1 THE BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is the cornerstone of Church history. Written by the evangelist Luke as the sequel to his own Gospel, it tells us of the Church’s first years, of the initial events in her life. It describes the first Christian community in Jerusalem and its persecution by the Judean authorities, the preaching of the apostles — especially that of St. Paul — and finally the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. The historical value of this account has often been challenged; indeed, at first sight it may seem remote from the modem conception of the functions and methods of history. There are many "blank pages" in Acts, many things passed over in silence. Sometimes it is more like a commentary than a simple narrative of events. But in reading it we need to remember that, just as the content of the Gospels is not exhausted by the description of the life of Christ, so Acts was not intended to be merely a historical chronicle.

This account, later a book in the New Testament, was written at a time when the Church, after emerging from the first stage of her development and establishing herself in many major centers of the Roman Empire, was already fully conscious of her mission and was beginning to crystallize in writing her earliest experiences. St. Luke, more than all other New Testament writers, may be called a historian in our sense of the word; nevertheless, he did not focus his attention on history alone, or on history as such. His theme is the Church, as the culmination of the New Testament, as the fulfillment in the world — that is, in human society and in history — of the work Christ has accomplished. The subject of Acts is not simply the history of the Church, but her essential nature and living image as they were revealed in the very first years of her existence. The book also contains the first doctrine of the Church, with the facts of her life as illustrations; it therefore includes only facts that are of service to this teaching and vital to its understanding. All succeeding generations of Christians have interpreted this book doctrinally, for they have seen in the community at Jerusalem, in the apostles’ preaching, and in the life and teaching of St. Paul the pattern that set the standard of Church life for all time, and the inspiring beginning that laid the foundations of the Church’s entire subsequent history.

Acts begins its account with events which, for the historian, are still only on the threshold of Church history: the Ascension and Pentecost. But in St. Luke’s perspective the Church is based on these events; they are what gives meaning to her existence, which the succeeding chapters of Acts portray.

A small group of disciples — fishermen ("simple men, without learning" as St. Luke describes them), women, a few relatives and friends of the Master — here in its entirety was the "little flock" left behind after Jesus of Nazareth. What is it that will make them fearless preachers and lead them to the ends of the world? It is the descent of the Holy Spirit, the mysterious transformation after which all that Jesus did and taught will become their own strength. Thereafter He Himself will act through His disciples and in them His presence on earth will continue.

But what is the content of this witness? Before beginning the actual history of the Church, we should recall to mind — in very general terms, of course — that Gospel, or "good news," which is the basis of Church life and Christian preaching to the world. In the days of His earthly ministry Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God to men. And the meaning of His preaching and His works was this: that His coming is also the beginning of this kingdom, that the Son of God has come to reveal the kingdom to men and bestow it upon them. Although they have been torn away from God by sin, have been subject to evil and death, and have lost their true life, through faith in Christ men may again come to know the one true God and His love for the world; in union with Him they may inherit the new, eternal life for which they were created. Jesus taught that the world does not accept the kingdom of God, because the world "lieth in evil" and has loved the darkness more than the light. The Son of God, therefore, has brought to men not only true doctrine and knowledge of the kingdom, but also salvation. He has conquered evil and sin, which ruled over mankind.

By His whole life He showed us the type of the perfect man, that is, of a man utterly obedient to God. The authority and power by which He forgave sins, healed the sick, and raised the dead existed only through this love and obedience. In His own Person He revealed the kingdom as complete union with God, as the power of love and sacrifice for God and men. He was delivered up to a shameful death and abandoned by all, yet remained the image incarnate of complete self-surrender, perfect love, and absolute humility. By this surrender of self, love has triumphed over hate, and life has conquered death, for God raised Christ from the dead. The evil of the world and the forces of disintegration that rule it have proved powerless, and in one Man they have been overcome. In one Man the kingdom of God — of love, goodness, and eternal life — has penetrated the realm of sin and death.

Christ did not win this victory for Himself, but for all men — to save them all and lead them into that kingdom which He brought into being. Therefore, at the very outset of His work, He chose twelve witnesses — men who were with Him continually, who heard His teachings and beheld His works, who were to be witnesses of His death, resurrection, and glorification. And when, by way of death on the Cross, He entered upon His glory, He entrusted His kingdom to them, promising that after His glorification He would bestow His power upon them, so that what He alone had done they all might do. With His power they would be able not only to tell men about Him, but also to lead them to Him and make them partakers of His kingdom.

Such was His promise, and on Pentecost it was fulfilled. On that day the little band of disciples received the power to witness, not only to the Master’s life and miracles, but also to the fact that He is the Savior, King, and Lord of the world. For the disciples it is in the Church that His life continues; His dominion and power become realities through their hands, and His life becomes the new life of all who believe in Him. The coming of the Holy Spirit means all of this — out of the little flock it makes the Church.

Pentecost took place in Jerusalem. The apostles were Galileans, inhabitants of the northern part of Palestine, and we are told by St. Mark and St. Matthew that it was in Galilee that they first saw the risen Lord. But in Acts, St. Luke emphasizes the Savior’s words as He instructed them not to leave Jerusalem, and the fact is important for an understanding of Church history. Jerusalem was the focal point of all the religious and national expectations of the Jews, and the heart of all Old Testament history. Steeped in the golden legend of Solomon’s glory, in the past the city had witnessed the political flowering of Israel. Now, in a time of captivity, she recognized even more clearly her role as the mystical center of Israel, the Holy Zion where, on the yet hidden "day of the Lord," the Messiah must appear to save His people and restore His kingdom. In the visions of the prophets this messianic kingdom had been transformed from a narrowly national, political restoration into the religious renewal of the world and the triumph of truth and justice. They had envisioned the Messiah Himself as the Savior of mankind from sin and death. And so on Pentecost St. Peter answered the questions of the perplexed crowd in the words of the prophet Joel: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh" (Acts 2:17), and he professed his faith that the "great and notable day of the Lord," which every Jew awaited and believed in, had already come. This meant that for Christians the Messiah was here and all the promises and expectations of the Old Testament had been fulfilled; the messianic kingdom had arrived. It meant also that the glory of the Lord promised to Jerusalem had come down upon her and that the Old Testament history of salvation had culminated in the Church.

Such was the meaning of the first chapters of Acts, the prologue to Church history. The unbeliever may doubt their historicity. But even he must admit that at no time have Christians failed to believe in this divine origin of the Church, and unless this belief is kept in mind it is virtually impossible to understand the whole subsequent development of her history.

Community in Jerusalem — The First Church.

A small sect within Judaism — viewed superficially, this is a possible definition of the Christian status in Jerusalem during the very early years. There were many similar sects and religious factions in the Jewish world of that era. It was a period of religious and political excitement, of a heightening of the hopes and expectations connected with Israel’s national destiny and the biblical prophecies of the ultimate triumph of the chosen people. The time of the final revolt against the hated Roman rule was approaching; the destruction of Jerusalem was near at hand. "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). The question the disciples addressed to their departing Master burned deep in Jewish hearts. But for the Christians (and at first almost all of them were Jews) their own faith was the answer, for the confession of Jesus as the Christ was central to it, and in bringing their own kindred to the Messiah they saw their first goal, for He had come to the "lost sheep of the house of Israel." If He had been crucified by the rulers of the people, Israel could still repent and turn to her Savior. "For the promise is unto you, and to your children" (Acts 2:39); these words of Peter’s first address to the Jews were the basis of all the early preaching. For the first Christian generation, which was by birth almost completely Jewish, the conversion of Israel seemed the fulfillment of Christ’s covenant. He had charged His disciples to begin preaching about Him in Jerusalem and Judea, and we are told in Acts that a great many Jews were converted at the very beginning. Later there was to be a final and total break with Judaism, but before that event the Church lived believing in the possible conversion of Israel.

The explanation for this belief is a fact which seems strange to us now: the first community in Jerusalem not only did not separate itself from Judaism, but even preserved Jewish religious forms intact in its own life. The apostles observed the appointed hours of prayer and all the ritual injunctions concerning food; when St. Paul came to Jerusalem, he agreed without objection to a request by St. James and the presbyters that he perform the ceremony of ritual purification, in order that "all may know...that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law" (Acts 21:24). The Temple at Jerusalem remained for Christians a place of prayer, instruction, and preaching. Even when the initial link with it was broken and Christian worship began to develop independently, that worship retained — and always will retain — the stamp of its Jewish origins. The fundamental principles of Orthodox worship were determined almost entirely by the Temple and the synagogue.

Although we do not at first see any sharp break with Judaism, this does not mean, as some historians once thought, that Christianity began to experience its own radical newness only later, after entering the Greco-Roman world; that only then, under the influence of that world, did it create its "original" pattern of life and organization. The fact is, this sense that a radical change had taken place in world history and human life was the most basic and outstanding trait of the early Christian community as described in Acts and St. Paul’s epistles. But we must understand that for the Christians of Jerusalem the preservation of the Jewish religious tradition and mode of life was not a mere survival of the past from which they were released as they grew in understanding of their own faith. On the contrary, they observed the tradition because for them it all bore witness to the truth of their faith. Christ Himself had declared His work to be the fulfillment of the Scriptures: "Thus it is written...thus it behoved..." (Luke 24:46). "You pore over the scriptures…it is of these I speak as bearing witness to me" (John 5:39). The old accustomed words and ancient rites were now radiant with new light, and in them Christians were always discovering new points to confirm the truth and plenitude of the New Testament. St. Matthew’s Gospel, written in the Judeo-Christian milieu, was later to express this fundamental Christian belief in the Old Testament as prophecy and doctrine about Christ.

Just as the prophecies have come true and the Church is the culmination of the Old Testament, she also, while preserving Old Testament doctrine, incarnates in her life the "new thing" revealed in Christ: the society that Christians compose, which, despite all its links with the traditional religion, is quite distinct from it.

The New Testament Scriptures, already set down in Greek, called it ekklesia — the Church. In the social and political life of the Greco-Roman world this word signified an official citizens’ assembly with legislative powers, called together to decide on public questions and express their sovereign will. But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament — the so-called Septuagint, made in Alexandria during several centuries before the Christian era — this term acquired a religious meaning, that of the company of God’s people, the chosen people whom God Himself has summoned to His service. Thus the application of the word to the Christian community in the New Testament indicates that even from the beginning this community knew itself to be a divine institution called to a special ministry. It was not to be merely a religious brotherhood or spiritual society, but the Church, the visible company of those who have been called to declare God’s will and carry out His work. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God" (I Peter 2:9f.) — here is the definition of the Church we find in Peter’s first epistle.

