The Apostolic Fathers, Persecution, and Apologetics

Grace Reformation Bible Church

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Amen well I'm glad you all persevered and as we now come back to this book

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Nicholas Needham here and we're in chapter 3 of our church history study and of course we're looking at the way to Nicaea right 2 ,000 years of Christ's power but we're only going about halfway through this book that's my fault there we go all right

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I will try not to move we're only going about eight chapters forward really to the

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Council of Nicaea so this is the way to Nicaea but a part of that is to really help us understand the flow and the context that leads us to the

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Council of Nicaea and of course when we come to October and wrap up this study we'll be arriving at the Bolton conference and be able to attend that and learn even more about the

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Council of Nicaea itself so tonight we're looking at chapter 3 which is on the apostolic fathers and within that we're going to be looking at the church as well as the persecution of the church as well as apologetics

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I might call on some people depending on how big or small the text is to read and then

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I'll try to carve out a little bit of time for discussion or Q &A toward the end so let's begin here

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Nicholas Needham writes historians and theologians often refer to the early centuries as the patristic age that Greek and Latin term pater father the age of the fathers we speak of the church fathers but here we're talking not about the church fathers we're talking about the the fathers of the church fathers that is the apostolic fathers and he defines that as the first generation of early church fathers so we have

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Clement of Rome here very early figure we have his letter to the church at Corinth which we'll read a piece of in a moment it's important that you understand and this is frustrating to me when

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I when I do some searching in Clement that a figure we have a lot more writings from is

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Clement of Alexandria and once you find something where Clement of Alexandria is being discussed they just call them

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Clements so when you're Google searching Clement do you have to know which Clements are you reading about and Clement of Alexandria is is later

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Clement of Rome is one of the earlier apostolic fathers we have Ignatius of Antioch we'll be looking at him

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Papias we have very important fragments and textual scholars love debating and talking about Papias we're not going to really dive into him at all

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Polycarpo Smyrna we we don't have any time or attention for him but his martyrdom account is very famous and he's the one who said 86 years

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I've served my master and he has not done me wrong as he gave his life in service of the faith well before we get to some of those figures let's look at some of the writings where the figures are anonymous the second century the the the 100s was a period where Christians were writing and circulating an incredible amount a credible amount of literature we have a few things that Needham points out we have the letter of Barnabas and here he says it shows us how quickly events of the church had severed off events had caused the church to sever off itself from its

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Jewish roots and this is really important we're talking a little bit about this at the Saturday morning yesterday we have to understand that Christianity and Judaism essentially are parting ways as we break ground into the first and second century and and that is a very important aspect of the turmoil of the early church and so we read for most

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Christians and the letter of Barnabas reflects this the epistle of Barnabas the Jews now simply meant those who had crucified

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Christ and continued to reject him a lost blind people this attitude produced among many Christians a mindless hostility to Jews but we should also note there was a lot of Jewish hostility toward Christians the

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Romans seemed to allow Christianity to be seen as a Jewish sect until it had become so pronounced that it could no longer be seen as a sect of Judaism it was its own thing entirely a lot of this is taking place as we head into the second century we have a book like the did okay did okay is

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Greek for teaching it's the oldest handbook we have of how churches are working out matters of order originating from Syria the full title he gives it's divided into two parts notice part one concerns doctrine that is given to Christians based on the difference between the way of life and the way of death two ways to live that structure sounds a lot like how the

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Psalms are written of the Proverbs major themes and emphases on but but how one is to live this we were talking about this yesterday this is very distinctive here's

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Christianity and it's a faith it's a religion and that term is very difficult to grasp and what it would have meant or how it would have come across in this time

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Roman religion was a matter of rights it was a matter of rituals a matter of priestcraft ethics the way one lives that was for philosophers as we'll see at the very end this evening a lot of the apologists those who were making a defense of the faith were actually philosophers that were converted to the faith but from the very beginning largely because we are now seeing our faith come to its fullness holding together

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God's revealed word in both Old and New Testament we have a whole way of live of living a way of life and a way of death so Christians were very concerned about ethics this was not a religion of empty ritual this was a religion that was comprehensive moving forward now let's talk about some figures we have polycarp 80 70 to 160 a bishop of the church in Smyrna Asia Minor being a very important site even at the end of the first century

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Asia Minor is it's a very important place that Christianity takes root in his martyrdom account is one of the most famous he writes this letter this epistle to the church at Philippi and Needham says this letter is largely made up of quotations from the

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New Testament and his main concerns are he's concerned to preserve and protect what the

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Apostles have laid down you get the sense that the the faith once for all delivered is now being transmitted preserved circulated it's now being opened up and spread and church leaders are very concerned about the influence of heresy and we have one he named two heresies in chapter three we have the heresy of Dostatism if you kids are wondering about quiz questions that might be one of those pop quiz questions

