical priorities of Christianity, paganism paled.Julian’s hoped-for elimination of Christianity by allowing its various sects to operate side by side never materialized. On the contrary, major advances were made toward a mutual understanding of the doctrinal debates that divided them. The old Athanasius was still around and as an elder statesman for the Church he’d mellowed, making him a rallying point for different groups. He called a gathering of church leaders in Alexandria in 362, right in the middle of Julian’s reign, to recognize the Creed of Nicea as the Church’s official creedal statement. His resolution passed.But trouble was brewing in the important city of Antioch. While the Western churches under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome remained steadfast in their loyalty to the Nicean Creed, the Eastern Empire leaned toward Arianism. Antioch in Syria was a key Eastern city split between adherents of Nicea & Arianism. The official church, that is, the one recognized by the Emperor in Constantinople had an Arian bishop. The Nicean Christians were led by Bishop Paulinus in a separate fellowship. But in 360, a new bishop rose to lead the Arian church at Antioch – and he was a devoted Nicean named Meletius! This occurred right at a time when more & more Eastern bishops were coming out in favor of the Nicene Creed. These Eastern bishops supported Meletius and the New Niceans of Antioch. We might think this would see a merger of the old-Niceans under Paulinus with the new, and à we’d assume wrongly. Rome & the Western church considered Paulinus the rightful bishop of Antioch & remained suspicious of Meletius & the new-Niceans. Efforts on their part to negotiate with & be accepted by the Western church were rebuffed. This served to increase the divide between East & West that had already been brewing for the last few decades.A new center of spiritual weight developed at this time in Cappadocia in central-eastern Asia Minor. It formed around the careers of 3 able church leaders, Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend, Gregory of Nazianzus. Their work answered the lingering concerns that hovered around the words the Nicaean Council had chosen to describe Jesus as being of the same substance as the Father. These 3 Cappadocian Fathers were able to convince their Eastern brothers that the Nicean Creed was the best formulation they were likely to produce and to accept that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father, and so God, not a similar substance and so something other than or less than God, as the Arians held it. They pressed in on terms that made it clear there was only one God but 3 persons who individually are, and together comprise that one God; The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They said the 3 operated inseparably, none ever acting independently of the others. Every divine action begins from the Father, proceeds thru the Son, and is completed in the Holy Spirit.In 381 at the Council of Constantinople, the Eastern Church demonstrated its acceptance of the Cappadocian Fathers’ theology by affirming their adherence to the Nicean Creed. This effectively marked the end of Arianism within the Empire. And unlike the previous 3 ecumenical councils, the Council of Constantinople was not followed by years of bitter strife. What the council failed to do was resolve the split in the church at Antioch. The West continued to support the Old-Niceans while the East supported the New. It was clear to all tension was building between the old seat of Imperial power & the new capital; between Rome & Constantinople.  Which church & bishop would be the recognized leader of the whole? Antioch became the site where that contest was lived out thru their surrogates, Paulinus & Meletius.The Council of Constantinople attempted to deal with this contest by developing a system for how the churches would be led. The rulings of the Council, and all the church councils held during these years are called Canon Law, which established policy by which the Church would operate. One of the rulings of the Council of Constantinople established what was known as dioceses. A diocese was a group of provinces that became a region over which a bishop presided. The rule was that one diocese could not interfere in the workings of another. Each was to be autonomous.Though Jovian followed Julian as emperor in 363 his reign was short. He followed a policy of religious toleration, as did Valentinian I who succeeded him. Valentinian recognized the Empire was too vast for one man to rule & appointed his younger brother Valens to rule the East. Valens was less tolerant than his brother & attacked both paganism & the Nicean Christians. But Valens was the last Arian to rule in either East or West. All subsequent emperors were Orthodox; that is, they followed the Nicean Creed.When Valentinian died in 375, rule of the Western Empire fell to his son Gratian. When Valens died, Gratian chose an experienced soldier named Theodosius to rule the East.Gratian & Theodosius presided over the final demise of paganism. Both men strongly supported the Orthodox faith, and at the urging of Bishop Ambrose of Milan, they enacted policies that brought an end to pagan-worship. Of course, individuals scattered throughout the Empire continued to secretly offer sacrifices to idols & went through the superstitious rituals of the past, but as a social institution with temples & a priesthood, paganism was eradicated. Under the reign of Theodosius, Christianity was made the official religion of the Empire.We’ll end this episode with a look at how the church at Rome emerged during the 4th & 5th Centuries to become the lead church in the Empire.In theory all the bishops of the Empire’s many churches were equal. In reality, from the time of the Apostolic Fathers, some gained greater prominence because their churches were in more important cities. During the 2nd & early 3rd Centuries Alexandria, Antioch, Rome & Carthage were the places of the greatest spiritual gravity; their senior pastors recognized as leaders, not just of their churches but of The Church. The Council of Nicaea in 325 recognized Alexandria as the lead church for all North Africa, Antioch in the East & Rome as preeminent in the West.Constantinople, the new Eastern political capital, was added to that list in 381 by the Council of Constantinople.  As one of its rulings in canon law, the Council declared Constantinople 2nd only to Rome in terms of primacy in deciding church matters.We might assume the Bishop of Rome would gladly accept this finding of the Council, being that it acknowledged the Roman “see” (that is, a bishop’s realm of authority) as primary. He didn’t! He objected because the Council’s ruling implied the position of a Church and its Bishop depended on the status of their city in the Empire. In other words, it was the nearness to the center of political power that weighed most. The Bishop of Rome maintained that the preeminence of Rome wasn’t dependent on political proximity but on historical precedent. He said the decree of a Synod or Council didn’t convey primacy. The Roman Bishop claimed Rome was primary because God had made it so.  At a Council in Rome a year after the Council of Constantinople, the Roman Bishop Damasus said Rome's primacy rested on the Apostle Peter’s founding of the Roman church. Ever since the mid-3rd C, Roman Christians had used Matthew 16, Luke 22 & John 21 to claim their church possessed a unique authority over other churches & bishops. This Petrine Theory as it’s come to be known was generally accepted by the end of the 6th C. It claimed Peter had been given primacy over his fellow apostles, and his superior position had been passed on from him to his successors, the bishops of Rome, by apostolic succession.In truth, there was already a substantial church community in Rome when Peter arrived in Rome and was martyred. The Christians honored Peter as they did all their martyrs by making his grave a popular gathering place. Eventually, it became a shrine. Then, when persecution ended, the shrine became a church. The leader of that church became associated with Peter whose grave was its central feature.When Constantine came to power, he ordered a basilica built on the site on Vatican Hill. To mark that a new day of favor toward the Church had come, Constantine gave the Lateran Palace where the Roman Empress had lived to the Bishop of Rome as his residence. But the story that arose later which puts Emperor Constantine on his face before Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, pleading forgiveness in sackcloth & ashes & handing over to him the rule of Italy & Rome, is a fiction.Until Bishop Damasus in the mid-4th C, the Roman bishops were competent leaders of the church but tended toward weakness when dealing with the Emperors, who often sought to dominate the Faith. A dramatic change occurred at the end of the 4th C, when under Ambrose of Milan, the Church dictated to the Emperor.Bishop Damasus, a contemporary of Ambrose, installed the Primacy of Peter as a central part of Church doctrine. He claimed the Roman church was started by Peter, who’d passed on his authority to the next bishop, who’d, in turn, handed it to his successor and that each Bishop of Rome was a recipient of Peter’s apostolic authority. Since Peter was the leader of the Apostles that meant the Roman church was the lead church and the Bishop the leader, not just of Rome but of all Christendom. Damasus was the first to address other bishops as ‘sons’ rather than ‘brothers.’Historical events during the 4th & 5th Centuries enhanced the power of the Bishop of Rome. When Constantine moved the political capital to Constantinople in 330, it left the Roman Bishop as the strongest individual in Rome for long stretches of time. People in the west looked to him for temporal as well as spiritual leadership when a crisis arose. Constantinople & the Emperor were hundreds of miles & weeks away; the Roman bishop was near; so people turned to him to exercise authority in meeting political as well as spiritual crises. In 410 when Alaric and the Visigoths sacked Rome, Bishop Innocent I used clever diplomacy to save the city from the torch. When the Western Empire finally fell in 476, the people of Italy looked to the Roman Bishop for civil as well as religious leadership.Great leaders like Cyprian, Tertullian, & Augustine were outstanding men of the Western church who counted themselves as being under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome. The Western Empire had also managed to stay free of the heretical challenges that had wracked the East, most notably, the brouhaha with Arius and his followers. This doctrinal solidarity was due in large part to the steadfast leadership of Rome’s Bishops.Another factor that contributed to Rome’s rise to dominance was the decline of