So new and so holy was this company that joining it is already defined in the Gospels as a new birth, accomplished through a symbolic act. This is baptism, the liturgical immersion in water of the new Christian, which commemorates and symbolizes Christ’s death and resurrection. On the day of Pentecost those who believed in St. Peter’s preaching asked him what they must do. "Repent," Peter said to them, "and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). The early Church lived by the experience of baptism, men were brought to it by the call of the Gospel preachings; the community’s liturgical life was bound up with baptism, and the symbols and allegories of the earliest Christian paintings on the walls of the catacombs testify again and again to the tremendous power of regeneration the first Christians experienced in the baptismal water.1

Baptism ushers men into the new life which is still "hid with Christ in God," and into the kingdom of God, which in this world is as yet only the kingdom of the age to come. In early Christian experience the Church was the anticipation of the future by faith; she was the mysterious growth of the seed that had been cast upon the earth and was now hidden in it. "Maranatha . . . the Lord cometh" — with this triumphant liturgical cry Christians express both their expectation that Christ will come again in glory and their faith that He is implicitly present among them now.

But if this new life begins with baptism, the central act of the community, in which it professed its essential nature as Christ’s kingdom, was the breaking of bread. On the night before His Passion, Christ Himself commanded His followers to continue this act. It was a meal in common, modeled after the supper Christ had eaten with His disciples. At this meal the Eucharist, or thanksgiving to God for Christ’s sacrifice, was offered up, after which all who were present divided the bread and wine among them and through it became partakers of the Body and Blood of Christ, that is, of the life of Christ Himself. All the records of the time which have come down to us testify that then, as always, Christians believed that in the breaking of bread they were united with Christ Himself.

The breaking of bread took place from house to house, at gatherings of the community separate from its attendance at the Temple. And the special day of the Eucharist was the first day of the week, the day following the Sabbath, on which, according to the apostles’ testimony, Christ had risen. Christians call this day the "Lord’s day." Here was perhaps the most vigorous expression of the early Church’s awareness of herself as an absolutely new beginning which was leading Christians beyond the framework of the traditional religion. During the three centuries that preceded Constantine, the Christian holy day was not a day of rest but an ordinary working day. It was not the "seventh" day, which men since ancient times had reckoned as the final day of the week; it was the following day. In this conscious departure from the earlier emphasis of the week, the Church bears witness to the fact that her own life, as it flows onward in this world, is a foretaste of that eternal day which dawned on the morning of the first victory over death. "For ye are dead," said the Apostle Paul, "and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory" (Col. 3:3f.). At that time these words were understood literally: into our familiar, everyday world and natural human existence had come a great and growing light — the dazzling radiance of another world, of eternal life.

Thus the little Judean sect, almost unnoticed by the world when it first emerged, felt itself to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world the source of the new light, called to enlighten men and save them.

Early Church Organization.

This community has often been contrasted with the "organized" Church of a later age, as though early Christians had been a kind of fluid, ecstatic brotherhood living on inspiration, with no authority except the "breath of the Spirit." In fact, however, from the beginning the very concept of a Church included the idea of an organized society, and nothing was more foreign to the early Christian outlook than any kind of opposition between spirit and form, or between freedom and organization. Human society, they believed, was now filled with the Spirit of God and was thereby a vehicle of the divine life, so that everything human in society becomes a channel for things divine, while everything spiritual is made incarnate in the life of mankind. When Paul called the Church the Body of Christ he had simply found words to describe something Christians had experienced from the very beginning — the sense of the Church as one body made up of the many people united by the new life — in the language of a later day, the life of grace. "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (I Cor. 12:13).

The idea of an organism presupposes a structure essentially hierarchical in character. In the very first descriptions of the Church we see a definite ruling body invested with power and authority. This was the Twelve, the original group of disciples whom Christ Himself had chosen. "It is not ye who have chosen Me, but I have chosen you." This election by the Savior and not by men was the source of their unique and incontestable authority, and it was through them that the Lord’s dominion was exercised in His Church. They had witnessed His earthly life; when they preached about Him they were telling of what they themselves had heard, seen, and felt. At Pentecost, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and granted the power to give a reliable account of their witness and to practice it in this world. They were also granted the power to teach, "to bind and loose," to make decisions — in a word, to be the architects of the Church. To enter the Church, therefore, meant to believe in their teachings; the community itself "continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship" (Acts 2:42).

The significance of the Twelve as the cornerstone of the Church was so indisputable to the first community in Jerusalem that its first act, even before Pentecost, was to complete their number, replacing Judas who had shown himself a traitor. This twelfth man had to be one of the early disciples. "Of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection" (Acts 1:21f.). This choosing was thought of as an election by the Lord Himself: "And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell . . . and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles" (Acts 1:24-26).

The author of Acts singles out Peter as the leader of the apostles, the spokesman of their unanimity. It is Peter who proposes filling the gap in their number and who explains the meaning of Pentecost to the bewildered crowd in a sermon. He it is, also, who replies to the accusations of the Judean rulers and pronounces judgment upon Ananias and Sapphira, whose evil cunning had disturbed the solidarity that prevailed in the life of the first Church. In a later age the position of Peter in the early community and among the apostles became a bone of contention, and eventually this controversy separated the Christian West from Eastern Orthodoxy. But in Acts he always speaks in the name of all the apostles and expresses only the common consensus of their witness. In Eastern tradition he has always remained the "supreme apostle." But this primacy has been understood as a gift of grace to be the voice of apostolic unanimity — not in terms of any special power over the apostles or the Church.2

The apostles governed the Church, but their basic ministry was the "ministry of the Word," the preaching of Christ. Therefore, when the number of disciples multiplied and the cares of ruling the community increased, they proposed that special persons be chosen for this administrative work, so that the Twelve would be able to give themselves "continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude," and they chose seven men, "whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them" (Acts 6:4-6). In the selection of these seven, Luke gives us the fundamental principles upon which the Church’s hierarchy and its later development are based. If the apostles had been chosen by Christ Himself, these new ministers had been chosen by the Church, but at the apostles’ initiative and with their approval. Moreover, after the election of the seven, each was ordained by the apostles through the laying on of hands. It was the apostles who decided the conditions for selection; those chosen must be "men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom" (Acts 6:3). Thus all ministry in the Church, indeed her entire hierarchic structure, is rooted in her apostolic beginnings; this means that she is rooted in Christ Himself, since the apostles were His witnesses. The Church chooses her own ministers, but it is God Himself, through the hands of the apostles, who bestows upon them the special gift of the Spirit to perform their ministry.

But although their preaching and teaching was the link between all the churches, each Church through its local hierarchy also received the apostolic gifts and doctrine in full measure. In the community at Jerusalem, the model upon which all the other churches were based, even at a very early stage St. James and the presbyters exercised authority along with the apostles. The apostles moved on, but everywhere local hierarchies remained to continue their work, preserve their witness, hand on their gifts, and — in harmony with all the other communities — to realize in this world the unity of the Church as the one, indivisible people of God which is everywhere assembled together to proclaim the new life. In this way we are given from the outset an example and definition of what later became known as "apostolic succession."

Life of Christians.

But what, one may now ask, was the positive ideal of life held by this community? For the early Church, unity in love was the ultimate value; it was the supreme purpose of life that Christ Himself had revealed to men. The Church was the restoration of the unity that had been broken and torn asunder by sin; those who were baptized, who were living in union with Christ and sharing in His life through the breaking of bread, were reunited with God, and in God they also found unity with one another.

This unity was demonstrated above all in the active love through which each Christian was conscious that he belonged to all the brethren, and conversely, that they all belonged to him. The unity of Christians with one another is now, alas, only symbolized by their communion in divine service; in the early Church the liturgy was the crowning point of a real unity, a continual communion in everyday life; moreover, the liturgy was then unthinkable apart from that communion. In early Christian writings no other word is so often repeated as "brother," and Christians of that age filled the idea of brotherhood with vital meaning, which showed clearly in their unity of thought: "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul . . ." (Acts 4:32).

Brotherhood also meant active mutual support among Christians "of all for all" — a care which was both material and spiritual. "And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need" (Acts 2:44f.). The very smallness of the Christian community in Jerusalem made it possible to put unity of life into practice in a radical way through sharing their property. This phenomenon, inaccurately described as "primitive Christian communism," was not the product of any specifically Christian economic or social theory, but a manifestation of love. Its meaning lies not in community of property as such, but in the evidence it gives us of the new life that manifested itself among them, entirely transforming the old. In the Pauline epistles we find the summons: "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give" (II Cor. 9:7) — a remark which points to the survival of private property in other Christian communities. But the utter devotion of the Jerusalem community — the brotherhood of "beggars" as St. Paul called them — remains forever in the mind of Christendom as an ineffaceable example and legacy, the ideal of an authentic regeneration of all human relationships through love.

The early Church has often been described as indifferent to this world and as existing in a continual tense expectancy of the End. But the new life also involved a new attitude toward the world; since for Christians this love is not an internal affair of the Church, but, on the contrary, the essence of her witness in the world. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another" (John 13:35). If we read the New Testament with care we discover a complete doctrine concerning the world and how Christians should relate to it and live in it. The Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the figure of the merciful, succoring Christ are proclaimed to the world by the Church and will remain the world’s ideal even when men reject the Church. And when Christians have sought the basic standards by which to determine their relationship to the state, to the family, to work — indeed, to all aspects of human life — have they not always searched the epistles of St. Paul? The expectation of the End, the prayers for the coming of Christ — everything which it is now the fashion to call eschatological — cannot, without doing violence to historical truth, be divorced from this positive ideal. The kingdom to come for which Christians pray is for them inseparable from judgment, and their judgment will reflect the precise extent to which they have embodied their faith in their own lives, i.e., in the world. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these. . ." (Matt. 25:40). Through Christ the kingdom of God has entered human life in order to regenerate it.

Here, then, is the image of the Church bequeathed to us by the records of her earliest days. Does this mean that she had no failings or weaknesses then? Of course not. The author of Acts mentions many of them, and in the Pauline epistles whole chapters will be devoted to exposing and scoring these sins. But as we begin the history of the Church, in which such sins and weaknesses will too often be painfully obvious, we also need to keep in mind that "icon of the Church" — that image and realization of the first experience of true life in the Church — to which Christians will always have recourse when they seek to cure their spiritual ailments and overcome their sins.

