The spread of Christianity

Contents

PAGE

Preface 5

The Christian Message in the Mediterranean World 7

Preface

Of the making of church histories there seems to be no end, nor of the discovery of new facts that have a bearing on the story. The only reason for a new text, in view of the adequate volumes that already exist, is the hope of winning the interest of a new group — in this case, pupils in the eleventh grade of the American school.

In writing for this group (which is generally found in the sophomore or junior years of the high school) no effort has been made to mention all the facts, or even all the names, that must be included in any complete record of the Christian enterprise. It is conceivable that some church historians, chancing on this book, might be overwhelmed by its omissions. To any such it can only be said that the omissions have been deliberate.

The attempt has been to throw into bold relief the significant developments in Christian history since the days of Constantine. Christianity as a growing power is the theme, with the hope that young Christians may find some pride in belonging to a body that, with all its long traditions, lives ever on the move. Likewise, the spread of Christianity has been presented, not as some unique phenomenon in a water-tight compartment of its own, but as an integral part of the movement of all history. The repetition of much that is included in the usual school course seems justified if this branch of history is to be seen in its proper frame.

In every case the publishers named in the footnotes

6 PREFACE

have generously granted permission to quote from the books mentioned.

The cooperation of the editors and publishers of the Abingdon Series of Week-Day Religious Education Texts is gratefully acknowledged.

Teachers of this course will find added material and suggested methods of approach and treatment in the Teacher's Manual soon to follow this text.

So the book goes forth, with all its shortcomings. May these not mar for any the challenge of the Christian adventure, hard-bound toward the establishment of a universal kingdom. For there is ever a place for any youth that would share in that high endeavor.

The Author.

Chapter I The Christian Message In The Mediterranean World

From its birth Christianity has prospered as it has traveled. The days of its missionary vigor have been the days of its greatest power. Ahnost the last authentic echo from the life of its Founder centers about the imperative "Go!" and it has seemed as though the destiny of the gospel were bound up with the degree of fidelity that the church has shown that command.

It is our purpose to trace the process by which Christianity developed from a small sect within the Jewish faith to a religion spread throughout the continents. We will not find a story of unimpeded advance. We will encounter defeats, retreats, and — what is perhaps worse — periods of self-centered stupor. But we will find, after twenty centuries, a vast body of believers and multiplying agencies, inspired by common ideals, owning allegiance to a common Lord, and moving ever toward distant horizons.

The Christian Message Enters the World

What is the Christian message? — Christianity has spread because it has brought men such a message as they have heard nowhere else. For that reason it is well for us to ask, as a foundation for our study, what the Christian message is.

It was first given form by Jesus, a member of the Hebrew tribe of Judah, who came from the town of Nazareth, preaching throughout Judasa during the early years of the Roman Empire. Jesus followed in the line of the Hebrew prophets, proclaiming the necessity for inner righteousness that should express itself in a life able to stand the most searching ethical tests. He found the impulse for such a life in the realization of the character of God, whom he spoke of as always actuated by motives of love and good will, and directly interested in the spiritual welfare of every human being. His conception of God was epitomized in the term by which he habitually spoke of the Deity, a term that has become characteristic of Christian devotion: "the heavenly Father."

Jesus taught that the heavenly Father is seeking a regenerated human society, to which he gives the name of "the kingdom of God," or "the kingdom of heaven," and conceived it as distinctively his mission to lead men into the understanding of God that he himself possessed, and so into membership in this kingdom. Such relationship with God, Jesus promised, would result in transformation of life, both inwardly and outwardly, and ultimately in transformation of all human society.

After a brief career as a teacher Jesus came into conflict with the conservative religious forces of his own nation. To some extent the universality of his outlook brought this to pass; to some extent his claim to possession of unique spiritual truth outside the bounds of the established church. The Roman administration of Palestine was induced to regard the teacher from Nazareth as a disturber of the pubhc order, and he was crucified.

The message of Jesus begins to spread. — The execution of Jesus was one more instance of the answer

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 9

that authority is generally moved to make to agitation. In this case, however, the application of force failed to put an end to the new ideas that had come out of Galilee, Declaring that they had knowledge that Jesus had risen from the dead, as an evidence of the truth of his teaching and the validity of his claim to be the Messiah (or, in Greek, the Christ), the group of followers who had formed about Jesus by the time of his death formed a band within the Jewish church marked by evangelistic fervor and philanthropic effort.

