Christianity in the Ancient World

Related civilizations: Israel, Roman Greece, Imperial Rome.

Date: beginning in first century c.e.

Locale: Europe, northern Africa, Middle East

Christianity in the Ancient World

Christianity is a religious faith that centers on the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. From the beginning, a great diversity of beliefs existed among various Christian groups, but all groups generally taught that Jesus was divine and that belief in his sacrificial death and resurrection provided a means for the salvation of Christian believers. Most of the earliest Christians appeared disinterested in acquiring political power, and they were organized into local congregations relatively independent of each other. As Christianity grew and expanded, however, the dominant Church was gradually organized into hierarchical structures, and during the fourth century, it began to look to the state to promote its interests and suppress its rivals.

Jesus of Nazareth

The name “Jesus” is the Greek form of a Hebrew name meaning “Jehovah saves,” and the Greek word “Christ” means “the anointed one” or “messiah.” Most of the information about Jesus’ life comes from the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament, although other accounts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, have demonstrated the existence of a variety of early traditions. Jesus was probably born just before the death of King Herod about 4 b.c.e., and following a brief public ministry, he was apparently executed during a Passover celebration, circa 30 c.e. His teachings were essentially Jewish, having much in common with the Pharisee sect. The documents called the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered between 1947 and 1956, demonstrate that other Jewish movements had ideas that were often similar to those of Jesus and the early Christians.

The complex teachings of Jesus had several aspects. In personal ethics, he taught the value of benevolence toward those in need. Usually endorsing pacifism and nonviolence, he emphasized that a future kingdom would be instituted by divine intervention. Like the Pharisees with whom he debated, he often spoke about rewards in a life following death. Although Jesus was an observant Jew who acknowledged the authoritative nature of Jewish laws (the Torah), he advocated flexibility toward external observances, such as dietary rules and inactivity during the Sabbath. According to the Gospel accounts, he appeared to believe that he and his message were of divine origin, but the Gospels are vague about later controversial issues such as the Trinity and church organization.

Jesus offended and angered orthodox Jews when he insisted that he had the authority to speak in his own name, rejecting many standard doctrines of the religious establishment of the day. The Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, ordered Jesus to be executed because of fears that his controversial teachings might result in violent conflict among Jews and also because of concern that some Jews believed that Jesus was a promised messiah who would drive the Romans out of Palestine.

The primitive Church

Following the crucifixion, several disciples taught that Jesus had been resurrected and ascended into heaven. At first, most disciples continued to worship in Jewish synagogues on the Sabbath, but gradually they began to constitute a separate religious movement, sometimes meeting on Sundays to commemorate the day of resurrection. Christian teachers reinterpreted and transformed a number of core Jewish beliefs. For instance, rather than practicing animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, some Christians argued that the sacrificial death of the Son of God provided a possibility of salvation for all humans.

Paul, a Hellenized Jew from Asia Minor, is sometimes called “the second founder of Christianity.” Following a vision near Damascus, Paul was converted to the new religious movement, and he became convinced that faith in the Christian message provided salvation for both Jews and non-Jews (or Gentiles). He taught, moreover, that Christians did not have to obey all the commands of the Torah and that the ceremony of baptism had replaced the practice of male circumcision. A man of great energy and conviction, Paul converted and baptized a number of Gentiles. About 50 c.e., he traveled to Jerusalem to discuss his ideas with Peter, James, and other leaders of the Jewish Christians. A compromise was worked out so that Gentiles were not required to be circumcised, but they were expected to keep some of the dietary and sexual rules of the Torah. Before he was beheaded circa 64 c.e., Paul made three long missionary trips, and he explained his doctrines in many epistles, including at least eight that became part of the Christian New Testament.

During the first century, various Christian groups differed greatly in their teachings and rituals. There existed no official list, or canon, of New Testament writings, so that doctrinal beliefs had to be acquired from oral messages and traditions. No centralized organizational structures, moreover, existed to make authoritative decisions concerning orthodox doctrines. Christian teachers often disagreed with each other about the nature of Jesus’ divinity, and some Gentile groups entirely rejected the validity of the Hebrew scriptures. Diverse kinds of syncretism with pagan religions emerged. By the second century, a heresy called Gnosticism, teaching salvation through occult knowledge, was widespread, as demonstrated by the Gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945.