Break with Judaism.

The conflict with the Judean religious authorities, the next main topic in Acts, introduces us to the second phase of Church history in the apostolic age. By providing the impetus for the expansion of the new faith beyond the limits of Jewry, it brought the Church out onto the broad highroad of history.

This conflict had been brewing since the very beginning. The members of the Sanhedrin twice ordered the arrest of the heads of the Church, but on both occasions set them free after questioning. After all, the Christians were not breaking the Mosaic law; their sole offense was that they preached "the name of Jesus" and the resurrection of the dead. But the doctrine of resurrection had its adherents, particularly among the Pharisees. Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee, spoke out in favor of avoiding conflict: "If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it" (Acts 5:38f.). The author of Acts constantly emphasizes that the Jews have no objection they can raise against Christian teaching, since it is itself based on the Scriptures and testifies to the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

But difficulties developed none the less, to which the interrogation and stoning of Stephen gave explosive momentum under the zeal of Saul. "And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. . . . Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word" (Acts 8:1,4). Up to that time the Church had stayed in Jerusalem. We have already seen that the Church, by virtue of her very purpose, at the beginning had to reveal herself as a united, visible company — the messianic community gathered together around the Twelve in the Holy City in order to testify to the advent of the promised kingdom of God. Now she would have to accept as her lot all the heat and dust of her long — and very human and earthly — journey through history, a journey that began with the expulsion of Christians from Jerusalem by force. The Christians of Jerusalem, who were Jews by birth, naturally looked upon the Church as primarily the crowning point of their own Jewish tradition; they did not yet comprehend her universal, pan-human mission. Indeed, the question as to whether or not pagans should be received into the Church was to be one of her first acute growing pains.

The Apostle Paul.

The preaching to the Samaritans, St. Philip’s conversion of the Ethiopian nobleman, and the conversion of the Roman Cornelius were still exceptional cases; even missionaries who went further afield — to Cyprus, Antioch, and Rome — at first preached only to Jews, though other converts began at Antioch, and no doubt elsewhere, to share the Good News of Christ with pagans.

The life work of St. Paul, which won for him the title of Apostle to the Gentiles, brought to completion the formative period of the Church. Since Acts was written by his traveling companion and "beloved physician," and since Paul’s letters to the various Christian communities both describe his spiritual experience and expound his understanding of doctrine, we have more information about him than about any other apostle. An orthodox Jew born at Tarsus in the Diaspora, his religious consciousness was completely conditioned by the insatiable Old Testament thirst for the living God, but he also breathed freely in the atmosphere of the Greco-Roman world. He received his religious education in Jerusalem from Gamaliel, the intellectual spokesman of the Pharisees; his consequent natural enmity to Christianity already revealed the wholehearted ardor with which he applied his religious ideals to life.

In the turning point of his life on the road to Damascus, which Paul always described as a call to him "not of men, neither by a man" (Gal. 1:1) but by Christ Himself, he heard the voice of the Master and was converted to Him completely and with finality. Books have been written to explain the conversion scientifically as the result of psychological or neurological factors, or even of the epilepsy from which he is alleged to have suffered. But it is clear that we are dealing with a mystery which science, even with the aid of its most delicate instruments, cannot fully explain. What is important is that every word spoken by Paul that has come down to us shows how his whole being and consciousness were rooted in the person of Christ, and attests his conviction that he had received a special revelation of the Christ. That is why the Church, despite the abundance of opposition and misunderstanding encountered by Paul during his life, does not hesitate to acknowledge him as an apostle equal to the Twelve, and to number him among those whose witness is a cornerstone of the Church.

After his baptism Paul spent three years in Damascus. He then went to Jerusalem, which he was always to regard as the elder Church, the focal point of Christianity. Driven out by the hatred of the Jews, he journeyed back north to Antioch, which was, after Jerusalem, the second most important center of Christianity, and there rose to a leading position as a preacher in the Christian congregation. His lifelong devotion to the "ministry of the Word" led to the founding of a whole network of churches in Asia Minor, Greece, and possibly also in the western part of the Roman Empire.

From the very outset of his ministry Paul was confronted with the whole problem of the position within the Church of converts from paganism, a problem destined to affect the entire future of the Church. Christianity had taken root in the chief centers of the Roman Empire — Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome — even before he began to preach. As yet, however, the controversy over it remained an intra-Judaic dispute. Thus the Roman historian Suetonius states that the Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from Rome in the year 49 A.D. because the question of "a certain Christ" had provoked outbreaks of disorder among them. Paul, too, began his preaching in Asia Minor by addressing the local Jews. On arriving in a given city, he would go into the local synagogue and, basing his sermon on the Scriptures read there every Sabbath, would begin to preach about Christ. With only a few exceptions, the Jews rejected him and he would then turn to the Gentiles. Paul never doubted that "the word of God should first have been spoken to you. . ." (Acts 13:46) — i.e., to the Jews. The Jewish rejection of Christ was a "continual sorrow" to him. "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:2f.). But he was equally certain that the Gospels had been addressed to the whole earth for salvation "unto the ends of the world" (Rom. 10:18).

Soon it was no longer a question of individual conversions or exceptional cases; now there were whole Christian communities of Gentiles. Did the ritual prescriptions of the Old Testament, which had remained in force among the Judeo-Christians of Jerusalem, apply to these people? St. Paul answered this question with a flat "No!" Nor did he see the problem in terms of the best method of converting Gentiles; he believed this was an issue involving the very essence of the Christian Good News. First in his Epistle to the Galatians, written in the heat of controversy, and later in a more academic manner in his Epistle to the Romans, he developed his doctrine concerning the relation between law and grace and the freedom of Christians from the law. He was not in the least inclined to deny the importance of the Old Testament. "The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good" (Rom. 7:12). But the law simply defined evil and sin, it gave no power of salvation from sin. Even when a man knows what is good and what evil, he is often powerless to crush the latter. "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do" (Rom. 7:19). Man is the slave of sin and he cannot free himself from his servitude. If the setting up of a law or norm — the knowledge of it — included the power to avoid going against it, there would be no need for salvation in Christ. But in giving man law, God reveals to him the abnormality of evil — a sinful violation of His will concerning the world and mankind — and at the same time condemns him; for sinful man, lacking the strength to save himself from sin, lies under judgment. But He who is without sin has taken upon Himself the whole burden of our sins and their condemnation under the law; by His death He has redeemed us. In Christ law died and grace ascended the throne, and through faith in Christ and union with Him in the baptismal death man ceases to be a slave and receives a share in His life.

Nor has this salvation been granted to the Jews alone, but to all mankind. St. Paul never denied that the Jews were a superior people, God’s elect, but for him they excelled other nations not because the Word of God had been committed to them, but because through them the way had been prepared for the advent of Christ. Any person who believes in Christ and shares in His life and death must realize that now there is "neither Jew nor Greek" (Gal. 3:28); if he still thinks to obtain justification through fulfilling the ritual injunctions of the law, let him know that "Christ is become of no effect unto you, . . . ye are fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:4). For in love lies the whole meaning of the law, yet the law itself has no power to give love. In Christ love is freely bestowed upon men, and through Him and in Him the law thus becomes unnecessary. In Him "circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God" (I Cor. 7:19).

When Paul and his companion Barnabas returned to Antioch and gave an account of their travels, they met with opposition and censure from the element among Judeo-Christians which continued to regard the observance of Mosaic law as binding upon all members of the Church without exception. One can see from his epistles that Paul had constantly to defend his apostleship and doctrines against the slander of his enemies, who sought to tear from his grasp the churches he had founded.

In Church tradition the so-called apostolic council in Jerusalem has remained the model for all subsequent councils and the standard of catholicity for the Church. In addition to the apostles, the presbyters — the hierarchy of the local community — and through them the whole Church in Jerusalem took part. It was James, the head of that Church, who summed up the deliberations and proposed a solution. By it the non-Jewish Christians were now officially freed of the burden of the law. They were enjoined only from taking part in pagan ritual banquets (Acts 15:20). An epistle to that effect was prepared and sent to the Gentile Christians of Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. Although this decision was not unanimously or everywhere accepted, a decisive step had been taken: by freeing the converted Gentiles from Judaic law — thereby freeing them from being included in the Jewish nation — the Church demonstrated that she was now fully conscious of her world-wide vocation.

Paul continued his preaching ministry for many more years. Three of his great journeys are described in Acts, but these did not exhaust his apostolic activities. In each city he followed up his preaching by establishing the Church, consecrating bishops and presbyters, and building up a Christian community. Teacher, shepherd, father as well as preacher, he embodied perfectly the pastoral ideal, which he himself had formulated. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (I Cor. 9:22). When the dangers of Judaic legalism were paralleled by that of a pagan mystery cult religiosity, in which the moral content of the liberty in Christ conferred upon converts was forgotten, Paul’s infinite patience and tireless concern were constantly used in the service of the full doctrine of the Gospel.

In the final analysis everything the apostle said, all the answers he gave, can be summed up in one fundamental, tirelessly repeated affirmation and appeal: "In Christ." These two words give us a pattern for the Christian life. Faith and baptism have united us with Christ; Paul saw Christians as living in such unity with Him, love for Him, and eagerness to serve Him that the whole Church is nothing other than His Body, which He Himself has created through the Holy Spirit. Everything in the Church, therefore — organization, assemblies, variety of gifts, even administrative cares — exists only so that we may grow toward Christ and give back, both to Him and to all around us, that treasure of grace which we have received from Him. If the Church appears in the first chapters of Acts as the advent of the long-promised kingdom of God, Paul’s epistles now reveal this kingdom to be the life of Christ Himself, that life which has been bestowed as a gift upon men and which unites them in the Holy Spirit in an indissoluble union with God and with one another.

The great apostle’s life ended in martyrdom. In Jerusalem, to which he invariably hastened after every new journey, he was finally seized by the Jews. About to be flogged, he made mention of his Roman citizenship, which entitled him to trial before the emperor. The narrative of Acts records his arrival in Rome under arrest and his two years of preaching activity in the capital, then suddenly breaks off. It is not by chance that the books ends in this manner; its main theme is the journey of the Church from Jerusalem to Rome, from the center of Israel to the center of the empire.