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Dostatism was a an early heresy that argued Jesus Christ was not really human he only seemed to be human it's the word to ko in Greek seemed to be appeared to be and so you're starting to see even as we can't come into the early part of the church in the 100s you already have heresies that will take several centuries to actually crystallize and draw some of these fathers into creedal statements about the nature of Christ what it means that he was both divine and human so again we're gonna be paying attention more on these heresies next week the next chapter chapter 4 is largely devoted to heresies early heresies but you need to see these things are evident even in the

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New Testament itself as we as soon as the truth comes along we see a lot of errors being spread to Paul combats that John combats that and and of course these apostolic fathers are combating that as well we have the letter to Diognetus I don't know who that is it's anonymous letter it's even hard to date but here as we'll see with a lot of the apologists that the whole aim is to show the superiority of Christianity and part of that is everyone's going what is

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Christianity how do we make sense of this is it a religion in what we mean by religion not quite is it a philosophy in what we mean to be a philosophy no not quite is it a superstition it's a mystery is it a cult what what is

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Christianity and really this is where Christians are now seen as their own group there they have their own self -awareness and self -identity some

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Christians understood themselves to be a third race and they were spoken of that they're not Jews they're not

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Romans they're this third race of men and a lot of the defense and evangelization is showing we had and we now have what the philosophers were always striving after what the

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Jews could only understand in part we are preaching foolishness to the Greek foolishness to the

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Greeks a stumbling block to the Jews but this is the truth this is the truth so here's

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I'm gonna have someone read this is a excerpt from first Clement Clement's letter to the church at Corinth the context that Needham gives is this church at Corinth and we're talking about a few generations away from Paul when he was writing and ministering to the church at Corinth the whole letter is framed by an issue that's taken place a younger generation of men has struggled with the elders that had been established at Corinth and they deposed them and so Clement being an elder at the

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Church of Rome is writing and making his appeal for the Church of Corinth to actually address this situation rightly that the the deposition was wrong that the cause was not just and and this younger generation ought to submit themselves fully to this older generation of elders and he actually calls upon the church to take up the letter that Paul wrote to them which would have been 1st

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Corinthians and then he quotes from 1st Corinthians 13 and he begins to praise love and show the importance of love just as Paul had done that when the church at Corinth in his day was being pulled apart by factions and by strife so we have someone that would be willing whoever has good enough sight to read that to read for us the words of Clement of Rome all right go for it who can describe the bond of God's love what human being what human being can rightly tell the excellence of his beauty the height to which love exalts us is beyond our speech love unites us with God love covers a multitude of sins love bears all things love is long -suffering in all things there is nothing corrupt or arrogant in love love allows no schisms it gives no rise to no additions but does all things in harmony love is what makes all the elect of God perfect without love nothing is well pleasing to God in love the

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Lord has taken us to himself it was because of his love for us that Jesus Christ our

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Lord gave his blood for us by the will of God his flesh for our flesh his soul for our souls you see my beloved how great and wonderful a thing is love no one can declare it's perfection who can find anyone who is fit to dwell in love except those to whom

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God has granted such fitness let us therefore pray and beg of God's mercy that we may live blameless in love free from all human parties that prefer one person above another the thing that I find really striking is for someone who can wax eloquent about love he doesn't look very happy right he looks kind of dour one of the things you'll notice about early

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Christian art and this carries well into the Middle Ages is they they tend to have a very serene way of doing portraiture and so what you'll see is in a lot of images of martyrs or people being killed they all look like they're just like they have a case of the

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Mondays they're just kind of staring and looking rather dour and there's like spears and swords running through them and part of that is they're trying to give an overall presentation of that person rather than capture a moment and I I don't know what that is he's throwing up gang signs or something but you get you get the you get the sense here right

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Christians even centuries later were making images of some of these apostolic fathers and as we'll see as we get to the martyrs and the persecutors they were also adorning and replicating images of some of the martyrs that these were the heroes of the faith if you come to my study in our home

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I have a couple images of Spurgeon and of Calvin well if I lived 2 ,000 years ago

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I might have this on my wall instead of you know that the Baptist Prince of Preachers or or so on so we all tend to do this we we look back and we we have these great heroes we have the faith of our fathers we have that Hebrews 11 gallery and these things encourage us and they say you know

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I want to rise to the occasion I want to be as faithful as these men and women of old have been so there's an example of an apostolic father he is an elder at a church in Rome and he's addressing a situation at the church at Corinth and he's encouraging them across many many many chapters filled with a lot of doctrine and apostolic teaching and ultimately he's getting to the point of this situation needs to be worked out so that what

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Paul had wrote can be realized in the very church he wrote it to let's look at Ignatius of Antioch you kids paying attention for pop quiz

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Ignatius of Antioch was the one that wrote seven letters on his way to his death and you get a sense of for as strange as early

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Christianity can seem to us there's something very familiar and I think that's something

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I hope you see every time we gather is that on the one hand when we look at things from antiquity it seems so different from how we view things how we do things what our lives are like why did they do that why was that so important to them but when it comes to the things that they write when we when it comes to the things that they pray we realize that there really is a faith once for all delivered and you'll see the things that were very important to them largely overlap with the things that are very important to us and so we we sometimes go back to history to find all the differences what