the other great centers. Jerusalem lost its place due to the Bar Kochba rebellion of the 2nd C. Alexandria & Antioch were overrun by the Muslims in the 6th & 7th Centuries; leaving Constantinople & Rome as the centers of power.In an Imperial edict in AD 445, the Emperor Valentinian III recognized the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in spiritual affairs. What he enacted became Canon law for all.Another great boon to the influence & prestige of the Roman Bishop was the missionary work of monks loyal to Rome. Clovis & Augustine planted churches in northern France & Britain, all owing allegiance to Rome.But above all, the Roman church was led by several able bishops during this time; men who overlooked no opportunity to enhance & extend their power.Leo I was bishop at Rome from 440 to 461 & by far the ablest occupant of the Bishop’s seat until Gregory I, 150 years later. His skill earned him the title “Leo the Great.”We’re not sure when Rome’s bishops began to be called “pope”, a title which for years had been used by the bishop of Alexandria. But Leo was the first to refer consistently to himself as pope – from Latin, a child’s affectionate term for papa. In 452, Leo persuaded Attila the Hun to let the city of Rome alone. Then 3 years later when the Vandals came to sack the city, Leo convinced them to limit their loot-fest to 2-weeks. The Vandal Leader Gaiseric kept his word, and the Romans forever after esteemed Leo as the one who saved their city from destruction.Pope Leo insisted all church courts & the rulings of all bishops had to be submitted to him for final decision. This is what Valentinians III’s edict of 445 granted and he was determined to apply it.Pope Gelasius I, who ruled from 492 to 496, said that God gave sacred power to the Pope and royal power to the King. But because the Pope had to account to God for the King at the judgment, the sacred power of the Pope was more important than royal power. So, civil rulers should submit to the Pope. While the emperors didn’t all automatically knuckle under to popes, most did resign a large part of authority & political influence to the Roman Bishops.

This week’s episode is “The Daggers Come Out.”The Council of Nicaea dealt with more than just the Arian controversy over how to understand the nature of Christ. The 300 bishops who gathered in Nicaea also issued a score of rulings on issues of church life that had been subjects of discussion for years. Chief among these was setting the date for the annual celebration of the resurrection of Christ. They also set various rules for organizing the Church & the ministry of deacons and priests.As the Church grew with more congregations being formed, the need for some organization became apparent. So for administrative purposes, the church-world was divided into provinces with centers at Rome in the West & in the East, four headquarters; Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem & Constantinople. It may seem odd to us today that only 1 church was the Western center while the East had 4. Why so many? The answer is that it was in the E the Church had its greatest extent & growth.The bishops at these 5 churches were given oversight of their surrounding regions. This stoked a major rivalry between Alexandria & Antioch, the Empire’s 2nd & 3rd largest cities after Rome. These 2 cities vied with each other for leadership of the entire East. That rivalry became more complex when the church at Constantinople, the new eastern capital of the Empire, was added to the mix. The contest between them at first took place mostly in the realm of theological debates but later became sinister when ecclesiastical position equaled power and wealth.But, the amazing unanimity of the bishops at the Council of Nicaea seemed to presage the dawn of an era of peace and tranquility for the Church and Empire. It was not to be. While the bishops agreed on the word “homo-ousias” to describe Jesus being one substance with the Father, many bishops, possibly even most, left Nicaea feeling the Emperor Constantine's pressure coerced them into taking a position they weren’t happy with. After Nicea, many of them regretted knuckling under & grew resentful of his pressure to settle the issue.I don't want to get too technical here, but that's precisely what this all was; a highly technical issue of the parsing of words, trying to find an accurate expression of their belief about the humanity and deity of Christ. It isn't that the bishops didn't believe Jesus was anything less than God. It's just that the word used in the Nicene Creed, ‘homo-ousias,’ didn't capture what they thought the truth of Jesus deity was. Many of the bishops were uncomfortable with that word because the Gnostics had used it to describe their beliefs about Jesus a few decades before.So not long after the Nicean Council, many of those who’d signed the Creed backed away from it. Several alternate creeds were offered, some close to the Nicene version and others at great distance from it. None of them repeated the word ‘homo-ousias.’It was in the East that the greatest theological turmoil ensued. After Constantine, several of the Emperors were decidedly hostile to the Nicene position. A few were openly friendly with the Arianism Nicaea was supposed to have buried.As we saw last time, though Alexandria was a lead church in the East, its Bishop Athanasius was the sole standard-bearer for the Nicene Creed in the East. Though