What was left when the ministry of the apostles had been sealed by their blood? There were only insignificant groups of Christians scattered about the world. Nobody knew much about them and at first hardly anyone even noticed their existence. Nevertheless, the first victory had been won: the Good Tidings of Christ had been heard. Throughout the next period of Church history, the time of persecutions, the profound assurance of the apostle will resound: "As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things" (Cor. 6:9f.).

The Church and the Greco-Roman World.

Christ was born when Augustus reigned alone upon the earth, as the Christmas hymn proclaims. The Church has not forgotten that it began when the Roman Empire was at its peak. The Greco-Roman world, which was the Roman state held together by Hellenistic culture, was, after Judaism, the second motherland of Christianity. The myth that this world was unique and universal has been undermined as our historical horizons have broadened and our understanding of other ancient worlds and cultures has extended. Yet it is not merely a myth, and no Christian can be indifferent to the significance of this tradition. For the Christian mind, history cannot be a mechanical chain of cause and effect, nor can the foundation of the Church in precisely that world and at precisely that moment be simply a matter of chance. "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son" (Gal. 4:4). The world that was the "historical flesh" of the Church met Christianity with hostility and persecution, yet it ultimately proved capable of heeding the Christian teaching, and to some extent of responding to it. Nor can it be merely chance that the sacred words of the Gospels were written in Greek, or that the theology of the Church, the human answer to divine revelation, was clothed in Hellenic categories of thought. The Gospel cannot be thoroughly understood if separated from its Jewish, Old Testament sources; it is also inseparable from the world in which the Good News was first destined to be proclaimed.

Although the empire of Alexander the Great fell apart almost within a year of his death, Hellenism conquered with its culture, which gradually became a unifying pattern from Armenia to Spain, from the Sahara to the Danube and the Rhine. The Roman conquests in the second and first centuries B.C. only continued this Hellenization. It was in the world-wide monarchy of Rome that the Hellenistic era reached its apogee. After a century of wars and devastation, there the Pax Romana finally reigned. Roman law everywhere assured a good measure of justice, stability, and well-being. With good roads, economic prosperity, and a widespread exchange of writings and ideas, it is not surprising that the source and symbol of all these benefits, Roma Augusta herself, gradually became the object of a cult — the highest value of this newly-unified mass of humanity.

Yet beneath the external glitter and prosperity a deep spiritual crisis was developing. Men were no longer satisfied with the national gods of popular religion who had previously guarded the narrow horizon of their city, tribe, or clan. Many sought new spiritual nourishment in the Eastern mysteries that engulfed the empire. Temples to Isis, Cybele, and Dionysus were erected in the center of Rome, and secret ceremonies, promising immortality and regeneration, were performed. This was an era of premonitions and expectations. "A single Empire, a single world language, a single culture, a single common trend in the direction of monotheism, and single common longing for a Savior" — this is how Harnack has summarized the circumstances in which Christianity began to spread.

People of the Early Church.

The Jewish dispersion, which eventually resulted in the establishment of Jewish communities in almost every city of the empire, was, of course, the intended instrument for this expansion. Historians have calculated that there were no less than four million Jews living in the Diaspora, whereas the whole Roman population totaled fifty million. Despite the innumerable religious restrictions that continued to separate the Jews from the "unclean," their constant contact with Hellenistic culture inevitably had some effect on them. In contrast to the Palestinian rabbis, the Jews of the Diaspora felt a need to explain their faith to the outer world. The Septuagint had made the Bible accessible to the Greek-speaking world; later on, the Alexandrian Jew Philo tried to express the faith of his fathers in the categories of Greek thought.

The pagans, meanwhile, were showing a growing interest in the East and its religious core; a number of them became Jews, not by blood, but by the faith which gave central place to the expectation of the Messiah. The network of synagogues that covered the whole empire became the means by which the preaching of the Gospel penetrated the milieu closest to Judaism and accessible to its spiritual influence.

Naturally, we cannot explain early Christian preaching and conversion in terms of any single approach; Paul’s epistles make clear how differently he addressed different groups. Yet the center of all preaching was always the kerygma, the proclamation of a new event, the news of the Savior who brought salvation and peace. There was no mass preaching to a crowd nor attraction of popular curiosity by outward ceremonies. More than by words, Christianity was served by the actual renewal of life which appeared in the Christian community and was in the final analysis alone capable of proving the life-giving force of the Gospel.

There was a time when it was assumed that the first Christians came from the international "proletariat" which filled the large cities of the empire and which, because of poverty and social inequality, was assumed to be more receptive to the proclamation of love, hope, and new life. Paul’s words to the Corinthians seems to confirm such a supposition: ." . . not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble were called" (Cor. 1:26). But one has also to account for James’ reproaches of rich Christians, for Pliny’s report of the number of Christians "of various classes" and for references in other Pauline epistles to the city treasurer, a member of the Areopagus, and a number of the leading women in Thessalonica.

How many Christians were there at first? Tertullian’s claim, "If we alone are your enemies, then you have more enemies than citizens, because all your citizens have become Christians," is obviously rhetorical exaggeration. There was, however, a rapid geographical spread of Christianity, with large churches in Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, and perhaps in Spain and Gaul. The estimate of historians is that up to the time of Emperor Constantine’s conversion at the beginning of the fourth century they were still less than 10 per cent of the whole population of the empire. Thus the Church retained for a long time its character of a small flock, a minority persecuted by the world.

Further Church Development.

Since there are few records of the period from the apostolic beginning of the Church to the middle of the second century, a number of historians have been tempted to look for some sort of metamorphosis within it at this period, some break with the original "idea" of Christianity expressed in the Gospels. The organized Church with its hierarchy, doctrine, and discipline, as we see it again in the middle of the second century, they regard as the product of various crises and adaptations to social conditions; the molten, shapeless faith was Hellenized by being poured into contemporary molds of thought. Today, however, scholars are giving increasing attention to the voice of Church tradition, which so recently seemed to some of them a tendentious invention. The Gospel, it turns out, must not be separated from the Church; it is the witness to the faith of the Church, to its living experience, and cannot be understood apart from this experience. Fragments of prayers, the signs and symbols on the walls of the catacombs, a few epistles from some churches to others, have acquired new significance and are seen to represent part of a single development, not a series of crises and ruptures. What was not recorded may have lived secretly, retained in the uninterrupted memory of the Church, to be written down only centuries later. It has become increasingly clear that the Church has no need to be restored and justified on the basis of the fragments that have reached us. Rather, only in the light of the Church, in the recognition of its primacy, can the meaning of these fragments be discerned and properly interpreted.

In our limited knowledge of the churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire, the emphasis is on the Christian community gathered for baptism and the Eucharist. This double mystery — rebirth from water and the Spirit and the breaking of bread — was not simply a ceremonial service but the source, the content, the very heart of primitive Christianity.

Tertullian’s words, "Christians are not born but they become," explain why the scanty sources of the period speak most about baptism and the Eucharist. Christians became. This meant that each of them could never forget the day when, after the secret growth of the seed cast into his soul by preaching — after doubts, tests, and torments — he finally approached the water of baptism. When he emerged from the holy water, the newly-baptized Christian was brought into a brotherhood, a unity of love. Such is the everlasting significance of the Eucharist, communion always through Christ with one’s brothers. One bread, one cup, shared by all and uniting all in one, memory transformed into reality, expectation into the Presence. How the words of thanksgiving preserved from the early youth of the Church must have sounded when pronounced by the celebrant over the offered gifts!

We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have revealed through Jesus, your Child. To You be glory forever. As this piece of bread was scattered over the hills and there was brought together and made one, so let your Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into your Kingdom . . . Remember, Lord, Your Church, to save it from all evil and to make it perfect by Your love. Make it holy, and gather it together from the four winds into Your Kingdom, which You have made ready for it.

In the light of the Eucharistic meeting, every day and every deed performed were steps on the way to the final victory of the coming Lord; because of the Sacrament, Christians do not look on the Church as a simple human organization, with a leader and subordinates, authority and obedience, but as a living organism imbued with the Holy Spirit.3

At the head of the community stood the bishop. His authority was unique. Appointed by the apostles or their successors, the other bishops, he was the head and source of the Church’s life. His special gift consisted in transforming the gathering of Christians through the Sacrament into the Body of Christ and in uniting them in an indivisible union of new life. The power to dispense the sacraments was indissolubly linked with the power to teach; he taught at the meeting, not by his own initiative but according to the Spirit; he was the guardian of the apostolic tradition, the witness to the universal unity of the Church. "One must look on the bishop as on the Lord himself," writes St. Ignatius of Antioch in the beginning of the second century. Therefore "nobody must do anything that has to do with the Church without the bishop’s approval . . . Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."4

The bishop was helped in administering the Church by the presbyters, or elders. While St. Ignatius compared the bishops to Christ, he compared the presbyters to the apostles. Installed by the bishop through the laying on of hands, they helped him in every way and passed on his teachings and directions to the community. The primitive Church was a city community, a meeting of Christians in one place around a bishop, but when the number of Christians grew and a single meeting of this sort became impossible, the community split into a network of parishes dependent on it. Then the presbyters replaced the bishop and became his fully-empowered deputies, but through the sacrament of the episcopal laying on of hands all congregations retained their organic link with the bishop as the beneficent organ of Church unity.

After the bishop and the presbyters came the deacons, the "servers." They were the "ears, hands, and eyes" of the bishop, his living link with his people. In the early Church, unity in worship was inseparable from actual material aid, brotherhood, concern for the poor and for widows, for the burial of their brothers, and for orphans. The bread transformed into the Body of Christ was a part of that daily bread, the food that Christians brought to their meeting for the common table and to aid the poor. The deacons had the responsibility of distributing the gifts, helping the poor, organizing the agape ("love feast," as partaking of the Eucharist was called) — in sum, of carrying out the unity of Christians resulting from their participation in the Sacrament.

St. Ignatius’ statement that "without the bishop, presbyters and deacons there is no Church" does not mean that only the hierarchy was active in it. Every member had his function and each supplemented the other in indissoluble union. "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal" (I Cor. 12:4-7). The various organizational forms of the early Church must be understood in the light of an ideal which found expression in service to one’s brothers.

In St. Paul’s epistles the word "church" is already used to designate both each separate congregation and all Christians, the universal Church. This was so because each congregation, however small, felt itself to be, in the union of bishop, clergy, and people, the incarnation of the whole Church — the appearance and visitation here of the one Christ. Wherever the Christian went he found the same broken bread — "broken to bits but not divided" — heard the same blessing, and was included in the same union. All the churches had one source and one norm: apostolic tradition. Through its bishops each Church could attain the level of the Church as it had first appeared, the miracle of Pentecost and the first community in Jerusalem.

