Church History in Plain Language (Plain Language Series)

by Bruce L. Shelley

Many Christians today suffer from historical amnesia. The time between the apostles and their own day is one giant blank. That is hardly what God had in mind. The Old Testament is sprinkled with reminders of God’s interest in time.

As a consequence of our ignorance concerning Christian history, we find believers vulnerable to the appeals of cultists. Some distortion of Christianity is often taken for the real thing. At the same time other Christians reveal a shocking capacity for spiritual pride, hubris. Without an adequate base for comparisons they spring to the defense of their way as the best way—their party as the superior party. Finally, many Christians engage in some form of ministry without the advantage of a broader context for their labor. When they want to make the best use of their time or their efforts, they have no basis for sound judgment.

Professionals in the field may not be happy with my failure to set limits by a strict definition of the term church. But that fuzziness is due to the fact that I believe the people of God in history live in a tension between an ideal—the universal communion of saints—and the specific—the particular people in a definite time and place.

CHRISTIANITY is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of its God.

Crucifixion was a barbarous death, reserved for agitators, pirates and slaves. Jewish law cursed “everyone who hangs on a tree” and the Roman statesman, Cicero, warned: “Let the very name of the cross be far, not only from the body of a Roman citizen, but even from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.”

Out of the distaste for life under the Romans several factions arose among the Jews, each interpreting the crisis in a different way. The Jesus movement was one of them.

One group, the Pharisees, emphasized those Jewish traditions and practices that set them apart from pagan culture. Their name means “separated ones” and they prided themselves on their strict observance of every detail of Jewish law and their extreme intolerance of people whom they considered ritually unclean. This piety and patriotism made them respected leaders among their people.

Among them were members of Jerusalem’s aristocracy. From this small group of wealthy, pedigreed families came the high priest and the lesser priests of the temple. Many of them enjoyed the sophisticated manners and fashions of Greco-Roman culture. Some even took Greek names. Their interests were represented by the conservative political group known as the Sadducees. At the time of Jesus, these men still controlled the high Jewish council, or Sanhedrin, but they had little influence among the common people. Another party, the Zealots, were bent on armed resistance to all Romans in the fatherland. They looked back two centuries to the glorious days of the Maccabees when religious zeal combined with a ready sword to overthrow the pagan Greek overlords. Thus, the hills of Galilee often concealed a number of guerrilla bands ready to ignite a revolt or destroy some symbol of Roman authority in Palestine.

Such talk of a messiah alarmed the temple authorities. What if this Galilean were to ignite another revolt against the Roman government? Yet they were hesitant to arrest him for fear of provoking a riot. A man like Jesus presented a real danger to the Sadducees, because they held their privileged position with the support of the Roman authorities. Anyone who aroused talk of a messiah undermined the people’s allegiance to the established political order and endangered the relationship the Sadducees had with the Romans. Such a man, they concluded, had to be silenced before he sparked an uprising, which the Romans would crush with characteristic brutality.

The answer lies in Stephen’s confrontation with the Jewish authorities. It centered upon the interpretation of the Old Testament. It was not a question of what the Jewish Scriptures said, but what they meant. If Jesus was all he claimed to be, then the standard interpretation of the Old Testament had to be revised, and in some cases scrapped entirely. The experts in the Jewish Scriptures, the Scribes and Pharisees, believed the Old Testament presented the law of God for his special people, the Jews. The law began with the Ten Commandments but it went on until some regulation covered every detail, every action, every thought in life. It prescribed every move in true worship and every step to true piety.

It was quite a beginning. Stephen knew the story well and Christians ever since have insisted that the death of Jesus on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, and the empowering mission of the Holy Spirit are the foundational realities of Christianity.

The Sanhedrin chose to be tolerant, partly because the followers of Jesus attended temple services regularly and strictly observed Jewish laws and rituals. They showed no signs of rejecting the law of Moses or the authority of the temple. Within two years their ranks had grown to several thousand. Under the leadership of the apostles the fledgling movement maintained its unity by two special ceremonies that kept the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection at the center of their fellowship.

The first, baptism, was familiar to them because most of the early disciples had followed the ministry of John the Baptist. But baptism in the apostolic community was different. John’s baptism was a way of professing faith in a kingdom yet to come. Baptism in the infant church was what theologians now call “eschatological.” It marked entrance into a spiritual kingdom already proclaimed, though still to be revealed in its fullness.

Bound together, then, by the teaching of the apostles and the two ceremonies depicting the death and resurrection of their Lord, the infant church spread throughout Judea. This rapid growth, however, aroused new fears in the authorities and created tensions within the church.

Some of the Hellenist believers complained that their widows were overlooked in the church welfare program. In an attempt to remove these resentments, the apostles created a council of seven Hellenist disciples, among them Stephen and Philip, to oversee the distributions. They called these men deacons (in Greek, diakonoi), meaning “servants” or “ministers.”

