1 - CHRISTIANITY, OVERVIEW OF EARLY Overview

CHRISTIANITY, OVERVIEW OF EARLY Overview of Early Christianity. A survey of the practices and teachings associated with Christianity in the first and second centuries AD, exploring how the movement founded by Jesus started as a sect of Judaism based on faith in him as Israel’s messiah and unique Son of God and transitioned into a distinct religion. Introduction The diverse expressions of early Christianity were united by a common faith in Jesus and a common core of apostolic teachings. Church leaders’ ongoing travel and correspondence between communities prevented most churches from forming in isolation. While different early Christian communities treated the Hebrew Bible in varying ways, they all accepted it as the Word of God and interpreted it in light of the new revelation in Jesus Christ. From the first century onward, shared practices such as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Sunday worship gatherings, and unique ethical characteristics functioned as unifying factors (Ferguson, Church History, 43–44). Features of Early Christianity Definition and Initiation Acceptance of Jesus as Messiah and Lord differentiated Christians from Jews and pagan Romans. Followers of the Jesus movement were first called “Christians” in Antioch (Acts 11:26) around AD 44. Entrance into the Christian church entailed commitment to Jesus as Lord and Savior and baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christian baptism was distinguished from Jewish ceremonial washings by its confession of Jesus as divine and the fact that Christianity promised the gift of the Holy Spirit, which many Jews considered the sign of the dawning of the eschatological era. Moreover, Christian baptism was seen as participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus and as a sign of spiritual rebirth (Patzia, Emergence, 235–41). Common Meals Early Christians continued the practice of sharing common meals that they had begun during Jesus’ ministry. Now, however, the breaking of bread and the drinking of the cup—accompanied by a blessing or thanksgiving (εὐχαριστία, eucharistia) to God—functioned as a remembrance of Jesus’ last supper, passion, and resurrection. Christians’ special meetings comprised prayer, singing, reading from the Hebrew Bible, messages of exhortation and instruction, and observance of the Lord’s Supper. While these meetings could take place as often as daily, they seem to have occurred at a minimum on Sunday—the first day of the week (the Jewish term) or the “Lord’s Day” (the Christian term)—in commemoration of Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2). Other Features Much of Christian practice reflects Christianity’s Jewish roots. For example, Christians integrated prayer to Jesus and Jesus’ teachings about prayer into traditional Jewish patterns. They also interpreted Jewish moral teachings regarding family, occupation, and social structure under Jesus’ rubric of loving God maximally and loving one’s neighbors as oneself. Furthermore, they interpreted the Jewish law as finding its fulfillment in Jesus’ ministry. The Jerusalem Council (AD 49) officially freed Gentiles from the ceremonial and ritual commands of the Mosaic Torah as requirements for salvation (Gundry, Survey, 318) and required them instead to “abstain from food sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality” (Acts 15:29). Christian communities stood out from the pagan world by their -1-

