Chapter 7: The Next Generation After the Apostles. The apostles didn't appoint a second group of twelve apostles to replace themselves after they died. In fact, the apostles themselves didn't serve as a rabbinical body, a second Sanhedrin. After the ascension, they remained together in Jerusalem only for a few years. After that, they all went their separate ways, taking the kingdom gospel throughout the world.
There is no indication that there were any further meetings of the apostles after the one described in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. So how did the apostles prepare the next generation of leaders in the church? Did they write theological works for men in leadership to study? No. Kingdom training worked exactly the same way it had when Jesus was on earth. The apostles gave hands-on training to other men such as Mark, Titus, and Timothy.
The next generation of leaders learned by working alongside more experienced leaders. As Paul told Timothy, "The things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." 2 Timothy 2:2. And that's the reason the simple message of the kingdom gospel continued on after the apostles died. They had committed it to faithful men who were able to teach the next generation.
The apostles did such a superb job that the second-century church was able to overcome both the Gnostic heretics who tried to hijack the church and the fierce persecution the pagan Romans leveled against Christians. And the second-century Christians did this without establishing a new theological class or losing sight of the kingdom. As it was in the days of the apostles, there were no seminaries or other schools to train church leaders in the second century.
In fact, there weren't even any systematic theologians in that period. Men were appointed as elders and bishops because they met the spiritual qualifications set forth in the New Testament, not because they were educated men or because they had a diploma from a seminary. Their only training came from serving under spiritual leaders in the local church. It was mainly the uneducated and poor, the intellectual infants, who comprised the bulk of the church.
To be sure, there were well-educated Christians in the second century, but most of them had obtained their education before they had ever heard of Christ. After they surrendered their lives to Jesus, some of these men put their education to good use by defending Christianity with their pens. Justin Martyr, Mark Felix, and Athenagoras are examples of men who used their learning in the service of the kingdom. But these men held no office in the church, and they didn't wield any ecclesiastical power.
They were in no sense theologians, nor were they church fathers as they are often mistakenly called. They simply were kingdom soldiers who made good use of the abilities and learning they had. The Historic Faith: Centered on Jesus' Teachings. Christians in the second century remained children of the kingdom. They continued to recognize that the teachings of Jesus, not Paul, were the central tenets of Christianity.
When they wanted to explain to non-believers what Christianity was all about, the second-century Christians went straight to the teachings of Jesus. For example, the oldest Christian apology that still exists in its entirety is the First Apology of Justin Martyr. In it, Justin Martyr explains to the Roman officials what Christianity is all about and what Christians believe. He tells them, "The teachings of Jesus have transformed our lives. We who previously delighted in immorality now embrace chastity exclusively.
We who used to practice magical arts now devote our lives to the good and unbegotten God. We who valued the acquisition of wealth and possessions above all things now bring what we have into a common pool and share with everyone in need. Many of us used to hate and destroy one another. We wouldn't live with people of a different race because of their different customs. But now, since the coming of Christ, we live familiarly with such people and we pray for our enemies.
We seek to persuade those who unjustly hate us to live by the wonderful teachings of Christ so that they can enjoy the wonderful hope of God's reward with us." The teachings of Christ were brief and concise. He was not skilled in devious argumentation, but rather his word was the power of God. Justin Martyr then proceeds to set forth the teachings of Jesus, quoting almost exclusively from the Sermon on the Mount.
If you had asked any of the early Christians what the heart of the gospel was, they all would have answered, "The Sermon on the Mount." Christianity centered on the fruit that comes from an obedient, love-faith relationship with Jesus, with a focus on his teachings from the Sermon on the Mount. Fruit versus Theology. The second-century Christians stood in a blessed position. They were the last generation of Christians who could personally know what had been handed down from the apostolic age.
When they talked about the historic faith, they spoke of what they had personally heard from the apostles or from the faithful men whom the apostles had trained. Logically, we might expect to find that the theology in the early second century was far more complex than the theology we have today because it was so close to the time of the apostles. However, the truth is just the opposite. All the theology the second-century Christians considered essential could be summed up in a few sentences.
Several writers from the second century bear witness to the simple statement of theology to which the early Christians universally subscribed. One of these was Tertullian, who wrote, "The rule of faith indeed is altogether one, alone, immovable, and unchangeable.