At Antioch, for the first time, Jesus’ followers were called “Christians.” Originally, opponents of the church used the term as a derogatory label for the “devotees of the Anointed One” (in Greek, Christianoi). But the Nazarenes soon adopted it gladly.

What fool can believe that crucifixion is a blessing from God? Saul found the answer to that question when he confronted the Lord one day outside Damascus. He dropped to the ground blinded by a light and he heard a voice, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Suddenly Stephen’s argument fell into place, and Saul became a believer.

He later explained: The law pronounces a curse on everyone who fails to keep it in its entirety, so all who hope to gain God’s favor by keeping the law are exposed to a curse. Fortunately, God provided a way of escape. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us,” by hanging on a cross (Gal. 3:10–14, NIV).

So the persecutor of Christians became the persecuted among Christians. He was, however, a leader uniquely qualified to bridge the gap between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. He was a man of three worlds: Jewish, Greek, and Roman.

If a person could gain the righteousness of God by obeying the law, said Paul, I would have been the greatest in the kingdom. But righteousness by personal effort can only lead to failure. Man can be accepted as righteous only through God’s undeserved mercy. That is grace. And grace always arises from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“At the start of the revolt, the leaders of the Jerusalem church were advised in a vision to flee the city.” Pious Jews considered the Christian flight an act of treason, and it sealed the fate of the church in the Jewish world. With the decision to bar Christian Jews from synagogue services some years later, the break was complete. Any Jew who wished to remain faithful to his religion could not also be a Christian. The new faith had become and would remain a gentile movement. The old wineskin was irreparably torn.

THE AGE OF CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY 70–312 In this period Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and probably east to India. Christians realized that they were a part of a rapidly expanding movement. They called it “catholic.” This suggested that it was universal, in spite of pagan ridicule and Roman persecution, and it was the true faith, in opposition to all perversions of Jesus’ teachings. To face the challenges of their times Christians turned increasingly to their bishops for spiritual leadership. Catholic Christianity, therefore, was marked by a universal vision, by orthodox beliefs, and by episcopal church government.

Today, with the creed, we confess faith in “the holy, catholic church.” That is what this period gave us, “catholic” Christianity. It was more than an organization. It was a spiritual vision, a conviction that all Christians should be in one body.

We call the years between A.D. 70 and A.D. 312 the Age of Catholic Christianity because this thought dominates Christian history between the death of the apostles and the rise of the Christian emperors. Though the universality of Christianity is a common idea in the New Testament, the term catholic never appears. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in the early second century, is apparently the first to use the word. He spoke of the “Catholic church,” when he said, “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church.” By the end of the second century the term catholic was widely used of the church in the sense that the Catholic church was both universal, in contrast to local congregations, and orthodox, in contrast to heretical groups.

After the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the center of the Christian movement moved north and eventually west. The second home of the church was Antioch of Syria. Under a succession of notable bishops, the church in this third largest city of the empire took root and exerted widespread influence throughout Syria. By the end of the fourth century Antioch was a city of half a million people and half of these were Christians.

There is good reason to suppose that from Edessa some unknown Christian continued east until he came to India. So-called Thomas Christians in India today believe that the Christian was the apostle Thomas. That may be true. It will probably never be settled beyond historical doubt, but we can say with some certainty that the church in India has existed from very early times. A voyage by Thomas to south India in the first century was well within the realm of possibility.

Moving west from Antioch, the next city of note would be Ephesus.

Harnack calculated that by A.D. 250 no less than 30,000 Christians lived in Rome! Most of these came from the poorer classes. We know this because for more than a century Christians in Rome spoke Greek, the language of slaves and poor men. True Romans of the upper classes used Latin.

From its beginnings this church in the capital, with its claim to the ministry of the apostles Peter and Paul, gained the respect and admiration of Christians throughout the empire. That is not to say, as the Roman Catholic church has claimed, that God gave it authority over all other churches. But once a church took root in the capital it naturally assumed leadership in Christian affairs, even as large churches in metropolitan areas do in our own time. Beyond Rome to the west and north, progress of the gospel seems to have been slow. In the southern area of what is now called France (then Gaul) we know a church existed in Lyons in the middle of the second century, for the bishop Irenaeus left us a number of his writings.

“Tertullian’s Apology underlined the legal and moral absurdity of the persecution directed against Christians. Some of his other books offered encouragement to those facing martyrdom. He attacked the heretics, explained the Lord’s Prayer and the meaning of baptism, and helped develop the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. He was the first person to use the Latin word trinitas (trinity). . . . His intellectual brilliance and literary versatility made him one of the most powerful writers of the time.”

Why did the Christian faith spread in this extraordinary way? The devout Christian will want to stress the power of the gospel. By ordinary standards nothing could have been less likely to succeed. But believers have always insisted that God was at work in this movement. He went with those early witnesses. There was a divine side to the expansion of the church.