extreme generosity in caring for the poor—a Christian hallmark for the first four centuries of church history (Cairns, Christianity, 84). Early Christian Leadership Peter, Paul, and James—the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church—were likely martyred within five years of each other in the AD 60s. Josephus records that the Jewish Sanhedrin stoned James to death in AD 62. Peter and Paul were likely executed in Rome under Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians in AD 64. The removal of these three dominant personalities, along with Rome’s defeat of the Jews and destruction of Jerusalem in the JewishRoman War (AD 66–70), brought about developments in the leadership of the church (Ferguson, Church History, 46). The original leadership structure, which included a group of elders or presbyters (responsible for preaching, teaching, and other leadership functions) and a group of deacons (responsible for the care of the poor), continued to be used. Over time, bishops were added to this structure to supply the leadership formerly offered by the apostles. By the middle of the second century, bishops of major Christian centers such as Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Ephesus were recognized as superior to other bishops. The bishop of Rome would, over time, emerge with greater influence than other bishops. Cairns lists several factors that bestowed this extra prestige upon the bishop of Rome (Cairns, Christianity, 112–13): • Peter, a central leader among Jesus’ apostles, was instrumental in founding the church at Rome. • The longest and possibly the most significant of Paul’s epistles was addressed to the Roman church. • Rome’s prestige as the capital of the Roman Empire led to a natural exaltation of the church there. • Rome had a reputation for unflinching orthodoxy in the face of heresy and schism. Christianity in Its Ancient Context Split from Judaism The late first and early second centuries witnessed increased alienation of Christians from the synagogues, and Gentile churches separated themselves from Judaism. Jerusalem ceased to function as the geographical nucleus of the Christian movement for several reasons, including: • the death of James the Just (AD 62) • the destruction of the temple (AD 70) • the Roman banishment of Jews from Jerusalem after the Bar Kokhba revolt (AD 135) During the Jewish War (AD 66–70), Christians fled from Jerusalem to Pella across the Jordan River. This desertion—which Jews considered a betrayal of their Jewish heritage—prompted many synagogues to eliminate any Christian presence from their membership. Jewish Christians thus found themselves excluded from synagogues yet still mistrusted by Gentile churches. Ferguson remarks that this double rejection undercut the possibility for a Jewish-Christian viewpoint that preserved lines of communication between Jews who did not embrace Jesus and Gentiles who did (Ferguson, Church History, 47). According to some early church fathers, three groups of Jews that survived the Jewish War combined aspects of Jewish practice with Christian belief: -2-

• the Ebionites • the Elchasaites • the Nazarenes The Ebionites and the Elchasaites were both generally classified as heretical sects according to the later evaluations of several early church fathers (on the Ebionites see Irenaeus, Haer. 1.26.2; Haer. 1.26.2; Epiphaneus, Pan. 30.13.2–6; 30.14.3, 5; 30.16.4–5; 30.22.4; on the Elchasaites see Hippolytus, Ref., 9.13–17; 10.29, Epiphanius, Haer, 19, 30; Origen ap Euseb HE, 6.38). The Ebionites considered James the Just a hero and strongly opposed Paul, arguing that Gentile Christians must submit to the ceremonial and ritual demands of the Torah to be saved. Their emphasis on monotheism drove them to regard Jesus as merely human and to reject his virginal conception; they regarded him as the new Moses and the Messiah by virtue of his righteous life. Ebionites viewed Jesus’ mission as overturning the temple sacrificial system and instituting a new way of forgiveness of sins by immersion in running water. The Ebionites prohibited the eating of meat, likely emphasized poverty (the appellation “Ebionite” comes from the Hebrew ‫אביון‬, 'bywn, “poor”), and practiced ritual immersions in addition to initiatory baptism. They continued the Jewish practices of circumcision, Sabbath observance, and dietary laws. Recognizing the Gospel of Matthew as Scripture, they also composed at least one noncanonical gospel and perhaps acts (Walker, History, 40). The Elchasaites featured their own holy book, allegedly revealed by Jesus to their prophet Elchasai. This book discusses a second baptism in the name of the Most High God and his Son, efficacious for forgiving adultery and healing wounds from the bites of mad dogs and other diseases. They carried out theosophical speculations and practiced an inflexible asceticism (Seeberg, Doctrines, 1:89). The Nazarenes are sometimes identified with the Ebionites, but they appear to have held more closely to orthodox Christian teachings, particularly in regard to the divinity of Jesus. Later patristic sources suggest that the Nazarenes affirmed Jesus’ virgin birth and divinity and accepted Paul’s writings as authoritative. Their only divergence from Gentile Christianity appears to have been their continued practice of the Jewish law. Epiphanius, for example, does not raise any specific erroneous beliefs held by the Nazarenes—although their inclusion in his work targeting heresies implies that he did not regard them as acceptably orthodox (Epiphanius, Panarion, Heresy 29; Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 37–46). Relationship with Roman Religion Early Christianity encountered rivalry from competing Roman systems of religion and philosophy. The Romans were syncretistic in their religious outlook and tolerated any faith that would not threaten the stability of the state or preclude its adherents from taking part in the state system of worship. The state religion integrated emperor worship with the old worship patterns of the Roman Republic and demanded the allegiance of everyone in the Roman Empire; Jews, however, were legally exempt from state religious rites. The state system of worship was a public and social affair of family and community, whose rites local political leaders administered. Romans offered worship to the emperor as the living manifestation of the divine; they also believed human well-being in agriculture, business, and war depended on the goodwill of the Roman gods. Since Christians would not take part in the state system of worship, the Roman Empire persecuted them (Walker, History, 50–52). Christianity also faced persecution because of its exclusive claims to loyalty in Christ. Roman authorities viewed such loyalty as -3-