The rule is to believe in only one God Almighty, the Creator of the universe, and his Son, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right hand of the Father, destined to come to judge the living and the dead through the resurrection of the flesh." That uncomplicated statement of belief contains only 63 words.
To give you an indication of just how much Christianity has changed since its early years, the Westminster Confession of Faith, promulgated by the Puritans in the seventeenth century, contains 12,079 words. In fact, one of the things I've noticed in studying church history is the further a person gets from the time of Christ, the more theological dogma there is. The essentials of the faith somehow kept growing through the centuries. But how can that be?
The apostles and disciples had recognized that the faith was already complete in their day. Before AD 60, Paul could boldly declare, "If anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed." Galatians 1:9. Jude exhorted Christians to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. Jude 3. So there would be no more theologians and no further definitions of the Christian faith after the apostles.
Jesus wasn't ever going to change, and there would be no further master teachers after him. The second-century Christians recognized the finality of the gospel. They didn't add man-made dogma to what they had received. They had received a simple faith, and they kept it that way. Their focus was on the Christ life, not theology. Now, please don't misunderstand me. The early Christians had theological beliefs about most of the same matters that our doctrinal statements cover.
And their beliefs nearly always followed a literal understanding of Scripture on every subject. However, they never felt that a person had to understand most of these things correctly to be a true Christian. They never elevated such teachings to being essentials of the faith or something to build a church upon. Because the faith received from the apostles was so simple, we should question any new dogmas that go beyond the simple faith.
If a continuity of belief can't be traced back to AD 100, we can hardly claim that it's the historic faith. A God Who Doesn't Specialize in Theology. As I've said, second-century Christianity was truly a religion of the ordinary and unlearned. A Christian in that age could read and innocently talk about what he understood the Scriptures to be saying without fear of being hauled before the theological police for saying something he shouldn't have said.
The way the second-century children of the kingdom perceived God is aptly reflected in the words of the sixteenth-century writer and early Christian scholar, Richard Hooker. He said, "God is no nitpicking sophist, eager to trip us up whenever we say something amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say in error, and to make the most of what we say correctly." To the ears of many, this may sound very liberal, but the early Christians weren't liberal.
They were conservative. The apostles hadn't built up complicated theological systems, so the early Christians weren't going to do so either. The apostles hadn't written any theological tomes, so the second-century Christians didn't write any either. If the original gospel was simple enough for the uneducated to understand, so was the gospel in the second century. If someone innocently misunderstood a statement made by Jesus or his apostles, the second-century church simply brushed it off.
They figured that God would overlook what we may misunderstand in our human ignorance. The early Christians served a God whose grace and mercy cover unintentional theological errors. To be sure, there were theological boundaries in the early church. But the simple statement of belief we read earlier pretty well marked where those boundaries lay. The groups excluded by the early Christians, such as the Gnostics, went beyond those rather simple boundaries. What is heresy?
Today, the word heresy has come to mean an opinion at variance with orthodox theology. But that's not at all what the Greek word hairesis meant in New Testament times. It meant a faction or party, such as in Acts 5:17, where it speaks of the sect hairesis of the Sadducees. It's the same word Paul used in writing to the Corinthians.
"When you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it, for there must also be factions, heresies among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you." 1 Corinthians 11:18-19. The second-century Christians viewed a divisive or schismatic person very dimly, but they didn't condemn someone who innocently misunderstood a passage of Scripture. Being divisive constituted heresy in the original sense of the word. Making a theological error did not.
But just as the Christian theologians had changed the word doctrine to mean theology, they have also changed the word heresy to mean theological error. The early children of the kingdom placed little emphasis on defined dogma because they well understood that the essence of Christianity was not theology, but relationship. It's an obedient, love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ that produces genuine Christian fruit. It doesn't take much theology to enter into such a relationship with Christ.
And Christ, like his Father, is a gentle teacher who is ready to make the most of what we say correctly and to overlook the things we understand only dimly. The two great commandments on which the law and the prophets hung were not theology and religiosity, but loving God with our whole heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. The kingdom of God hangs on these same two commandments. The second-century church was by no means perfect, and neither was the first-century church.
But the second-century church was still a church populated primarily by children of the kingdom. Things began changing in the third century, yet it was still a decidedly kingdom-oriented church, a church that focused on fruit. Nevertheless, the third century did give birth to the first Christian who can truly be called a theologian.