01: The Early Church: Beginnings & Persecutions – Part I

INTRODUCTION

SLIDE

(Review agenda)

I want to begin with a discussion of why church history is important – why we should be taking time on a Sunday morning to learn something about it.

However, before I do that I want to talk about the notion of history itself.

The way we understand history is a result of Christianity.

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), a Dutch Reformed theologian and pastor, believed it was, above all, in the changed perception of history that Christianity left its most significant mark on culture.[i]

German philosopher Rudolph Christian Eucken said it was the incarnation of Christ more than anything that led to a Christian understanding of history as a series of events working together with a beginning and an end. – in other words that history was going somewhere. He said:

SLIDE

“Christ could not come again and yet again to let himself be crucified; hence as the countless historical cycles of the Ancient World disappeared, there was no longer the old eternal recurrence of things. History ceased to be a uniform rhythmic repetition and became a comprehensive whole, a single drama.”

The pagan (Greek) understanding of history was of repeating cycles. They believed history went through phases like the seasons of the year and then began again.

As Christians we believe that history is going somewhere. History is the outworking of the providence of God. It’s the unfolding of God’s plan.

SLIDE

Prior to Christ, all of history was working together to bring about His incarnation, ministry, death, burial and resurrection.

Since His resurrection all of history is working together to bring about the spread of the gospel and the consummation of the Kingdom of God that will be fully realized when Christ returns.

SLIDE

We’re now in that second main flow of history and it’s still going somewhere. And, just like the first flow, the place it’s going is towards Christ.

SLIDE

WHY SHOULD WE LEARN CHURCH HISTORY?

Any thoughts on that?

Christianity isn’t a religion of abstraction or of speculative philosophies, but is a religion rooted in historical fact. It is, among other things, a message about events that took place in time and space. Christianity is grounded in things like Luke 3:1-2:

SLIDE

Luke 3:1–2 ESV

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

That’s a pretty specific time.

That’s like saying:

“In the first year of the Kennedy administration, when Ernest Vandiver was governor of Georgia, on the night the Dick Van Dyke show premiered on CBS, Larry Farlow was born.”

You can check all that out. It’s not “Once upon a time...” or “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...”

And as I mentioned in my sermon a couple of weeks back, a guy named Sir William Ramsey did just that where Luke was concerned - checked it all out - and found Luke to be accurate. Just as one example, Ramsey says:

“Luke references thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands without making a single mistake.” (Stealing From God, Turek, p.194)

SLIDE

1. It reaffirms a biblical value of looking to the past. Multiple scriptures call us to remember God’s deeds in the past. When writing to the Corinthian church, Paul, speaking of the Old Testament, says “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” (I Cor. 10:11). God’s faithfulness didn’t end with the close of the New Testament. We can see it continue to be manifested throughout the sweep of history if we just look for it. Mark Dever said “Knowing WHAT God has done helps us believe what He WILL do.” (Psalm 77-78). (Read a couple of verses)

2. It gives us perspective. Church history frees us from thinking we live in a unique time, from taking world events and assuming things like that have never happened before and therefore giving them a significance that they don't necessarily have. Rare is the thing the church is dealing with today that she has not dealt with in the past. As The Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccl. 1:9) (Arianism, Marcionism)

3. It provides warnings about what to look out for and what not to do. Not only do we see what’s happened in the past but we see how the church has handled what happened, sometimes well, sometimes not so well. We can learn not to repeat the mistakes of the past and not to reinvent the wheel when seeking solutions to issues similar to those our predecessors faced.

My grandfather used to have a saying about geese. He said a goose wakes up to a new world every morning. Absent an understanding history there’s a tendency to wake up to a new church every decade or so. You see this in what I call “trendy” churches that pop up from time to time. “We’re going to do church differently than anyone else has ever done.” A. You’re probably not. B. If you are, that’s a red flag.

