The Apostolic Fathers, Persecution, and Apologetics

Amen. Well I'm glad you all persevered. And as we now come back to this book 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 I will try not to move. We're only going about eight chapters forward really to the 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 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 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.

I might call on some people depending on how big or small the text is to read. And then I'll try to carve out a little bit of time for discussion or Q &A toward the end. So let's begin here. Nicholas Needham writes.

The Patristic Age and the Apostolic Fathers

Historians and theologians often refer to the early centuries as the patristic age that Greek and Latin term potter 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 Clement of Rome here a 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 I when I do some searching in Clement that a figure we have a lot more writings from is Clement of Alexandria.

And once you find something where Clement of Alexandria is being discussed they just call him Clement. So when you're Google searching Clement you have to know which Clement are you reading about. And Clement of Alexandria is is later.

Clement of Rome is one of the earlier apostolic fathers. We have Ignatius of Antioch. We'll be looking at him Papias. We have very important fragments and textual scholars love debating and talking about Papias.

We're not gonna really dive into him at all. Polycarpo Smyrna. 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 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 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 Christians.

And the letter of Barnabas reflects this. The epistle of Barnabas the Jews now simply meant those who had crucified 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 Romans seem 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 Greek for teaching. It's the oldest handbook we have of how churches were 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 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 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. Roman religion was a matter of rights.

It was a matter of ritual it was 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 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 AD 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 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 New Testament. And his main concerns are he's concerned to preserve and protect what the 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 3 we have the heresy of Dostatism. If you kids are wondering about quiz questions that might be one of those pop quiz questions. Dostatism was a an early heresy that argued Jesus Christ was not really human.

He only seemed to be human. It's the word de Keo 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 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 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 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 Christians understood themselves to be a third race and they were spoken of that. They're not Jews. They're not 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 Jews could only understand.

In part we are preaching foolishness to the Greek foolishness to the Greeks a stumbling block to the Jews. But this is the truth. This is the truth. So here's I'm gonna have someone read this is a excerpt from 1st 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 the elders that had been established at Corinth and they deposed them. And so Clement being an elder at the 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 Corinthians. 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 what human being what human being can rightly celebrate 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 gives no rise to no seditions 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 Lord has taken us to himself. It was because of his love for us that Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us by the will of God. His flesh for our flesh his soul for our souls.

You see my great and wonderful thing is love. No one can declare its perfection. Who can find anyone who is fit to dwell in love except those to whom 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 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 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. Christians even centuries later we're 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 they these were the heroes of the faith. If you come to my study in our home I have a couple images of Spurgeon and of Calvin.

Well if I lived 2 ,000 years ago I might have this on my wall instead of you know the 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 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 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 and apostolic teaching and ultimately he's getting to the point of this situation needs to be worked out so that what Paul had wrote can be realized in the very church he wrote it to.

Ignatius, Martyrdom, and the Way of Life

Let's look at Ignatius of Antioch you kids paying attention for pop quiz. 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 Christianity can seem to us there's something very familiar and I think that's something 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 I would like to do is help us to see how vibrant the similarities are. And to me that's evidence that the Spirit is always leading his people into truth always preserving his lampstand.

So maybe 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 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 I moved my knee. Okay God hid the virginity of Mary.

The birth of her child and the death of the 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 God had perfected in his purpose he began to carry out and it stirred the whole universe because God was undertaking the destruction of so.

You notice how he's talking about life and death. What are the didache 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 healthcare 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 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 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 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 Ignatius. Michael Aiken says in the seven letters that he wrote it's really one of the richest windows we have into early 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 Apostles writing letters to church is 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. 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 Lord of life who has power over the grave who wants to read this for us.

Okay.

For neither shall I have another opportunity of attaining to God nor will you if you should be silent now ever be entitled to a more honorable work. For if you are silent concerning me I shall become God's but if you shall but if you show love to my flesh I shall again have to run my race.

Please then do not grant me any greater favor than that I be sacrificed to God while the altar is still prepared. That being gathered together in love you may sing praise to the Father through Christ Jesus that God has given you worthy.

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 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 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. 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. Our church organization. Now the church is bursting out of Jerusalem and out of the city centers where it had planted under the 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 I think a certain structure 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 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 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 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 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 in the next week 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 AI art.

Okay we talked about the ideas in the New Testament itself. The word that we translate Bishop in the Greek is Episcopal. It simply it simply means overseer. All right. So you've heard of the Episcopal Church Episcopalian Church or sometimes a group of authority is called the Episcopate.

That's all coming out of this 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 Bishop because that would be reading later terminology into the original source.

But you find that it's also used alongside the Greek term presbyteros. You have other terms related to shepherd or pastor. But essentially these terms are all being used synonymously in the 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 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 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 geographic 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 over a you know what's what would be the opposite of that associate pastor.

There you go. 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 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 Paul Washer sermon and they're like that's it I'm a Christian and they come to church and they've been a 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 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 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 Apostles are some pretty heavy lifters. But you can imagine that as a church begins to spread and as we move away from the apostolic foundation now to 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 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 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 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 Protestant Reformation as you see what that hierarchical structure became through the Middle Ages and we coming out of the 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 hath no jurisdiction here. 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 Christians may have worshipped in Rome that he was aware of all.

Right. We should not say that this was the form that all 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 Sunday there is a meeting of all believers who live in the town or the country. In the memoirs in the memoirs of the 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. Then we all stand up and offer prayers.

Then our prayers. 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 God put to flight darkness and chaos and made the world and on the same day 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 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 Lord's Supper held a remarkably high place and unfortunately it became higher than it ever should have been heading toward the 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 Christians is such a central part of worship was not so important in the early church. In fact doesn't. 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 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. I have a feeling the most important part as Needham 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 Lord. You were speaking to him up 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 Christian maybe if I meet one of you for coffee and I say well why don't we pray before the breakfast comes and you go 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 diner and say let's pray and I stand up and I go 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 Christianity. An important point which doesn't come out so clearly Needham writes 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 were receiving instruction in the 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 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 Lord's Supper early on seemed to have been part of a larger meal when we read first 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 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 Lord's Supper very early on as we head into the second and third century and then interestingly enough this meal falls away entirely from church practice.

But this meal is called the agape which is of course the Greek one of the Greek words for love. This would be the agape but the love feast you could say so we get close to this. When I'm trying to see who notices stanza 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 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.

Christianity and Pagan Society

The moral and social values of the early 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 fought against abortion in the early centuries which was rampant.

If children weren't exposed there were attempted abortifacients and procedures that were done. Christians were at every level of society but at every level of society they sought to conduct themselves as Christians.