treasonous and saw Christians as attempting to institute a state within a state (Cairns, Christianity, 87). Several Christian practices appeared to substantiate the Roman leaders’ suspicions. Christians consistently refused to offer incense on the altars devoted to the spirit of the emperor. They also held the majority of their meetings at night and in secret. Misinterpretation of the Lord’s Supper led to the rumors that Christians killed and ate infants in sacrifice to their God, while the kiss of peace resulted in rumors of incest and other kinds of immoral behavior (González, Story, 60). By contrast, Roman intellectuals embraced philosophical systems, including Stoicism, Epicureanism, and neo-Pythagoreanism, that taught philosophical contemplation as the way of salvation. Stoicism aimed to provide a philosophical foundation for the Roman Empire, as its pantheistic view of god, its idea of natural ethical laws discoverable by reason, and its assertion of the fatherhood of god and the fraternity of human beings gave support to imperial claims (Gundry, Survey, 61–62). The Roman masses were attracted to the mystery religions of Mithra, Cybele, Eleusis, Dionysus, and Isis, all of which furnished an avenue to fellowship with the gods and claimed to offer immortality. These religions often centered on myths of a goddess whose lover or child was taken away from her and later restored. Gundry observes that these religions contained secret initiatory rites and additional rites involving the sprinkling of blood, ceremonial washing, sacramental meals, drunkenness, emotional frenzy, and elaborate pageantry through which devotees allegedly gained union with the divine (Gundry, Survey, 58–59). Some elements of mystery religions seem to reflect Christian beliefs and practices, but such a viewpoint would misunderstand the basis of Christianity, which is Christ Himself. As mystery religions were known for their assimilation, it is more likely that they were influenced by Christian practice rather than the other way around. Mettinger notes that elements that appear similar are actually not. He argues, for example, that myths of dying and rising gods do not correspond to the Christian belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection, as the dying and rising gods symbolized the vegetation cycle, in which crops die in the dry season and come back to life in the rainy season. In addition, none of these gods was resurrected bodily from the dead but only spiritually revived or came back to life in the underworld (Mettinger, Riddle, 4–7). The notion of death by crucifixion and bodily resurrection were abhorrent to ancient pagans, who linked crucifixion with insurrection against the Roman state. Ancient pagans also often viewed the body as the prison of the soul that was to be destroyed at death, such that the soul could be permanently liberated from the body to enjoy a purely ethereal existence. Early Heresies Related to Christianity Proto-Gnosticism and Gnosticism The heresy of Gnosticism proved the greatest philosophical threat to early Christianity, presenting itself as an alternate way of viewing God and the gospel. Christian tradition traces the origin of Gnosticism to Simon Magus, whom Peter denounced (Acts 8:18–23). It has been argued that the book of Colossians and John’s writings appear to be written against a nascent form of proto-Gnosticism (Rudolph, Gnosis, 25–31). Maintaining a radical dualism in which all things physical were evil and all things spiritual were good, Gnosticism emphasized secret knowledge (γνω̃σις, gnō̃sis) as the key to salvation and held secret rites and ceremonies that often appealed to the intelligentsia. Gnostic writings that have come down to us from the mid-second century and onward presented Jesus as a teacher of knowledge (gnosis) and special emissary from the supreme God. -4-