In this network of churches we may distinguish from the very start senior churches in each region which acted as centers of communication. These were the churches most immediately connected with the apostles, the most ancient and largest in membership. Because of the destruction of Jerusalem, the apostolic sees (or "seats") of Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, and Alexandria took on special significance. Rome, in particular, was sanctified by the blood of Peter and Paul and "presided in love," according to St. Ignatius of Antioch. Later Rome was to claim universal authority for its bishop, and the claim was to divide the Church. In the early years we hear nothing of these claims. No one disputed the authority and significance of the Roman Church; she was first and senior, but in union and equality with the others, as the center of the universal consent of all churches. A final formalization of the organization of the Church was still remote, yet behind the inconsistency of differing words and designations appeared the firm contour of the Catholic, or universal and united, Church.

Basis of Persecution by Rome.

The persecution of Christians has been variously treated by historians from early times. After the accounts of martyrdom had been embroidered by Christian piety into a shining legend, a later age of enlightenment to which Rome appeared as an ideal of justice and culture attempted to deny or minimize the fact of persecution. Whatever its destructive intention, this attitude has helped to separate genuine documents from the vast hagiographic literature, so that we are now in a better position to explain the persistent struggle against Christianity over three centuries by the Roman Empire, which was in fact basically neither bloodthirsty nor fanatic.

When Christianity appeared, the most varied religions were flourishing in the empire, and Juvenal’s satires mock the fascination of these many exotic cults for the Romans. At first the authorities took no notice at all of the Christians and did not perceive the radical distinction between them and the Jews. Judaism, though strange and unusual, was a legitimate religion, and the Church survived its first decades, as Tertullian has said, "under its roof." Even in this period, however, we encounter hostility and frequently even hatred for Christians on the part of the multitude. The lack of temples, the night meetings and secret ceremonies, all inevitably aroused suspicion, and naturally the most monstrous rumors developed about orgies, magic, and ritual murders at Christian meetings. Although this created an atmosphere favorable for persecution, the Roman state was in general law-abiding and did not permit arbitrary outrages. The true cause of the conflict must therefore be sought in the essential nature of the Roman state.

Like all states of antiquity, Rome had its gods, its national-political religion. This was neither a system of beliefs nor a system of morals (the Roman citizen could and very often did believe in foreign gods). It was a ritual, worked out to the last detail, of sacrifices and prayers, a cult of primarily political and state significance. Rome had no other symbol to express and maintain its unity and to symbolize its faith in itself. Although in this troubled period very few believed in the symbol, to reject it meant disloyalty, being a rebel. Rome demanded only outward participation in the state cult as an expression of loyalty; all that was required of a citizen was to burn a few sticks of incense before the images of the national gods, call the emperor "Lord," and celebrate the rites. Once he had fulfilled this, he was free to seek the eternal meaning of life wherever he wished.

For a man of the ancient world the validity of such a demand was self-evident. Religion (the word is of Roman origin and without synonym in Greek or Hebrew) was not a problem of personal choice but a family, tribal, and state matter. One’s personal faith or lack of it had nothing to do with religion, since religion itself had never been a problem of truth, but only an acknowledgment of the existing system, its legitimacy and justifiability.

The Christians refused to fulfill this self-evident, elementary civic duty. Their act was neither rebellion, condemnation of the state as such, nor even opposition to its particular defects or vices. Starting with St. Paul, Christians could boldly declare their loyalty to Rome, referring to their prayers for the emperor and the authorities. But they could not fulfill two requirements: they could not recognize the emperor as "Lord," and they could not bow down to idols, even outwardly, without faith in them. "Lord" in the language of that time meant absolute master and ruler, but for Christians the whole significance of their faith was that the one true Lord, Jesus Christ, had come and ruled in the world: ." . . God hath made that same Jesus . . . both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36). This meant that God had given Him all authority over the world, and that henceforth He was the only Master of human life. "One Lord!" We no longer feel the force and paradox of this early Christian exclamation that has come down to us, but it rang out then as a challenge to a world in which lordship had been claimed through the ages by every authority, every state, and every "collective."

The indifference of Christians to the external world, their effort to free themselves from it, has been regarded as a strange way of combating the pagan demands of the empire. In actual fact, by their refusal to fulfill a requirement that was not taken seriously even by those who had imposed it, the whole measure of Christian responsibility in the world was revealed for all ages. By rejecting the formal requirement of the state, they thereby included the state within the perspective of the kingdom of Christ and — however passively — summoned it to submit to the Lord of the world.

Modern observers, even some Christians, regard this conflict as a struggle for freedom of conscience, for the right of a man to make religion his private affair. For the early Church its significance was much more profound. Christianity was not so much a new religion as an upheaval in world history, the appearance of the Lord to do battle with one who had usurped His authority.

Blood of Martyrs.

The beginning of the persecutions was illumined by fire in the Eternal City. On the night of July 16 in the year 64 a great part of Rome burned down, and popular rumor accused the emperor himself of arson. In order to distract attention from himself, Nero shifted the blame onto the Christians, showing that the existence of Christianity was known to all. Although Nero’s persecution was confined to Rome and its cause was arbitrary, it raised the question about Christians for the first time on the plane of politics and the state, where it was also to be examined in the future. During the rest of the century the frequent rebellions and disorders left Rome no time for the Christians. But the persecutions were gathering head: Church tradition places the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome in this period, perhaps under Nero, and of John the Evangelist in the East under Domitian (81-96).

The beginning of the second century brought the golden age of Roman history under the best emperors that ever ruled her. Their morality was so attractive that the Christians were to create a legend about the posthumous salvation of the first of them, Trajan. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, still hold an honorable place in the classical heritage of antiquity. Yet precisely in these days, when all the moral values of the Greco-Roman world seemed to triumph, the tragic conflict with Christianity became fully clear.

Trajan’s answer to his friend Pliny the Younger, who, as governor of one of the remote provinces, had asked him about the Christians, has been preserved. How was he to deal with them? The emperor answered clearly and definitely: Christianity was itself a crime and must be punished. Although he forbade seeking out Christians and repudiated anonymous reports, "which are unworthy of our time," from that time anyone accused of being a Christian who did not exculpate himself by offering sacrifices to the gods was sentenced to death. True, the structure of the Roman judiciary enabled Christians to exist even under this condemnation. Rome had no state prosecutor; a private accuser had to bring a case against each Christian, while the state itself at first refused to take the initiative for persecutions. This explains both the relatively long lulls in the persecutions and their individual nature. Still, the situation of all Christians was terrible; they were outside the law, and a single denunciation was enough for the irrevocable process of accusation to result in death.

From this time, for two entire centuries, the line of martyrs was never really interrupted. Sometimes there were outbreaks of mass persecution; for example, in Smyrna in 155, and in Lyons in 167. Sometimes there were individual trials: the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch and Simeon of Jerusalem under Trajan, of Telesphorus of Rome under Hadrian, of Polycarp and other Smyrnean Christians under Antoninus Pius, of Justin the Philosopher under Marcus Aurelius, and so on. Whatever the situation, for two hundred years a Christian could not consider himself secure, and of course this awareness of his outcast state, and his condemnation by the world, is a central experience of the early Christian.

The descriptions of the persecutions that have come down to us reveal the whole significance the Church attributed to martyrdom, and explain why the Church seemed to recognize martyrdom as the norm of Christian life as well as the strongest proof of the truth of Christianity. It would be false to reduce the meaning of martyrdom to heroism merely; if the truth of an idea could be established by the number of its victims, every religion could present adequate proofs. The Christian martyr was not a hero, however, but a witness; by accepting suffering and death he affirmed that the rule of death had ended, that life had triumphed. He died not for Christ but with Him, and in Him he also received life. The Church exalted martyrdom because it was proof of the most important Christian affirmation, the resurrection of Christ from the dead. No one has expressed this better than St. Ignatius of Antioch; taken to Rome for execution, he wrote to his Roman friends requesting them not to attempt to save him: "Let me be fodder for wild beasts. . . . For though alive, it is with a passion for death that I am writing to you. . . . There is living water in me, which speaks and says inside me, ‘Come to the Father.’ I do not want to live any more on a human plane."5

In the cult of martyrs the Church laid the foundation for the glorification of saints; each of them is a witness, and their blood is a seed that promises new shoots. The Church does not consider its conflict with the Roman Empire a tragic misunderstanding, but the fulfillment of the promise of the Savior: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). For the Church, persecution was the best pledge of victory.

Struggle of Christianity to Keep its Own Meaning.

The conflict between Christianity and the world was not confined to persecution by the state. More dangerous for the Church than open persecution was its contact with the ideas and beliefs of surrounding Hellenism. Here it encountered a threat that the faith would be distorted from within, and the second century was marked by intense struggle as Christians strove to preserve the purity and integrity of their doctrine.

St. Paul had already called preaching about Christ "unto the Greeks foolishness" (I Cor. 1:23). It was extremely difficult for a man raised in an atmosphere of Hellenism to understand and really accept Christianity. Inevitably the philosophers of Athens, meeting on the Areopagus to listen to St. Paul, interrupted him when he spoke of the resurrection of the dead. His words about the incarnation of God, death on the Cross, and resurrection of the body could not be received without a revolution in their habits of thought. Greek philosophy taught that in the body we see a prison of the immortal soul, and in the world the Hellene saw only an eternal return, an eternal cycle from which he sought salvation in the motionless world of ideas. Does not the secret of the harmony of Greek art lie in its effort to find and express only the ideal form of the world concealed behind its passing, changeable surface? Not real life, surely, full as it often is of tragic contradictions. The sense of history, its irreversibility, the unrepeating nature of time, and within this time the uniqueness and unrepeated quality of each event and each person, were all profoundly alien to Hellenic psychology. The history of early Christianity, therefore, is a history not of rapprochement between Athens and Jerusalem, but rather of a struggle through which there took place a gradual "churching" of Hellenism which was to fertilize Christian thought forever after.

The Church had first to protect itself from all attempts to reconcile Christianity too easily with the spirit of the times and reinterpret it smoothly in Hellenistic patterns. If the Church had remained only in Jewish molds it would not have conquered the world; but if it had simply adapted these molds to those of Hellenistic thought, the world would have conquered Christianity. Gnosticism, the first enemy with which it came into conflict, was in fact inspired by the idea of reinterpretation and reconciliation.

