Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight I'm going to be explaining who's who in the early church. This message is the result of a suggestion made by one of my readers. He told me it would be very useful if he could get an introduction to the various writers and leaders in the early church. And it sounded like a great idea to me. So here we are. I've tried to think of a way to do this so that the names don't start all running together.
And the plan I've come up with is to divide the Orthodox early Christians into three groups. The apologists and other writers as the first group. The second group will be the church leaders, and the third group will be famous martyrs. Now, many of the men we'll be talking about fit into more than one of these groups. In fact, some of them, like Ignatius, fit into all three. He was both a writer and a church leader, and he died as a martyr.
Now, to keep this manageable, I won't be talking about all of the early Christian writers or all of the known early Christians. Instead, we're going to concentrate on the major figures. Then at the end, we're going to take a brief look at some of the prominent heretics of that time period. Now, when I talk about the early church, I'm talking about the period from the close of the New Testament up to the year 325 AD, which was the Nicene Council. So let's begin with the apologists and other writers.
Today, the English word apology is usually used in the sense of expressing remorse for wrongdoing, but that's not its only meaning. Actually, our English word apology comes from the Greek word apologia, which meant a defense. So the early Christian apologists were writers who defended the Christian faith against the false charges laid against it. They also explained to the pagan Romans and to the Jews what Christians actually believed and why they practiced and lived the way they did.
Furthermore, the apologists went on the offensive, pointing out the defects in the pagan religions and sometimes chiding the pagans for their scandalous behavior. Now, not all of the writers we're about to discuss were apologists. In fact, one of the earliest Christian writings we have, the Didache, is not an apology. We don't know who wrote the Didache. In Greek, the word Didache simply means teaching.
The first half of the Didache contains moral instruction to Christians, contrasting the way of life to the way of death. But the last half of the Didache is a church order. That is, it's a work that is written to Christians to explain how they should baptize, how they should ordain their leaders, how they should celebrate communion, and things like that. When was the Didache written? Well, nobody knows for sure. However, the internal evidence would place it very early, very close to the time of the apostles.
In fact, perhaps it was written as early as AD 70. So what are these pieces of internal evidence to which I'm referring? Well, first, it was written at a time when the churches were still overseen by traveling teachers and prophets. Yet, it indicates that the churches are in a transition stage, beginning to select men to serve as bishops and deacons from the local congregation in place of these traveling prophets and teachers.
This would indicate that the Didache dates back to the closing days of the apostles or shortly thereafter. Second, the Didache speaks of only two classes of ministers, bishops and deacons. Yet we know that by AD 160 or 170, most churches had a threefold ministry consisting of one bishop and multiple elders and deacons. So the Didache dates back to a time earlier than that. The third piece of evidence is that the Didache encourages church leaders to baptize new converts in living water, meaning running water.
But by the year 200, most churches had a pool or baptistry inside the church buildings where they met. Finally, the recommended service for communion is fairly brief, consisting of a few short prayers. Furthermore, it says that the prophets can pray any way they want instead of using the suggested prayers. Again, this would indicate an early period because we know that by the year 200, the order of service was longer than what set forth in the Didache.
Furthermore, decades before 200, the only ones who presided over communion were bishops and elders, not prophets. Of course, I realize someone could have faked all of these things in the Didache to make it look earlier, but what would have been the point of doing that? Normally, when people did that sort of thing, they had some agenda they were trying to push, but the Didache doesn't contain anything that fits a later agenda. Furthermore, these later forgeries are usually very easy to catch.
They purport to be written by one of the apostles or by a personal disciple of the apostles, but the internal evidence almost always points to a later date. Another anonymous early Christian work is the Letter to Diognetus. Estimates of when it was written vary from AD 125 to the year 200. It may have been a real letter written to Diognetus a pagan, or it may have simply been an apologetic work using a letter format as its literary style.
Regardless, it gives a very moving description of Christians in the second century. Next we come to a work entitled The Shepherd. Perhaps a better translation would be the pastor because it's talking about a spiritual shepherd, not someone who herds sheep. This work was written by a man named Hermas, and the work is generally known as the Shepherd of Hermas. The whole work is an allegory like Pilgrim's Progress. Now, the date of the Shepherd of Hermas is disputed.
It could have been written as early as the year 90 or as late as the year 150. Either way, it's a very early Christian work, and it's the earliest Christian allegory we have in existence. Now, some of my readers have found this work very spiritually strengthening and others tell me it's a bit tedious trying to work through it. So I encourage you to check it out for yourself and see. Now we come to Justin Martyr, one of the most famous apologists.
Before his conversion, Justin was a philosopher on a pilgrimage to find truth. One day when he was alone in the country, reflecting on the issues of God, on the purpose of life, things like that, an elderly Christian happened to pass by. Well, this Christian man struck up a conversation with Justin and then shared the gospel with him. As a result of the conversation, Justin looked into Christianity further and realized that he had at last, found the truth he had been seeking.
After his conversion, Justin became an evangelist, sharing the gospel with educated and uneducated people alike. He also was one of the earliest to take up the pen in defense of Christianity, even though he was risking his life to do so. He addressed his first apology to the Roman Emperor. Justin's first apology is one of the most valuable works we have after the New Testament. It's because it gives us so much insight on what Christians believed and practiced just 50 years after the last apostle died.