Constantine had sponsored and endorsed Nicaea and enforced its terms by the use of civil authority, his desire to bring unity to the Empire and Church moved him to press bishops to re-install Arius and his followers; not as leaders, but simply as church members. When Athanasius and other Nicene-keeping bishops refused, Constantine punished them with banishment. Then, after a season, he changed his mind and allowed them to return. But when those same church leaders again proved too principled for Constantine's taste in some other ruling he wanted adopted, he’d banished them once again. Constantine’s successors followed his lead.For reasons relating more to politics than doctrinal concerns, the half-century after the Council of Nicaea, saw the Eastern church effectively taken over by Arians. The Pro-Arian Bishop of Nicomedia, Eusebius (not the famous church historian) was allowed to return to his post after a 2-year exile. He immediately set about to undo Nicea. He persuaded Constantine to reverse Arius’ exile and when the heretic appeared before the Emperor, he confessed a statement of faith that appeared to line up with the orthodoxy of Nicaea, but was in fact only a clever piece of verbal gymnastics that fooled the Emperor. Athanasius wasn't fooled and refused to affirm Arius as a member in good standing. So Eusebius and his supporters plotted to get rid of him. A council of Eastern bishops was called in 335 at Tyre as they were on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher Constantine had just had built. At Tyre, the bishops condemned Athanasius as guilty of conduct unbecoming a Bishop. Which is tragically comical, because Athanasius was about as pious as one could get. What Eusebius and his cronies meant was that a bishop ought to agree with them, “because well, just because. Stop being contentious or we’ll charge you with conduct unbecoming a bishop!” Athanasius recognized the ambush and went to the Emperor to plead his case. Eusebius followed and warned Constantine he'd heard Athanasius had threatened to call a strike of the Alexandrian dock-workers who loaded grain into the barges that fed both Constantinople and Rome. Without Egypt's harvest, the cities would go hungry & vicious riots would ensue. Eusebius's charge was ridiculous but he knew the Emperor couldn’t risk it being true. Constantine was forced to banish Athanasius to Trier (TREE-yer) in Germania.If you’re a subscriber to CS, you know we sometimes breeze over years, even decades of church history with only a brief summary.  Other times we slow down & go in depth. The reason for this is because there are moments, seasons, even eras when events occur, trends develop, movements are birthed that have a major impact on the course of following years. We’ve slowed down to focus on the post-Nicaean years because they’re illustrative of how ruinous the infiltration of political power has been to the Church. Only 20 years passed after Constantine’s conversion and the Edict of Milan, and already church leaders are using their authority, not as spiritual guides to bless those God entrusted to their charge but to accumulate more power & influence in the political & civil realm. A man like Athanasius, whose sole concern was to glorify God & faithfully discharge his role as a pastor, proved no match for a conniving political operator like Eusebius who used his office as Bishop to bend the Emperor’s ear & secure civil authority to enforce his will. While the once-persecuted Church rejoiced that the Emperor was finally one of them, they couldn’t foresee that his merging of church and state would bring about a whole new set of problems that would turn their leaders into power-hungry competitors.  While many bishops resisted the lure of political power & stayed true to their spiritual task, many others were seduced and plunged into the great game of ecclesiastical politics. The machinations of the contest between Eusebius & Athanasius would likely not have occurred during the persecutions of the previous decades. But when civil authority was lent church leaders, the doctrinal daggers came out and theology became a ruse behind which to plot how to gain political advantage.The historian Eusebius, not the villain who attacked Athanasius, but the one who wrote the first Church History chronicle, helped blur the lines between church and state. After charting the church’s course from the Apostles to Constantine in his book Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius presented Constantine as much more than just a ruler kindly disposed toward the Faith. Oh no – Eusebius sketched Constantine as much more than that. He was God's agent; ordained by God to provide leadership for both the Church & Empire.Eusebius said that just as the Church was a manifestation of the Kingdom of God on Earth, set to rule in spiritual affairs, so the Empire under Constantine was a manifestation of the Kingdom on Earth to rule in civil affairs. God would use both to accomplish his redemptive plan. And just as God ruled in Heaven, Constantine ruled on Earth. He’s not a god, as some of the earlier emperors had claimed, but he is, Eusebius reasoned, God's unique agent to administer His Kingdom on earth.These ideas of monarchy and kingship Eusebius promoted about the Emperor played well in the East where monarchs had long been esteemed as semi-divine. But Rome's historic aversion to kings, its allergic reaction to monarchy, meant Eusebius's