4. It implants hope in dark times. Church history reminds us that history is going somewhere. It moves according to God’s plan. Even in the darkest of times of the past, we see God bringing revival or His church standing firm in the face of persecution through the power of the Holy Spirit and it helps us as we deal with similar circumstances in our day. When the recipients of Hebrews were struggling with persecution and thinking about turning back, the author reminds them of the heroes of the faith in chapter 11. He uses history to encourage them.

5. It tethers us to our spiritual family. How much better do you understand your biological family when you understand who your ancestors were and what they did? Our brothers and sisters in Christ are not just those sitting around us this morning but they are also that “great cloud of witnesses” who has gone before us. Joel Beeke says of reading the life stories of believers in the past generates in those who read them a sense of belonging to a spiritual family that transcends the centuries.”[ii]

Another thing it does is help us understand theology – what we believe and why we believe it. There’s a branch of theological study called historical theology.

One of the benefits of Historical theology is to help us understand how our theology was formed.

We are blessed to live in a time when an orthodox understanding of things like the Trinity or the Incarnation has already been hashed out by those who went before us. We, for example, take it for granted that God exists eternally as one God in three persons and that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. But this understanding has not always existed among Christians. The church wrestled for years with those and other concepts before arriving at what we now see as the orthodox understanding.

So, we benefit from the labors of those who have gone before us

There are two ditches into which we can fall:

Revering (or rejecting) something just because it’s new

Revering (or rejecting) something just because it’s old.

We can have an idolatry of the new and novel that disrespects anything traditional and we can also have nostalgia for the past that is little more than an idolatry of the old and traditional. So it’s a balance.

I’d say in our day, idolatry of the new is the bigger problem.

SLIDE

I saw a great quote from the composer, Gustav Mahler: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

Now, let’s delve into the early church.

Of course, the first, post resurrection history of the church we have is the Book of Acts that follows the church from its beginnings in Jerusalem and ends with Paul under house arrest at Rome around 60-62 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Nero.

All the history we have after that time is non-inspired but nonetheless important and useful.

SLIDE

THE EARLY CHURCH AND JUDAISM

The first Christians were Jewish and the first New Testament church was at Jerusalem.

These first Christians did not see themselves as leaving Judaism. They saw themselves as being faithful to their religion - not turning their back on it.

They rightly saw Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies so to be a faithful Jew was to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Many of them continued to keep the Sabbath and attend worship at the Temple.

Notice the context Luke gives us right before Peter and John heal the man crippled from birth:

Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. – Acts 3:1

But we also see that to these observances, they added the observance of the first day of the week, on which they gathered to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.[iii] We see by the time of the writing of Revelation this day was being called “the Lord’s day.”

Revelation 1:10 “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet”

This led to inevitable conflicts with other Jews, especially the Jewish officials, who did not believe the messiah had come.

So, you had one group of Jews who believed to be a faithful Jew meant to worship Christ and another group who believed that to be a faithful Jew meant to reject Christ.

Those two things are mutually exclusive. They can’t coexist within one religious body.

So the first theological challenges and physical persecutions of the church came from other ethnic Jews.

What we’re going to see is throughout her history the church has faced these two things to one degree or another - challenges to her belief (theology) and to her safety (persecution). Usually it is a refusal to give in on the first that leads to the second.

SLIDE?

How do we see this happening today? (Beliefs conflict, physical consequences result, Revelation 13)

We see this persecution break out full force after the stoning of Stephen:

...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

The Romans, however, saw this as an intramural disagreement and didn’t see the need to get involved so at this point Christianity and the church were not yet in the cross hairs of the Roman Empire.

Notice the Roman governor Festus’ comments to King Agrippa from Acts 25:18-19

18 When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. 19 Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive.

Paul was only in Roman custody because that had been necessary to save his life and prevent a riot in Jerusalem. He was not detained by the Romans for being a Christian or preaching the gospel.

But, of course, that would eventually change both for Paul and for the Christian church.