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I would like to do is help us to see how vibrant the similarities are and to me that's evidence that the

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Spirit is always leading his people into truth always preserving his lampstand so maybe

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I'll have two different well actually just one reader and I'll read the Hagen quote here but this is an excerpt from the letter to the

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Ephesians that Ignatius of Antioch wrote and again the point here is here's the theology we talked about this this morning at the at the sermon this is not just a empty sentiment this theology is going to make a practical difference in Ignatius's life he's not just saying these things because he's been taught them he holds these things to be true and it makes a difference for him all right so let's look at the theology here and then look at the outcome to follow who wants to read that top quote here for us of Ignatius oh sorry that moves my knee okay

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God hid the virginity of Mary the birth of her child and the death of the

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Lord from the understanding of the prince of this world these two mysteries which God brought about in his quietness we must now proclaim with a shout the ancient kingdom of Satan was overthrown for God was manifested in human form to bring newness of eternal life then what

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God had perfected in his purpose he began to carry out and it stirred the whole universe because God was undertaking the destruction of death so you notice how he's talking about life and death what are the did a

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K point out a way of life a way of death what are all people in the ancient world surrounded by that we in our modern world really aren't death at every turn death surprisingly you know we think even all the people that we've prayed for recently that have had procedures and operations if you were living 2 ,000 years ago you didn't have those procedures and operations in fact health care was something that Christians brought into the world at least that the formal nature of going to a hospital that's a that's a

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Christian invention but you notice what's really important to him it's that it's the storyline it's the aspects of our faith the the virgin birth of Christ the fact that this

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Lord is the Lord of life and because of his death now has power over death itself he has destroyed the destroyer he has destroyed death this veil that covered over every people he was manifest in the flesh to bring a newness of life that could not come about in any other way and now the things that were veiled for so long that philosophers and all the priest craft of antiquity had ever longed to look into now it's been revealed it's no longer veiled and so what had remained hidden we are now to shout that's

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Ignatius Michael Aitken says in the seven letters that he wrote it's really one of the richest windows we have into early

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Christianity of this era and there's really three central things that come through these seven letters first the concern he has for the unity of the local church he writes to local churches and then he also has a letter he writes to polycarp and his concern in all of them is for the unity of the church just like all the

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Apostles writing letters to churches one of their main concerns is the unity of the church and secondly he's very concerned that the church will be unified against heresy that they will know the doctrines of the faith and be able to stand against all the false ways and false professors that come along her as the hymn says false sons in her pale and then thirdly and perhaps this is the most fascinating when he wrote these letters to the churches he was very concerned that they would not interfere in his martyrdom don't don't ruin this for me is essentially what he's saying now that's very striking to us who would like to read this is a letter he wrote to the church at Rome and here he makes his plea

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I know that you want to love me and I know you want to go and make an appeal on my behalf and I know that you want to show that I'm just and I have done nothing wrong and and if you do that if you love me in that way you're actually injuring me remember what we read about the

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Lord of life who has power over the grave who wants to read this for us okay that's theology turned into a whole way of life right and these leaders were very cognizant how we conduct our faith in these ways will either bring others in the train of Christ to live out their faith with the same cost with the with the same holy calling or it will help them to shrink back right if you if you are going to be a bishop and we're going to talk about the difference between elder and bishop and how that came about but if you were a bishop for certain periods maybe not so much in the second century but certainly as we head into the third it was almost a death sentence it was like John Calvin when he created his

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Academy to train pastors that were coming as refugees out of places like France and upon their graduation they were basically saying see you in glory like we're sending you back to France now will you where you will be killed burnt at the stake you've come so that you can go you've joined so that you can be taken away and it's that same idea that the the blood of the martyrs truly was the seed of the church and so Ignatius went to Rome and as he was brought into the arena under the

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Emperor Trajan who will see at the very end of this evening he was torn apart by wild beasts all the way down to the bones at the at the great applause of 87 ,000 spectators and that was the end of Ignatius of Antioch there's four important areas of Christian development in this period

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Needham goes into this we're not going to touch fully on them but a few things that are maybe worth bearing out so the four things that are really developing and coming to the fore in the second century are church organization now the church is bursting out of Jerusalem and out of the city centers where it had planted under the

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Apostles and as it's beginning to spread and burgeon leaders are of very different capabilities and length so church organization church structure certain pressures and needs that force

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I think a certain structure of hierarchy for the sake of survival and self -identification church teaching the apostolic witness the things of the faith that have to prevail against heresy we're gonna largely look at that in two weeks time church worship we have very few sources of what did it look like to have a

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Christian worship service the one thing we can be sure of is it didn't look like sitting on a metal folding chair with a

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Trinity blue hymnal and you know goldfish and board books and listening to in our sermon these these things have taken some time to develop so how did her did early

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Christians worship and then lastly the relationship between early Christianity and society so first let's start with church organization you have this this let me give credit where I it needs to be do

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I I've asked Dan Hume to be my illustrator for these slides and I find him to be quite talented with AI art so and he did five really good ones and so I in the next week