In these texts, Jesus either seemed to have only a physical body (Docetism) or was an earthly man that the Christ, a higher spirit, associated with from his baptism to his crucifixion. There are about 52 of these gospels—titled in order to associate them with well-known figures (a phenomenon known as pseudepigrapha)—including (Brown, Introduction, 835–40): • • • • •

The Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Judas The Gospel of Philip The Gospel of Mary The Secret Gospel of Mark

Gnosticism held that there is a supreme God who is utterly transcendent, having no relation to physical things. This supreme God differentiated into aeons, or progressively lower divine beings, which in turn differentiated until the emergence of an ultra-low, wicked god known as the demiurge, who created the physical world. The gnostics identified this demiurge as the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible, who they believed spawned humans by enslaving bits of pure soul into evil material bodies. Only by apprehending knowledge (gnosis) could humans escape the perpetual reincarnation of their souls into further bodies, leave the physical cosmos, and enter heaven. In response to gnostic teachings, the early church drew up a brief creed in order to test orthodoxy; this creed also had the effect of unifying Christians in a core set of beliefs. The Apostles’ Creed likely was the basis for this early creed or the creed itself. Marcionism While not technically a gnostic, Marcion (ca. 85–160) taught that the God of the Mosaic covenant was an inferior deity, distinct from and opposed to the true God of Jesus and Paul. Upon his expulsion from the mainstream church, Marcion founded his own church in AD 144 and formulated his own canon of Scripture, which contained 10 letters of Paul and a truncated form of the Gospel of Luke. By creating this canon, Marcion spurred Christianity to take up the question of the canon and to assert continuity with its Jewish heritage (Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, 30–31). The church affirmed that its basis of authority was more than one apostle and one gospel: There were epistles that were equally authoritative to those of Paul and gospels that were equally authoritative to that of Luke. Further, it affirmed the authority of the Hebrew Bible and equated the God of Israel with the God of Jesus Christ. Responses to Heretical Movements Church fathers such as Hegesippus (ca. AD 110–180), Irenaeus (ca. AD 135–203), Tertullian (ca. AD 160–225), and Hippolytus (AD 170–235) issued polemics to refute Gnosticism. In his Against Heresies (ca. AD 180), Irenaeus taught apostolic succession as a major line of attack against the authenticity of the secret traditions that gnostics claimed to have received from the apostles. Irenaeus insisted that the bishops of Christian churches could be traced back to men ultimately appointed by the apostles, thus demonstrating that the bishops possessed the authentic traditions. Irenaeus’ doctrine enhanced the office of the bishop as a center of unity for the faithful against heresy (Pelikan, Emergence, 118–19). Ultimately, the early church countered the issues of heresy and potential schism by developing an authoritative canon for faith and practice, articulating an authoritative creed, and insisting on Christians working within the bounds of the historical church. Jaroslav Pelikan states that these factors served to unify the community of the faithful, such that by AD 170 Christians -5-

were denominating themselves as the “catholic,” or universal, church (Pelikan, Emergence, 159– 60). Bibliography Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Cairns, Earle E. Christianity through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church. 3rd rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1996. Ferguson, Everett. From Christ to Pre-Reformation. Vol. 1 of Church History. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005. González, Justo L. The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. Vol. 1 of The Story of Christianity. Rev. ed. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperOne, 2010. Gundry, Robert H. A Survey of the New Testament. 5th ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2012. Mettinger, Tryggve N. D. The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2001. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage, 1979. Patzia, Arthur G. The Emergence of the Church: Context, Growth, Leadership & Worship. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600). Vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Pritz, Ray. Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period Until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature & Structure of Gnosticism. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Seeberg, Reinhold. Text-Book of the History of Doctrines. 2 vols. Rep. ed. Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 1997. Walker, Williston and Richard A. Norris, David W. Lotz, and Robert T. Handy. A History of the Christian Church. 4th ed. New York: Scribner, 1985. KIRK R. MACGREGOR

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