So in this earliest era of the church:

Theological issue that caused conflict with the culture leading to persecution: Jesus is the Messiah

SLIDE

What happened to the church at Jerusalem? The city was conquered by the Romans and destroyed in 70 A.D. and many Christians left at that time because they remembered Jesus’ words in Luke 21:20-21 “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it,”

Justo Gonzalez notes that by 135 A.D. “a number of Jewish Christians had returned to Jerusalem.” However, “their relationship with the rest of Christianity had been almost entirely severed.” By the fifth century, so the 400s, the Jerusalem church had “faded out of history.”

SLIDE

Before we talk about the conflicts with the church and the Roman state, it’s helpful to remember how important the Roman Empire was to the spread of the gospel and the growth of the early church. That helps put in perspective that God’s providence rules all of history and nothing happens by accident or outside His control. While Rome ended up being a great persecutor of the church, she was also a great facilitator of her growth.

Ironic. What the Enemy meant for evil, God meant for good.

Justo Gonzalez says:

“The political unity wrought by the Roman Empire allowed the early Christians to travel without having to fear bandits or local wars. When reading about Paul’s journeys, we see the greatest threat to shipping at that time was bad weather. A few decades earlier, an encounter with pirates was much more to be feared than any storm. In the first century, well-paved and well-guarded roads ran to the most distant provinces. Since trade flourished, travel was constant; thus, Christianity often reached a new region, not through the work of missionaries or preachers, but rather through traveling traders, slaves, and others. In that sense, the political circumstances favored the spread of Christianity.”

As Paul reminds us in Galatians 4:4, Christ came to earth in the “fullness of time” so that the gospel would be breaking out of Jerusalem and Judea at a time when it could spread easily.

This was a circumstance that would not happen again for hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire.

SLIDE

ROMAN RELIGIOUS LIFE

From a religious perspective, Rome was pluralistic. The official state religion was the worship of a pantheon of deities each of which was in charge of a particular realm. Most of the Roman gods were borrowed from the Greeks though they were usually given different names. The Greek god Zeus became Jupiter. The god of the sea, Poseidon, became Neptune, etc.

And when Rome would conquer a new land, they would incorporate the local gods into the Roman pantheon. Because most of the people they conquered were also pagans, they saw multiple gods as normal. Some of these other gods became quite popular with the Romans such as the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Persian god Mithras that was especially popular in the army and among the aristocracy.

However, despite this inclusivity, Rome still insisted that its conquered peoples worship the Roman gods as well, especially when the belief that the emperor himself was a god began to be practiced – and this is what eventually became the sticking point for Christians and Christianity - because the Christian confession is that Jesus is Lord to the exclusion of all others was not acceptable to Rome.

SLIDE

[ALISTER BEGG VIDEO] 3 MINUTES (16) Proclaiming the Exclusivity of Jesus Will Result in Persecution - YouTube

This was of course, true for Jews as well but Rome had a kind of understanding with the Jews unique among those, they had conquered in which they tolerated their monotheism as long as it did not threaten Roman rule. This was one of the reasons Jesus was opposed by the Jewish leaders:

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation. – John 11:48

And that is eventually what did happen.

The party of the Zealots, who had always been opposed to compromise with Rome started a rebellion in 66 A.D. Rome sent four legions to put down the rebellion, which ended in 70 A.D. with Jerusalem being captured, and the temple destroyed. As we mentioned earlier, Christians in Jerusalem fled the city as the Roman army began to surround it because they remembered Jesus’ words.

SLIDE

The historian Eusebius says:

“All occurred in this manner in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, according to the predictions of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who by his divine power foresaw all these things as if already present at the time…” [iv]

Providentially, as Old Testament Judaism and the sacrificial system were being swept away, the first large scale persecution of Christians for being Christians happened but, as we’ll see, it was not directly the result of a refusal to worship Roman gods as much as it was an act of political expediency.