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I think we'll even aim for more but we'll try to stay focused and not not just go for the sake of some good

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AI art okay we talked about the ideas in the New Testament itself the word that we translate

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Bishop in the Greek is Episcopal it simply it simply means overseer all right so you've heard of the

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Episcopal Church Episcopalian Church or sometimes a group of authority is called the Episcopate it's all coming out of this

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Greek language of an overseer so that term is used in in the New Testament in the original it's it's written it's barely ever translated

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Bishop because that would be reading later terminology into the original source but you find that it's also used alongside the

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Greek term presbyteros you have other terms related to shepherd or pastor but essentially these terms are all being used synonymously in the

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New Testament an overseer is an elder and elder is an overseer and elder and overseer are shepherds this is all part of synonymous language as as Needham points out in the

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New Testament itself the word bishop and presbyter do not refer to two distinct offices it's one in the same they're simply different names for the same office and they're used interchangeably in the

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New Testament even when we get to the letter of Clement written a generation and a half or so at the earliest after Paul was ministering we find that he's still using this language interchangeably this language of presbyter or bishop overseer by the time we get a little bit later and this really depends on geographical locale you get the sense that churches are beginning to actually use these terms distinctly and that may be still in the same church but it's giving a certain weight you could almost say a pastor is a pastor a path is a pastor but for some churches in some traditions you maybe have a senior pastor over a what's what would be the opposite of that associate pastor there you go

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I was looking for that word we don't use junior because that's almost belittling you say hey junior pastor it's like JV pastor but you have you have the sense that pretty early on you start to distinguish this now remember as Christianity is spreading and new people are coming to the faith let me let me use this as an example if if someone had been an atheist for the past 30 years of their life and they had

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I mean classic atheist you know fedora watching five hours of YouTube debates you know like classic atheist and then they become converted they hear that one electric

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Paul Washer sermon and they're like that's it I'm a Christian and they come to church and they've been a

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Christian for about a year would you raise your hand and say there's my elder let's vote him in next week you probably say what you've only been a

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Christian for a year let's slow down when Paul is a missionary he's saying no one should be an elder before one or two years part of that it's because no one's even a

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Christian the oldest Christian you might have in your church might be the year olds Christian so that there's your elder the spirits doing some overtime work the

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Apostles are some pretty heavy lifters but you can imagine that as the church begins to spread and as we move away from the apostolic foundation now so what is really just several successive stories of the faith being built out and spread out that you have some that come to the faith that have to rely on the wisdom and the help of those that have been established in the faith for a long time those that are seasoned those that perhaps are more formally educated those that have access to better resources and writings those that are better networked as you get the sense that on the farther reaches you have those that are are really functioning like elders of elders we don't have access to the end what do we do in this scenario what are the scriptures say and that may happen in the in the specifics of a local church itself where you could have perhaps coming out of that synagogue structure that need a mention the precedent the ruler of the synagogue the the primus inter

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Paris the first among equals but you can see how pretty soon this hierarchical structure emerges where now you have a bishop over other elders the

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New Testament uses this language in the same way but around the first into the second century you have this hierarchical structure and that changes the way that the church understands itself understands its authority structure this is something that gets taken to the woodshed during the

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Protestant Reformation as you see what that hierarchical structure became through the Middle Ages and we coming out of the

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Reformation going back to Scripture under understands ourselves as as having a congregational polity in part because we believe the bishop is not the head of the church the bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction here

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Jesus Christ is the head of his church and we follow the New Testament and saying every elder is a bishop every bishop is an elder every elder and bishop is a pastor okay let's go to church worship we have this from Justin Martyr who will come we'll bring him at the very end he describes in his first apology at least one typical experience of how

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Christians may have worshipped in Rome that he was aware of all right we should not say that this was the form that all

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Christians undertook but he's trying to point to the things that are common among all Christians as far as gathered corporate worship who would like to read for us the words of Justin Martyr all right on the day called

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Sunday there is a meeting of all believers who live in the town or the country in the memoirs in the memoirs of the

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Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read for as long as time will permit that's my favorite part as long as when the reader is finished the president in a sermon urges and invites the people to face their lives of these noble things and we all stand up and offer prayers then our prayer when our prayer is concluded bread and wine and water are brought and the president offers up prayers and thanksgivings to the best of his ability and the people assent with amen then follows the distribution of the things over which thanks had been offered and the partaking of them by all and the deacons take them to those who are absent we hold our communion we hold our common assembly on Sunday because it is the first day on which

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God put to flight darkness and chaos and made the world and on the same day

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Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead so again a lot of differences but a lot of similarities as Needham says from Justin's account we learned the main ingredients of Christian worship in the second century are the reading and expounding of Scripture that's what he meant by the memoirs of the

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Apostles prayer and celebration of the Lord's Supper and our practice happens to be this way but many churches today don't practice in this way the

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Lord's Supper held a remarkably high place and unfortunately it became higher than it ever should have been heading toward the

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Reformation but the local church celebrated it every Sunday and it formed a large part of the service now here's an interesting note from Needham singing which for many modern