And it's particularly valuable because it's an apologetic work, not a church order. Justin isn't trying to tell other Christians what they should believe and practice. Rather, he is explaining to the Roman Emperor what Christians in his day believed and the lifestyle they lived. So his first apology gives us an objective window into primitive Christianity around the year 150. Among other things, Justin describes how baptism was practiced in his day and what the typical Sunday morning service was like.
In the course of his discussion, Justin also reveals what Christians in his day believed about the Trinity, about salvation, eternal security, baptism, communion, life after death, judgment day, and many other doctrines. He also reveals what Christians in his day believed about war, about entertainment, abortion, and other lifestyle issues. And because Justin's first apology is so valuable, it's why I included it in the book, We Don't Speak Great Things, We Live Them.
Another work of Justin, his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, gives us valuable insight into what Christians in the year 150 believed about the Mosaic Law, about Israel in prophecy, the millennium, and the Bible text and Bible canon. Well, Justin was eventually arrested because of his Christian evangelism and was martyred about the year 165. Since that time, he has been known as Justin the Martyr or simply Justin Martyr. Tatian and Athenagoras are two other second century Christian apologists.
Tatian was actually a disciple of Justin Martyr. He not only wrote a Christian apology, but he also compiled the first harmony of the gospels. However, later in his life, Tatian deviated into an ascetic Christian sect. Their theology was Orthodox, but some of their practices don't represent typical Christianity. Now, we don't know much about Athenagoras, except that he wrote a fine Christian apology about the year 177, which was addressed to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Now, one of the things that makes works like Athenagoras' plea on behalf of the Christians particularly valuable, is that all of these different works harmonize with each other, even though they were written decades apart and from different parts of the ancient Mediterranean world. So from reading the apology of Athenagoras, we know that the things that Justin describes weren't peculiar to him or to the local congregation to which he belonged.
No, the apologists and other Christian writers of the second century all say basically the same things. Our next writer is Clement of Alexandria. Clement served as part of the ministry of the church in Alexandria, Egypt, teaching new converts. However, he is best known for his writings. He wrote around the year 190 A.D. Clement is one of my favorite early Christian writers because of his kind, loving spirit. But he's not one of the easiest writers to read.
That's because he constantly strays from his main argument to chase down various rabbit trails. Like Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria had been a philosopher, and his search for truth is what led him to Christ. Clement was a very educated man. In fact, Jerome later said about him that he was the most learned of all ancients.
However, because some of the early Christian writers had once been philosophers, people today frequently make the claim that the leaders of the early church were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, and that made them stray from what the apostles had taught. Well, my response to that is, show me an example of what you're talking about. I say that because usually the person making that claim has never even read the early Christian writings. He's just repeating something that he's read somewhere else.
And there's another reason why the claim is absurd. If you've listened to very many of my messages, you know that I frequently point out that what the early Christians believed on just about any subject is what anyone would believe if they, one, started out with no preconceptions, two, looked at everything the New Testament teaches on that subject, and three, took everything the New Testament teaches on it very literally and very seriously.
The early Christians got their belief system directly from the New Testament. They didn't get it from Greek philosophy. The only thing that's different about Clement, and to a lesser extent, Justin Martyr, is that he doesn't hesitate to quote from philosophers or statesmen or secular historians when their teachings harmonize with the teachings of Scripture. The scroll publishing book Intimacy with God contains some of the best passages gleaned from Clement of Alexandria. Well, next on our list is Tertullian.
He's perhaps the most famous of the early Christian writers. That's because he wrote so many works that have survived to this day, and he's much easier to read than Clement of Alexandria. Now, one of the reasons why his work survived is because so many of them were written in Latin rather than Greek. And after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, during the Middle Ages, very few people could read Greek. On the other hand, Latin was the official language all throughout Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
So if you were an educated person, you could read Latin. Now, because Tertullian was one of the first persons to write Christian works in Latin, he often had to develop Latin terminology to express various truths that had previously been presented only in Greek. For example, it was Tertullian who coined the familiar word Trinity. Tertullian was born around the year 150. Both of Tertullian's parents were pagan, and Tertullian received a thorough classical education.
Apparently, he practiced law before his conversion, although this isn't certain. We think he was converted to Christianity when he was in his 30s or 40s. One thing we know for certain is that once he became a Christian, Tertullian was zealous in his devotion to Christ. He defended Christianity against the pagans. He defended Christian orthodoxy against various heretics. And he used his pen to fight against spiritual laxity that was creeping into the church.
Now, in contrast to Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr, Tertullian often writes in a strong, even judgmental spirit. He's one of the harshest of all the early Christian writers. Yet his writings are invaluable because they give us a record of the viewpoints, issues, and controversies that concern the church of his day. Towards the end of his life, Tertullian became persuaded that the Montanist movement was where God was working.
