EARLY
CHURCH HISTORY
INTRODUCTION
Forty years ago, I went
through an early mid-life
crisis. I had been
teaching middle
school and high school English and doing a lot of coaching. I loved what I was
doing, but I couldn’t find
a public school teaching job, and the Christian schools where I
worked didn’t
pay me enough to support our growing family.
I decided to go back to school to get an MA, and maybe
teach at a local
junior college. I
spent one day in an
English program at Sacramento State. I
absolutely hated it, and that left me with a dilemma.
I sat on the steps outside
the building where the
English department was, and half-complained/half-prayed, and
wondered what I
was going to do next. It
struck me that
what I *really* wanted wasn’t to teach English, but to teach the
great works of
the ancient world, to spend my time with Herodotus, Homer,
Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Tacitus, Suetonius, and (most of
all) the writers
I talk about in this class, the writers of the New Testament.
So, here I am, living the
dream—and enjoying it even
more than I thought I would.
I get to
turn back again and again to some of the greatest works ever
written, works
that not only retain their relevance, but become (if anything)
even more
important as time goes on.
This class in particular is a
lot of fun to
teach. We get to
explore perhaps the
most important turning point in all of history, the transition
from the
polytheism of the ancient world to the monotheistic world-view
of
Christianity. This
is a change that
affects every aspect of life, and a change that still affects
the world in a
major way today.
The importance of that change
is reflected in our
calendars. We
divide history up into
“AD” and “BC” periods, a designation that reflects the idea that
the birth of
Christ initiates major changes.
While
many prefer to use CE and BCE, there is still a recognition of
that fundamental
change.
In order to understand just
how important that change
is, I need to back up and talk about ancient Rome.
Rome was in many ways the
most successful society the
world had ever seen. As
I teach History
121, I tell students about larger and larger empires. Sargon of Akkad
creates the first great
empire. Then
Hammurabi creates the
largest empire the world had ever seen.
The Assyrians create the largest empire the world had
ever seen. The
Persians create the largest empire the
world had ever seen. Alexander
creates
the largest empire the world had ever seen.
And then come the Romans,
creating, not only the
largest empire the world had ever seen, but the best organized. The Romans were superb
administrators—so much
so that many subject peoples preferred Roman rule to rule by
their native
kings. Roman dominance of the Mediterranean meant easy trade and
economic
growth. Not
only was Rome prosperous,
it was relatively peaceful.
While there
were wars on the borders, most Roman subjects could live their
lives without
being directly affected by war.
Further, the Romans had a
knack for picking out that
which best in the achievements of other peoples and cultures. The Romans appreciated
(for instance) Greek
art, theater, poetry, history, architecture, science, and
philosophy. They
imitated these things themselves and
(sometimes) even surpassed the Greeks.
In addition, the Romans had
the most splendid
religious system ever created.
The
Romans were the most religious of all the peoples of the
Mediterranean,
worshipping not only their own gods, but the gods of all their
subject
peoples. The Romans
built a “pantheon,”
a place where they had images of every god they knew of—a great
symbol of Roman
religious pluralism. One
out of every
three days on the Roman calendar was a festival celebrating one
god or another. The
Romans had special religious ceremonies
for every occasion, and they thought they had religion down just
right. Their “pax
deorum,” the treaty with the gods,
gave Romans the confidence the gods would bless their every
endeavor.
Pease, prosperity, culture,
strength, and a recipe for
ensuring the blessings of divine power: Rome offered more than
any society in
history. But it
wasn’t enough. Despite
all these achievements, and despite
the love the Roman people had for their society, by the time of
Christ, it
looked like Rome was coming apart at the seams.
The political system was
falling apart. For
500 years, Rome and been a self-governing republic, but in 31 BC
the Republic had
come to an end. The
new system, the principate
or the dyarchy, was not necessarily a bad way to organize
things, but quite
often, the man at the top was anything but an admirable man. The Romans had at once
time been led by true
patriots, men like Cato, Scipio Africanus, and Marcus Livius
Drusus, men who
put the good of the Republic far above personal interests. But the emperors? Men like Caligula,
Nero, and Domitian? Moral
midgets.