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Christians is such a central part of worship was not so important in the early church in fact doesn't

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Justin doesn't mention it here at all there's actually some interesting writings on what did congregational singing look like where did it emerge from we do have some examples from antiquity of attempts at ancient notation of how do you sing notes in a way that a cantor or someone could lead the gathered assembly into music and you could all sing melodies wherever you went that were very similar modern

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Western readers should also note as Tony alluded to standing throughout worship was the traditional practice in the early church period and for centuries after I'm very thankful we don't do that I would get eggs and tomatoes thrown at me

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I have a feeling the most important part as Nita mentions is the standing for prayer we we think of prayer as a time to sit close our eyes kind of draw into ourselves but in antiquity and not just to Christians you had your arms outspread and you were looking up to the

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Lord you were speaking to him up up above you with your eyes open that was a posture of prayer and anyone else who was praying with you would be standing in that way so again very interesting how things change over time and in certain forms of practices change over time if if we go into a church or maybe if you come alongside a

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Christian maybe if I meet one of you for coffee and I say well why don't we pray before the breakfast comes you know that's good we we know what to do right fold your hands bow your head try not to open your eyes you might peek around when the waitress comes all right you probably wouldn't want to go out with me if we go to a breakfast center and say let's pray and I stand up and I go

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Oh Lord and everyone in the cafe is like is he gonna shoot up the place what's going on right but this is this is true of all ancient cultures including

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Christianity an important point which doesn't come out so clearly need him rights from Justin is the service of worship was divided into two parts the first part known as the service of the word he mentioned singing here which is but you didn't say singing but if there was singing singing would have been there the reading of the word that the message and we have very early on examples of sermons and commentaries on Scripture and this was open to baptized believers you had baptized believers you had those that were on their way toward baptism in the early church that were at least in a certain point of that history called catechumen those that were being instructed and catechized in the things of the faith and then you had those that were curious they were outsiders if there was no persecution there would be a little more freedom to have outsiders come and go in times of persecution early church gatherings were far more secretive and so the those were those who were receiving instruction in the

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Christian faith the catechumens probably also those were simply curious about Christianity in other words as far as the service of the word there were all comers so long as there was an intense persecution but then there was a separate part of the service where prayers and the

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Eucharist or the Lord's Supper was only for those who had already been baptized not even for the catechumen or those that were on the way toward that the early church often only baptized on Easter and so that would be the point where those who had been catechized up to that point would receive their baptism in cold water as divided baptismal practice changes a lot early on there's many different countering pieces of evidence that we marshal one other thing that's very interesting is the

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Lord's Supper early on seemed to have been part of a larger meal when we read 1st Corinthians 11 carefully there's a reason that those who are wealthy could eat a meal and and even drink to excess and so Paul says by the time the other people can gather maybe slaves finally being released from their master's service you all gather and some of you those that are wealthy enough you're already drunk and this is no picture of what the

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Lord's Supper is meant to be she had a sense that there was a larger meal of which the Lord's Supper was a part this meal gradually became separate from the practice of the

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Lord's Supper very early on as we head into the 2nd and 3rd century and then interestingly enough this meal falls away entirely from church practice but this meal is is called the agape which is of course the

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Greek one of the Greek words for love this would be the agape the love feast you could say so we get close to this when trying to see who notices stanza

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AI ingenuity we we probably get closest to what an early Christian agape would have been when we have our covenant feast in other words

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I would say it was even a little bit more than how we do a regular lunch fellowship this really was a very special blessed time for those who are baptized believers to gather in love and community and so I think there's something really beautiful about that that insight and practice in the early church but of course when when the church was rather small and if it wasn't being pressed in by persecution it was almost just inevitable that it would have fallen away because when the church is now spreading and the leaven is so effective that now whole cities whole towns are being turned over to Christianity it's pretty hard to have a regular practice of agape with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of believers the moral and social values of the early

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Christians brought them into sharp conflict with pagan society right the Christians were a part of society they always sought to be good citizens good workers good neighbors that they had a certain concern for those that were on the margins of society babies that were being exposed on the hillside became orphans in the care of Christians they they they fought against abortion in the early centuries which was rampant if children weren't exposed there were attempted abortifacients and procedures that were done

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Christians were at every level of society but at every level of society they sought to conduct themselves as Christians so they wouldn't join in pagan festivities which were constant the calendar was filled with them they wouldn't join in gladiatorial games they wouldn't go to the circus in the theater because sacrifices were made to gods and gods were often what was portrayed on the stage a

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Christian artist could do almost no work for pagan customers because pagan customers wanted pagan images pagan symbols this is in part why

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Christians developed Christian symbols Christian stories Christian artwork they were doing all of the same things and yet unto

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Christ for the sake of the kingdom for all the differences you remember the the cake artist in in Colorado in many ways there's a lot of similarity

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I can't make that pagan symbol for you circa second century

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I can't make that wedding cake for you 21st century Christians condemned the most popular form of Roman entertainment that the arena you've all seen