The Montanists were a sect within the church who were Orthodox in their theological beliefs, but they claimed that the Holy Spirit was giving new commandments on lifestyle issues or at least new guidance. As a result, the Montanists were known for their ascetic rigor. A person who starts with Tertullian's earliest works and reads all of them up to the last one written, will notice the Montanist influence on Tertullian's later writings.
There are no signs at all of Montanism in Tertullian's earliest writings, written before the year 200. One example would be his famous apology, where he coined the familiar phrase, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. But then around the year 200, the reader will notice little clues here and there that indicate Tertullian was being influenced by the Montanists. For example, he will throw in something that some supposed prophet or prophetess has said.
However, except for these brief references, the reader wouldn't be able to tell any difference between these works and his early works. Then at the end of his life, Tertullian has thoroughly embraced the Montanist viewpoint, and he criticizes the institutional church, usually on matters of discipline. If you're going to read any of Tertullian's works, and I would certainly encourage you to do so, there are four that I particularly recommend.
First would be his apology, and then the work The Shows, which addresses entertainment in his day. Third would be the work against Praxeas, which is a thorough discussion of the Trinity. And then finally, the veiling of virgins, which discusses 1 Corinthians 11 and the head covering. Now, I included two of these works I've just mentioned, the shows and the veiling of virgins in the book, A Glimpse at Early Christian Church Life.
Although Tertullian's apology is perhaps the most famous of the early Christian apologies, the best early Christian apology was written by a man we know very little about. His name is Mark Minucius Felix. His apology, which was written about the year 200, is entitled Octavius. The setting is an informal debate between a Christian and a pagan. The pagan speaker attacks Christianity and the Christian speaker defends it.
It enables the modern reader not only to affirm what Christians believed in that age, but it helps us to understand the various accusations that the pagans were making against Christians. Moving on, a short time ago, we talked about Clement of Alexandria, who instructed new Christians in the church in Alexandria. Among his students was a gifted teenager named Origen, who had been reared in a Christian home.
In fact, when Origen was 17, a severe persecution broke out in Alexandria, and Origen's father was imprisoned. Origen wrote his father in prison and encouraged him to remain faithful and not to renounce Christ out of fatherly concern for his family. After date was set for his father's trial, Origen decided to appear at the trial by his father's side and to die with him.
However, on the night before the trial while Origen was asleep, his mother hid all of his clothes, preventing him from leaving the house the next morning in time for the trial. Although he was only 17, Origen distinguished himself in the Church of Alexandria by the loving care he gave to his fellow Christians during the fierce persecution raging at the time. The angry mobs noticed his acts of mercy, and he barely survived the persecution with his own life.
Origen had learned grammar and Greek literature from his father, and he studied under a well-known teacher of his day. And so he began giving private lessons in those subjects of grammar and literature to support his younger brothers and sisters. He was so unusually brilliant that many pagan parents sent their sons to Origen to be instructed, and many of these youth became Christians as a result of Origen's witnessing to them.
Meanwhile, Clement, who had been the teacher in charge of training new Christians, had put his life at risk. So he was forced to escape from Alexandria to another city to continue his Christian ministry elsewhere. In an unusual move, the bishop of Alexandria appointed Origen, who was only 18 at the time, to take Clement's place as head of the teaching school. They chose wisely and Origen poured his very soul into the task.
He quit his short-lived profession as an instructor of grammar and literature, and he sold all of his Greek literary books on credit to another man. He subsisted in poverty off of the small monthly installment payments he received from the sale of his Greek literary books. He refused to accept any payment for his services as a Christian teacher. After teaching all day, he would study the Scriptures far into the night. Before long, Origen became one of the most respected Christian teachers of his age.
Eventually, some of his friends asked him to give a series of lectures on the various books of the Bible, discussing each of the books in detail passage by passage. His friends paid scribes to take down his words, and these became the first set of Bible commentaries. Now, Origen didn't intend for his commentaries to be taken as dogmatic pronouncements, since he frequently went off on tangents and personal surmises.
Throughout these commentaries, Origen displays an amiable, flexible disposition, frequently ending a discussion by saying, well, that's the best I can do with that passage. Maybe someone with more insight has a better explanation. Origen possessed one of the most brilliant minds of his day among Christians and non-Christians alike. He apparently authored more writings than any human before his time. He produced some 2,000 works, primarily through dictation.
He even carried on personal correspondence with the wife of one of the Roman emperors. He wrote the most thorough of all of the early Christian apologetic works. His apology is entitled Against Celsus. Celsus, or perhaps pronounced Celsus, was a pagan critic of Christianity. Actually, in most ways, Origen personified the kingdom life taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
Origen witnessed about Christ to whomever he could, he passed up wealth to live in poverty for his king, that is, King Jesus, and he always treated both friend and foe alike with gentleness and love. Although Origen was from Alexandria, Egypt, he traveled throughout Palestine to learn as much about the geography of that area as he could. In fact, he became the first biblical geographer. He even dialogued with prominent Jewish theologians of his day.
In fact, he was the first Gentile Christian to actually learn Hebrew. He did this so he could better defend the faith against the ridicule that the Jews were heaping on it. One of the questions I get asked most often about Origen is, wasn't he a heretic? And it's a question that can't be answered with a simple yes or no. Origen certainly said several things that people in his day disagreed with, but he was never labeled a heretic in his own lifetime.