promotion of Constantine didn't go over as well in the West. This is another factor that added to Constantine's tendency to stay in the East. Eusebius's promotion of Constantine as the leader of both Church & State set the scene for the emergence of one man to whom the Church would look for leadership. If not the Emperor, then another dynamic church leader; a bishop of the bishops.When Constantine died in 337, the empire was split between his 3 sons, who each lined up behind a pro- or anti-Nicean stance. Eventually one of them, the Pro-Arian Constantius, aserted sole authority. But immediately after Constantine’s death, many church leaders were allowed to return to their homes from exile, including Athanasius. His enemy, the pro-Arian Eusebius moved from Nicomedia to the capital at Constantinople where he convinced Constantius to once more banish him. Athanasius knew Eusebius was moved by sheer political will and went à to Rome to plead his case.In 340 Council of Western Bishops was convened that reversed Athanasius's excommunication and reaffirmed the doctrinal position of the Nicene Creed. This was a gauntlet hurled to the ground before the Eastern churches who were by now leaning decidedly toward Arianism. They counted the Emperor as a chief defender & advocate. The Eastern bishops asked a crucial question; one that becomes central in the decades that followed. It was this: What gave Rome the right to overrule their decisions? After all, Athanasius was Bishop of Alexandria, an eastern city. He was their problem, not Rome's. So how did the West think it could meddle in Eastern affairs? And besides, “Do you guys in Rome really want to mess with the Emperor? He is after all, our guy.”The following year, 341, the Eastern bishops called their own council in Antioch to counter Rome’s. Interestingly, when they sat down to establish an official position on Arianism, they realized it couldn't be supported and repudiated it instead. Discussions revealed they weren't pro-Arian so much as uncomfortable with the way the deity of Christ had been put at Nicaea. It's like the members of a family each thinking, "Fish. I haven’t had fish for a while. I should have some fish." But then when they all talk about where they want to go for dinner on Saturday night, they agree what they really want is prime rib. Eusebius was clearly pro-Arian & had the Emperor’s ear. But when the other Eastern bishops gathered, they realized they didn’t really want his fishy-Arianism. What they wanted was the prime-rib The Nicean Creed had sought to serve but ended up dishing burger. So the 341 Council of Antioch repudiated Arianism. But they were going to have none of Rome’s meddling in their affairs & refused to reverse Athanasius’ exile. Ultimately, the Council of Antioch failed in that they were unable to offer a creedal statement that improved on or fixed the problems they had with the Nicene Creed. Their efforts ended up only adding to the confusion on what Christians believed about Jesus.At the prompting of his brother Constans, Constantius called for a Council of both Eastern & Western bishops at Sardica (SAR–dee-ka) in modern Bulgaria just a year after Antioch. This Council accomplished nothing but to further divide East from West. Though a temporary calm ensued, the fracture between the 2 halves of the Empire revealed at Sardica only became more pronounced in the decades that followed. It was never healed.Athanasius returned to Alexandria yet again, only to be banished a few years later when Constantius took control of the Western Empire from his brother. Constantius then allowed his Arian friends to dictate policy in the West as they’d been in the East. Nicene bishops were replaced by Arians. Athanasius was again condemned and banished. You have to feel for this poor guy who just wanted to take care of his flock, but could not sit idly by & watch corrupt men make war on the Truth for political gain.As Constantius’ reign entered its last years, he forced a couple more councils to adopt the Arian-backed word ‘homoi-ousias’ to describe Jesus as being of similar substance with the Father rather than the Nicean formulation of ‘homo-ousias’ – ONE & the same substance as the Father. And again, as at Nicea, this terminology was rammed down the Bishops’ throats. As happened after Nicaea, they went away from the councils resentful of being pressed to accept a doctrine they couldn’t support. The effect was the exact opposite of what Constantius & his Arian priest Eusebius wanted. The bishops retreated to the Nicean Creed. “Homo-ousias might not be precisely how they’d describe Jesus’ deity, but it was better than the newly required “homoi-ousias” and would have to suffice until someone could come up with a better way to state it.That better formulation of the deity of Christ came from the 3 bishops who took up the Nicean standard after Athanasius died. We’ll take them up next time.As we close it out, I want to thank those who’ve recommended the podcast to others.It’s great seeing all those who go to the Facebook page, give CS a “like” and leave a comment about where they live.Because of the growth of the podcast and the bandwidth required to host it, we’ve needed to add a DONATE feature. What used to be a labor of love that I was more than happy to fund has become a labor of love that now needs your assistance. So, if you can, please go to sanctorum.us and follow the link to donate. Any amount is a help. Thanks.