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Russell Crowe are you not entertained just standing in the Coliseum there's no Christians in those seats and if there were that the bishops would have something to say about that part of this is because men were fighting each other to the death captive slaves those that had been conquered those that were trained and often seen as heroes there's a lot of people they actually enjoyed being gladiators if especially if they could make it through but it was a live fast die young very violent kind of world and the church rejected all of that and though it took time the church eventually pulled that kind of amusement and death sport away from the culture that was a result of Christianity many

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Christian leaders also oppose the idea of Christians becoming soldiers a soldier as Needham says was your firemen your sheriff your rescue worker and so for times of peace and tolerance a

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Christian could be a soldier without ever having to engage in in killing another person but it took some time for the church to actually work out a theory of just war where Christians can in the context of war actually take another human life if the cause is just that it's not murder and this again presses the significance and weight of the

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Sixth Commandment so again Christians very distinctive

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Romans are mighty conquerors Christians are not fighting flesh and blood but they're fighting principalities and powers

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Rome classified all religions as one of two categories and again that term religion is not always very helpful but you had permitted religions and religions that were not permitted for a long time

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Rome saw Christianity as some debate among Jews a Jewish sect and because Judaism was seen as a permitted religion because this is just a religion of ancestry of national custom of an ethnicity so it's like let the

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Jews be the Jews but here come Christians and they're comprised of men of every race and so as they begin to emerge the

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Empire doesn't really know what to do with them this isn't just some religion of belonging to a national ancestry or custom this is a custom that is held a faith that is shared across men and women of every status of every ethnicity is this a religion is this a superstition is this a philosophy do we permit this what do we do it doesn't officially become a permitted religion until Constantine at the edict of Milan in 315 so there's persecution as Needham points out until the year 250 there were no persecutions of an

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Empire wide extent in other words you shouldn't think the Christians were constantly being hunted down by Romans by the

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Roman Emperor there was persecution but was it was often local it would break out across the margins of the

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Empire and a lot of that would be quelled and never really brought up to the Imperial level and even the

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Emperor's when it came to that level largely just wanted to quell it and dismiss it if I can keep being Caesar and things can go on being peaceful that's the course

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I want to take but of course these outbreaks were very severe it might not have been Empire wide but if you were living in Syria if you were living in some of these places where Christian persecution broke out it didn't matter if it was

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Empire wide it was persecution and you were suffering Pagans increasingly blamed and victimized

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Christians for every calamity and disaster you don't you don't worship the gods the gods we have to pray to constantly the gods that we sacrifice to are the reason we have no storms and good sailing weather and good harvests you

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Christians are to blame you're upsetting the gods you don't show loyalty to the Emperor you

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Christians are the cause of social unrest it's you Christians and so Tertullian says when the Tiber floods or the

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Nile fails to flood up goes the cry Christians to the lions so again you shouldn't think of it as the

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Emperor saying how can I get me some Christians today you think of it as workers as tradesmen as localized assemblies people that were upset and even felt threatened by this

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Christian exclusivity to the Lord we won't worship the gods we won't bend the knee to Caesar and so a lot of that mob violence broke out against Christianity Christianity was exclusive and so it was seen as a source of instability of threat or of disloyalty to Rome and a lot of that meant there was a certain secrecy about Christians the earliest sources we have about how

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Pagans and Romans were understanding Christianity is it was like a big game of telephone Christian practice had somehow gone through that game of telephone and by the time it was written in a letter it was nothing that the

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Christians were practicing but the Christians were so secretive so suspicious and mysterious that that almost invited persecution look at the bottom of this statement here from from Needham it was a vicious circle because the authorities were likely to persecute them

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Christians met in secret but the more they met in secret the more likely the authorities were to persecute them so one of the earliest sources we have of what a

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Roman Emperor would do in reacting to suspicions about Christianity was a letter written by Pliny who was a governor of Bithynia in the

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Roman Empire and he receives he sends this letter to Emperor Trajan so here is is the first part a part of letter 10 do we have someone that would like to read

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Pliny's report about this very mysterious sect called Christians who wants to play

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Pliny for us you if you've read ones before you can read again all right Marie and unbending perversity others were guilty of the same insanity but they were

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Roman citizens so I as for those who claimed they were not

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Christians and never had been I thought I should let them go they said a prayer to the gods which

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I ordered them to recite and offered worship before your statue statue the statue of the

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French treatment with offerings of incense and which I had ordered brought into the court along with images of the gods.

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They even cursed Christ. So here's a statue where this test would have been portrayed.

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Worship the emperor and curse Christ. Okay? Who wants to read the second half of Pliny?

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Unless you'd like to continue. This is the other half of it. Would you like to? Okay. They say that real

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Christians cannot be made to do such things. The accused held that their only crime or error had been this.

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On a certain day, they used to gather before sunrise and recite, by turns, a liturgy to Christ as to a god.

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They bound themselves by an oath. I'm going to put my glasses on. Not for criminal purposes, but swearing not to commit theft, robbery, or adultery, never to break their promises, and always to return property entrusted to them when it was demanded.

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I thought I should find out more about the truth of this by torturing two female servants who were called deaconesses.

