From Persecution to Toleration

Grace Reformation Bible Church

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So, here we are in our penultimate study of the first 300 years of the Church, and we're looking at the place we left off now several weeks ago, where we left the 300s, or at least the late 200s, in the throes of persecution.

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And as we saw, as has been recited a lot ever since Charlie Kirk's assassination,

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Tertullian has been mentioned just about hourly, at least for several days. As the flames of persecution spread, so did the flames of faith.

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That was true in the mid -200s, especially in the northwest of Africa, but also that began to spread throughout the

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Roman Empire, as succeeding emperors had various policies of either intensive persecution or relief.

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So persecution in the third century is the context that we left off, and we're going to pick right back up from that. We left off with the figure of Decius.

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In 250, the middle of the third century, Decius organized the first universal persecution of Christians throughout the empire, as wide as the

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Roman Empire was, as wide as the persecution was. Decius believed that the Church was a deadly threat to the empire's unity and stability.

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We'll understand a little bit more about the rationale behind that when we look at later emperors related to Constantine.

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The authorities executed the Bishop of Rome, the Bishop of Antioch, the Bishop of Jerusalem. Cyprian, who we mentioned last time, escaped only by going into hiding, something that he caught a lot of flack for as a result, but ultimately he was killed as a martyr.

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Decius ordered that all inhabitants of the empire offer sacrifices to the gods and obtain an official certificate stating that they had done so.

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Christians who refused, like Origen, were imprisoned and tortured. Not all martyrs, by the way, were killed.

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Many of them were tortured and released. Some were captured and released without torture.

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So there was various forms of understanding martyrdom, and that was something that the early Church sought to clarify as a result of some of the controversies we'll look at shortly.

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But one was arguably a martyr, even if they had not been killed as a result of their faith.

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That came into question where some would say, you were not a martyr until you made the ultimate sacrifice.

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Many died, of course, during the Decian persecutions, however, large numbers of Christians gave in.

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The persecution was so intense, thinking about family members, thinking about betrothed, thinking about children, many

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Christians gave in. They either gave in by offering sacrifices to the

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Roman gods or by purchasing fake certificates, looking for bootleg certificates that they had done so.

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So this was happening during the persecutions under Decian. The persecution of Christians under Decius was overwhelming.

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At Carthage in North Africa, many departed from their professed faith. In 251, a year later,

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Decius died in battle, leaving his persecution incomplete. The succeeding

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Emperor Valerian renewed the persecution. In 257, he prohibited all meetings for Christian worship and systematically tried to kill all the

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Church's bishops and presbyters. Cyprian of Carthage was his most famous victim. Many others, not just leaders, died for the faith.

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This lasted until 260, when his estranged son, who couldn't stand his father

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Valerian, Gallienus, ended the Christian persecution and inaugurated decades of freedom from official sanctions.

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Gallienus believed that the only effective weapon against the Church was education. In other words, he was no friend to the

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Christians. He just thought they were fools. And if he could educate them to the beauties of Hellenism, then they would depart from their faith.

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He therefore made every effort to promote Hellenism throughout the empire. His subjects, however, failed to appreciate his eloquent

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Hellenistic fervor, and he was killed along with his whole family in AD 268.

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But even though Gallienus was killed, the Christians were left largely untouched for the next 44 years, unless there were local or sporadic attempts by perhaps mobs or local magistrates.

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There wasn't an imperial persecution, again, until 44 years later. This persecution came about under Emperor Diocletian.

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We're going to be spending a little bit of time looking at him. He was a soldier who rose to power in AD 284.

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He was a very savvy ruler, and as we'll see, almost single -handedly saved the

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Roman Empire in the midst of the crisis of the third century, and we're going to look at the factors of that crisis.

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He was a very significant figure in terms of the history of the Roman Empire. And yet, in a sense, with all the persecution that had been endured over the 200s, the damage had already been done.

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Decius, Valerius had shaken the church so badly that many Christians had committed apostasy in order to save their lives.

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So what happens, before I get there, what happens when the persecution ends and many

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Christians who had apostasized are now coming back to worship Christ? Yeah, well, this is one of the controversies that emerges.

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What do you do with the lapsed Christians or the traditores, the traitors? We're going to look at that in a moment.

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There is a bright spot as we get to the year 300, and that's in the Armenia, the land of Armenia.

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Meanwhile, in Armenia, in the eastern province of Cappadocia, that'll be important beyond our study with the

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Cappadocian fathers who are very important Trinitarian theologians. But here in Cappadocia, on the eastern fringe of the

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Roman Empire, there's an Armenian named Gregory, Gregory, later known as Gregory the

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Illuminator. So our brother's in good company as far as his namesake. And old

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Greg the Illuminator here, possibly of royal descent, became a Christian. And when he became a

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Christian, he went back to his native Armenia and he preached the gospel to the king of Armenia, Tiridates III, and the king and his whole family converted to Christ.

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And so Armenia officially becomes the first Christian nation in history, the first nation from the throne all the way down to accept

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Christianity as its religion. Gregory the Illuminator ends up taking a position as bishop in Armenia, known as the

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Catholicos in Armenia. And that's true to this day in the Armenian Orthodox Church, that particular location,

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I forget the name of it, in modern -day Armenia is still the Catholicos or the overseer of the

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Church of Armenia. So there we have a nice picture. You can see St. Gregory the Illuminator and a little

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Kung Fu action or whatever he's doing in that image. Now, what's the crisis of the third century?

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Well, for a time, it seemed that in the late 200s, the Roman Empire had become so vast and was so pressurized that it was going to collapse.