In fact, when he died, he was an elder in good standing in the church at Caesarea. It's true that Origen was put under church discipline at one point in his life, but it was not because of anything he taught. As I mentioned, Origen was in charge of the instruction class in Alexandria, but he was never ordained as a minister in Alexandria. However, because of his extensive writings, he was better known and more widely admired than his own bishop there in Alexandria.
And when Origen first traveled to Caesarea for the purposes of learning more about biblical geography, the church in Caesarea asked him to preach, even though he wasn't ordained and he complied with their request. But when his bishop learned about it, he called Origen back to Alexandria and put him under church discipline for what he did. Actually, I think it was a matter of personal jealousy. Anyway, Origen later moved to Caesarea where he was ordained.
Now, 200 years after his death, some of Origen's teachings were declared heretical by the Roman Emperor Justinian at the Second Council of Constantinople. And the teachings that were condemned were speculations by Origen, in which I believe Origen was in error. The only problem is that by Justinian's day, the church had drifted into very serious errors, particularly in the jointer of the church and state, in embracing war, and in veneration of Mary, to just name a few things.
So the Christians in Justinian's day were hardly in a position to be condemning someone who lived 200 years before them. Now, I said I felt Origen was wrong in some of his speculations, and I'll just mention three areas. He speculated that souls preexist before they are given to our bodies. This was never a dogmatic teaching on his part, and he didn't teach transmigration of souls, which some people have accused him of.
Of course, the Bible reveals nothing about the origin of our souls, so all any of us can do is to speculate. But I personally feel it's wiser not to speculate beyond what the Scriptures have revealed. If they haven't revealed it, we should leave it alone and say we don't know. Origen also speculated that God would eventually bring about universal reconciliation with all those who are at enmity with Him, but only after untold eons of repentance and purification. So sometimes people say he taught universal salvation.
Well, yeah, in a sense, and again, it was a speculation, not a dogma, but it wasn't that everybody is going to be saved, but rather that the lost after an infinite number of years of repentance and punishment for their wrongdoing, that they would eventually be won over to God. I like his idea, but I don't see much scriptural support for that speculation. Another thing where I think Origen was partially right and partially wrong is that he believed that most of Scripture can be read at three levels.
There's the historical, the moral, and the allegorical. Now, I think all of us would agree that some passages of Scripture can be read at these three levels. For example, the passage about Abraham when he took Isaac to be offered up as a sacrifice. That's an historical event. It actually happened. So we can read that as a biblical history.
There's also a moral lesson we can learn there about the faith of Abraham and his belief in the resurrection of the dead and being willing to offer up Isaac, his only begotten son through his wife, Sarah. And then there's the allegorical level. I think most of us would agree that in what happened there, God was giving us a foreshadow of His being willing to offer up His only Son, Jesus Christ, which actually happened as well.
He stopped Abraham from doing it, but he himself went through with it, showing his love for us. But I don't think that all passages of Scripture can be read at those three levels. In fact, I don't think most passages can. And so Origen speculates a lot in his writings, seeing allegories where I don't think most of us would see. Now, you know, perhaps he's right, but I think he overdid it to a degree. But probably my main criticism of Origen is that he was the first Christian theologian.
Now, even though he had an open and gentle spirit himself, he paved the way for later theologians. And these later theologians who followed him were often dogmatic and judgmental. Most of the pamphlets and books written today in support of the King James Version attack Origen and accuse him of tampering with the Scriptures and creating the Alexandrian text. However, it's not the Alexandrian text that follows Origen's recommended readings.
He was a textual critic in the sense of trying to find what was the original text, but it's the majority text and the Textus Receptus that follow Origen's recommended readings. And that is from the Textus Receptus that the King James version was translated. So the charge that Origen produced the Alexandrian text is completely false. Even though I have some criticisms of Origen, I greatly appreciate his writings.
He provides us priceless information about ancient Koine Greek, about the Old Testament text and the New Testament text as well, about biblical geographical information, and about church life in his day. His defense of Christianity and his work against Celsus is one of the masterful apologetics ever written. And I think Origen had a lot of amazing insights into Scripture, even though I think he was occasionally wrong at times. Origen also set a marvelous example of how a kingdom Christian should live.
Here was a man who could have been rich and famous, but instead chose to live in poverty in order to serve his Lord. In the year 251, during the Decian persecution, Origen was arrested, put in prison, and tortured. However, no amount of torture could make him deny Jesus, and his tormentors finally gave up in exasperation. However, they had done so much physical damage to Origen that he eventually died as a martyr from their inhumane treatment. Now we come to our last writer, Lactantius.
Unlike Origen, he is neither famous nor controversial, but he was a very outstanding writer. Before embracing Christianity, he had been a celebrated teacher of rhetoric, receiving notice from Emperor Diocletian. After his conversion, Lactantius dedicated his literary abilities to the cause of Christ. He lived through the last great Roman persecution of Christians in the early 300s, and he eventually settled in Gaul, which is modern-day France.