SLIDE

PERSECUTION UNDER NERO

Nero became emperor in October 54 A.D., when he was seventeen, so he was the emperor during much of the Apostle Paul’s ministry – the emperor to which he appealed in the Book of Acts. At first, he had advisors around him helping him to rule and was a popular ruler. However, as he became older, he threw off wise council and began to rule independently and eventually tyrannically. In 59 A.D., via the instigation of his mistress, he murdered his mother. By the time he’d been on the throne ten years, he had become quite unpopular and was considered by many to be insane.

On July 19, 64 A.D., in the shops surrounding the Circus Maximus, the chariot racing venue, a fire started in Rome that quickly engulfed much of the city. The fire lasted nine days and 10 of Rome’s 14 districts were either completely destroyed or heavily damaged.

Roman historian Tacitus describes it like this:

“It had its beginning in that part of the circus which adjoins the Palatine and Caelian hills, where, amid the shops containing inflammable wares, the conflagration both broke out and instantly became so fierce and so rapid from the wind that it seized in its grasp the entire length of the circus. For here there were no houses fenced in by solid masonry, or temples surrounded by walls, or any other obstacle to interpose delay.

The blaze in its fury ran first through the level portions of the city, then rising to the hills, while it again devastated every place below them, it outstripped all preventive measures; so rapid was the mischief and so completely at its mercy the city, with those narrow winding passages and irregular streets, which characterised old Rome.”

VIDEO

Nero was not in Rome when the fire started but rushed back to the city to supervise the relief efforts even opening his private gardens to hundreds made homeless by the fire.

However, for some reason rumors began to circulate that not only was Nero in Rome when the fire started but that he’d had it set so he could rebuild the city to his liking. He had that kind of extravagant reputation that he would do anything to get what he wanted.

Nero tried to dispel these rumors to no avail and so he did what many rulers have done in history, he found a scapegoat.

As it happened, two of the areas of the city that did not burn had a large concentration of Christians living there – so Nero blamed them for the fire – as if they could start a fire and then control it so that it didn’t burn their part of the city.

SLIDE

Roman historian Tacitus tells us about this:

“To kill the rumors, Nero charged and tortured some people for their evil practices – the group popularly called ‘Christians.’ The founder of this sect, Cristus, had been put to death by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, when Tiberius was emperor.”

He goes on to say:

SLIDE

“First those who confessed to being Christians were arrested, and on the basis of their testimony a great number were condemned, although not so much for the fire itself as for their hatred of humankind. Before killing Christians, Nero used them to amuse the people. Some were dressed in furs, to be killed by dogs. Others were crucified. Still others were set on fire early in the night, so that they might illuminate it. Nero opened his own gardens for these shows.”

Tradition tells us that it was during this persecution that Peter and Paul were martyred.

One thing we notice here is that Christians were already despised in Roman culture, which made making them the scapegoat all the easier. You don’t pick somebody to blame for something that is well thought of in most cases because people might not believe it. People were willing to believe this of Christians.

SLIDE

Why were they so reviled already and considered “evil” and “haters of mankind?” Several possibilities:

They did not worship the Roman gods so many Romans saw them as atheists or anarchists or at the very least, unpatriotic. It placed them outside of the cultural norm.

There were rumors of incestuous relationship within the sect because they called each other “brother” and “sister” including their husbands and wives. This scandalized even pagans. Remember Paul’s charge to the Corinthian church regarding the man who was having an affair with his father’s wife (I Corinthians 5).

They were accused of cannibalism because of the talk of eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ.

Christian History Magazine—Issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church The Romans’ Public Piety

In the cities of the Roman Empire, religion was inextricably intertwined with social and political life. Piety toward the gods was thought to insure the well-being of the city, to promote a spirit of kinship and mutual responsibility, to bind together the citizenry. “In all probability,” wrote Cicero, “disappearance of piety toward the gods will entail the disappearance of loyalty and social union among men as well, and of justice itself, the queen of all the virtues.”