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Part of that pressure came from the invasions almost at every border of Roman territory. To the north,

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Ryan's ancestors were invading almost continually. In Asia Minor, the

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Balkans, Greece, France, the German tribes had begun to invade and Roman armies.

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Germany had long been a thorn in Rome's side. Augustus famously lost his legion in the forests of Germany, the

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Teutoburg Massacre. And ever really since, the tribes of Germany became more and more organized and effective at dealing with a corroding and vastly outstretched empire.

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They even penetrated, this is interesting, into Spain and even raided Northwest Africa. I can't imagine what the

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Northwest Africans thought when the German tribes were invading their land.

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So that's true of the north and in parts of the Northwestern Empire. Meanwhile, to the east, the Sassanid Empire of the

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Persians attacked and they seized control of all the eastern provinces three different times.

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Toward the end of the 200s, two Roman emperors were able to push back these assaults, Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian.

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And that brings us right to the helm of Diocletian, again, rising to power through military prowess in 284, leaving his reign in 305.

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This is a Aureus. So Diocletian had a number of reforms that stabilized the empire in the third century.

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One of the things that he did, one of many things, was he introduced a golden Aureus and he, as it were, brought balance to the currency of the

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Roman Empire. It had a standardized currency and he was dealing with matters that we're dealing with today, inflation, reestablishing

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Roman dominance over trade. Diocletian came to power, eventually dividing the

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Roman Empire into two spheres, the east and the west. Each sphere had two regions, largely a northern -southern aspect to each sphere.

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So we're going to see in a moment, the Roman Empire officially was broken into quadrants and that's going to require a ruler in each quadrant of the empire.

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The empire as a whole had 12 administrative districts. So these were called diocese.

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He changed the structure of the court. He changed the structure of the civil service. He made the army far more effective by breaking it down into mobilized units that could get to any area within those regions more effectively.

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These reforms were so successful that beyond the crisis of the third century, they enabled the Roman Empire to survive for another 1 ,000 years in the east.

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So we tend to speak of the Byzantine Empire. If you found a Byzantine in the 15th century, they would still be calling themselves a

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Roman. The Roman Empire in the east lasted all the way up till 1453, until it collapsed under the pressure of the

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Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Turks. Diocletian, he's here on this side,

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Diocletian introduced the tetrarchy, in other words, the rule of four, in AD 293, dividing the

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Roman Empire into four administrative regions. The two regions, east and west, were ruled by senior emperors.

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He was one of them. These were called Augusti. So the Augustus, you remember that name, that means revered one.

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Octavian is given that title by the Roman Senate to become Augustus Caesar. So they basically make a distinction between Caesar and Augustus.

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The more revered Caesar would be the Augusti. They would be the more senior emperor ruling over the east and the west.

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But within that division, you also have the junior emperor, which would be simply the Caesar. Diocletian ruled as Augustus of the

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Eastern Empire. He was a native of Dalmatia, modern -day Croatia, while Maximian, this odd -looking duck,

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I'm wondering if that sculptor lost his head after he made that. It almost looks like Maximian got stung by a bunch of hornets.

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But Maximian ruled as Augustus of the Western Empire. And largely, this was a way of sharing power so they didn't go into civil war for the throne.

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And this was all architectured by Diocletian. So you see, we have at the top here our two

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Augusti. This is Maximian in the west and Diocletian in the east. Underneath them, the two

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Caesars. These would be the junior emperors, Constantius Chlorus, pay attention to that name,

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Constantius, and Galerius, also pay attention to that name. Though they're under, as it were, the thumb of Diocletian and Maximian, these junior emperors are very powerful in their own right with loyal soldiers and vast control over their regions in both the east and the west.

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So here's a sort of map, and you can see at this time, this is the tetrarchy under Diocletian and Maximian.

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So in the yellow, you have the area where Constantius, the father of Constantine, had his rule.

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So you see up to the north in Britain, you see Gaul, you see down toward modern -day Austria.

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And then you see in the green the place of Augustus Maximian, and that includes

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Spain. You can see in parts of Italy as well as northwest Africa, Roman Africa.

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So he has quite a spread of power there in the west. To the east, you see the district of Galerius as a junior emperor.

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It's a little bit hard to see in the color there, but that's the pink region immediately next to Maximian's region.

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So you see Illyria there, you see the Balkans, Dalmatia. And then furthest east, you see the realm of Diocletian, down toward Pontus and Asia Minor, as well as swooping down toward the

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Gulf of Arabia and Egypt. So this is the Roman Empire now divided into these four regions with these four rulers.

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That is a lot of territory to cover. Well, it doesn't take long under the influence of Galerian to bring about a persecution.

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Galerius hated Christianity and sought to destroy it. Diocletian seemed to be relatively unbothered by it.

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He was just trying to stabilize his control and bring order to the empire. But under the influence of his co -Augusti, he said, maybe we do need to get rid of Christians.

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Maybe this is part of the instability. And so we have the so -called Great Persecution or the

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Diocletianic Persecution that began in 303. Diocletian Caesar Galerius was extremely hostile to Christianity.

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Toward the end of his reign under Galerius' influence, Diocletian became a less tolerant ruler. In 303, Galerius persuaded

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Diocletian to take action against the Christians. So began the last and most terrible persecution of the church by the

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Roman Empire. Diocletian dismissed all Christians from the government and from the army, issued three anti -Christian edicts in 303 and a fourth in 304.

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This is the first edict, every church building is to be destroyed, every

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Bible that can be found is to be burnt, all worship of Christ is forbidden. That's the first edict in 303.

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Second edict, all clergy are to be arrested and imprisoned. Third edict, all clergy are to offer sacrifice to the gods or be tortured.

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Then the fourth edict in 304, all citizens throughout the empire are to sacrifice to the gods, and if they refuse, they are to be executed.