This week’s episode is titled, “Contra Munda”In our last episode we noted how the Emperor Constantine hoped Christianity would be a unifying influence in the far-flung & troubled Roman Empire. But as soon as he & his co-emperor Licinius passed the Edict of Milan granting religious tolerance to all the Empire’s subject, the doctrinal & theological debates that had been in place for years began to surface.When the Church was being hammered by persecution prior to Constantine, Christians had a more imminent threat to deal with. But now that persecution was lifted, secondary issues moved to the foreground.As we saw at the conclusion of the last episode, the Donatists of North Africa asked the Emperor to mediate their dispute with their non-Donatist adversaries. At the Council at Arles, the Donatists lost the debate over whether or not lapsed church leaders could be reinstalled. When they refused to capitulate, Constantine sent troops to Carthage, the lead church in N Africa, to enforce his will. For the first time, the power of the State was used to enforce Church policy on other Christians.An interesting aside from the Council of Arles was the presence of 3 bishops from Britain. This gives us an idea how far the Gospel had penetrated by the beginning of the 4th C.But the Donatist Controversy wasn’t the only or near the largest debate that would engulf the Church at that time. The biggest doctrinal challenge facing the Church was how to understand the person of Jesus Christ. A pastor of a church near Alexandria, Egypt named Arius became the champion for a position which said Jesus was human but not God.As we embark on this chapter in Church History, let me begin by saying it was in these early years, as church leaders wrestled with the identity of Christ and His relation to man & God, that the theological groundwork was laid for what we hold today as Orthodoxy. It took many years & several Councils before the Church Fathers worked out the right wording that captures the essence of what we now call orthodox doctrine. Getting there was no easy trip. The journey was fraught with great trouble, distress, and at times, bloodshed. It began with a debate over the nature of Christ; was He God, man, or both? If both, how are we to understand Him; did He have 2 natures or 1 hybrid nature that merged the 2? And if Jesus is God, then how do we describe God as one, yet being both Father & Son? Oh – and don’t forget the Holy Spirit? How are we going to describe all this without saying something about God that’s untrue?I warn you that as we carry all this into the 5th & 6th Cs, especially the discussions over how to understand the nature of Christ, we’re going to see some church leaders acting in a decidedly non-Christian manner. One of the Church Councils called to settle this matter ended up in a bloody riot! So hang on because we have some fun stuff ahead.For now, realize what we’re looking at in this era of our review is a big deal and will frame the course of Church life over the next nearly 300 years.How do I explain the debate as it emerged in the challenge Arius presented?Well, because of their pagan background, many people didn’t believe God experienced emotions as humans experience them. Yet it’s clear from the Gospels Jesus did experience such emotions. Therefore, logic seemed to dictate Jesus could not have been divine, because if He was, then God experienced human emotions. Arius’ solution was that Jesus was God’s first & greatest creation. Denying that Jesus was eternal, he said, “Once, the Son did not exist.” Arius wanted to get his ideas into the public mind quickly so he set his doctrine to catchy little tunes & soon, many were singing his songs.Arius’ position was popular among the common people who found the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation & the Trinity difficult. How could there be 1 God eternally manifest as 3 persons? Arius’ description of Jesus as a kind of divine hero beneath the 1 God fit more easily into their pagan background so they adopted his theology. While Arius’ teaching spread rapidly among his pagan neighbors, those with a keener awareness of the Bible opposed his aberrant views. They composed their own chorus that today is known as the Gloria Patri – “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, so Arius’ spiritual overseer, led the opposition to Arius and called together a group of Church leaders in 320. They reviewed Arius’ theology and declared it heretical.  When Arius refused to back down, they excommunicated him. Arius then went to the Empire’s Eastern capital at Nicomedia & asked for the support of his friend, the bishop of the church there, a guy named Eusebius.  Not the church historian Eusebius who lived at the same time.The 2 most influential churches of the East were set in opposition to each other, Nicomedia, the political headquarters & Alexandria, the intellectual center. Because Arius had Eusebius’ backing he felt emboldened to return to Alexandria. When he did, there was rioting in the streets. But then, if you know anything about ancient Alexandria, rioting was a favored past-time. They rioted like we go to a ball game; it was public sport.As the Arian Controversy spread, Emperor Constantine realized if he didn’t take action, instead of the Church providing much needed unity for the Empire, it would become one of the major sources of turmoil & unrest. In 325 he called Church leaders far & wide to attend a special council at the city of Nicea in modern Turkey, at his expense. Some 300 bishops managed to make it, enough to make the Council of Nicea a remarkable representation of the whole church.  