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But I discovered nothing else than a perverted and wild superstition. So I adjourned the case and referred it to you.

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The questions seem to me to deserve consideration, especially since for many people of every age and rank, both men and women, are in danger now and in the future of embracing this superstition.

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This infraction has penetrated both cities and villages and the country itself. So these are the kind of things that are happening in the margins of the empire in places like Bithynia.

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What is this? What is this thing called Christianity? What are you doing? What's this about?

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What are you up to? It must be something bad. It must be some sort of crimes that you want to commit. It must be some threat to the empire.

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And as they're seeking the truth under duress, which is what Romans would do, you'd say, well, I know you're saying that, but I can't believe it until I torture you and see if you keep saying the same thing.

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The Inquisition has some roots in that Roman practice. But of course, notice what's being said.

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Here's the rumors that are being spread. People say real Christians can't curse Christ.

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People say real Christians can't actually worship Caesar as to a god. And so as I'm torturing them, as if they don't actually recant of their

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Christianity, I just put them to death, I'm realizing that this is some crazy, insane superstition.

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The problem is if I don't start killing them, it's going to spread like wildfire. And so you see at the very end there, he's saying, so many are threatened.

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And notice, many people, every age, every rank, men, women, they're in danger now of embracing this.

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And the reality is plenty could not have been more right. That's exactly what is taking place.

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Men and women, people from every place, of every tongue and tribe, of every rank and status, are coming to embrace this faith.

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He calls it an infection. We call it leaven working itself out in that Matthew 13 sense of the kingdom advancing.

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And it doesn't matter if you're in the major cities where the apostles planted the faith, or if you're in the farthest reaches of the villages.

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People are becoming Christian. And a major part of this, both what leads to this and why this is coming to be, is because in the second century you have apologists.

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That's from the Greek word apologia, which is defense. So these are people that are making a defense of the faith.

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And early on you have very important figures like Aristides, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Antioch, Minucius Felix.

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And these are, and many others besides them that are writing, making a defense of the Christian faith.

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And you should understand that many of these were on the receiving end of these evangelistic efforts, on these persuasive arguments, on this observation of life, on this, what are these

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Christians all about? Let me try to make sense of it. And then they get pulled into it and they go on evangelizing and defending, despite the threat, despite the persecution.

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The second century is seeing the church begin to burgeon and roll through the farthest reaches of the

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Roman Empire. Nearly all the apologists, we're coming to the end here, nearly all the apologists wrote in Greek.

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Sometimes they would address their writings to a governor or toward an emperor. We find that carrying all the way through Christian history.

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When John Calvin is writing his Institutes, he's addressing it to the emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor. He's addressing it, saying, here's my case, here's what we believe, here's what we're about.

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And so you always have a sense that you're aiming for the highest court of appeal. That's what these second century apologists are doing.

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They're partly making their arguments on the fact that a lot of the rumors are just rumors. A lot of the slander is just slander.

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They're actually law -abiding citizens that are seeking to do good. They may not worship the emperor, but they are loyal to their empire, to their environs.

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They are the best of the soldiers. They are the best of slaves, the best of the workers. They also aimed at other arguments.

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There was a religious competition at play in antiquity. As they were answering the skeptics, they were answering the philosophers that were seeking to destroy the claims of Christianity.

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They're answering the Jews that said, no, you're actually using our scriptures, but that's not the

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Messiah. Jesus is not the Messiah. And you're actually misusing and misreading all of our prophecies.

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And so that's where these apologists are coming to the fore. I want to bypass men that should not be bypassed, but we'll just close here with Justin Martyr.

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Justin Martyr, Needham Wright, started thinking about Christianity after being impressed by the fearless way that Christian martyrs went to their deaths.

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Again, I remember that image of Ignatius of Antioch. If you read Needham, you read the account of Blandina and her death.

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So here's Justin Martyr, and the starting point for him is, I can't dismiss these people really believe what they believe.

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They happily go to their deaths for it. Color me curious. Explain to me why that might be.

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What is going on there? Finally, Justin became a Christian himself through an unexpected meeting with an old man when he was out walking one day along a seashore at Ephesus.

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The old man talked with Justin about the meaning of life and introduced him to the Old Testament scriptures and Christ as providing the answer.

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Justin spent the rest of his life teaching philosophy as a Christian. I want you to notice this. Here's the faith.

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They're willing to suffer for their faith. Here's someone who's curious, but he's not curious enough to maybe join or even enter too much into this wild superstition called

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Christianity. But then he's just minding his business walking on a seashore, and an old man strikes up conversation with him and talks to him about life.

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Oh, you're a philosopher. You want to know what wisdom is? Let's talk about that. And then takes him through the scriptures and then points out that Christ is the answer.

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It's a lot like the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch. And so Justin Martyr becomes a Christian.

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He spoke to both the Jew. He wrote this magnificent dialogue with Trifo the Jew, one of the counterpoints that there was hostility toward Jews in the early centuries

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Christianity. This is a very respectful engagement trying to show the truth of the faith of Christianity.