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This is the great persecution of the church, 303 to 311.

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In 305, Diocletian and Maximian resigned their roles as Augusti. So think, this is still in the midst of the great persecution, but Diocletian and Maximian had agreed to serve a 20 -year term as co -rulers of the

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Roman Empire. So when the 20th year came, they both said, retirement, we're going to bow down now.

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And those junior Caesars can now be the senior Augusti. So Diocletian settled back to his native

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Croatia, modern -day Croatia, and sought a life of gardening and simplicity. In fact, he was most enamored with growing cabbages.

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And there's a report that he had been recalled to the throne to deal with some crises that emerged after 305, and he refused, sending a letter saying, if you could see what great cabbages my hands have wrought, you would not recall me.

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So maybe you get a green thumb, you don't need the throne after all. Constantius and Galerius became

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Augusti. Remember, Galerius is the one who hated Christianity, and so he turns the volume all the way up on the persecution when he now comes to power as an

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Augustus. Meanwhile, two new emperors, Severus and Maximinus, become

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Caesars. So Severus and Maximinus now are sharing power as junior rulers.

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Now what happens when Galerius comes to power is the persecution stretches from 305 all the way to 311.

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At the very end of his life, when he's on his deathbed, he decides to pass an edict to effectively end the persecution, at least in his realm in the east.

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This may have been because it had become so ineffective, or it may have been because he was now transitioning toward the power of another, and the other was influencing away from this imperial edict of persecution.

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We have the Edict of Certica, so -called. This is effectively the end of the persecution in the east.

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We're going to look at the Edict of Milan, so -called, in AD 313 in a moment. That is the official end of persecution throughout the

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Roman Empire. But sometimes that gets all the limelight and we forget that in the east it ended two years earlier under the

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Edict of Certica. Now Lactantius, who's a historian, recounts, at least allegedly, what that edict, what that cancellation read like.

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And maybe I could have someone read for us. If you were a Christian struggling through the persecution in the early 300s, church being burnt,

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Bibles being burnt, all the leaders that you trusted imprisoned, tortured, you're out there hoping not to get caught and be brought to Roman sacrifice lest you be imprisoned and executed.

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And so the idea is, this edict is at play through all these years, and now finally maybe you're passing through the forum and you notice these edicts being proclaimed.

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You notice them perhaps being published on one of the community walls. And this is what the edict would have said, effectively ending the

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Christian persecution. But remember, this is the state, the persecuting state, not apologizing for anything that's happened, but almost blaming the

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Christians for it, and then reasserting, we've always been very merciful at the Roman Empire. That's essentially what the edict said.

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So who has good sight and could read for us very slowly and clearly the Edict of Certica according to Lactantius?

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Marie. Certica, AD 311, issued by Galerius and Persecution in the

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East, among all the other arrangements that we are always made to the benefit and utility of the state, we have heretofore wished to impair all things in accordance with the laws and public discipline of the

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Romans, and to ensure that even Christians who abandon the practice of their ancestors should return to the good sense.

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Indeed, for some reason or other, such self -indulgence assailed and idiocy possessed those

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Christians that they did not follow the practices of the ancients. They made laws for themselves that they observed and gathered various peoples in diverse areas.

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Then, when a work was issued stating that they should return themselves to the practices of the ancients, many were subjected to peril, and many were even killed.

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Many more persevered in their way of life, and we saw that they neither offered proper worship and clothes to their gods or their godly

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Christians, considering the observation of our own mild clemency and strict customs, by which we are accustomed to grant clemency to all people.

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We have decided to extend our most speedy reluctance to these people as well, so that Christians may once more establish their own meeting places, so long as they do not act in a disorderly way.

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Consequently, in accordance with our indulgence, they ought to pray to their god for our health and safety of the state, so that the state may be kept safe from all sides, and they may be able to live safely and securely in their own homes.

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I mean, toward the end, that almost sounds like something that could have been written with COVID policies from our own government, right?

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Safe and effective. We've always been a very merciful state. Haven't we always? I love that they used this passive construction.

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Some of them were even killed somehow. Who knows how that happened? As you can see, the state has this vested interest to always present itself as doing the most reasonable thing for the sake of security, for the sake of blessedness, for the sake of providing for its own, for the sake of honoring its past, its legacy, its ancestors.

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And the idea is that Christians assailed these things. The Christians were possessed by some idiocy, and they rejected their forebears, and they made laws to themselves.

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That's a very rogue thing to do, to be a law to yourself when you're part of our state. And our state is so merciful.

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We show such clemency. We tried to convince you otherwise, but look how clement we are.

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Just get back, you can have your own places of worship, keep praying for our state, and don't be disorderly. We don't want to have to do that all over again.

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That's the Edict of Sertica, right? Apologizing for nothing. Although the persecution resulted in death, torture, imprisonment, or dislocation for many

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Christians, most of the empire's Christians avoided punishment. The persecution did, however, cause many churches to split between those who had complied with the imperial authority, in other words, the traitors, the traditores, and those who had remained faithful through suffering.

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Now, when peace emerged after 311, the return of these so -called traditores introduced a crisis to the church.

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All that peace brought about division, not just in places in the West, but even in Northwest Africa, even down toward Egypt.

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So you have, earlier toward the Decian persecutions, the crisis of Novatianism. It's essentially, again, what do we do with those that have lapsed, those that have compromised under pressure?

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Down in Egypt, you have the Miletian Controversy. That's, again, the same issue. What do we do with those that have compromised and betrayed their faith?

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And then the most famous, and the one that Needham gives the most detail on, is the Donatist Controversy.

