Courage & Persecution

1. Courage & Persecution • From about 100 to 300 CE, fear of invading barbarians and of any internal dissension fueled the Roman Empire’s persecution of Christians, who refused to sacrifice to Roman gods and resisted joining the Roman army. • Within the church, “bishops” led the community’s worship and supervised the congregation’s life, deacons and deaconesses looked after those in need, and the bishop of Rome became a central figure.

2. Courage & Persecution continued • Christians who had renounced their faith or sacrificed to idols in oder to save their lives were allowed to rejoin the church after a process of public penance and a ritual of re-entry. (See pages 65-72 in your text) • Fighting under a special “sign of Christ” in 312 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine won a major battle for the imperial throne. In 313 CE, through the Edit of Milan, Constantine granted freedom of worship to Christians in the Roman Empire.

3. The Emperor Constantine

4. The symbol (Chi-Rho) Constantine had his soldiers put on their shields before the critical battle of Milvian Bridge

5. Constantine goes further • He returned all confiscated Church property • He bestowed many privileges on the church and its clergy • By the year 400, Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire • See pages 73-75 in your textbook

6. The State Church of the Empire The accession of Constantine was a turning point for Early Christianity, generally considered the beginning of Christendom. After his victory, Constantine took over the role of the patron for the Christian faith. He supported the Church financially, had an extraordinary number of basilicas built, granted privileges (e.g. exemption from certain taxes) to clergy, promoted Christians to high ranking offices, and returned property confiscated during the Great Persecution of Diocletian, and endowed the church with land and other wealth. Between 324 and 330, Constantine built, virtually from scratch, a new imperial capital at Byzantium on the Bosphorus (it came to be named for him: Constantinople) – the city employed overtly Christian architecture, contained churches within the city walls (unlike "old" Rome), and had no pagan temples.

7. Clarity of Doctrine • Challenges to Christian beliefs by early splinter groups often led to clarification and expression of official church teachings. • “Gnosticism,” which denied Jesus’ humanity, led Christians to formulate the Apostles' Creed. • “Arianism,” which denied Jesus’ divinity, led church bishops to write the Nicene Creed, the expressed Christian belief that Jesus was both human and divine.

8. The Apostles Creed I believe in God, the Father Almighty,the Creator of heaven and earth,and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,born of the Virgin Mary,suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into hell.The third day He arose again from the dead.He ascended into heavenand sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,the communion of saints,the forgiveness of sins,the resurrection of the body,and life everlasting. Amen.

9. The Nicene Creed We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeded from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

10. Church and State • Government involvement in church issues increased. • Athanasius, an Alexandrian (Egypt) bishop, was removed from office 5times by various emperors during the Arian controversy. • See pages 76-81 in your textbook. • Also read “Women in the Early Church” on pages 78-79 in your textbook.

11. From Persecution to Power • After Constantine legalized Christianity, the church was relieved of terrible persecutions. The Good News could be preached more widely; al could hear the Word of God. • Places of worship could be open to the public and regular schedules put in place. There must have been tremendous joy in the hearts of Christians in 313 CE and after. • However, power tends to corrupt.

12. From Persecution to Power continued • History shows clearly that the church was subject to the corruptions of power too. • While guided by the Holy Spirit, the church sometimes does not listen too well. • The Church is, after all, composed of human beings like ourselves.

13. The Evolving Role of “Bishop” Church bishops emerged as overseers of urban Christian populations, and a hierarchy clergy gradually took on the form of episkopos (overseers, bishops), elders and presbyters (shepherds), and then deacons (servants). But this emerged slowly and at different times for different locations. Clement, a Bishop of Rome, refers to the leaders of the Corinthian church in his letter Clement I as bishops and presbyters interchangeably, and likewise says that the bishops are to lead God's flock by virtue of the chief shepherd (presbyter), Jesus Christ. The New Testament writers also use the terms overseer and elders interchangeably.