Christian History Magazine—Issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church The Romans’ Public Piety

For the Romans, religion sustained the life of the state. The new Christian superstition undermined it.

In short, from the very beginning Christian belief and practice set them apart from the culture and caused people to think they were odd or weird or dangerous making it easier to justify mistreating or killing them.

Remember when we said that studying church history helped us have perspective? Many of the things we’re experiencing in the west today were the rule rather than the exception for the church for much of her history.

Well, Nero was finally deposed as emperor in 68 A.D. and committed suicide. At that point the persecution abated for a few years.

Theological Issue that caused conflict with the culture: Did not participate in Roman civil religion.

What are some of the ways Christians today do not participate in civil religion?

This is how it would go for most of the first three centuries of the church. Persecution would come, sometimes in a local area, sometimes empire-wide and then it would abate for a while only to be resurrected again 10, 20 or 30 years later.

SLIDE

PERSECUTION UNDER DOMITIAN

There was one final persecution in the first century under the emperor Domitian who ruled from 81 – 96 A.D. Domitian was the brother of Titus, the general who sacked Jerusalem and later became emperor. When Titus died, Domitian succeeded him. It was during his reign that construction on the Colosseum was completed.

SLIDE

Early church historian Eusebius writes:

Ecclesiastical History, Books 1–5 Chapter 17

When Domitian had displayed great cruelty toward many and had killed without fair trial no small number of well-born and famous men at Rome and had punished countless other notable men without cause by banishment to foreign lands and by confiscation of their property, he finally established himself as Nero’s successor in hatred and hostility toward God. In fact, he was the second to promote a persecution against us, although his father Vespasian contrived nothing unusual against us

It was during this persecution that Clement of Rome was martyred. Tradition tells us he had an anchor tied to him and was thrown into the sea. Clement was a church leader in Rome after the apostles Peter and Paul were martyred and probably knew them. Many people believe he is the Clement mentioned in (Philippians 4:3).

Clement wrote a letter to the church at Corinth chastising them for problems that sound very much like the same ones Paul dealt with in his letters to them. It is one of the earliest Christian documents we have outside after the New Testament.

In this letter he calls out those who were causing strife in the church, calls the church to repent and uses examples from scripture such as Noah and Jonah and David and ultimately the example of Christ to illustrate his points.

Tradition tells us the apostle John was exiled to Patmos during this persecution as well. Because of this, some see Domitian as the “beast” referred to in Revelation.

Interestingly, the historian Pliny called Domitian the beast from hell who sat in its den, licking blood so he was not only cruel to Christians but to most everyone.

He was also the first emperor to insist that he be acknowledged as a god and that is likely what brought Christians into his cross hairs (as well as Jews). He insisted that other people hail his greatness with acclamations like “Lord of the earth,” “Invincible,” “Glory,” “Holy,” and “Thou Alone.” [v]

Domitian’s reign ended when he was murdered by his enemies.

Theological issue: Jesus alone is Lord and God

Theologians: Clement of Rome, John the Apostle

In what ways must Christians necessarily conflict with the culture today? How will refusing to compromise in these areas impact the church in the next 5-10 years?

I’ll close this morning with a quote from Rod Dreher:

“When a new regime or social order takes over, the first thing it does is to find ways to sever society’s connection to its past.”

This is true of the culture of the church as well. If we want to see her stand firm against the cultural tide in our day, one of the best things we can do is remember how she did so in earlier days.

[i] https://www.crossway.org/blog/2015/08/how-christianity-transformed-our-understanding-of-history/ [ii]“Encouragement for Today’s Pastors” by Joel Beeke and Terry Slachter [iii]The Story of Christianity, Justo Gonzalez – p. 20 [iv]Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, C.F. Cruse translation, p. 76 [v] https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/persecution-in-early-church-gallery/