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But he also wrote two major works against what we could say were the Greek. In other words, pagan philosophers and critics and skeptics.

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So here's our boy, Justin. You have here written in a very ornate

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Greek, Justin the philosopher. Notice that it's just Justin. And that's how he would have been known all the way up till 165.

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And it was only after 165 that he was known as Justin Martyr. Martyr is the word for witness because that's when he was martyred.

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And so the witness, the faith that he had come, think of Justin's life.

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As a young man, he was struck by how fearless the martyrs were that confessed faith in Christ.

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He became a Christian and then he too became one of those fearless martyrs when he was killed in 165

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AD. And so I close here. The apologists did not succeed in persuading the

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Roman government to cease from persecuting Christians. Probably no emperor ever read any of the apologies addressed to him.

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The chief effect of the apologies was on the church itself. They helped to develop the church's theology to strengthen the confidence of believers in the truth and the righteousness of the faith that they confessed.

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So that was the impact, the effect of the apologists at this point in church history.

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And so we'll close off there. We do have a little bit of time, not much time, maybe for some reactions or some comments or questions.

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We had some technical difficulties to start with. Otherwise we had a little more time and hopefully in two weeks we'll have a little more time for that.

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Any closing thoughts or sentiments or questions?

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Or you want to see more of Dan's pictures, I can put it back up. Mateo. Yeah, I saw the word they used, confessed.

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Yeah. They will ask if they feel confessed Christ. So can you explain the difference between profess and confess?

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Like now if somebody comes to the door and be like, I profess Christ or confess Christ. What is the difference?

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That's a question that someone that is not a native English speaker would ask. I'm a native

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English speaker and I have no idea. Because we tend to use them synonymously in the same way. And I'm sure if I pulled out a dictionary there might be a subtle difference there.

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But I've always used profess or confess very similar. Now the prefixes, the idea of profess would be to proclaim.

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We don't say conclaim, we say proclaim. The idea is something toward, something outward. Con is a prefix meaning with.

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So my stab in the dark would be a confession is something you do with. A proclamation, a profession is something you do toward.

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The emphasis is on who you're speaking to or the action of speaking. Confession is what we're confessing in common, what we're proclaiming in common.

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It's who you're proclaiming with, if that helps. Yeah, very good.

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And it's a corporate document which bears that out. Maybe one or two comments before we recite the creed and then sing the

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Gloria Pontry. Seth. I was waiting for someone to open that can of worms.

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Well, the answer is yes, they did. I would say alongside that, the early church had deaconesses and bishops too.

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And so we have to understand there is debate, and part of that is

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Romans 16 .1. And Phoebe, who is called in some translations a servant, in other translations a deaconess of the church.

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And there's some very, I think, solid reform practices that believe there's a historical and biblical argument to make for having deaconesses.

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Those same churches would not permit those women, nor did the early church permit women to function in the office of elder or bishop.

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It tends to be, as anecdotal evidence as it may be, it tends to be that in the current time, because of the cultural shifts and the impact of feminism over the most recent century, that the churches who embrace, who are trying to straddle,

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I think, a more conservative or traditional view on gender roles and distinction, especially in terms of eldership, and welcome deaconesses, generally are a generation or two away from actually having women function as elders or teachers or so on.

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Now, that's not a reason to dismiss the historical evidence and the debate over whether women functions as deaconesses.

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If you look at 1 Timothy 5, the big debate is in verse 11 over whether Paul is introducing a new category of deacons who happen to be women, or if he's continuing on in that passage with a deacon who is a man must have a wife who is like this.

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Now, that's the debate. The only thing I'll say, because it is a can of worms, is I think we have to take very seriously the pattern of Jesus not only calling 12 men to himself, which might be a pattern for the apostolic foundation of elders, but also in Acts chapter 6, when there's issues that require the service of tables, and you have the origin story of the deaconate, it's seven men full of the

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Holy Spirit who are appointed. I think that should have a lot more bearing on the 1 Timothy 5 passage than it does, but there's still more debate to happen over it.

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So the quick answer is yes, but as we said, it also had bishops, and we would go back to Scripture, not just in a few proof texts, but in the larger contours of Scripture to try to ascertain what should a more

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New Testament or arguably a more apostolic practice look like. Ryan, somehow

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I knew you would have your hand up for that. Let me add to that. It's when the apostles give the command to set aside people who are deacons.

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The word they use on there is men. So if you want to follow the literal command, you have just men.

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The early church's deaconesses were celibates on there. On a different note, we had one of the examples of Ignatius telling a church not to even feed his martyrdom.

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That will be very important for next time when we talk about Gnosticism. Yes, and we'll get there when we get there.

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Any last comment or question before we recite the Creed together? Well, let's close out our study now.

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I think we kind of know how to handle the slides, so we'll be a little more timely next study.

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So just recite with me here. This is the Nicene Creed. We believe in one

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God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible, and in one

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, begotten of the

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Father before all ages, light of light, very God of very

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God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the

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Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried.

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And the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the

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Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

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And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the

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Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

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And we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

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We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.