Although Lactantius was an old man when Constantine became emperor in 312, Constantine asked Lactantius to be the personal instructor of Constantine's oldest son. That's how much he was respected in the Roman world. The writings of Lactantius are important because they were written at the very end of the pre-Constantinian period of the church. They demonstrate that most Christian beliefs had changed very little during the years from the end of the Apostle John's life to the Council of Nicaea.
Lactantius's writings comprise about one half of volume seven of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. His longest and most famous work is entitled The Divine Institutes. That concludes our discussion of the early Christians who are known primarily as writers. The next six persons we're going to look at were also writers, but they are better known for their role as church leaders. We begin with Clement of Rome. He's known as Clement of Rome to distinguish him from Clement of Alexandria.
He was a leader in the church at Rome at the close of the first century. Tertullian wrote that Clement had been personally ordained by Peter to the ministry. The Roman Catholic Church views him as the third bishop of Rome. However, the letter that is attributed to Clement indicates that in his day there were only two categories of ministry in the Roman church, elders and deacons and that the word bishop was used interchangeably with elder or Presbyter.
Interestingly, the letter attributed to him, which is known as First Clement, nowhere bears his name, but the church historian Eusebius states that it was written by Clement. We do know that Clement was one of the main leaders in the Roman church at the time this letter was written about the year AD 96. The reason the letter was written was that some of the younger members of the church at Corinth had ousted the older leaders who had been appointed by Paul and replaced them with younger leaders.
These ousted leaders or perhaps somebody else at Corinth contacted the leaders in the church at Rome and asked them to intervene. From that background information, we can assume that all of the apostles had died by this time, including John. Now, the church in Rome didn't pretend that it had any authority over the church in Corinth.
However, the fact that the Corinthian Christians turned to the church in Rome is evidence that it was one of the most highly influential churches at that time, and that it served an important role after the death of the apostles. Well, in his letter, which was written in the name of the church in Rome, Clement quotes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians quite often. In fact, as far as I know, this letter of Clement is the earliest writing we have that quotes from Paul's letters.
In fact, Clement not only quotes from 1 Corinthians, but also from Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, First Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews. He also quotes from the four gospels from Acts and from 1 Peter. So it's one of the earliest evidences we have of a nascent New Testament canon. In counseling the Corinthians, Clement appeals primarily to God's orderliness. He argues that men who were appointed to their position of authority by the apostles shouldn't be removed from their office except for misconduct.
Clement not only quotes from the New Testament, but also from the Old, quoting always from the Septuagint. Interestingly, we don't know what effect Clement's letter had in Corinth, but I think most people assume it had its desired effect and that the original leaders were restored. There were no more schisms or uprisings in Corinth that we know of. Next we come to Irenaeus, Bishop of the Church in Lyon, France. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a personal disciple of the apostle John.
So Irenaeus was only one human link removed from John. This makes his writings particularly important because Irenaeus lived up and beyond the year 200. So he was an important link from the apostles to the early Christian churches as far as the year 200. He was also an important link between the East and the West, in that he was from Smyrna in Asia Minor, yet he served as a bishop in the West in France. Irenaeus was well respected in the early church.
In fact, his standing was such that when a dispute arose between the bishop of Rome and the bishops in Asia Minor, concerning when to celebrate the resurrection of Christ every year, Irenaeus intervened to bring about peace between these churches. Irenaeus's most important written work is entitled" Against All Heresies." It is a very detailed refutation of all the heresies that were around in his day, the vast majority of which are various forms of Gnosticism.
And in recent years, as they've uncovered actual Gnostic writings, we can tell that Irenaeus was very accurate and objective when he describes the different Gnostic groups. He wasn't making things up about them. Now let's talk about Hippolytus. He was a contemporary of Irenaeus, also of Tertullian and Origen. He was a learned elder in the Church of Rome who wrote his writings in Greek.
Now, he had strong disagreements with two of the Roman bishops during his lifetime because he felt that they were too lax in their church discipline. Some sources state that he was ordained as a rival Reformed bishop there in Rome. We do know that in the year 235, he and the regularly ordained bishop of Rome were both exiled to Sardinia by the Roman Empire and that both men were martyred there on that island. Happily, these two rival bishops were reconciled to each other before their martyrdoms.
Hippolytus like Irenaeus wrote a work against heresies that were around in his day, and his work is fairly similar to that of Irenaeus. He also wrote a commentary on Daniel, a work about the Antichrist, and a treatise on the Trinity. All of these, some of which only exist in fragments today, are included in volume five of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. However, Hippolytus is the most famous today for a work that wasn't discovered until after the completion of the Ante-Nicene Father's 10 volume set.
This is a work known as the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. It's a church order similar to the Didache, but it was written around the year 200, a century after the Didache was written. From all the various writings we've talked about, we can see that between the years 100 and 200, there was little change in Christian theology and in Christian teachings on lifestyle. However, as the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus reveals, there were ecclesiastical changes.
For example, the distinction between clergy and laity is much greater in the year 200 than it was in the year 100. Also, the worship service has become a bit more elaborate and it's also become more fixed. You don't find Hippolytus saying, well, let the prophets pray however they want to. One last interesting bit of information about Hippolytus. He's the only pre-Nicene early Christian figure for whom we have an artistic representation.