Orthodoxy and organization

As Christianity expanded, there was a movement to codify recognized doctrines, with a concomitant tendency toward hierarchy and central organization. The adjective “Catholic,” meaning general or universal, was widely used to refer to the institutional church of the majority. Major beliefs were summarized in creeds (or professions of faith). In Adversus haereses (c. 185; Against Heresies, 1872), Bishop Irenaeus argued that the Catholic Church contained the depositary of divine truths, with bishops having the authority to ascertain truthful doctrines because of ordination ceremonies that could be traced back to the original apostles. The ideas of Irenaeus were soon codified into the doctrine of apostolic succession. Likewise, a standard canon of New Testament writings gradually emerged and was officially endorsed by synods of bishops during the fourth century.

In 313 c.e., an imperial edict of toleration legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. Constantine the Great, following his conversion, supported the Christian Church and proscribed many pagan practices. At the time, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria and other orthodox theologians were engaged in a doctrinal conflict with the followers of Arius, who taught that Jesus was not entirely equal with God and had not always existed. To end the dispute, Constantine sponsored an assembly of bishops to meet at Nicaea in 325 c.e., which is considered the first ecumenical council. In addition to producing the Nicene Creed, the council condemned Arianism as a heresy. Those who persisted in the heresy were exiled. About 394 c.e., Theodosius the Great made orthodox Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, which often meant the persecution of pagans and Arians.

The development of Christian dogma owed much to the church fathers who lived from the second to the fifth centuries c.e. Because many of them were intellectuals who were trained in Greek philosophy, they often tried to harmonize Christian beliefs with philosophies such as Stoicism and Platonism. The “eight doctors of the church” were especially influential. The four doctors of the Greek Church were Saint Basil of Cappadocia, Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint John Chrysostom, and Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. The four doctors of the Latin Church were Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, and Pope Gregory the Great.

Christian missionaries were crucially important to the growth of the Christian religion. The activities of Saint Patrick in Ireland and Saint Augustine of Canterbury in England were particularly notable. By converting tribal leaders, missionaries were often able to baptize large groups at one time. Many Christians practiced an ascetic and monastic way of life. Some individuals were quite extreme, such as Saint Simeon Stylites, who sat atop a high pillar for about thirty years. In contrast, monks in organized monasteries combined piety with education and the making of books. About 529 c.e., Saint Benedict of Nursia established an especially influential monastery at Monte Cassino, based on a system of rules providing order and discipline for the daily life of the monks.

The bishop of Rome gradually rose to a position of preeminence in the hierarchy of the church. The title of “pope,” which means “father,” at first applied to all bishops, but by the fifth century the title was usually limited to the bishop of Rome. Pope Leo I (r. 440-461 c.e.) was especially strong in claiming supreme authority on the theory that the pope was the heir of Peter. Saint Leo helped save Rome from the Huns, and in 451 c.e., he actively helped shape the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity at the Council of Chalcedon. Pope Gelasius I (r. 492-496 c.e.) further expanded papal power, adopting the title “vicar of Christ.” In times of disorder, powerful popes such as Gregory the Great (r. 590-604 c.e.) became virtual secular rulers in Rome and the surrounding region.

Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the tensions and disagreements between the churches of the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West grew increasingly bitter. During the seventh century, much of the controversy centered on the Monothelite heresy, which taught that the God-man had only “one will.” In 680-681 c.e., the Third Council of Constantinople explicitly anathematized Pope Honorius I, who had supported Monothelitism. Roman defenders of papal prerogatives resented the censure. Eleven years later, Rome angered the East when it refused to recognize the ecumenical status of the Fourth Council of Constantinople. Beginning about 725 c.e., the West was horrified by the Eastern practice of iconoclasm, or destruction of religious images. These disagreements contributed to the later schism between Rome and Constantinople.

Bibliography

Chadwick, Owen. A History of Christianity. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Crossan, John. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995.

Ehrman, Bart. After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds to Early Christianity. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994.

McBrien, Richard. Lives of the Popes. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997.

Urban, Linwood. A Short History of Christian Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Vallee, Gerard. The Shaping of Christianity: The History and Literature of Its Formative Centuries. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1999.