The Rise and Fall of Christendom 2A - Frogs Around a Pond

Early Christendom

The early days of Christendom were also the waning days of the Western Roman Empire. The migration of Germanic tribes into the Roman Empire was one of a number of factors weakening Rome. In the 5^th century the city of Rome itself was sacked successively by the Visigoths in 410, the Vandals in 455 and the Ostrogoths in 476, the last effectively bringing an end to the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, would last for another 1000 years.

The fall of Rome to the Germanic tribes, as consequential as it was, did not bring an end to Christendom, as those tribes had been Christianized before the 5^th century. The Vandals and Goths were (for a while) Arians rather than Trinitarians.

     The geographic shape of early Christendom was unlike what it would later become. The geography of Christendom reflected that of the Roman Empire, and was thus largely built around the Mediterranean Sea. It was a Greek and Latin-speaking culture once described by Plato as “Frogs around a Pond.” Christendom included Rome, as it always would, and Constantinople, as it would for 1000 years, but it also included Antioch in Syria, where the disciples were first called Christians. It included Alexandria in Egypt, an important city for learning. It included all of the land of Israel, centered around Jerusalem. It included Hippo in modern Algeria, where Saint Augustine was born and several important church councils were held. It included Nicaea in Northwestern Turkey, where perhaps the most important Christian creed was developed. About 2/3 of early Christendom would eventually be wiped away by Moslem conquest, but that would not come until the 7^th century. Early Christendom did not at first include far northern Europe. Christianity did not become preponderant in Ireland until the 5^th century, Scotland by the 7^th century, Russian in the 9^th century, Poland by the 10^th century, and Scandinavia during the 9^th through the 13^th.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 1D - Growth and Triumph

Growth and Triumph

Counterintuitively, persecution of the Christians did not seem to reduce their numbers or influence. In some instances, persecution may have fueled the growth of the faith. “And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). Apparently when the Christians scattered, they took their faith with them and spread it. The Christian population continued to grow, and Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity estimated that it was greater than 10% of the Roman Empire by the year 300.

     The Great Persecution (303 – 312) under Diocletian (286-305) and his successor Galerius (305-311) was the last and worst of persecutions prior to Christendom. It required churches to be razed, scriptures to be burned, and sacrifices to be offered to pagan gods. The persecution was reinforced with four separate edicts, and led to much loss of life. However, Galerius had limited influence in the western part of the Empire and enforcement of the edicts was uneven. By 311, on his deathbed, Galerius admitted the persecution had failed and issued the Edict of Serdica, or Edict of Toleration, bringing the persecution to a close. The death of Galerius and the struggle for succession lead to the war between Constantine and Maximius.

     Perhaps Constantine may have made the calculation that Christian support could be politically valuable. But whether by calculation or by divine vision, Constantine’s decision to align himself and his army with the Christian faith marked a sudden and fateful turn in the course of History. Christianity was no longer just tolerated, but was actually preferred, and had state support. In 321, Constantine made Sunday a day of rest for all citizens. He sent his mother, Helena, on a tour of the Middle East to identify and memorialize important Christian sites. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, consecrated in 335, survives to this day. Constantine’s son Constantius (330-355) was a Christian, though he promoted Arian Christianity. Julian II “The Apostate” (355-363), the last non-Christian emperor, briefly attempted to turn the clock back, restricting some Christian rights. These efforts were short-lived, and in 380, the Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica, making Nicene Christianity the Empire’s state religion. Christendom had arrived.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 1C - Persecution

“And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” (Acts 8:1)

Carthage, March 7, 203 A.D.

Vibia Perpetua was led into the arena with her friend Felicity and three other Christian companions. Perpetua, a 22 year old wife and mother of a young son, was of noble birth. She had refused the opportunity to recant  - if she had done so, as her father had begged, she would have been spared.  In the arena, the five believers were first scourged by gladiators, then set upon by animals. Perpetua was gored by a wild bull, but still alive, a gladiator had the task to finish her life. The hand of the young man was unsteady, and Perpetua had to guide his sword to her own throat.

     Early Christianity was heavily marked by persecution. During the New Testament period described in the gospels and the book of Acts, persecution came mostly from Jewish sources, but as the faith spread to the gentile world, this quickly changed. Sporadic local persecution accompanied the Christians almost from the beginning, but it was the Emperor Nero who first made it more widespread. Needing a scapegoat to blame for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D., Nero chose to blame the Christians, and the ensuing persecution famously took the life of both the apostles Peter and Paul.