At least, though, the early
emperors provided stability.
But, eventually, they didn’t do that. From 235-284 AD, a
period of 50 years, there
were 26 emperors, only one of whom died a natural death.
And it wasn’t just the
political system that was
dying. Roman
culture was decaying. Entertainments
were more and more sordid,
more and more violent.
The economic system was
functioning badly too. While
some Romans were making fabulous
fortunes, more and more citizens were reduced to poverty,
dependent on the
government or wealthy patrons just to get by.
One third of Roman citizens were on our equivalent of
welfare.
Religion was falling apart as
well. There was a
growing skepticism about divine
things. Plutarch, a
devout man himself,
wrote books like, “Why the Oracles no Longer Answer,” and “Why
the Gods don’t Punish
Oath-breakers.” And,
while skepticism
was growing, superstition was growing as well.
Many Romans believed they were surrounded by hostile
spiritual forces, demonic
influences they could do nothing about.
Making matters worse,
morality was falling apart.
At one time, the Romans were among the most
admirable of all people, emphasizing “virtus,” excellence in all
aspects of life. Courageous,
faithful to husbands and wives, preferring
death to dishonor. But,
by the time of
Christ, morality had broken down entirely.
Divorce, once rare, had become the rule rather than the
exception. In the
cities, male and female prostitutes were
everywhere, often specializing in particularly forms of
perversion.
And, as always when sex gets
perverted in such ways,
children came to be regarded as a nuisance that gets in the way
of pleasure rather
than the greatest treasure a man or woman could have.
Infanticide, formerly
rare, became routine. Babies,
particularly
girl babies, would be abandoned to die of exposure or perhaps
eaten
by a wild beast. And
it wasn’t because
people were too poor to raise kids either. Infanticide was
common among the wealthy
as well as the poor.
Exposed infants didn’t always
die. They were
sometimes “rescued”—but rescued by
pimps who had a use for these little boys and girls. And since they wanted
a return on investment
as soon as possible, they’d turn the kids out as
prostitutes—perhaps as young
as five years old.
Tome had achieved the best
the ancient world could
offer—and it was not enough.
Romae had
become as society that could not sustain itself, a society that
had had the
best of everything a human society can create—and yet a society
that was about
to die, a society that deserved to die, a society—well, a
society not all that
much unlike our own.
But, in the midst of all this
hopelessness, in the
midst of the failure of everything the Romans had counted on,
came one of the
great surprises in history.
Just as Rome
was about to fall apart, a small Jewish sect, a sect hated by
their fellow Jews
and even more hated by the Romans, a sect that the Romans at
first regarded as
just one more vile superstition characteristic of a decaying
age, provided—not just
a glimmer of hope—but a complete rebirth.
This sect, of course, is
Christianity—the most important
religion in the history of the world.
This course will look at the
emergence and growth of
Christianity. The
first 2/3rds of the
course will focus on the New Testament period.
The last 1/3rd of the course will focus on the
church from
the end of the New Testament period (around 90 AD) until the
death of Constantine
in 333 AD.
A couple of caveats as we
begin the course.
Caveat I: This course
constantly deals with religious
themes. If you are
uncomfortable with
that, this is not the course for you!
You don’t have to be religious to do well, and you
certainly don’t have
to agree with my point of view.
Agnostics, atheists, Catholics, Pentecostals, Lutherans,
Jews and even
Methodists have all done well in this class.
The class is best when there are different points of view
and when
people speak their minds. But if you aren’t interested in
religious topics, let
me help find you another course.
Caveat II: This is an
academic class, not a devotional
class. You can be
very religious in your
personal life, but, even so, you won’t do well if you don’t do
the readings and
if you don’t learn the material.