Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

Several prominent factors, however, appear to have contributed to the growth of Christianity. 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.

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.” The pagans’ words were sincere. 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.

Men always view with suspicion people who are different. Conformity, not distinctiveness, is the way to a trouble-free life. So the more early Christians took their faith seriously, the more they were in danger of crowd reaction. Thus, simply by living according to the teachings of Jesus, the Christian was a constant unspoken condemnation of the pagan way of life. It was not that the Christian went about criticizing and condemning and disapproving, nor was he consciously self-righteous and superior. It was simply that the Christian ethic in itself was a criticism of pagan life.

the early Christian was almost bound to divorce himself from the social and economic life of his time if he wanted to be true to his Lord. This meant that everywhere the Christian turned, his life and faith were on display because the gospel introduced a revolutionary new attitude toward human life. It could be seen in Christian views of slaves, children, and sex.

Christians were accused of atheism. The charge arose from the fact that many within the empire could not understand an imageless worship. Monotheism held no attraction for such people. As a result they blamed Christians for insulting the gods of the state.

Most Christians came to see that while Christianity had deadly external enemies—as the conflict with emperor worship demonstrated—a subtler and no less critical danger came from within, from the realm of ideas. If the Christian faith could be undermined by “another gospel” then its living power would be lost.

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.

Constantine ruled Christian bishops as he did his civil servants and demanded unconditional obedience to official pronouncements, even when they interfered with purely church matters. There were also the masses who now streamed into the officially favored church. Prior to Constantine’s conversion, the church consisted of convinced believers who were willing to bear the risk of being identified as Christians. Now many came who were politically ambitious, religiously disinterested, and still half-rooted in paganism. This threatened to produce not only shallowness and permeation by pagan superstitions but also the secularization and misuse of religion for political purposes.

The same believers who had been the victims of terrible persecution under Diocletian and Galerius were now demanding that their fellow Christians be suppressed or banished from their churches by the power of the state over disagreements concerning points of doctrine. Constantine had no choice but to intervene to stop this constant bickering (or worse) and to make his Christian subjects agree on what their own beliefs were.

“A deep instinct,” J. S. Whale once told the undergraduates at Cambridge University, “has always told the Church that our safest eloquence concerning the mystery of Christ is in our praise. A living Church is a worshiping, singing Church; not a school of people holding all the correct doctrines.”

the Christian idea from the beginning believed that in Jesus Christ earth and heaven meet, both man and God. Christians of an earlier day felt this reality deeply. They also knew that the obligation to be intelligent is a moral obligation, so they searched for some statement that would correlate the human life and the divine life in Jesus Christ.

Salvation, therefore, consists of the perfection or completion of the full image. Christ, the incarnate God, came to earth to restore the icon of God in man. The major themes of Orthodoxy, then, are rebirth, re-creation, and the transfiguration of man. The church is not a formalized institution, it is the mystical body of Christ constantly renewed by the life of the Holy Spirit flowing through it. And it is within this community of love that man is made ready to join the preexisting fellowship among Father, Son, and Spirit. Orthodox believers call the process Theosis or deification. The language of “becoming gods” troubles Western believers. But Orthodox teachers do not claim that believers become Father, Son, or Spirit, but use the language to picture the transformation of believers to become fit companions for an eternal communion with and in the triune God. A champion Greek theologian, Athanasius, pictured Jesus fully sharing in the corrupted world of humans so that we could fully share in the incorruptible fellowship of God; he becomes man so that men can become gods. Western theologians also taught other concepts that would picture an unavoidable and necessary transformation prior to our sharing eternity with God;