Many of those who attended bore the scars & marks of the Diocletian persecution. When they met, they found a throne set for the Emperor in the midst of the hall. He sat arrayed in richly jeweled robes befitting more an Eastern monarch than an Emperor of Rome.Constantine assumed the Arian Controversy was merely a sematic debate; a petty brueha over words & that a meeting of the minds of Christians leaders was all that was needed to settle the dispute. Yeah, let’s just get every together in one place and talk it out man to man, face to face. Surely they’ll reach a compromise, right?  à So, he commenced the council with a little pep talk about the importance of their task, then turned it over to them. The depth of his naivete was quickly revealed.The account of the finding of the Council reveals that while the doctrinal issue raised by Arius was quickly resolved, it was how Arius was handled by Bishop Alexander that became the main point of debate.Arianism was declared heretical. The Council affirmed both the deity & humanity of Jesus as the Son of God. Constantine urged his friend, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the famous historian, to put forward his creed, his statement of faith as something the entire council could endorse as their united statement. But the Council didn’t find Eusebius sufficiently clear on his belief in the deity of Jesus and went instead with a creed offered by the Bishop of the Spanish city of Cordova, a man named Hosius, another favorite of the Emperor’s. Still, the Council dithered, & Constantine, with an empire to run, grew impatient & pressed the bishops to endorse what today we know as the Nicean Creed, the accepted standard of Roman & Eastern Churches.I quote the Nicean Creed in full …We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, …Then comes the lines the Council wrote to specifically deal with the Arian error –True God of True God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father (remember that phrase; it’ll be important later) by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe in only one holy, universal and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.Only 2 of the 300 bishops present refused to sign the Creed. Along with Arius, they were exiled. Constantine assumed the Arian Controversy had been dealt with, so the Church would settle down and help him unite the realm. To mark the dawn of a new & glorious day of Church & State cooperation, Constantine held a huge banquet before the bishops headed home.What a sight, these men bearing the scars of the previous emperor’s persecution, now the emperor’s celebrated guests, eating at his sumptuous table, reclining on his own couch! Guarded by his bodyguard. One man, missing an eye put out by Diocletian, was given special honor; Constantine even kissed the eyeless cheek!But in the years that followed, some of those bishops were banished from their posts when they took umbrage at this or that imperial decision. A hierarchy grew up around Constantine, self-appointed advisors to the Emperor on the state of the Church. If they didn’t like a certain fellow, they accused him of some offense, and the newly anointed enemy was exiled with his replacement being someone more amenable to the accuser. And just as often as a bishop ran afoul of Imperial favor & was banished, just that quick he could be called back when Constantine replaced one set of advisors with another. The role of Church leader became a kind of musical chairs. In today, out tomorrow, back the day after, but keep your bags packed at all times.An example of this is the career of Athanasius.Athanasius was a young advisor to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria who led the opposition to Arius. Athanasius was a short & dark-skinned deacon his enemies referred to as the Black Dwarf.  As a young man, he spent hours with his heroes, the monks in the wilderness outside Alexandria. The word monk means “alone” & they took their name from the isolation they pursued. Athanasius took it on himself to make sure they had food & supplies as they devoted themselves to God by literally fleeing the world.Athanasius had a keen mind & lived a highly-disciplined life. Even at a young age his brilliance was respected and when Alexander made the trip to Nicaea for the famous Council, he took Athanasius with him. Not long after returning from Nicaea, Alexander fell ill & asked Athanasius to replace him. But Athanasius wanted to serve, not lead. So he fled to his desert friends, the monks. They convinced him of his calling to lead the Church & he returned to Alexandrian as Bishop. He was 33.Constantine was loath to undo the findings of the Council of Nicaea, but he also knew the Arian position was still popular among many f the common folk. He thought it best that Arius be allowed to return to Alexandria as a member of the Church. Thinking that now that Alexander, the man who’d led the opposition was out of the way, Athanasius would knuckle under to Imperial authority and consent to Arius’ return. He couldn’t have been more wrong.Athanasius locked horns with the Emperor & refused to budge, even when Constantine threatened to banish him.  