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The last great persecution under Diocletian had left the church in Northwest Africa bitterly divided. Large numbers of Christians refused to recognize the new

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Bishop of Carthage, Kychilian, who was appointed in 311, because one of the bishops who ordained him had allegedly handed over the

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Bible to be burnt during Diocletian's persecution. So the Donatist Controversy is essentially, how can we trust legitimacy, the order of apostolic succession, or even the acts of one who was authorized or brought into appointment by one who was a traitor, one who has lapsed, one who betrayed the faith and wasn't willing to suffer, right?

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So you end up having followers of Kychilian, who was seen as compromised, and followers of Donatist, who was seen to be more rigid.

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And so this split, two rival churches came into being there in Northwest Africa. One church was led by Kychilian, the other by a rival bishop called

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Donatist. And this is where you get the Donatist Controversy, which, by the way, stretches out long after this period.

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Here's a painting by Charles -André Vanloo of Augustine, toward the very end of the 300s, arguing with the

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Donatists. Constantine, and we're not going to get into his relationship with the Donatist Controversy tonight, but he tries to weigh in and straighten all these things out and almost makes it worse.

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And so even by the middle of the 4th century, Donatism still has a lot of momentum and sway.

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And largely, it's Augustine who ends up putting that controversy to rest by arguing that the failures of a priest have no bearing upon the functional legitimacy of the priestly act.

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After Maximian, remember our hornet's stung friend, after Maximian's retirement, Constantius went from being a

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Caesar to an Augustus in the West. When Constantius died in 8306, his troops made his son

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Constantine, roughly 280 to 337, into the new Caesar at the

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British city of York. This is actually a statue outside of the Cathedral of York. Some of us were there some years ago on a horn tour.

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A glorious statue. I have like a hundred pictures of that on my iPhone. A magnificent statue. And here you get the sense of this unopposed ruler of the

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Roman Empire. By 324, there's no subdivision, there's no tetrarchy, there's not even two rulers, there's just Constantine the

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Great. So he becomes the new Caesar at York. The West was now divided between Constantine, who had controlled

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Britain, France, and Spain under his father, and Maxentius, who controlled Italy and Northwest Africa.

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Like his father, Constantine was tolerant toward Christianity. He himself was not a Christian at this point, but he was tolerant toward Christianity in the same way his father had largely been tolerant toward Christianity.

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Although Diocletian's persecution was empire -wide, there was some levity depending on that particular tetrarch's policy.

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For Constantius, he only burnt down a few church buildings. As far as we know, he never martyred anyone or put anyone to death.

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Maxentius, on the other hand, the rival to the East was rigidly anti -Christian.

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So the uneasy peace in the West between the tolerant Constantine and Maxentius came to an end in 312.

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War broke out. Constantine, with a smaller army than Maxentius, invaded

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Italy, and the two armies faced each other across the Milvian Bridge on the River Tiber outside of Rome.

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Up to this point, Constantine had been a sun worshiper. However, on the night before the battle, he had a dream in which the first two

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Greek letters of Christ's name, the kero that we saw, appeared in the shape of a cross.

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Remember that baptismal font that we looked at. Constantine also saw or heard the words, by this sign you will conquer.

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Remember that for the kids' sheet next week with that cross. You have the language for Christos, and then you have the language for nika, or conquered.

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The following day, Constantine had the kero sign painted on the shields of his troops, and then

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Constantine prayed to the god of the Christians for victory, and he won a crushing triumph over Maxentius, who was killed in the battle.

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So at the age of 32, Constantine was now master in the West. He believed that the Christian god had granted him victory, and from then on,

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Constantine acted as the champion and defender of Christians under his realm. So here you have a kero, that one not quite in the shape of the cross, but that's the more standardized symbol of the kero, which was already in full swing as a symbol used by Christians throughout the 3rd century.

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Now, what this led to, as a result of the battle of the

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Milvian Bridge, is the so -called Edict of Milan, which was neither an edict, nor did it occur at Milan, but it's known as the

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Edict of Milan to historians. This occurred in 313, and this put an effective end to the

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Great Persecution. Again, in the East, 311, empire -wide, and 313.

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Constantine and Augustus Licinius now shared the empire as the two

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Augusti. So you have Constantine and Licinius, and they're going to have some civil wars heading into the 320s.

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This is an illuminated page from a book of homilies by Gregory of Nazianzus, who was a very important church father.

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And here you actually have a scene of Constantine with a vision of the cross heading into battle over the

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Milvian Bridge outside of Rome. In the Eastern Church, Constantine is regarded as a saint.

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He was the one who brought the end to Christian persecution, and the church was never to be systematically persecuted in the empire again after Constantine.

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However, his legacy is debated to this day. Constantine's acceptance of the

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Christian faith was the most important conversion in history. This is Needham, apart from that of the apostle Paul. That is a huge claim.

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He was the most important convert to Christ in the history. Paul, the apostle, who's second?

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Constantine. That's the argument of Needham. Now, why would that be the case? Because it altered the destiny of the church in the

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Roman Empire, and forever shaped the relationship of the church and state in the West, as well as in the

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East when he became emperor over Rome. Because of his historic influence, Constantine certainly deserved the title that was given to him,

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Constantine the Great. Yet Christians and historians have often debated what really happened that fateful night at the

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Milvian Bridge. Some have concluded that Constantine did not sincerely embrace Christianity at all, and point to some distinctly unchristian acts in Constantine's later life.

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Most of that has to do with certain family members going MIA. I would liken this to, you know, a mafia godfather becoming a convert.

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Somehow you're still wading through all the bloody politics of your position, but you're doing so as a convert to Christ.