Gnosticism is the name usually given to a mixture of Greek philosophy and Eastern mysticism, a strange religious and philosophical fusion, which emerged from close contacts between the Greco-Roman world and the East. The movement reached its peak just at the time when Christianity was beginning to spread. Typical outgrowths of a transitional, religiously excited age, Gnostic tendencies reflected genuine spiritual needs as well as a superficial attraction to the "wisdom of the East" and a morbid interest in mysterious symbols and ceremonies. As in theosophy, Gnosticism combined a "scientific" approach to religious problems with mystical fantasies and all sorts of secrets. Men were promised initiation into the ultimate mysteries of existence, but an emphasis on rites and consecrations tended to substitute religious sensuality for genuine religion.

As in our own time, men were groping for a syncretic religion, in which elements of truth from all doctrines, philosophies, and religions might, as it were, be one. It was this effort to combine and reinterpret all religions in its own way that rendered Gnosticism a danger to the Church. It was far from hostile to Christianity — on the contrary, tried to include it within its own fold. Christianity had also come from the East, the homeland of all secret wisdom; it was connected with Judaism, which had a distinctive vogue in the Hellenistic world and also had its mysteries, concealed from the eyes of the crowd. As the Church was taking its very first steps, we see beside it and sometimes even within it seeds of Christian Gnosticism, attempts to interpret the Gospels, avoiding what seemed unacceptable or incomprehensible in them — primarily, of course, the very reality of the Incarnation of God and the humanity of Christ. We sense uneasiness even in St. Paul: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Col. 2:8).

The danger increased when converted pagans began to outnumber Jews in the Church. Many were attracted to it by the same attitudes that explain the success of Gnosticism. By no means all of them could immediately appreciate the vital distinction between Christianity and the Eastern Hellenistic mystery religions; they saw in the Church what they wanted to see, the crowning of their own religious experience. "These pagans thought that they were under no obligation to abandon their former theories when they became Christian," writes Professor Bolotov. "On the contrary they thought it correct to interpret and understand Christianity with their aid, in a high and perfect sense." This Christian Gnosticism reached full bloom in the middle of the second century, in the teaching of Basilides, Valentinus, Saturninus, Marcion, and others. Their very number indicates the scale of the movement.

Attraction to Gnosticism cannot be ascribed only to corrupt imagination or interest in exotic mysteries. Its strength — as well as its falseness — was that, although Christ was acknowledged as the Logos, Savior, and Redeemer, the essence of Christianity as faith in the Incarnation of God and His coming into the world was corrupted. Christianity was transformed into a special mythological philosophy: instead of the drama of sin, forgiveness, and salvation, a personal encounter between God and man, Gnosticism offered a sort of cosmological scheme according to which the "spiritual elements" in the world were gradually freed from the captivity of matter and evil multiplicity gave way to abstract unity. It was a return in a new Eastern form to ancient Greek idealism.

Some historians have argued that out of the struggle with Gnosticism came a whole metamorphosis of the Church, transforming it into a structured, monolithic organization fortified by the authority of the hierarchy and official doctrine. Berdyaev even regards the condemnation of Gnosticism as a stifling of free thought. In the light of better knowledge of Gnostic documents, such conclusions are hardly still tenable. Nevertheless, the movement did oblige the Church to define more precisely the inner, organic laws of this life and to express in outward forms and formulas what had composed the essence of Christianity from the very beginning. In Gnosticism the Church saw the substitution of an alien and distorted image of Christ for the one by which it lived. The Gnostics referred to secret legends and created a whole apocryphal literature about Christ. Fragments of such Gnostic "gospels" have come down to us, written in the names of Peter, James, Paul, and John. "The image of Christ acquires . . . a character that is not only strange and superhuman but spectral as well. He is present invisibly, sometimes in the flesh, sometimes bodilessly, appearing variously as a child, an adult, or an old man . . . they responded to the curiosity which sought secret knowledge instead of the traditional teachings of the Church, theology and history."6 The Church faced the necessity of defining on precisely what basis the Gnostic Christ was false and what would enable it to distinguish true tradition about Him from falsehood.

The New Testament.

We have seen that acceptance of Christianity had always been regarded as acceptance of the evidence about Christ given by the apostles, the witnesses to His teaching. The apostles interpreted their mission as service or preaching of the Word. Moreover, the Church itself is nothing but the acceptance of this Word, so that the growth of the Church is defined as the growth of the Word. "But the word of God grew and multiplied" (Acts 12:24). "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed" (Acts 19: 20). For the Church, the Word of God meant not only the expression of absolute truth in human language, but primarily the appearance of God Himself and the revelation of His divine life and strength. In the Old Testament God created the world by His Word, maintained life in it by His Word, and began its salvation by His Word. God not only spoke His Word, He acted through it. The prologue to the Gospel of John has been interpreted as an attempt to introduce concrete Judeo-Christian teaching to the abstract philosophical mind. Yet it is wholly rooted in the biblical perception of the Word as divine life, divine action. "And the Word became flesh." This meant not only that in Christ God revealed to man a new doctrine and imparted a new and absolute truth, but that divine life itself had come into the world and had become the life of man. The preaching of the Word of God by the apostles, therefore, was something more than the evidence of eyewitnesses about Christ’s life. It not only told about Christ, but transmitted Christ Himself; it led men into His life and united them with it. In this understanding of the Word of God there is an organic link between the preaching of the apostles and baptism.

This total dependence of the Church on the Word of God does not mean that it depended solely on its written account in the New Testament text. The image and teachings of Christ as proclaimed by the apostles were not a truth mastered once and for all; "the word of God is quick [i.e., living] and powerful . . ." (Heb. 4:12), and is constantly proclaimed in the preaching of the bishop. Christians commune with it in the sacraments and are inspired by it in prayer; it is the source of the unanimity that links them. In all the sources we find reference to the words and teachings of Christ, which were obviously known to all from the very start.

When records of the apostolic preaching began to appear, since this was evidence of the Word of God, it acquired the same significance as the tradition about Christ in other forms, such as preaching, liturgical prayer, and preparation of new converts for baptism. Since they already possessed the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, Christians naturally added these writings to them as their completion, interpretation, and fulfillment.

It is impossible for us to present here even briefly the history of these writings, which has aroused such endless disputes among scholars. One point is obvious: whatever the "sources" of our four Gospels and the relations between them; whatever ingenious hypotheses scholars may have created in their efforts to reconstruct their genesis; they were received by the Church — that is, were recognized — because their content coincided with the image of Christ and the content of His teachings that the Church already knew. The Church did not "sanction" the New Testament writings; it recognized them as the Word of God, the source of its existence from the start.

By the end of the first century, when the apostolic period was drawing to a close, the Church already possessed the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Although they were not perhaps as yet collected into one volume, each had been accepted by the group of churches for which it was written. Very shortly afterward they were combined in one quadripartite Gospel, and in the middle of the second century the Christian apologist Tatian composed the first harmony, or code, of the Gospels. The differences between the four accounts, and even obvious divergences in secondary matters such as chronology and the sequence of events, did not bother early Christians, who were not looking for precise accuracy of detail but for the truth about Christ.

The appearance of the New Testament in the Church as a book, as Scripture, was therefore not a new factor, but a record of the founding tradition. Just because it was identical with the original tradition as the Church already knew it, there appeared at first no need of a canon, or precisely fixed list of accepted records or Scriptures. This situation enabled Gnostic teachers to ascribe their own doctrines to the apostles and to present them in the form of "gospels" and "epistles." Hence, the problem of criteria became crucial for the Church in the middle of the second century. Each new doctrine claimed to be a true interpretation of the Gospel — what would enable the "Catholic" Church to judge among them?

These questions were answered by the first generation of Christian theologians, among whom we must especially distinguish St. Irenaeus of Lyons, chief fighter against Gnosticism. First of the great Fathers of the Church, he had known in his childhood Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna and other presbyters who had seen the apostles, and he may have studied in the first Christian school known to us, that of Justin the Philosopher at Rome.

Irenaeus’ arguments against the Gnostics may be expressed by the term "apostolic succession," but for him this meant more than the uninterrupted episcopal laying on of hands from the time of the apostles; it meant primarily the unity of the Church and its life in time and space:

Having received this preaching and this faith, . . . the Church, although scattered in the whole world, carefully preserves it, as if living in one house. She believes these things [everywhere] alike, as if she had but one heart and one soul, and preaches them harmoniously, teaches them, and hands them down, as if she had but one mouth. For the languages of the world are different, but the meaning of the Tradition is one and the same . . . Neither will one of those who preside in the churches who is very powerful in speech say anything different from these things, for no one is above [his] teacher, nor will one who is weak in speech diminish the tradition. For since the faith is one and the same, he who can say much about it does not add to it, nor does he who can say little diminish it.7

For Irenaeus the gospels of the Gnostics are false because they are alien to the witness of the apostles: "Only that Gospel is true which was handed down from the apostles and is preserved from their time by orthodox bishops without additions or omissions." We see here the beginning of a New Testament canon and the principle used to define it: only the four Gospels are genuine, because they contain the true witness of the apostles; but we know of their genuineness because they have been preserved and passed on by the orthodox bishops. In other words, only the Church can distinguish true Scripture from false, because the Holy Spirit always abides in it.

Thus, ultimately, Irenaeus opposed Gnosticism — the seduction of schism and partial interpretation of Christianity — not by another interpretation but by the very fact of the Church as a visible, palpable unity which alone preserves and transmits to its members the whole truth and fullness of the Gospel. The canon of the Scriptures, the succession of bishops, the interpretation of prophecies, are all only outward forms of this fundamental unity, aside from which they mean nothing. The most significant answer the Church gave to the temptations of the second century was its clear doctrine about itself, its "catholic self-consciousness." Although this self-consciousness had become more precise as a result of conflict, the Church was victorious not by creating something new, nor by metamorphosis, but by realizing and strengthening what it had been from the very beginning.

Sin and Repentance in the Church.