They battled for 5 yrs when finally the Emperor had enough & found Athanasius guilty of treason. In the 40 yrs Athanasius was bishop, he was banished & recalled 5 times as the winds of fortune & imperial favor shifted in the palace. At one point, he was so thoroughly out of political good will every one of his supporters deserted him.  It was during this period he wrote & spoke of his devotion & unwavering loyalty to Jesus as the King above all earthly kings, saying that nothing could weaken his resolve to love & serve God, even if it meant, “Athanasius contra munda” = Athanasius against the world.Remember just a moment ago when reading the Nicaean Creed, I mentioned to note the phrase that Jesus was of one substance with the Father. Not long after the Nicaean Council, a group of Church leaders decided to soften the Nicaean position & bring it a little toward the Arian view. They said Jesus wasn’t the SAME substance as the Father but was a SIMILAR substance. In Greek, it’s the difference of one letter’ between homo-ousios – same substance & the new terminology they advocated – homoi-ousios – similar substance.As we’d expect, Athanasius led the classic Nicean interpretation of homo-ousios against the Quasi-Arians and their statement of homoi-ousios. While this may seem an insignificant difference to many of us, it proved to be of monumental importance. If the door was opened in even a small way to begin thinking of Jesus as somehow different in essence from the Father, it wouldn’t be long before His deity would be jettisoned entirely. Then we wouldn’t be following the Jesus of the Bible; the real Jesus of history. Athanasius’ lonely & steadfast determination to hold fast to what the Bible said about God, rather than go along with the politically-minded doctrine-massagers of his day is one of the most important & heroic moments, not just in Church history, but in all history. This was one of those moments when it seems truth hung by a thread; a thread only as think as the letter “i”.We end this episode with this . . .One of Constantine’s most important contributions to history was the relocation of his capital to Byzantium from the decayed husk of the once great but now worn-out & tired city of Rome. Byzantium was located at the geographical crossroads for the ancient world and it’s a wonder no one had recognized its strategic brilliance before this.  It sits a the narrow neck of the Bosporus, linking E & W & controls the flow of maritime trade between the Black & Mediterranean Seas. Located not far from Diocletian’s Eastern capital at Nicomedia it meant an easy relocation of the capital. Constantine decided to turn the hundreds year old village into a bright shining new center of civilization and made a good start on the project before his death in 337. Because it was the Eastern capital, it also became a major center & headquarters of the Church, which would eventually vie with Rome for bragging rights over which church ruled the Christian world.At Constantine’s death it was as if a message was sent to the frontiers it was time for Rome’s enemies to push her borders backwards.  In Central Asia, the Huns pressed westward on the Goths, who in turn pressed in on Rome’s Eastern Frontier. Another group known as the Visigoths eventually made it all the way to Rome in 410 & sacked the city. Their leader was Alaric, who’d been influenced by Arianism.Over the next years, other Easterners made their way across Europe, bringing more ruin. Each successive wave was like another slap to the face of once great Rome which by that time was little more than a punch-drunk & washed up has-been. The Franks, Alans, Vandals & Ostrogoths all took a turn knocking the Romans about.The Vandals, who began their campaign of terror & pillage in the steppes of Asia, crossed the Rhine, plowed a deep furrow S into Spain, took ship to cross the Straits of Gibraltar & landed in N Africa where they heard fabulous wealth awaited. Furious that the riches they dreamed of weren’t there, they went on a rampage of destruction that’s bequeathed their name “Vandal” to later generations as meaning someone out to wreck wanton & pointless ruination.One of the cities they laid siege to in N Africa was Hippo, where a Bishop named Augustine served as pastor. Augustine became one of the most important theologians of church history. He died during the siege by the Vandals. When they finally conquered & destroyed the city, the Vandals so respected Augustine they took pains to preserve his church & the extensive library he’d accumulated.Augustine of Hippo is a towering influence in church history and one that we’ll return to in a future episode.

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.

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 ChristThese 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.

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.

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.

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.

Explore the life of Origen of Alexandria, an early Christian scholar famous for his extreme asceticism and relentless defense of faith. Discover his groundbreaking work, the Hexopla, aimed at countering Gnostic interpretations. Delve into his controversial allegorical interpretations of scripture, which stirred debate and accusations of heresy. Learn about the tensions between his radical beliefs and church authorities, illuminating a compelling figure whose complex legacy shaped early Christian discourse.