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We should keep in mind that some of these family members, as Roman courts were prone to do, were often jockeying for position, were willing to bribe and poison their way to the top.

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And so sometimes these were actions of self -defense. Though, again, historians debate Constantine's legitimacy as a

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Christian convert. It should be noted that Constantine was not baptized by the church, but by his own desire until his deathbed.

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He faithfully prayed to Christ. He attended the part of the service that he was allowed to attend. At this point in time, again, the preaching of the

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Word and the prayers of the saints was something that could be attended by anyone. The partaking of the

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Eucharist and anything that came with that afterward was something that was only allowed for those that had been baptized.

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And so though he was a Christian emperor in one form or another, he himself was never able to stay for a whole worship service until he had been baptized toward the end of his life.

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Again, that gives a little wrinkle into the relationship of church and state. The bishops loved having a

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Christian emperor, a Christian that was a patron to the church, but they also didn't treat him with undue adulation.

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They said, well, you're not baptized now, so you may go. And that says something about the integrity of the church at this point in history.

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Some of it have concluded that Constantine did not sincerely embrace Christianity at all and point to some distinctly unchristian acts in Constantine's later life.

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But on the other side, we can point to strong evidence of a Christian conscience at work in many of Constantine's laws and policies.

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We must also recognize that Constantine had nothing, literally nothing, to gain either in the political or military sphere by professing the

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Christian faith. That's a really important point. There was almost nothing but loss to coming out as a

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Christian if you were a Roman emperor at this point in time. And though there's a few subsequent Christian emperors that perhaps saw this as a pathway to power, it quickly reverts back toward paganism because the vast majority of subjects in the

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Roman Empire were pagans, still in the fourth century. So by professing the

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Christian faith, Constantine identified himself with Christ, with the

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Christian church. The Roman ruling classes, those that he would have to rub shoulders with and play political chess with, were almost entirely pagan in their religious loyalties.

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And by far, the most popular religion in the army was the Eastern mystery cult of Mithraism, the cult of Mithras, who was largely a

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Persian import. So whatever Constantine's motives were, his conversion cannot have been the product of a desire to win political or military favor.

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Wrong God if that was his desire. But after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, he certainly conformed at least outwardly to Christianity.

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He regularly attended Christian worship, listened to the longest sermons without murmuring, that gets a thumbs up from me, and observed

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Easter with great solemnity. Now something else, I know we're saving everything

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Trinitarian for the next study, but I can't bypass this little reading that Needham included just to show that in the midst of all this turmoil, of the great persecution of Decius, and then later

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Diocletian, and all the controversies that come out of that between Novatianism and the Donatist controversy, all these things that are at work, you also have theology being actively developed,

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Scripture being sought out, things being worked through, heresies putting as much pressure on the biblical text as the biblical text puts pressure toward the truth.

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Very important point, that in dealing with Scripture, there's a certain pressure to come to understand a

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Trinitarian faith. And these things are happening well on the way toward Nicaea, heading into the 320s.

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So Gregory Thaumaturgus, which is a Greek term meaning wonder worker, Gregory is working out

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Trinitarian theology toward the latter end of the 3rd century. Could I have someone read for us, notice all the

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Gregories we have floating around, Gregory the illuminator, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory Thaumaturgus. Maybe Gregory, you should read for us these words of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

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There is one God, the Father of the living Logos, who is the Father's personal wisdom, power, and eternal image.

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God is the one who perfectly begets the perfect begotten. He is the Father of His only begotten

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Son. There is one Lord, the only one from the only one, God from God, the image and likeness of the deity, the all -accomplished

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Logos, the wisdom who embraces the fashioning of all things, the power who forms the whole creation, the true

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Son of the true Father, the invisible from the invisible, the incorruptible from the incorruptible, the immortal from the immortal, the eternal from the eternal.

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And there is one Holy Spirit who has His personal existence from God and is manifested by the

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Son to man. He is the image of the Son, the perfect image of the perfect. He is the life, the cause of all living things.

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He is the holy fountain. He is sanctity, the source and leader of sanctification.

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In Him is manifested God the Father, who is above all and in all, and God the Son who is through all.

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There is a perfect Trinity, existing in glory and eternity and sovereignty, without division or separation.

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There is nothing created or in bondage in the Trinity. There is nothing added, as if it did not previously exist but was introduced later on.

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Thus the Father never lacked the Son, and the Son never lacked the Spirit, but without alteration or change, the same

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Trinity endures forever. Isn't that amazing? You'd almost think this is on the other side of the

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Nicene Creed, not preceding it by decades. And you can pick up elements of biblical language.

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You can see 1 Corinthians 8, Colossians 1, John 1. You can see this working out.

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If the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all to be worshipped and regarded as God, there are certain entailments to that.

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A creature is never to be worshipped. And so the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were never created.

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They must always have been. He's working out theologically a lot of the same phrases that even 2 ,000 years later are still bedrock to Trinitarianism.

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And you'll notice that even this framework sounds like the Nicene Creed. There is one

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Lord. There is one Holy Spirit. That articulation, that assertion, these are the things that we hold.

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These are the things that we see. One God, one true Son, the image of the invisible, one

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Holy Spirit, eternally existing, uncreated, enduring eternally.

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It's glorious. Well, Constantine's conversion did not lead to Christianity becoming the official religion of the empire in his lifetime, as many people often think it did.

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It became a tolerated religion. It became a religio licita, illicit religion or legal religion.

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But it didn't become the official religion. That takes place under Theodosius. But it did change the relationship between government and religion.

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We'll see that in the next study as we look at the Council of Nicaea. For the first time, the empire had a ruler who did not look favorably on paganism.