14. Who Ran the Overall Church? • Early on, we can't even find evidence of a single bishop of Rome presiding over churches in the city. Although the official lists give the names of several “popes” during the first decades, it is more likely that they simply presided over a council of elders. The first “pope” who actually is a single bishop presiding over the diocese of Rome was Pius I (142 - 155). • In addition to the fact that there isn’t really any evidence for the existence of a church administration under the leadership of Peter, there isn’t even any evidence for such an administration under many of his successors. All available evidence points to the existence not of a single-leader structure but instead to committees of elders or overseers. This was standard in Christian communities all over the Roman empire. Not until a couple of decades into the first century do letters from Ignatius of Antioch describe churches led by a single bishop who was merely assisted by the presbyters and deacons. • Even once a single bishop can definitively be identified in Rome, his powers were not at all like what we see in a pope today. The bishop of Rome did not call himself the “Vicar of Christ“ (the first to do so was Gelasius I, 492 - 496). The bishop of Rome did not have the Roman Curia to govern other churches. He did not call for church councils or write encyclicals. Pope Sylvester I (314 - 335) didn’t even attend the first ecumenical Council of Nicea, much less call it (that was done by Constantine the Great).

15. Bishop/Priest/Deacon in the Early Church • In the apostolic age, the terms for these offices were still somewhat fluid. Sometimes a term would be used in a technical sense as the title for an office, sometimes not. This non-technical use of the terms even exists today, as when the term is used in many churches (both Protestant and Catholic) to refer to either ordained ministers (as in “My minister visited him”) or non-ordained individuals. (In a Protestant church one might hear “He is a worship minister,” while in a Catholic church one might hear “He is an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.”) • Thus, in the apostolic age Paul sometimes described himself as a diakonos ("servant" or "minister"; cf. 2 Cor. 3:6, 6:4, 11:23; Eph. 3:7), even though he held an office much higher than that of a deacon, that of apostle. • Similarly, on one occasion Peter described himself as a "fellow elder," [1 Pet. 5:1] even though he, being an apostle, also had a much higher office than that of an ordinary elder.

16. Fluid Titles - continued • The term for bishop, episcopos ("overseer"), was also fluid in meaning. Sometimes it designated the overseer of an individual congregation (the priest), sometimes the person who was the overseer of all the congregations in a city or area (the bishop or evangelist), and sometimes simply the highest-ranking clergyman in the local church—who could be an apostle, if one were staying there at the time. • Although the terms "bishop," "priest," and "deacon" were somewhat fluid in the apostolic age, by the beginning of the second century they had achieved the fixed form in which they are used today to designate the three offices whose functions are clearly distinct in the New Testament.

17. What was the status of women in the early church? Were they particularly attracted to it? The status of women in early Christianity has been quite debated in recent decades, no doubt prompted by interest in the women's movement in Western countries today. The evidence is somewhat mixed. Certainly there's evidence in the New Testament itself of women doing many things within early Christianity. In Paul's letters he greets women. Calls them co-workers. Refers to one of them [with] a word in Greek that we would translate as "deaconess." Paul even calls one of the women an Apostle. What exactly these terms meant is a little hard to say given the distance in time, but there's plenty of evidence of women's activity. Part of the activity in the early period, that is the New Testament period itself, perhaps is related to women's role in the house churches. The earliest Christian communities met in people's houses; they didn't have churches yet for quite some time, and throughout the New Testament, particularly Paul's letters in the Book of Acts, we find out that women owned the houses in which the early Christians met. This is significant because the women who owned the houses were more than simply providing the ancient equivalent of “coffee and cookies,” in effect, for the Christian community. Their role and actions probably gave them some avenue to power in the church.

18. The Role of Women in the early Church continued What seems to happen within the first few centuries is that whatever limited activities women might have had in the beginning begin to get curtailed as the development of a hierarchy of clergy members with bishops, presbyters and deacons grows, and it's pretty firmly established by the “establishment” that women should not be either bishops or priests. Many church fathers write about this. This results in women tending to get excluded from those functions, although they do have some roles such as joining a group called the “widows” or “deaconesses” in the fourth century. We have good evidence of a order of deaconesses in the early Church, but they were excluded from the priesthood.

19. Who owned the original Christian meeting places? Although later pushed to the side, women in early Christian communities often owned the 'house churches' where congregations gathered to worship.

20. One very powerful woman in the early Church – a follower of Paul named Thecla