There must have been about a hundred in this group of original disciples, among whom the eleven who had been most intimately in association with Jesus naturally took the leadership. Among these apostles, as they are known to history, Peter stood out at the beginning by reason of the boldness of his preaching, which led to great additions to the community of believers at Pentecost and after.

Within a few months or years (it is difficult to determine the precise chronology of this portion of the story), this group had grown to such size, and had so disturbed the conservative elements within the Jewish Church by the radicalism of its teaching, that it was practically forced to separate places and forms of worship, and was subjected to persecution. This persecution drove out of Jerusalem many of the professed believers in Christ, and these, in the language of the New Testament, "went everywhere (through Palestine) preaching the word." Thus began the diffusion of the Christian message.

The first approach to the Gentile world. — Some of the more adventurous of these refugees from Jerusalem, or those who had relatives in the Jewish quarters of Gentile cities, pushed beyond the borders of Palestine.

lo THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

The first contact with this vast Gentile life came within Palestine itself, when a Roman centurion, already in some touch with the Jewish faith, received baptism at the hand of Peter. This apostle thus became the champion of the element that opposed the poUcy of restricting the Christian message to the Hebrews. Others followed his lead, and soon there were followers of Jesus banded together in many of the great cities of Asia Minor. Of these the most important was Antioch, the great trade center of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Here a remarkable group was gathered in the infant church, and here the necessity for some distinguishing name first resulted in the application of the term "Christian."

These Christians in Antioch were largely Jews who possessed the cultural advantages of that Greek civilization that had been so determinedly repulsed from Palestine. They felt the urge of all the lands bordering the Mediterranean, and it was not long before two of their leaders had been sent to bear the Christian message to their brethren in the other cities of the Dispersion.

Paul takes the gospel to Rome.— The larger part of the book of Acts deals with the labors of the greater of these two Antiochan missionaries. This was Saul, a native of Tarsus, who soon, in his wanderings about the Roman world, became known as Paul.

Paul combined with a thorough grounding in Jewish theology the outlook of a Roman citizen and the culture of a home in a Greek city. As a result, when he turned to Christianity he was fitted to give the new faith its first formulated doctrine, and to respond to the inherent internationalism of the teaching of Jesus.

So it was that, from the day when he left Antioch

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE ii

upon the first of his three great missionary journeys, Paul felt the call of his world so compellingly that before he suffered martyrdom he had seen the Christian message carried to the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, to the leading cities of Greece, to islands such as Cyprus and Crete, to imperial Rome and minor cities of Italy, and perhaps even to Spain.

At the beginning of his ministry Paul confined his labors to the Jews found in the cities he visited. These provided a natural constituency in which to preach of one who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. But when the Jews refused to accept his gospel, Paul did not hesitate to extend his invitation to the Gentiles.

After a brief but intense struggle he won the church to support of his position. When he died he left Christianity planted in the capital of the world of that day, and committed to a pohcy of universalism. So influential, in fact, had he been in rescuing the new faith from the parochiahsm threatened by its Jewish antecedents, that some have claimed that Paul, rather than Jesus, should be regarded as the founder.

The Struggle for the Mediterranean

In the early Christian writings that form the New Testament, frequent references will be found to the proposed extension of the gospel throughout "the world." It is doubtful if the first-century writers employed that term in the same sense in which it would be used to-day. Geography was a very restricted science in those days. In fact, compared with our present geographical knowledge, it remained restricted for fifteen hundred years after the days of Saint Paul.

The world of the early Christians. — The world that the New Testament writers knew, and of which they thought when they employed the term, was practically coextensive with the Roman Empire. The first phase of Christian history, therefore, consisted of the effort to evangehze this world. As wiU be seen by a glance at any map, the Roman Empire was composed largely of the lands that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. To be sure, the imperial eagles were carried to Gaul, Germany, and Britain. But control in these provinces was always disputed. Roman civilization really gripped only the lands about the Mediterranean.

The story of the first three hundred years of Christianity concerned the penetration of these lands by the gospel. It has been told in detail in another volume in this series.^ Here it is sufficient to say that the campaign Saint Paul launched continued with increasing power, despite severe repressive measures, until Constantine, the greatest of the emperors to make his capital in the city named after him, Constantinople, placed the sign of the cross upon his imperial banners and gave Christianity legal standing as a permitted, and even favored, religion.

On his death-bed, Constantine was baptized. The year 313 is generally remembered as the year in which Christianity won its struggle for dominance in the Roman Empire, for it was in that year that the Edict of Milan, granting toleration, was signed.