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For example, he made Christian bishops into part of the empire's legal structure by decreeing that in a civil law dispute, two parties could take their case to the local bishop if they so desired, and the bishop's decision would have all the force of law.

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Many of Constantine's other laws reveal an enlightened conscience at work. For example, he introduced a system of state welfare in the form of child maintenance grants for the poor, which helped to discourage the common

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Roman custom of exposing unwanted children at birth. Now, that was true well up into the 200s, where if you didn't want a mouth to feed, you'd just leave them on the hillside to die.

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A lot of what Christians were doing at that point in time were railing against abortion and rescuing the exposed infants.

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He forbade crucifixion as a method of punishment, banned the practice of branding criminals on the forehead with a hot iron because the human face created to reflect heavenly beauty should never be disfigured.

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Constantine also tried to outlaw the bloodthirsty games of the gladiators, but old social habits die hard, and it was not until the reign of the emperor

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Honorius, when Christianity was widely accepted as the Roman faith, that the games finally ceased.

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One of Constantine's most historic decisions was to build a new capital city for the Eastern Empire at Byzantium, just across the sea from Asia Minor.

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It was finished in 330. Constantine called it New Rome, but it became known as Constantinople, Greek for the city of Constantine.

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This is Istanbul. You can go and see the Hagia Sophia there, one of its most famous buildings. Constantine ordered two magnificent churches to be built in the city, but no pagan temples.

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The empire's new eastern capital was, from the outset, to be a Christian city. In spite of all that Constantine did to advance

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Christianity, paganism remained the religion of the majority of the empire's citizens during his reign.

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The wealthy and educated classes did not follow their emperor's religious example, and Constantine allowed freedom of worship to pagans, although he did outlaw witchcraft and private sacrifices.

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He seemed to be okay with aspects of imperial cult, which is also perhaps some counter -evidence to where he was at.

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But again, to think of the president of becoming a Roman emperor, you can see that he wanted to align himself in continuity with what he saw to be wise and noble emperors of old.

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That's very important on the arc of Constantine in Rome. He aligns himself with Marcus Aurelius or Tiberius or others that he saw as noble rulers in their time.

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The main effect of Constantine's conversion was the changed relationship between the emperor and the affairs of the church.

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This is the beginning of church -state relations, something that will in many ways be a rollercoaster all the way toward the

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Protestant Reformation. The mingling of power, the establishment of a holy Roman empire, the increased authority and influence of both kings through the church and the church through kings, all of this is beginning to emerge in the 4th century in its seed form.

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Prior to Constantine's conversion, Roman emperors had taken it for granted that they had to uphold and maintain the worship of Rome's traditional gods.

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The empire was to have peace and prosperity. If you look at Roman coins from the 2nd century even, you'll find that often, the imprint on a coin of an emperor's face would have

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PM, the acronym PM, which stood for Pontifix Maximus, the great high priest.

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The Roman emperor was seen in many ways as the high priest over the people. One of his functions as a ruler was to appease the gods on behalf of the people.

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Constantine, of course, comes as a Christian, recognizes Christ as Lord, allegedly, seeks to be faithful to the degree that he knows how to be faithful to the claim, exclusive claim of Christianity, and he breaks away from that tradition.

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He doesn't build temples. He himself does not partake in any pagan worship. After the battle of the Milvian Bridge, he doesn't take the traditional triumphal route of worshiping at the temple of Jupiter.

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He completely turns his back on the Pantheon. That is a huge and radical break from how the

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Romans perceived the very task of a Roman emperor, was to keep the balance and security and stability of the gods for the sake of the empire.

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When the emperor became a Christian, it seemed obvious that he should use his authority in a similar way to promote Christianity.

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Constantine did exactly this. He felt he owed his position as emperor to the will of the Christian God and that he must further the interests of God's church if he was to continue to enjoy

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God's blessing. Now let's switch gears a little bit. This is getting toward chapter 7 and just a few little elements of worship as we come toward a close.

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This is Needham. Perhaps at no time before the Protestant Reformation, think in the 16th century, we're in the 4th century, perhaps at no time before the

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Protestant Reformation did the theology, organization, worship, and life of the church undergo such important developments as they did in the 4th century.

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If you're timelining significance, you're going from the 300s to the 1500s.

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That's what Needham is saying. The worship of the church underwent important developments in the 4th century.

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Up until now, virtually all churches throughout the empire had conducted their worship in the same language, Greek. However, in the 4th century, the

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West increasingly used Latin. That's under the influence of Northwest Roman Africa until by about 350 it had replaced

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Greek as the preferred language of Western worship. This reflected the fact that the eastern and western halves of the empire were drifting apart culturally and it contributed powerfully to the process by which eastern and western

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Christianity went different ways theologically and spiritually. There's something inescapable about mother tongues.

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Also within the east, many Syrian churches began to use Syriac in worship. That's a whole new realm of academic study is studying

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Syriac and diving into Syriac sources from this point in church history. And many

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Egyptian churches began to use Coptics. You have the Syrian Orthodox Church as well as the Coptic Orthodox down in Egypt.

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And this paved the way for Syrian and Egyptian Christians to form their own independent national churches in the 5th and 6th centuries, separate from the mainstream of eastern

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Byzantine Christianity as well as Latin Western Christianity. There was also an increasing emphasis in the 4th century worship on liturgy, a fixed, written form of worship.

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As we've seen, liturgies had been in use in Christian worship from the earliest times, but there was now less and less room for the bishop who had led the worship to vary from a set pattern.

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This is a liturgy. In the earlier centuries, the different main churches all had their own liturgies, but now in the east, the liturgies of Basil of Caesarea and of the church in Constantinople came to dominate.