In the year 1551, excavators in Rome uncovered a statue of Hippolytus that dates back to his lifetime. So we know what Hippolytus looked like, but we don't know that about any other pre-Nicene Christians. Actually, the schism involving Hippolytus was not that big and it didn't last very long. However, a few decades after his death, another elder in the church at Rome named Novatian started a reform breakoff movement that lasted for several centuries. Novatian was born around the year 200, probably in Italy.
His parents weren't Christian, so he grew up with pagan Roman beliefs, and he received an advanced education. At one point in his life, he was gravely ill and feared that death was close. He evidently had had some contact with Christianity by then, as he called for Christians to come and pray for him. He then received baptism on what he thought was going to be his deathbed. However, he recovered from his illness and became a very committed Christian.
Before long, he was ordained as an elder or presbyter in the church at Rome. As an elder in the church at Rome, Novatian wrote several theological works and works on Christian living. He was definitely one of the more capable elders there in Rome. Many scholars are of the opinion that Novatian's treatise on the Trinity is the finest work on that subject among all of the pre-Nicene Christians. It's contained in volume five of the Ante-Nicene fathers, and I recommend that you read it.
Even one of Novatian's enemies was forced to admit about him, quote," He wept over the sins of his neighbors as if they were his own. He carried the burdens of his brethren, as the apostle exhorts, and he strengthened with his exhortations those who were weak in divine faith." Novatian lived at a time when the church at Rome was becoming increasingly lax in its discipline. That's why Hippolytus had started a breakoff movement.
Novatian wanted to see the church in Rome return to its first love and to return to the careful discipline it had once practiced. That was important because Rome was looked to as an example by all of the other churches. And we talked about earlier how when problems arose in Corinth, they asked the leadership in Rome to act as moderators in the dispute. Well, in the year 250, the church at Rome and also in other places was struck with a severe crisis.
The new Roman emperor named Decius issued an edict that required all citizens to demonstrate their loyalty to the state gods by performing public sacrifices. This decree was rigorously enforced throughout the empire, and it resulted in a sizable number of Christian martyrs. Fabian, the bishop of Rome at this time, was martyred during this persecution, and the Christians at Rome decided not to ordain a new bishop, as it would no doubt simply mean instant martyrdom for him as well.
So for the next year, the body of elders in Rome ran the affairs of the church there. Novatian seems to have acted as the leader or spokesman for the body of elders. Now to the shock and shame of the church, most of the Christians who were unable to flee this persecution ended up either offering sacrifices to the state gods or compromising in some other way. Now, such a thing had never happened before in the history of the church.
Christianity definitely was in a downhill slide, at least as to the strength of Christian convictions. Well, Novatian was determined to reverse the course of things. So during his year of leadership in Rome, he did what he could to tighten church discipline. Well, the severe persecution was short-lived because the Roman Emperor Decius was killed in battle the next year. This brought an end to the persecution and the Christians saw it as God's intervention. But now the church had a real problem on their hands.
You had all of these people who had compromised in the persecution, but now they all wanted back into the church. Well, if the church simply accepted them back, it would essentially be endorsing and perpetuating the laxity that had led to this result. So Novatian felt that the lapsed, that is the people who had compromised, should be dealt with strictly. But other ones in the ministry felt like the church should overlook their sins or at least treat them fairly lightly.
Well, meanwhile, with the persecution over, it was now time to select a new bishop for the church at Rome. No doubt Novatian assumed that he would be chosen since he had been acting as the primary leader there. However, the other leaders realized that if Novatian were made bishop, that things were going to tighten up a bit. Some of these leaders had become quite lax themselves and they didn't want to see that happen.
So they bypassed Novatian and selected an elder named Cornelius, who was a much more moderate person who wouldn't upset the status quo. Well, Novatian and five other elders there at Rome refused to attend Cornelius' ordination. To them, his ordination as bishop meant that the church in Rome was officially accepting an easier, less disciplined, and less heroic type of Christianity. And what Rome did would no doubt influence the rest of the church worldwide.
There was a remnant in Rome who wanted a return to the Pilgrim Church of the previous century with his emphasis on holiness and uncompromising faith in the face of persecution. They wanted Novatian to serve as their bishop. So three bishops from South Italy ordained Novatian as the rival bishop of the church in Rome. And once Novatian was ordained as a rival bishop, well then both he and Cornelius quickly tried to win all of the other bishops of the major cities to their side.
Well, in the end, only a small minority of the worldwide body of believers joined in with Novatian and his reform movement. Novatian's reform movement did last several centuries, but it eventually died out. Now, one of Novatian's strongest opponents was the Bishop of Carthage, whose name was Cyprian. He had one time been a wealthy Roman who converted to Christianity about the age of 40.
As a new Christian, Cyprian was so jubilant to have found Christ and to be born again that he liquidated his entire estate and gave all of the money to the poor. He rejoiced to be unfettered from the weight of his material possessions, and his writings contain some of the most moving passages on the Christian rebirth that have ever been penned. The church in Carthage respected his enthusiastic commitment to Christ.