By the late second century primitive Christianity may be considered at an end. Although the Christians in the Roman Empire still composed a persecuted minority, this minority had already clearly recognized its universal calling. Educated Christians addressed the emperor and public opinion, pointing out the falseness of the accusations against them and presenting their faith as the true answer to questions of the human mind. After his conversion St. Justin continued his work as a philosopher; in his Apologies and other works, he was the first to attempt to explain the truth of Christianity to the Hellenistic intellectuals. Others followed him. The very appearance of these works indicates that an abrupt change was taking place. At first the world as represented by the empire persecuted Christianity and tried to abolish it, but did not argue against it — was indeed quite indifferent to its substance. The Church reacted to this indifference by martyrdom; soon it could be neither abolished nor simply denied, but had to be disputed. Celsus’ True Discourse, written very early in the third century, was the first scholarly repudiation of Christianity. The writer had studied Christian books and was armed against the new faith by the whole cultural array of Hellenism, but in his arguments we already sense the fear that an alien "barbarism" is undermining the Greco-Roman world.

The Church was now a monolithic and universal organization with a precise "rule of faith," authority, and discipline. At the beginning of the third century it has been estimated that there were up to a hundred presbyters in the area of Rome alone. The Church had its own cemeteries and almshouses, conducting an extensive charitable activity. In Africa almost three hundred bishops gathered for Church synods, and all Asia Minor was covered with Christian communities.

Nevertheless, this period of consolidation was also marked by a decline in the spiritual level of the Christian community, a dimming of the flame rightly associated with the Church’s first decades. Of course, there had been grievous failings from the beginning; the change lay in the altered attitude of Christians toward these sins. In the period of primitive Christianity the Church was a community of "saints," that is, baptized, dedicated, and thus newly-purified members of the Body of Christ, and every sin was felt to be a terrible abnormality. St. Paul constantly reminded the new Christian that since he was already consecrated and had received a new life, he should live in accordance with this gift. Although sanctity does not mean sinlessness, since God alone is sinless, it does mean awareness of belonging totally to Christ, body and soul; it means inclusion in His life.

By the middle of the second century we begin to hear, along with hymns to the unity and sanctity of the Church, admissions of sins by Christians. Hermas’ Shepherd, a second-century Roman document written by a layman, resolutely raises the question of sin in the Church. How is it possible? If baptism gives birth to new life and frees man from the power of sin, what is the meaning of its existence among Christians? It was hard to understand how there could be any repentance "except that which we have made when we entered the water and received in it forgiveness of our former sins . . . For he who has received forgiveness or sins ought not to sin any more, but remain in innocence."

The early Church cut off all who fell away from grace and rejected the new life. "For it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened . . . if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame" (Heb. 6:4-6). Unfortunately, however, sin continues to enter men’s lives, and they have no recourse but to repent once more. The Church is called upon to save, not to judge, until the Last Judgment. Therefore a "second repentance" was made possible to the excommunicant, permitting him to return to the Church and restoring the forfeited power of his baptism. As gradually developed, this new chance for sinners was guarded by the requirement of confession to the bishop or his representative, sometimes public confession; prolonged evidence of repentance, including various sorts of penance; and reinstatement only by stages in the freedom of Christians to worship together and partake of the sacraments. In very serious cases, restoration of the saving power of baptism was sometimes withheld until the deathbed of the sinner.

Christians did not take the matter lightly. Hermas continues, "If anyone sin, submitting to the temptations of the devil, only repentance lies in store for him, but if he keeps falling in order to keep on repenting, let him not expect good fruits. His salvation is in jeopardy." A little later Tertullian, the African teacher of the late second and early third centuries, warned that "God allows us to knock at the door of this second repentance once, only once." One must "day and night call on God and our Savior, fall at the feet of the priests, kneel before our brothers, begging the prayers of all."

Some historians have regarded this second repentance as a revolution in the mind of the Church, a transformation from a society of the "saved" into a society of "those being saved." This judgment is superficial, however. As awareness of sanctity in the Church presupposes constant repentance and a sense of one’s own unworthiness, so now the evidence of decline did not mean that the ideal of a society of saints had been abandoned. Life and history reveal the full force of evil in man, even the "new" man who has been reborn in water and the Spirit. From the beginning the Church had known itself to be a society of saved sinners, and in this apparently contradictory combination of words we may find the explanation for its inconsistency in regard to repentance. Christians were sinners to whom salvation was given. This salvation is not magic; it is given for free acceptance, for struggle, for growth. While in the joy of the first decades the Christians felt more forcibly the wondrous newness of the gift, as time passed they could not help but become aware of the dimensions of the struggle to which it committed them. There is no room in the Church for sin; yet it exists for sinners. Therefore the development of a "discipline of repentance" — an obvious lowering of standards — does not mean a change in the Church’s original ideal, but a fulfillment of its eternal task, the salvation and renewal of man.

Many could not accept this realism of the Church, the increasingly obvious way in which it was growing into the very stuff of human history; to them it seemed a betrayal. This attitude at the time led to Montanism, a new heresy that came from Phrygia, long a region of religious fanaticism. About the year 150 Montanus, a newly-converted Christian, with two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, started to proclaim the coming of the Holy Spirit as promised by Christ in the Gospels. They taught that the second Testament, that of the Son, was not yet final. Only in the last divine revelation, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, would salvation occur. This "new prophecy" had been sent by God through Montanus and his two prophetesses. Montanus demanded of his followers absolute moral rigor, celibacy, and voluntary martyrdom, for the end of the world was at hand. Essentially it was an outburst of gloomy eschatology, the last and most extreme expression of the imminent expectation of the end of the world that characterized the first generations of Christians.

But Montanism was in fact a protest against the existing historical Church, and was condemned by the bishops of Asia Minor. It was nevertheless received almost ecstatically in Rome, Gaul, and Africa, and much time was needed before its sectarian nature could be exposed; even Irenaeus of Lyons defended it from condemnation for a long time. The most celebrated conversion to the religion of the new prophecy was that of Tertullian. A fiery African, he has always seemed nearly the quintessence of primitive Christianity; almost no one is so much quoted when there is need to refer to the spirit of the early Church. One of the first Western theologians, teachers, and apologists, he had a great influence on the whole life of the Church. But, like many others, he could not accept its growth and the changes that resulted from it; he was scandalized by the consolidation of Christianity. In his treatise De Pudicitia he repudiated what he had written on repentance; he could no longer accept the idea, or the possibility of the forgiveness of capital sins. The Church could forgive sins, but it should not do so. Since the Church in which sin still abides is not the true Church, he devoted the last part of his life to struggle against it.

The example of Tertullian best shows us the character of Montanism, with its longing for the original purity and intensity of expectation of the first Christians. There is no denying that the level of Christian life began to decline at this time, yet the Church’s victory over Montanism was crucial. It was facing the momentous question of whether it should remain a small band of perfectionists or whether, without altering its final ideal, it was right to accept the masses and start their slow re-education. Should the Church remain outside the world and outside history, or should it accept history as a field for heavy and prolonged labor? It was difficult to fight against Montanism, which was fired with so much sanctity, faith, and self-sacrifice; by condemning it, however, the Church condemned forever all attempts to dethrone the historical, visible Church and to incorporate it into a third Testament.

Beginnings of Theology.

The mind of the Church was forged and the Church strengthened by persecution and temptations. The best intimation of coming victory was the first flourishing of Christian thought and the beginning of Christian culture that distinguished the third century. We have barely noted Tertullian in passing. Special mention must be made of the Christian school of Alexandria and its famous teacher, Origen.

Until the third century Christian literature had either been apologetic in character, opposing heresies and paganism, or had consisted of a simple statement of the basic principles of Church dogma. The significance of the Alexandrian school was that it was the first to attempt to reason out these dogmas as an integrated system and to reveal the truths contained in them as sources of thought and knowledge.

We know little of the origins of the Alexandrian school; in all probability it grew out of the teaching of new converts. The city was the intellectual capital of the Hellenistic world, and every sort of preaching there acquired academic overtones. It was natural, therefore, that the foundations for a scientific theology should be laid there, and theology recognized as the highest calling for a Christian.

For the first of the famous Alexandrian theologians, Clement, Christianity was already a higher knowledge — gnosis in the full and absolute meaning of the word. "If the Gnostic were offered a choice between the salvation of the soul and knowledge of God, supposing that these two things were distinct (although they are identical), he would choose knowledge of God." Gnosis is the vision of God face to face, the mystical illumination of His truth; the Christian prefers this knowledge of God to all else and sees the purpose of his whole life in it. But a joyous acceptance of the world, a "justification" of it, is also characteristic of Clement. This was a new transforming experience, for the sake of which Christianity was already firmly rooted in the world and triumphing there. How Is the Rich Man Saved? — the title of one of Clement’s works — is typical of his general outlook. He did not reject the world, but on the contrary tried to make everything Christian. We find considerations concerning laughter and even domestic arrangements in his writings. Everything is permissible if it is taken in moderation, but particularly if it is subordinated to the knowledge of God and the truth in Him. This was the optimism of the first union, not yet profound and often dubious, between Christianity and Hellenism.

In Origen, the successor of Clement, we see both the features of the heroic period of primitive Christianity and a new spirit, which was becoming more and more evident in the Church. A Christian by birth, son of a martyred father, he was inspired by the ideal of martyrdom and his Exhortation to Martyrdom, written during the persecutions of Maximinus (235-38), is still one of the best documents of early Christianity. For Origen martyrdom meant more than confession of Christ in the presence of one’s persecutors. It was the whole life of a Christian, which in this world can only be the "narrow way" if he is to strive for evangelical perfection. Origen was one of the founders of the theory of asceticism and his influence was immense when, in the next century, monasticism arose within the Church. His desire to follow the teachings of the Gospel to the letter led him, as is known, even to emasculation. He has often been regarded as a pure intellectual, remote from the life of the Church, immersed only in books; but in fact he was first of all a Churchman, deeply rooted in the life and prayer of the Church, and his intellectual contribution can be understood only if we remember that for him everything was subordinated to "the one thing necessary."

When he was very young he assumed the office of instructor, whose duty was to explain the Scriptures to new converts. While devoting himself completely to this work, he soon came to the conclusion that a simple reading of Scripture was not enough. Sitting in his lecture hall were philosophers, scholars, men of great learning. The Word of God must be explained to them as the highest revelation and all its depths uncovered.

The school of Origen soon outgrew its original task; it was open to all who were interested and became a forum for genuine encounter between Christian and pagan wisdom. It was not a matter of Christian wisdom simply overthrowing the pagan, however; here was the first acceptance of Hellenistic values by Christianity in order to convert them to the service of Christ. "I would wish you to use all the strength of your mind for the advantage of Christianity, which should be your highest goal," wrote Origen to his disciple Gregory Thaumaturgus. "To achieve this I desire you to take from Greek philosophy those spheres of knowledge, which are potentially an introduction to Christianity, and whatever information from geometry and astronomy may serve to explain the sacred books; that what philosophers say of geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, astronomy — namely, that they are handmaidens of philosophy — may be said as well of philosophy itself in relation to Christianity."8 This represented a revolution in relation to profane culture but in contrast to Gnosticism, Christianity was not subordinated to Hellenism, but Hellenism rather proclaimed as a preparation of the minds of men for the higher revelation and understanding of the Scriptures.