Early Christian worship. — When Justin Martyr wrote his Apology, in the middle of the second century, Christian worship as he described it was a very simple thing: "On Sunday a meeting is held of all who live in the cities and villages, and a section is read from the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets, as long as the time per-

'See The Early Days of Christianity, The Abingdon Press, by Frederick C. Grant.

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mits. When the reading has finished, the president, in a discourse (or homily) gives the admonition and exhortation to imitate these noble things. After this we all arise and offer a common prayer. At the close of the prayer, as we have before described, bread and wine and water are brought. The president offers prayer and thanks for them according to his ability, and the congregation answers, 'Amen.' Then the consecrated elements are distributed to each one and partaken of, and are carried by the deacons to the houses of the absent. The wealthy and the willing then give contributions according to their free will; and this collection is deposited with the president, who therewith supplies orphans and widows, the poor and needy, prisoners and strangers, and takes care of all who are in want."

The development of a church organization. — While the Christian message was thus sweeping around the Mediterranean, and even penetrating into Mesopotamia, Persia, Media, Parthia, Bactria, and Britain, the church itself was developing from the group of single-minded enthusiasts, with a simple, direct form of worship, to a complex organization, with symbolic and sometimes even secret rites. In part this came from a desire to protect the precious elements in the Christian faith from unworthy outside influences; in part it was the effect of those influences, particularly of the elaborate rituals of worship that marked the many mystery religions then competing for prominence in the Roman world.

Various views have been advanced as to the precise manner in which this development from the simplicity of apostolic days to the intricacies of the established church of Constantine's empire took place. It is sufficient for our purpose to remember that "very early in their existence the churches required for their spiritual life certain officers. Thus overseers and teachers were needed at once and they appeared as bishops, or presbyters, or pastors. The care of the poor and the proper distribution of alms led to the appointment of deacons. Very soon, therefore, the two great offices of the early church — the pastorate and the diaconate — were fixed. . . . The very ablest became the leader among his equals, and gradually combined several functions in himself, and if his ability sustained him, he became the chief source of power and influence in the community. . . .

"Towns became centers varying in their influence according to their size, the degree of their culture, their historical position, and their geographical situation. Questions too difficult or of too general interest to be settled by local communities were carried up to synods composed of representatives of all the communities, and usually the ablest man presided at the sessions of the synod. In the course of this process gradually and naturally each member seemed to fall into his proper place. The clergy and laity are separated, and ecclesiastical orders arise. "^

By the reign of Constantine this development had reached the point where the chief pastors of the churches in important cities were regarded as bishops, where the bishops in such cities as Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome had won recognition as archbishops, or metropolitans, and where an extended and standardized form of worship and church life had won acceptance.

A lofty claim. — What, then, was the condition of the Christian Church at the beginning of our period of

1 Moncrief : A Short History of the Christian Church, F. H. Revell Co., pp. 49, 70.

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 15

study? Justin could claim that "There is not a single j race of human beings, barbarians, Greeks, or whatever I name you please to call them, nomads or vagrants, or herdsmen living in tents, where prayers in the name of Jesus the crucified are not offered up." We know within what narrow geographical limits the early Christian writers were thinking when they made such statements, but it is clear that by the opening of the fourth century, Christianity had spread from an inconsiderable group of enthusiasts within the Jewish religion to a highly organized system of worship and doctrine that had penetrated throughout the Roman Empire, and could even require the approval of Constantine on the throne.

1. From what other religion did Christianity emerge, and what were its points of likeness to the parent faith?

2. What, in the minds of his fellow countrymen, was regarded as new in the teaching of Jesus?

3. What evidences can be shown of the statesmanship of Saint Paul?

4. Was the spread of Christianity hastened or delayed by the presence of Jewish communities in the cities of the Roman Empire? by the strong government of Rome? by the widespread use of Greek?

5. To what extent had Christianity conquered the world by the opening of the fourth century?

6. What was the worship and organization of the Christian Church like in the days of Constantine?

Chapter II Christianity Faces The Danger Of Success

"Nothing succeeds like success!" quotes one man. "Perhaps; but nothing is as dangerous as success," maintains another, with a clearer view of the lessons of history.

With the signing of the imperial edict granting toleration, Christianity entered upon a new phase. Gone were the days when meetings had to be held in secret places; gone was the menace of persecution and martyrdom. But in place of those dangers there arose others, more subtle, yet more destructive. Christianity was struggling with these inner perils all through the fourth century.