And so even though he had been a Christian only a few years, they selected him to serve as the overseer or bishop of the church in Carthage, which was a very unusual thing in that day and age to select someone who was so new in their Christianity. However, Cyprian in no way disappointed them. He proved to be a very energetic and uncompromising bishop. Cyprian's writings are particularly valuable because they consist chiefly of correspondence with the leaders of other churches.
And so they give us a candid look at the everyday concerns and problems that Christian congregations were facing during that period. Cyprian was forced to carry on much of his pastoral work underground since he also lived during this time of the Decian persecution. Cyprian was a tireless shepherd pouring out his energy and ultimately his very life for the flock that Christ had entrusted to him. But he too was eventually arrested by the pagan Romans and executed.
The final person I want to talk about under the category of church leaders is Alexander Bishop of Alexandria. He is the bishop who clashed strongly with Arius over the nature of Christ's divinity. This clash eventually led to the Council of Nicaea and to the end of the pre-Nicene Church. One of his letters appears in volume 6 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. I encourage you to read it as it demonstrates what Orthodox Christians believed about the divinity of Christ up to and through the Council of Nicaea.
And once you read it, you'll easily see how the church's teaching about the Trinity and the divinity of Christ has changed considerably from what it originally taught, particularly here in the West. Now we come to the martyrs. The first two we're going to talk about Ignatius and Polycarp were martyrs, church leaders, and writers, all three of these things. Both Ignatius and Polycarp were personal disciples of the Apostle John, so they provide an important link back to apostolic Christianity.
The seven letters of Ignatius, which were all written around the year 100, are extremely valuable because they were written so close to the last years of the Apostle John. They provide us with a window into what Christianity was like right after the last apostle died. Now, Ignatius wrote these letters as a prisoner. He was being transported from Antioch, where he had served as bishop, to Rome, where he was to be put to death. The fearlessness of Ignatius in the face of death is inspiring.
In one of his letters, he wrote," I would rather die for Jesus Christ than to reign over all the ends of the earth." It was this bold spirit of men and women like Ignatius that made it impossible for the Roman Empire to stamp out Christianity. Most Christians didn't seek martyrdom, but neither were they afraid of it if it came upon them. Now, I should mention that the letters of Ignatius often offend people because Ignatius seems to present an overly exalted view of the bishop.
In fact, offhand, I can't think of any other early Christian writer who held such a view of the Office of Bishop as what Ignatius expresses. However, when we remember the context of his letters, I think we can overlook some of Ignatius's overly dramatic language. You must remember that in his final letters, the apostle John had said that it was the last hour and that the Antichrists were already appearing, referring to the Gnostics.
So here is Ignatius in chains on his way to be executed in Rome and very much fearful that the Antichrist, the Gnostics, were going to take over not just his congregation, but the other churches as well. And in Ignatius's day, most of the elders and bishops had been appointed by the apostles or by apostolic men like Timothy. And most of these bishops, and perhaps all of them, remained faithful to the apostolic faith.
However, now that all of the apostles had died, the Gnostic teachers began trying to take over various churches. So Ignatius gives counsel to Christians to stay close to their bishops, because as I said, the bishops were men appointed by the apostles. So I encourage you to read the letters of Ignatius with this caveat in mind. Also, make certain you're reading the genuine letters of Ignatius.
I don't know why, but the compilers of the Ante-Nicene fathers decided to include in volume one not only the authentic letters of Ignatius, but also the spurious ones. And it wasn't because they didn't know the difference. They tell you in the prefaces whether this is an authentic letter or one of the ones that is fake. So make certain you read those prefaces before you read any of the letters of Ignatius, so you can be certain you're reading his seven genuine letters.
One of Ignatius's seven letters was sent to Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. Polycarp and Ignatius were friends as well as co-laborers in the field of Christ. As I mentioned earlier, they both were personal disciples of John. Polycarp has left us one writing his letter to the Philippians, but he is mostly known for his heroic martyrdom. Unlike Ignatius, who died around the year 100, Polycarp lived until the year 156, and he finally died as a martyr at a very old age.
So throughout most of the second century, he supplied a crucial link back to the apostles as he had been ordained by the apostles themselves. I mentioned earlier that Irenaeus had been personally instructed by Polycarp and Irenaeus lived past the year 200. So there's only one human link separating Irenaeus from the Apostle John. Polycarp died heroically as a martyr. Now, I'm not going to relate all the details of his martyrdom.
It's a very interesting account, but I've already described it in the first chapter of my book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. Also, the full account, which was written by members of the church there at Smyrna, who had witnessed his martyrdom, is contained in volume one of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. I encourage you to read it. The early Christian writings also contain accounts of various female martyrs.
Volume one of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, which contains the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp and the accounts of their martyrdom, also contains a letter from the churches of Lyon and Vienne in the province of Gaul, which is modern-day France. And that letter concerns the martyrs of Lyon, the men and women who died in the year 177. An incredibly fierce persecution had broken out there, and quite a number of Christians were horribly tortured and then put to death. Among them was a female slave named Blandina.