The final meaning of all scholarship, as well as of Christianity itself, was the understanding of the Word of God. Everything was subordinate to this, and there was no limit to the extent to which one could become immersed in its meaning. Yet this understanding required not only a special grace, illumination of the mind by prayer and of the body by ascetic practice, but also scholarly preparation. Origen himself studied Hebrew and in his Hexapla copied the whole Old Testament Scriptures six times, in parallel columns, placing beside the Hebrew original and its transcription in Greek lettering all extant Greek translations of it. He adopted the methods of the famous Alexandrian literary school, which had undertaken the study of ancient Greek literature; and through him these methods became a fundamental part of Christian study of the Bible.

This work was only preparatory, however. There remained the interpretation of the Scriptures, and here Origen struck out on new paths. The basic principle of his interpretation was the Church tradition about the spiritual meaning of the Word of God, which lay behind the literal meaning. The Old Testament prefigured the New, while in the New Testament are revealed the eternal patterns of Church and Christian life. The Jews did not perceive these types in their own Scriptures and rejected Christ, whereas the Gnostics, unable to understand the Old Testament, rejected it on the grounds of being a revelation of a malicious and vengeful God. According to Origen, all these Old Testament types became reality in the appearance of Christ, and therefore He alone is the key to the Scriptures, just as the Scriptures are for us the only source of revelation about Him. The Old Testament reveals the New, and the New reveals the coming kingdom of God, when "God will be all in all" and all these types will be manifested in an eternal reality.

Origen’s contribution to the study and interpretation of Scripture is very great. Although preaching and theology had always been based on the Scriptures, he was the first to formulate a systematically Christocentric conception of the Old Testament, and in his innumerable interpretations he was centuries ahead in the development of an ecclesiastical exegesis. We cannot overlook the danger of his approach to the Bible, however. In his extreme allegorism each word acquired an incalculable number of meanings, some of them extremely fantastic. Allegory was fashionable among pagan scholars of literature in Alexandria, and Origen had been influenced by it. Modern scholars are attempting to differentiate between his typology — that is, the search for true types and spiritual meanings — and his allegory, in which he applied arbitrary meanings to certain events and words. In all likelihood Origen himself was aware of the distinction. It is difficult, though, to draw a real line between these two approaches, and allegorism was for a long time a dangerous propensity in Christian theology, often substituting rhetorical contrivance for the vitality and common sense of the Word of God.

Still more dangerous for the future was Origen’s attempt to construct a Christian theological system. This was contained in his work Peri Archon ("On First Principles"), which has reached us only in a later, somewhat modified Latin translation, De Principiis. Although he maintained that the only standard for any theology must be the rule of faith — meaning the tradition of the Church — he did not in fact discover a way to combine revelation and Hellenistic philosophy so that the basic idealism of the Greek outlook might be overcome. On the contrary, his system was an abrupt Hellenization of Christianity itself; he rejected the clear doctrine of the creation of the world from nothingness, which is the key to any truly Christian cosmology, and all the unique features of the biblical conception of the world as history — as reality — and not an illusory tragedy of free choice. According to Origen, the world evolves from God and returns to Him, by some incontrovertible law, which makes possible the reality of evil, of freedom, and of salvation. But since all is eternal in God, this cycle of creation of the world is eternally repeated, ending unalterably with general restoration and salvation.

Origen ended his long and righteous life as a "confessor" — one who bore witness to Christ under torture — dying from injuries suffered during the persecutions of Decius (250). His longing for martyrdom, which had never slackened since his childhood, was satisfied. While his figure is unusually attractive and his example inspiring, his theology was to play in the end a fateful role in the history of Church thought, and only with great difficulty was the Church to overcome its temptations and dangers.

Origen started the gradual process of Christianizing Hellenism and the struggle to overcome it within the Church; this struggle was to be the basic theme of the later Byzantine centuries of Church history. Perhaps without his "creative failure" the eventual triumph of Christian Hellenism would have been impossible.

The Last Great Persecutions.

The third century was the time of the Church’s last, most terrible fight with the empire, but the dawn of coming victory was already approaching. One of the primary reasons for the decline in Christian intensity had undoubtedly been the lull in the persecutions. From the death of Marcus Aurelius (185) until the middle of the third century, the Church lived in relative security. Officially, the prohibition against Christianity had not been lifted, and the long line of martyrs was not actually interrupted, but the over-all situation was greatly improved. People had become used to the Christians, they knew about them. An increasing interest in the East during the Eastern dynasty of the Severi even made Christians — though not Christianity — somewhat popular. Septimus Severus’ niece, Julia Mamaea, invited the celebrated Origen to her palace so that she could debate with him in the circle for religion and philosophy which she had founded; later Emperor Alexander Severus placed a statue of Christ in his private chapel; and finally, St. Jerome called Emperor Philip the Arabian the first Christian emperor, which suggests that he had been secretly baptized.

For these reasons the persecution that suddenly burst upon the Church in the year 249 seemed a terrible and unexpected trial and exposed in full clarity how far many, many Christians had departed from the original intensity of faith and way of life.

Emperor Decius (249-51) assumed power at a critical moment. Rome was threatened with ruin by the restored Persian empire and by profound internal disruptions and disorder. Decius believed that salvation lay only in the restoration of the ancient Roman spirit and a return to the neglected and scorned traditions. He gave first priority to the restoration of state worship, and this inevitably led to conflict with Christianity. Except for Nero, Decius was the first representative of Roman power to take the initiative in these persecutions as opposed to the system of private accusation followed by test. In a special edict he ordered all his subjects to prove their loyalty to the national gods by making the sacrifice.

The Church again responded with the blood of martyrs, including not only Origen, as we have seen, but Bishop Flavian of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem. But what startled the Church was the mass apostasy. "Fear struck them," wrote Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, "and many of the more influential Christians gave in immediately, some giving way to fear, others, as civil servants, to the requirements of their positions, still others drawn along with the crowd. Some were pale and trembling, as if it were not they who were making sacrifices to the idols but they themselves who were being brought to sacrifice; and therefore the crowd mocked them."9 The same picture appears in the letters of Cyprian of Carthage: "There were some who did not even wait to be summoned to climb onto the Capitol, or to be questioned to renounce their faith. They ran to the Forum themselves, they hastened to their [spiritual] deaths, as if they had wished it for a long time. And — O ultimate crime! — parents brought their children with them, so that they might lose in their childhood what they had received on the threshold of their lives."¹⁰

The persecution passed liked a whirlwind and quickly abated, but it left the Church in ruins. The question arose as to how to deal with those who had lapsed, who now rushed back for forgiveness and reconciliation. While the Church had recognized a "second repentance" at the beginning of the century, now the question was posed anew and more acutely. In the earlier time, lapsed Christians had been the exception, so that a second repentance was also an exception, but now it was a mass occurrence. When we remember what the witness of martyrs meant to the Church — that it was the witness of the Church to itself, the proof of Christ’s strength which lived in it — then it becomes clear why the problem of the lapsed caused a lengthy dissension, the last in the series of "temptations of the Church" that marked the late second and early third centuries.

Against this background of dissension the figure of the great African bishop, St. Cyprian of Carthage, stands out clearly. Like Tertullian, he represented the "pure" Christianity that characterized the brief but magnificent history of the African Church. A pagan teacher of rhetoric and professor of literature, Cyprian repudiated everything on his conversion to Christianity. "The spirit descended from Heaven has made me a new man through a second birth. And immediately, in a miraculous way, certainty wiped out doubt." Very soon after his conversion he became bishop of Carthage, the oldest of the African churches. Almost immediately afterward the persecution started. Cyprian hid, not from fear but in order to continue to direct the Church; in his absence the question arose about the lapsed Christians. The latter, knowing the sternness both of Cyprian and of normal Church practice, bypassed the bishop and turned directly to the "confessors" — those who had confessed their faith in Christ and paid for their faithfulness by imprisonment or torture. The Roman state had learned by experience and preferred not to create martyrs; it therefore left the steadfast Christians to rot in jail and subjected them to torture. The confessors were the glory of the Church; their authority was indisputable, and they recommended to the bishop that he accept the lapsed Christians back into Church communion.

This created a difficult situation: there were two authorities in the Church. Cyprian would have liked to defer the question until his return, when there could be a general synod of bishops, but the confessors regarded this as disrespect to their suffering. A paradoxical conflict developed, with the confessors and the lapsed Christians allied against the legitimate bishop and the hierarchy. Alarm spread as well to the Roman Church, crimson with the blood of its own bishop; there the presbyter Novatian opposed Cyprian as a man who had fled and should therefore himself be considered lapsed. In Carthage a whole party was formed against Cyprian, who was obliged to resort to strictness and expel its leaders from the Church. Finally, in the spring of 251 Cyprian returned to Carthage and summoned a synod, which decided the problem by relaxing the discipline of repentance. It divided the lapsed into two categories, depending on the degree of apostasy, and established two forms by which they might again be accepted into the Church. Some could be received only on their deathbeds, while others could rejoin after more or less prolonged periods of repentance.

A rather strange reversal occurred at this point. Those who had demanded that Cyprian accept the lapsed immediately now cried that he was defiling the purity of the Church. They were supported by Novatian in Rome, who had been consecrated bishop under obscure circumstances. With terrible swiftness this new schism of Novatianism spread through all the churches, creating everywhere sects of the pure (cathari). The name alone indicates the attitude of the schismatics and their enthusiasm for a pure (in contrast to the "fallen") Church. Again, as under Montanism, the Church responded by gathering its forces around its bishops and the undestroyed continuity of catholic life. Africa united around Cyprian, the West around the newly-elected legitimate Pope Cornelius. From Egypt Dionysius of Alexandria, another luminous example of an ecumenical teacher, wrote letters to everyone, begging all to maintain unity. Novatianism, like Montanism, degenerated into a sect, remnants of which still existed as late as the seventh century.

In Montanism and Novatianism we may see what is meant by the evolution of the Church in these transitional decades. Formally, Novatian