First, and rather obviously, early Christians were moved by a burning conviction. The Event had happened. God had invaded time and Christians were captivated by the creative power of that grand news. They knew that men had been redeemed and they could not keep to themselves the tidings of salvation. That unshakable assurance, in the face of every obstacle including martyrdom itself, helps explain the growth of the church. Second, the Christian gospel met a widely felt need in the hearts of people.

“Before the external disorder of the world and bodily illness, retreat into yourself and find God there.” Thus, the Stoic soul stood proudly erect in the storms of life, unmoved by emotion.

Third, the practical expression of Christian love was probably among the most powerful causes of Christian success. Tertullian tells us the pagans remarked, “See how these Christians love one another.” And the pagan’s words were not irony; he meant them. Christian love found expression in the care of the poor, of widows and orphans; in visits to brethren in prisons or to those condemned to a living death in the mines; and in acts of compassion during a famine, earthquake, or war.

Julian was finding it more difficult than he had expected to put new life into the traditional Roman religion. He wanted to set aside Christianity and bring back the ancient faith, but he saw clearly the drawing power of Christian love in practice: “Atheism (i.e. Christian faith) has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”

“Persuade the people,” answered the governor. Polycarp said, “I would explain to you, but not to them.” “Then I’ll throw you to the beasts.” “Bring on your beasts,” said Polycarp. “If you scorn the beasts, I’ll have you burned.” “You try to frighten me with the fire that burns for an hour, and you forget the fire of hell that never goes out.” The governor called to the people, “Polycarp says he is a Christian.” Then the mob let loose. “This is the teacher of Asia,” they shouted, “the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods.” So Polycarp, praying that his death would be an acceptable sacrifice, was burned at the stake.

The popular notion held that disasters would strike if the gods were neglected. In his Apology Tertullian writes: “If the Tiber floods the city, or if the Nile refuses to rise, or if the sky withholds its rain, if there is an earthquake, a famine, a pestilence, at once the cry is raised: ‘Christians to the lion.’

After a man had burned his pinch of incense and had acknowledged Caesar as Lord, he could go away and worship any god he liked, so long as the worship did not affect public decency and order.

Thus, we see that Caesar worship was primarily a test of political loyalty; it was a test of whether or not a man was a good citizen. If a man refused to carry out the ceremony of acknowledging Caesar, he was automatically branded as a traitor and a revolutionary.

Many people who profess to be Christians, however, approach Christianity just as Gandhi did. They try to separate what Jesus said from who Jesus was. They want to set aside the doctrine of a supernatural Jesus and exalt his ethical teachings. They find the beliefs of historic Christianity an embarrassment. They prefer to stress Christian behavior.

Questions of behavior always followed confession of Christ as Lord and Savior. The early churches saw this so clearly that they made belief in who Jesus was a test of true Christianity.

Theology can be dull, or much worse, it can be ruthless. In Christianity, however, the answer to bad theology can never be no theology. It must be good theology. God gave us minds, and he surely expects us to use them in thinking about his truth. Charles Williams, the English writer, was right: “Man was intended to argue with God.” That means theology.

Theology comes from two Greek words: theos, meaning God, and logos, meaning word or rational thought. So theology is rational thought about God. It is not identical with religion. Religion is our belief in God and our effort to live by that belief. Theology is the attempt to give a rational explanation of our belief: it is thinking about religion.

Church history shows us that Christian theology is not primarily a philosophical system invented by men in the quiet of an academic study. Doctrines were hammered out by men who were on the work crew of the church. Every plank in the platform of orthodoxy was laid because some heresy had arisen that threatened to change the nature of Christianity and to destroy its central faith.

Theology is using our own language and our own way of thinking to explain God’s truth. And we know that people belonging to different times and cultures simply think and speak in different ways.

By Justin’s time, the middle of the second century, converts at Rome were baptized as they answered questions about their belief in “God, the Father and Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and the Holy Spirit who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus.”

Thus, John fights on two fronts, against those who thought Jesus was a mere man and against those who believed him to be a heavenly ghost.

The first position was held by a Jewish-Christian sect known as the Ebionites. They taught that Jesus was a mere man who by his scrupulous obedience to the Law was “justified” and became the Messiah.

Docetism. The word comes from a Greek verb, “to seem.” Some bright theologian has suggested we call it Seemism. The title comes from their teaching that Christ was not really a man, he was a spectral appearance. He only “seemed” to suffer for man’s sins since we all know divine phantoms are incapable of dying. The Event—God in flesh—has always struck man as religious nonsense. History shows how tirelessly man schemes, searching for some substitute explanation. One of his most popular devices is to lift the story out of time and present it as an “eternal” truth, some mystery of the universe, a myth that explains the way things really are.

The basic belief of the Gnostics was what we call dualism, that is, they believed that the world is ultimately divided between two cosmic forces, good and evil. In line with much Greek philosophy, they identified evil with matter. Because of this they regarded any Creator God as wicked. Creation by a deity, they felt, was not so much impossible as it was indecent.