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Basil of Caesarea revised the liturgy of the church in Caesarea, still used in the eastern Orthodox tradition today, during Lent and Christmas.

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The rest of the time, eastern Orthodoxy employs the shorter Constantinopolitan liturgy, known as the liturgy of John Chrysostom, the golden mouth preacher.

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If you ever have some time to read some homilies, you ought to read the homilies of John Chrysostom.

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They're marvelous. He was considered one of the great preachers of church history.

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This century also witnessed a trend toward ritual and ceremony. You're going to notice in the 300s, heading into the 400s, that there's a lot of decorum, there's a lot of order, there's ritualistic and ceremonial aspects to Christian worship,

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Christian activity. This is all beginning to develop, along with Christian architecture, Christian forms of art,

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Christian praxis. This is a little bit beyond our study, moving into subsequent centuries, but we have

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Lord willing, a baptismal service next Sunday evening. Let's consider how our baptismal service will probably vary different from their baptismal service.

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Would someone like to read for us the report or the summary from Cyril of Jerusalem? All right,

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Levi. Jerusalem tells us that the catechumens gathered in the vestal of the baptistery, turned to the west, and publicly renounced the saint in his words, his psalm, and his service.

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Then, turning to the east, they professed their faith in the Trinity. After this, the catechumens were led into the baptistery, where they took off their clothes and were anointed with oil, which had first been exercised.

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Then, one by one, they were immersed three times in the baptismal pool. This threefold or triple immersion signified their faith in the three persons of the

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Trinity and Christ's three -day summer in the tomb. They were then anointed with oil again on the forehead, ears, nostrils, and breast, in a ceremony called chrismation, from chrisma, the

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Greek word for anointing. Chrismation symbolized the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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Finally, the newly baptized people were clothed in white garments, given lighted papers, and led into the main part of the church, where they took part in the holy community for the first time.

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In the western churches, they were also given milk and honey just before communion, to symbolize their entrance into the heavenly promised land.

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Catechumens throughout the empire were all baptized in the same period, Easter and Pentecost. So a lot of changes there.

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I actually prefer a single dunk for my taste, because I'm not a tri -theist.

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There's the one name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that one is baptized into. But of course, you see the nature of symbolism, the three -day slumber in the tomb, the anointing, the reception of the

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Holy Spirit, the eating of milk and honey, this idea of entering into the land overflowing with God's blessing.

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So everything becomes intensely ceremonial, intensely symbolic. There's thought and practice and direction and posture and order.

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This is all developments that are occurring in the 300s, 400s, 500s in the early church.

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At this time also, you have believers increasingly prizing relics of saints. I have here a book, a tremendous study on this, by really the authority on all things late antique, this period of late antiquity, and that's

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Peter Brown. He's written a number of books, very, very helpful in studying this period. And he has this book on the cult of the saints.

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What are the origins for reliquaries? Why were things gathered from holy people, so -called?

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Well, believers increasingly prized relics of saints, things that had belonged to the saint when he was alive. It could be a piece of clothing, even one of his bones.

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The idea developed that the dead saint, now in heaven, could help struggling believers on earth by his prayers. After all, the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,

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James 5, 16. Surely a saint's prayer would be even more effective now that he was in heaven.

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So Christians practiced not praying to the saints, but asking the saints in heaven to pray for them. This was called invocation or invoking the saints, from the

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Latin in vocare, to call upon. And popular piety had often drifted into a custom of actually praying to the saints, which was a little different from the way that pagans had prayed to their various gods.

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People considered particular saints to be especially good at meeting particular needs. One could bring about a cure for childlessness, another could protect travelers, another could reveal the future, and so on.

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And that practice carries on down to this day, right? Perhaps we have Catholic friends, and maybe they have a metal on a necklace, or they're prone when they're losing something, or they're about to sell a house, or maybe their workplace has a traditional saint associated with their craft, or their skill, or their practice.

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And this is all emerging at this point in time. Remember, Christianity is becoming not only tolerated, but promoted.

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And essentially, when you have Christian emperors, the pagan temples are going out of business. And it becomes advantageous both politically, socially, maybe even economically, to align yourself with Christianity, as it begins to burgeon into the 4th and 5th century.

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And so with that, perhaps certain pagan practices, certain social mores are also carried into spiritual discipline.

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And you can see how a household shrine, what the Romans would have called a lorarium, you just get rid of the little pantheon of gods, or your patron deity, and now you just have a

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Christian saint there. And now maybe you're giving devotional exercises to revered saints.

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We see this in catacomb art. We have reliquaries, right? And this is going to carry down all the way to the

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Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther and some of the faculty at Wittenberg begin to rail against the system of relics.

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And that also produces, in its time, a counter -reaction. That confluence of worldly influence, of Christians that were essentially

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Christian in name only, well there's so much debauchery, there's so much inauthenticity, that it drives some

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Christians who desire to live a holy and meaningful life in Christ, to actually withdraw altogether from society.

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So at the same time you have Christianity overflowing and absorbing, even perhaps unbelieving elements of the empire into its midst, you also have a removal of Christians into the monastic movement.

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The most significant development in the spiritual life of the church in this period was monasticism. Many ordinary

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Christian men became so disgusted with the sinful state of the empire, that they decided to drop out of society completely.

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Like John the Baptist, they would go off into remote, unpopulated regions, such as deserts, the so -called desert fathers.

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Here you have an image from a monastic mantle, and this you'll see in Greek as Antonios here, this is the most famous desert father.

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Athanasius was a close friend of this desert father, and wrote a biography called The Life of Antony. And Antony, of course, gained a certain following, because he so intensely pursued sanctification and holiness, as he fought off demons and worked against temptation in the desert.