     The pagan Romans usually tolerated many religions within their borders under the condition that at designated times, every man must confess it: Kaiseros kurios – Caesar is Lord. Afterwards, a man could return to his regularly practiced religion. Christians wouldn’t do it, instead confessing Christos Kurios – Christ is Lord. The Christian refusal on this point was steadfastly and absolute, to the point of facing the arena rather than making the false confession. At various times and locales, the persecution eased and Christians lived what could be considered a normal life in the Roman Empire, but periods of persecution continually recurred. Even during times when Christians were not targeted on an Empire-wide basis, the local populations often blamed Christians for any disasters or misfortunes that occurred. The Christian apologist Tertullian complained: “They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its water up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, “Away with the Christians to the lions!”” [Bart D. Ehrman, A Brief Introduction to the New Testament, Oxford University Press 2004, pp. 313-314]

     Yet perhaps it would be incomplete to state that persecution was a feature of Christianity before Christendom. Indeed, persecution of Christians is a feature of Christianity outside Christendom. Historically and up through the present day, Christian persecution is prominent in Islamic countries, and the communist countries with an atheistic ideology have been notorious persecutors of Christians. Christians today may consider that religious persecution could someday become a feature of a post-Christendom world.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 1B - Church and State

Church and State 

 

An important but often overlooked aspect of Christianity before Christendom is that the church and the political sphere were separate, and this separation, beginning before Christendom, has persisted all through the period of Christendom and out the other side. This requires some explanation, as the reader may receive with skepticism the idea that the church and the political sphere have been separate, so a counter-example may serve best.

     The founder of Islam, Mohammed, was not just a religious leader, but he was also a military and political leader. As a political leader, under Mohammed, there was no distinction between civil law and religious law, but both ran together in what would come to be called Sharia, or Islamic law. In the Islamic world today, tension still exists over whether or not Sharia should be the official law in Islamic countries. Christianity did not develop in this way at all. Jesus and his disciples were never political leaders. The early church established church leaders in the form of deacons, elders, bishops, etc., but those individuals were not political leaders. The church established church laws, but those laws were entirely separate from the laws of civil society. There is no Christian equivalent of Sharia. The separation between civil and church leadership has continued throughout history. Christendom has had kings, tsars, presidents and prime ministers to lead the civil society, while the popes, priests, elders and pastors led the church. The two spheres often got tangled together, sometimes with one more or less dominating the other, but the two spheres – church and state – have always been conceptually separate.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 1A - Christianity Before Christendom Part 1

Christianity before Christendom

Jesus said “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). It was about 30 A.D. when Jesus said this, and within a generation his disciples had spread the gospel throughout the entire Roman Empire. By the end of the century, all the books of the New Testament had been written. Churches had been formed, church leadership established, vigorous doctrinal disputes were underway and heresies were growing like weeds. Yet Christendom was still a long way off.

     Although all books of the New Testament had been written by 100 A.D., the church before Christendom did not have a full canonical Bible at its fingers. Jewish believers used the Hebrew scriptures, which contain the same books as appear in a modern Protestant Bible. Gentile believers, who, by the turn of the century, greatly exceeded the numbers of their Jewish brothers, used the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, but including the apocryphal books that now appear in a modern Catholic Bible. All believers drew on a collection of gospels and apostolic letters to supplement the Old Testament, but there was not yet a full consensus on which books should be part of what we today call the New Testament – that would wait on Christendom. The lack of an official canon may have played a part in the development of additional heresies that developed prior to Christendom.

Early Christian Heresies

The church before Christendom by definition enjoyed no official sanction or government endorsement. Because no Christian doctrines had been codified as “official,” the environment was fertile for the growth of heresies within the faith.

     Christianity was born in a Jewish environment. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the 12 disciples and the first 10,000 or so Christians were all Jews. As the gospel began to spread to the gentiles, it gave rise to the first major heresy in the Christian faith – that of the Judaizers. This is the one heresy that appeared early enough to be fully described in the New Testament. The Judaizers taught that gentile Christians needed to be circumcised and obey the entire law of Moses – essentially this would mean that a gentile needed to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. The controversy was addressed in the first Jerusalem conference described in Acts 15. The church leadership – all of whom were Jewish – ruled that gentiles who came to Christ did not have to follow Jewish laws and customs, but did stipulate that gentile believers should avoid behavior that would harm fellowship with Jewish believers. Although the error of the Judaizers has long since been abandoned, the erroneous tendency for Christians to believe in a works-based relationship with God has continued to this day and will probably never go away.

     Gnosticism was a second heresy that was addressed in some of the New Testament letters, but it continued well into the 2^nd century A.D. and was responsible for numerous pseudo-Christian writings which are preserved to this day. Gnosticism (from the Greek gnosis, or “knowledge”) may have had pre-Christian roots, but it quickly made an appearance and grew within the church. It took a number of forms, but all generally regarded the material world as evil and the spiritual world as good. Therefore, Christ could not have become a physical man, and must instead have been a spiritual being only. One can see the New Testament writers refuting this with verses like 2 John 7 “For many deceivers have gone out, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.” Gnostics believed that salvation could be achieved through knowledge. The knowledge required was often held to be secretive information not known by the masses, much like modern conspiracy theories often work.  

     Marcion of Sinope (85-160) rejected the Old Testament and taught that the God who sent Jesus into the world was a different and higher God than the God of the Old Testament. Although Marcionism was rejected by all the early church fathers, similar rejection and/or criticism of the Old Testament sometimes still surfaces in Christian churches today.

     Arius (256-336) rejected the concept of the Trinity, teaching instead that Jesus was not fully divine in the same sense as God the Father. Arianism dug in enough to become the leading view in some early Christian lands. The Visigothic kingdom would be Arian in its theology. The famous Council of Niceaea was largely a reaction to the Arian heresy.