Christianity a Favored Religion

Constantine the Christian.— Although Constantine granted the Christian Church full rights in 313, and became a candidate for membership in the church about the time he founded his capital at Constantinople, he was not actually baptized until the year of his death, 337. However, Christianity was clearly the favored religion of the court throughout his reign. Although he retained the title of pontifex maximus, or high priest of the old pagan worship of Rome, Constantine allowed only Christian worship at Constantinople and built many churches in various parts of his empire. Also, as we shall see, he frequently exercised the imperial powers within the affairs of the church.

THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 17

Why did Constantinc thus favor Christianity, breaking with the pohcy of all the emperors who had gone before him? The story of his battle at the Milvian Bridge, when he adopted the sign of the cross, is famiMar.^ But why was he ready to adopt that sign?

We discover the answer to that question when we remember that Constantine came from the extreme western part of the Roman Empire to the rule of the whole. He felt that Rome was too far from the center to make a proper capital, and so built a new imperial city where Europe and Asia met. He felt the pressure being exerted upon the empire from without by barbarian tribes, and he saw the disintegration that soft living and loose thinking were bringing within. He realized that some unifying principle must be found if this huge empire was to be held together much longer, and that this principle must be moral if it was to purge the life of his realm of its inner rottenness. For this reason he embraced the religion that had shown its power to mold lives in every part of the empire. Constantine's conversion, if such it can be called, was a piece of statesmanship of the highest order.

Baptized pagans.— The effect of the Emperor's conversion was seen immediately throughout the empire. For one thing, it became fashionable to be a Christian. Baptism became, not the outward sign of an inner spiritual experience, but a means to imperial favor. Thousands rushed to enter the Christian fold.

Probably there were bishops and presbyters who saw in this great ingathering the fulfillment of early Christian prophecies of a time when the worship of Jesus should be universal. If they had not been dazzled by appearances, they would have been frightened

'See, for example, SchafE's History of the Christian Church, ii, 2o5.

rather than have rejoiced. For these new church members were only so many baptized pagans, who brought with them to the fellowship of the church all their old debauchery, worldliness, and an utter lack of any appreciation of the meaning of the message or life of Jesus. Far from being a blessing, the addition of these unspiritualized thousands must be regarded as a major cause of the stagnation that settled upon the church, and remained during the centuries we know as the Dark Ages.

The Church as a Political Instrument

The "catholic" church idea favored. — Constantine, as we have seen, saw in Christianity a unifying force to tie his scattered realms together. But this required that the church itself be a unit. And the Emperor had not gone far in his relations with the new religion before he found that this was far from the case.

It is not our purpose here to go into the details of the struggles over doctrinal points that were to furnish so much of the history of the church during ensuing centuries. Our course is concerned with the spread of Christianity, and Christianity has done little spreading while all its energies have been devoted to theological disputations. But we can see, here in the reign of Constantine, the beginning of the struggle between "catholic" and "heretic" that was to result in wars, exiles, and executions, and the branching out of Christian truth (and sometimes error) in unexpected ways and to unexpected places.

The idea of a "catholic" church came to the fore as Christianity pressed toward power in the third century. The name, which means all-embracing, defines the theory. It was precisely such a conception as

THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 19

Constantine was seeking. It meant to bind all congregations in all lands into one body, acknowledging the authority of one statement of truth, and excluding from the fellowship and privileges of true Christians all who might, in any detail, differ from this statement.

The Emperor was quick to make these privileges of the "catholic" church worth considering. For not only were great churches built and the basilicas (buildings something akin to a courthouse) of the Roman cities turned over to the Christian congregations, but the clergy were exempted from certain taxes, were permitted to receive bequests, were given certain judicial powers, and were licensed to harry to the point of death any heretics who taught in disagreement to the accepted, or orthodox, doctrine.

Catholic versus heretic. — It is interesting to see how Constantine, in his effort to weld the empire through a catholic church, brought on the first clear-cut division between orthodoxy and heresy. About the year 320 reports were brought to the Emperor of an uproar that was being fomented in and about the city of Alexandria by a dispute between the bishop Alexander and one of the clergy, Anus. Alexander found a champion in a young priest, Athanasius, and he waged wordy warfare for years with Arius over the question as to whether the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity were identical in nature, or whether the Father had created the Son, thus making the latter subordinate to the former. It was really, as can be seen, a struggle to define the place of Jesus in Christian thinking, and the controversy soon raged throughout all the eastern half of the empire.