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This man next to him I'm not too familiar with, it's Appopannon, who must have been perhaps a leader of that monastery.

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So they sought to live simple, ascetic lives. Asceticism is on the rise at this period, it's a denial of earthly pleasure, that often is hand -in -hand with a celibate lifestyle.

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It often has dietary restrictions. It's often a renouncing of property, even of worldly wealth.

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And so asceticism is on the rise, not just in Christianity, but especially within Christianity. And monks, as well as nuns, if you were female, sought to withdraw from the corrupting influences of the world around them.

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Men were monks from the Greek monarchos, a person who lives alone. The movement began to develop in the latter half of the third century, but it became widespread only in the fourth.

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And it began largely in the places that were less urban, less civilized, like Syria and Egypt, where Hellenistic culture had not made as much of an impact.

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All monks, and Needham goes into three types of monks here, eremitic, kinabitic, and skeet, or skeety,

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I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce that. The eremitics are where we get the idea of a hermit. A hermit would be one who was solitary, and anchorite was one who wouldn't just live alone, but then go about doing things in a solitary fashion, but actually be enclosed in a cell.

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If you look at your child sheet, you have a picture of someone sort of encased in the cell. They would take an anchorite vow and remain in that cell, usually no bigger than eight feet, until they died.

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It was literally self -imprisonment for the sake of holiness. And so you had whether anchorites or hermits, you had the eremitic monasticism, kinabitic, where we get our

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Greek word koine, or common, community. And the idea is these were monasteries, men, monks, or nuns, nunneries, living in community, seeking to fulfill various tasks of spiritual discipline, as well as work, for the sake of sanctification together.

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And then down toward Egypt, you have this skeet, skeety, however you'd pronounce that type, which was usually a group of 12 and a particular leader.

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What they all hold in common is they all renounce worldly property, they all renounce pleasure, they all undertake vows to be celebrate, they all consecrate themselves to prayer, fasting, and the study of Scripture.

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This simple, disciplined style of life, practiced by monks and nuns, was part of the general spirit of asceticism, which had become increasingly popular.

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There's so much more to say about all of these things, but our time has somewhat come to an end. So I close here.

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Upside to being a monk? Sweet haircut. Very sweet haircut. I think that was more of a medieval fashion.

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I don't know that they were doing that in the 4th century. That, of course, is known as the tonsil. The downside is our departed

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Greek Orthodox monk, Mihailo Tolitos, who lived 82 years on this earth, he was dropped off to a monastery by his mother, as a newborn, and he was raised in that monastery and he lived all 82 years without ever having laid eyes on a woman.

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He never saw a woman for his entire life. Other monks in that monastery did, as they interacted with public, but he had taken a particular vow and ended up carrying that through his whole life.

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And so, in my mind, that's kind of a downside. So, sweet haircut, maybe that's worth it to you, but I'm going to pass, at least on the

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Greek Orthodox tradition of our friend Tolitos. So with that, we have negative time for questions and responses, but maybe we could squeeze in one or two if you'll allow.

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Adam. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

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That may have been deliberate, but I wouldn't necessarily start there. Of course, that Egyptian imagery, and we're in the realm of northwestern

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Africa, had the sense of immortality or eternality. However, what that is properly is what looks like the

55:43

P, is actually the Greek letter Rho. And in the shape of the cross is actually the

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Greek letter Khi. And the Khi Rho is a short symbol for Christ. It's the first two letters in Greek of the name

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Christ. And so the Khi Rho was a very common Christian symbol. It was a shorthand for identifying a

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Christian site. It was on catacombs and gravestones and places of worship, on Constantine's soldiers' shields, on coins after Constantine.

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And so I think in that baptismal tank, it's meant to be a picture of the cross in the same way that tank itself is in the form of a cross.

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But that's actually a Khi Rho. I don't think it was intentional, but it may have been.

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It may have been unintentional. Infant baptism took some time to develop, and it really comes into full bore in the decades following Constantine.

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And there's a lot of theology unpacked within that. Cyprian has a lot to do with that. As we move toward Ambrose of Milan, and under his tutelage,

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Augustine, that's where essentially you have infant baptism as we know it standardized. Now there's various theological traditions that will continue to flow through the

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Western Church in regards to understanding what the nature of baptism is, even if you're already on board with paedo -baptism.

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There's a lot of theological streams and traditions that relate to that. And that'll be true up to and beyond the

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Reformation. But what's really important to recognize is infant baptism was a development that happens in the subsequent centuries of the

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Church. And there's a number of historical, social, and theological reasons that that is so.

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The unsurpassed study on all things related to the history and geography of baptism, the architecture of baptism, is

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Everett Ferguson, who did a study called Baptism in the Early Church. And he surveys everything in geographic locations by decade.

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And he marshals about as much evidence as you possibly could. There's more famous books that have been part of the debate about antiquity or historicity, but I think

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I don't know that paedo -baptists today, unless they're ill -informed, make the argument that it was part of early church praxis.

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They tend to acknowledge that it's ancient practice that was developed in subsequent centuries. Now, the doctrine of the

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Trinity was also something that was developed in subsequent centuries. So you can make that argument, but of course,

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I would argue as a red -blooded Baptist, that Scripture ought to lead to our theological developments.

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They, of course, would agree with that too, but nevertheless we see things distinctly. Maybe room for anything else before we recite the

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Nicene Creed. Is it behind a paywall?

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Very good. Okay, well with that, why don't we recite the Nicene Creed, and then we'll close with the

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Gloria Patria. Okay? We believe in one 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, and the third day

01:00:04

He rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the

01:00:11

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

01:00:20

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

01:00:26

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

01:00:35

And we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.

01:00:44

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.