The Roman officials tortured her in a dungeon cell, trying to get her to renounce Christ. But she endured everything the torturers did to her until the torturers themselves were worn out. Well, since she wouldn't renounce Christ, she was sentenced to die in the arena, along with the other faithful Christians from Lyon. The soldiers first scourged, an ordeal that often was fatal by itself. When Blandina survived that lashing, they then turned wild animals loose on her.
But she survived the mauling the animals gave her, although by now her body was badly bruised and mangled. The pagans then sadistically burned her on a hot grill, but she even survived that. Finally, they tied Blandina up in a net and threw her to a bull to toss about and trample. This final ordeal killed her, but her courage and unshakable faith gave a tremendous witness to the spectators watching it all. It also satisfied their bloodlust and the persecution came to an end.
Two other female martyrs whose names have been preserved are Perpetua and Felicitas. These two women both died as martyrs in Carthage around the year 203. Volume three of the Ante-Nicene fathers contains an account of their martyrdoms. The editors included this narrative about them in the volume that contains most of Tertullian's writings, because some people have guessed that maybe Tertullian either wrote or preserved the account of their martyrdoms.
Because as you may remember, Tertullian was alive and active in the church at Carthage at the time these two women, along with others, were martyred there. The narrative of Perpetua and Felicitas includes the prison diary kept by Perpetua. In it, she mentioned that her pagan relatives implored her to renounce Christianity, but she remained steadfast, even though she was just a new convert to Christianity. Her relatives implored her to think of her infant son, but she loved Christ even more than her own child.
Now, the only negative thing about the Diary of Perpetua is that she was a Montanist. The Montanists were the group who believed that the Holy Spirit was giving new instructions to the church through visions and ecstatic prophecies. Well, not surprisingly, Perpetua's Diary contains the account of four different visions she claimed to have received. In one of them, she says that she saw her deceased brother, Dinocrates. Now, having died unsaved, he was in a miserable condition in the lower regions of Hades.
However, Perpetua intercedes on his behalf. And then in the next vision, she says her brother was now in paradise, having been saved through Perpetua's prayers. Well, this is the earliest teaching we have of what became the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. In fact, the doctrine may have originated with Perpetua's diary.
During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church taught that people could deliver their deceased relatives from purgatory through prayers, through indulgences, and through having masses said on behalf of these dead persons. So I admire Perpetua for her courage, but not for her theology. Before closing, I want to briefly talk about three of the major heretics the church opposed during the early Christian period. We'll begin with Simon Magus, the Samaritan magician who is mentioned in the Book of Acts.
According to the early Christians, Simon Magus is the one who began the Gnostic movement. His story doesn't end with the brief reference in Acts about his trying to buy from Peter the power to bestow the Holy Spirit. Rather, Simon ended up setting up a rival religion to Christianity, and he eventually took his religion to Rome where he was viewed as a god. In some ways, Gnosticism was more of a rival religion to Christianity instead of a Christian heresy.
To be sure, it began with a professed baptized Christian, Simon, and Gnostics did believe in Jesus and his father, but they also believed in a whole pantheon of gods. And the basic premise of Gnosticism was that both the earth and mankind were created by an inferior God, the God they called the Demiurge. He is the God of the Old Testament, but He is not the Father of Jesus in their teachings.
They taught that the Father is actually the real God, and He sent His Son Jesus to earth to impart special knowledge to mankind so we can escape the clutches of the Demiurge, the one who created us, and we can also escape our physical bodies and the material world because the Gnostics believe that everything in the material world is corrupted. So there can be no resurrection of the body. They taught that Jesus really then didn't come in the flesh since the flesh is inherently evil.
These are the ones that John referred to as the Antichrist. The next heretic you should be familiar with is Marcion. He led a rival church between the years 140 and 155 AD. Marcion was the son of a Christian bishop. He was born near the Black Sea and was a wealthy businessman, but he later moved to Rome. As I mentioned, he was quite wealthy and he gave the church in Rome a large sum of money when he moved there. However, while he was in Rome, he fell under the influence of a Gnostic teacher.
He then tried to convince the leaders of the church in Rome that various Gnostic teachings were correct. Well, instead of accepting Marcion's views, the church leaders in Rome excommunicated him and gave him back his money. Well, then Marcion set up a rival church of his own, and he was very successful. His movement spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, and it lasted for nearly a century. Like the Gnostic teachers, Marcion taught that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New.
He also taught that all matter is evil and that therefore Jesus was not really born of Mary. He said that only Paul, out of all of the apostles, understood the real message of Jesus. So Marcion created his own New Testament, accepting only Paul's letters and the gospel of Luke, all of which he edited to fit his own belief system. There were many different Gnostic teachers with rival teachings. One of the more prominent Gnostic teachers in the second century was Valentinus.
He was from Egypt, but he traveled to Rome and to other places in the Roman Empire. He was an eloquent speaker, and he left a variety of writings. Many of his followers went on to become noted Gnostic teachers as well. Now, the teachings of Valentinus differ from those of Marcion in that Valentinus taught that there was a complex spiritual cosmos with all sorts of divine beings. Well, that concludes my discussion of who's who in the early church.
You've now been introduced to the major figures in the pre-Nicene church, and hopefully you'll feel now more at home with the early Christians.