Constantine was no theologian. He did not sense the gravity of the issues at stake. It seemed to him

20 THE SPREAD OR CHRISTIANITY

that a word from the throne ought to be sufficient to stop all this uproar, and accordingly he wrote Bishop Alexander as follows: "There is a new discord. And there is no real ground for it. The subjects in dispute are trivial. I offer myself as an arbiter. ... It is a pity that the question was ever raised. No Christianity requires the investigation of such subjects; they arise from the disputatious cavils of ill-employed leisure. Few can understand these difficult matters in which there ought to be mutual tolerance. In reality you are agreed. Return to your former charity and restore to me my quiet days and tranquil nights, or you will force me to weep and to despair of any personal peace."^

A Christian creed adopted. — Unfortunately for Constantine's sleep, it took more than an imperial letter to end this debate. A church gathering in Alexandria condemned Arius, and denied him the right to preach his doctrines in the churches. So he took to the open air, set his ideas to music, and soon had the streets and markets resounding with popular songs setting forth his position.

Finally Constantine determined to end it all by gathering the bishops of the church in a general council that was held at Nicea, about twenty-five miles from his capital. We cannot describe this gathering in detail, although it must have been one of the most remarkable in Christian history. An early Christian historian, Eusebius, tells how the three hundred and eighteen bishops, all but ten of whom were from the eastern part of the empire, came with their attendants as fast as they could run, in a frenzy of excitement and enthusiasm. And another sketches them: ''The old and the young, the learned and the unlearned —

>From Socrates, Ecclesiaslical History, quoted by Moncrief, op. cit.

THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 21

from city, from forest and from caves in the mountains. Many of them came bearing the marks of Diocletian's persecution, with eyeless sockets, scarred faces, twisted and withered limbs, and paralyzed hands. "^

Under the presidency of an emperor who was not yet even a baptized Christian, and certainly knew but little of the issues at stake, this gathering proceeded, after long debate, to condemn the Arian position, and to draw up the first generally accepted Christian creed.

Not as a complete or final statement of Christian teaching, but as a first attempt at such a statement, it is interesting to study what those three hundred and eighteen bishops of the fourth century (some of them with mental reservations) signed as embodying their creed :

We believe in one God the Father, Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, who for us men and our salvation, came down and was incarnate, and became man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended to heaven and will come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Ghost.

Those who say that there was when He was not, and that He was made from things that are not or from another substance or nature, saying that the Son of God is changed or changeable, the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church anathematizes.

Christianity Outside the Roman Empire

Missionary effort by heretics. — One unexpected result of this Council of Nicea, which placed the curse

'Moncrief, Op. cit., p. 134.

of the orthodox church on the followers of Anus, was the beginning of missionary work among the barbarian tribes of central and northern Europe who were so soon to overwhelm the western part of the Roman Empire.

Thrust out of the churches where the authority of the Emperor was supreme, the Arians went preaching along the northern shores of the Black Sea, where some were captured by Goths. These, under the leadership of a missionary named Ulfilas, were converted to an Arian form of Christianity, and later from the Goths the gospel, in this form, spread to the Vandals. So it happened that when these peoples swept down over the cities of Italy, they came not as utter barbarians, but as Christians, the shortcomings of whose practice was probably of less detriment to their faith than the degenerate supineness of the Christians they conquered.

Before the end of the fifth century Christianity had reached the Franks, that race destined to decide the fate of Europe. But it was Catholic Christianity that won the Franks, and so, finally, overcame the Arian influence among Goths and Vandals.

The last effort of paganism. — We cannot close this chapter without mentioning the Emperor Juhan, and his futile attempt to revive the old worships. Julian was a nephew of Constantine, who came to the throne in 361, after the sons of Constantine had made a failure of their attempts at rule. A man of high character, Julian was disgusted at the hypocrisy he saw in those who crowded into the Christian Church when it obtained imperial favor. He repressed the churches and Christian clergy, and did what he could to restore the pagan temples and philosophy.

THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 23

Had Julian lived, he probably would have further purified the church by another great persecution. But he fell in battle two years after ascending the throne. Perhaps he realized, before he died, the futility of his efforts to destroy the march of the church to power. At any rate, tradition represents him as crying out at the moment of his death, "Thou hast conquered, O GaUlaean!"

1. In what way was the conversion of Constantine a good thing for the cause of Christianity? In what way did it work harm?

2. Why did Constantine hope to find help in solidifying his empire in Christianity?

3. Has heresy helped or hindered Christian advance?