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Christianity began as a movement within Judaism at a period when the Jews had
long been under foreign influence and rule and had found in their religion
(rather than in their politics or cultural achievements) the linchpin of their
community. From Amos (8th century BC) onward the religion of Israel was marked
by tension between the concept of monotheism, with its universal ideal of
salvation (for all nations), and the notion of God's special choice of Israel.
In the age after Alexander the Great (i.e.,
the Hellenistic period, 3rd century BC-3rd century AD), the dispersion of
the Jews throughout the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire gave some
impetus to the universalistic tendency. But the attempts of foreign rulers,
especially the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes (in 168-165 BC), to impose Greek
culture and religious syncretism in Palestine provoked zealous resistance on the
part of many Jews. In Palestinian Judaism the predominant note was separation
and exclusiveness. Jewish missionaries to other areas were strictly expected to
impose the distinctive Jewish customs of circumcision, kosher food, and sabbaths
and other festivals. (see also Index: universalistic religion,
particularism)
The relationship of the earliest Christian Church to Judaism turned
principally on two questions: (1) the messianic role of Jesus of Nazareth and
(2) the permanent validity of the Mosaic Law for all. (see also Index:
messiah)
The Hebrew Scriptures viewed history as the stage of a providential drama
eventually ending in a triumph of God over all present sources of frustration (e.g.,
foreign domination or the sins of Israel). God's rule would be established
by an anointed prince (the Messiah) of the line of David, king of Israel in the
10th century BC. The proper course of action leading to the consummation of the
drama, however, was the subject of some disagreement. Among the diverse groups
were the aristocratic and conservative Sadducees, who accepted only the five
books of Moses (the Pentateuch), and the more popular and strict Pharisees. The
Pharisees not only accepted biblical books outside the Pentateuch but also
embraced doctrines--such as those on resurrection and the existence of
angels--of recent acceptance in Judaism, many of which were derived from
apocalyptic expectations that the consummation of history would be heralded by
God's intervention in the affairs of men in dramatic, cataclysmic terms. The
Sanhedrin (central council) at Jerusalem was made up of both Pharisees and
Sadducees. The Zealots were aggressive revolutionaries seeking independence from
Rome. Other groups were the Herodians, supporters of the client kingdom of the
Herods (a dynasty that supported Rome) and abhorrent to the Zealots, and the
Essenes, a quasi-monastic dissident group, probably including the sect that
preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls. This latter sect did not participate in the
Temple worship at Jerusalem and observed another religious calendar; from their
desert retreat they awaited divine intervention and searched prophetic writings
for signs indicating the consummation.
What relation the followers of Jesus had to some of these groups is not
clear. In the canonical Gospels (those accepted as authentic by the church) the
main targets of criticism are the scribes and Pharisees, whose attachment to the
tradition of Judaism is presented as legalistic and pettifogging. The Sadducees
and Herodians likewise receive an unfriendly portrait. The Essenes are never
mentioned. Simon, one of Jesus' 12 disciples, was or had once been a Zealot.
Jesus probably stood close to the Pharisees.
Under the social and political conditions of the time, there could be no long
future either for the Sadducees or for the Zealots--whose attempts to make
apocalyptic dreams effective led to the destruction of Judaea after the two
major Jewish revolts of 66-70 and 132-135 against the Romans. The choice for
many Jews thus lay between the Pharisees and Christianity, the former dedicated
to the meticulous preservation of the Mosaic Law and the latter to the universal
propagation of the biblical faith as a religion for all mankind. Pharisaism as
enshrined in the Mishna (Oral Law) and the Talmud (commentary on and addition to
the Oral Law) became normative Judaism. By looking to the Gentile (non-Jewish)
world and carefully dissociating itself from the Zealot revolutionaries,
Christianity made possible its ideal of a world religion, at the price of
sacrificing Jewish particularity and exclusiveness. The fact that Christianity
has never succeeded in gaining the open allegiance of more than a minority of
Jews is more a mystery to theologians than to historians.
The prime sources for knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth are the four canonical
Gospels in the New Testament. Only a few probably authentic sayings of Jesus
became preserved in oral tradition independent of these documents, though many
sayings came to be put into his mouth. These noncanonical sayings are called
agrapha (not in Scripture). The Gospel
of Thomaspreserved in a Coptic Gnostic library found about 1945 in Egypt,
contains several such sayings, besides some independent versions of canonical
sayings. At certain points the Gospel tradition finds independent confirmation
in the letters of the Apostle Paul. The allusions in non-Christian sources (the
Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and
Talmudic texts) are almost negligible, except as refuting the unsubstantiated
notion that Jesus might never have existed.
The first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, have a literary relation to
one another and are hence called Synoptic. Mark was probably used by Matthew and
Luke. John, differing in both pattern and content, appears richer in theological
interpretation but in detail may preserve good historical information. As their
titles imply, the Gospels are not detached reports but were written to serve
religious needs; they resemble oil paintings rather than photographs. Legendary
and apologetic (defensive) motifs, and the various preoccupations of the
communities for which they were first produced, can readily be discerned as
influences upon their narratives. Historical scholarship at present has
insufficient tools to eliminate subjective judgments about the probability of
many details (upon which there will always be disagreement), but the most
persuasive scholarly consensus accepts the substance of the Gospel tradition as
a veracious picture. (see also Index: Mark, The Gospel According to,
Luke, Gospel According to, Synoptic Gospels, John, Gospel According to)
A prominent uncertainty is the matter of chronology. Matthew places the birth
of Jesus at least two years before Herod the Great's death late in 5 BC or early
in 4 BC. Luke connects Jesus' birth with a Roman census that, according to
Josephus, occurred in AD 6-7 and caused a revolt against the governor Quirinius.
Luke could be right about the census and wrong about the governor. The
crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judaea (AD 26-36), was probably
about the year 29-30, but again certainty is impossible.
Encounter with John the Baptist, the ascetic in the Judaean Desert who
preached repentance and baptism in view of God's coming Kingdom, marked a
decisive moment for Jesus' career. He recognized in John the forerunner of the
kingdom that his own ministry was inaugurating. The first preaching of Jesus, in
his home region of Galilee, took the form of vivid parables and was accompanied
by miraculous healings. The Synoptic writers give a single climactic visit of
Jesus to Jerusalem at the end of his career; but John may be right (implicitly
supported by Luke 13:7) in representing his visits as more frequent and the
period of ministry as lasting more than a single year. Jesus' attitude to the
observance of the law generated conflict with the Pharisees, and, though the
people protected him, he also aroused the fear and hostility of the ruling
Jewish authorities. A triumphal entry to Jerusalem at Passover time (the period
celebrating the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt in the 13th century BC) was the
prelude to a final crisis. After a last supper with his disciples he was
betrayed by one of them, Judas. Arrest and trial followed, first before the
Sanhedrin and then before Pilate, who condemned him to crucifixion. The
accusation before Pilate was sedition, in which the Evangelists saw a framed
charge. It was universal Christian belief that three days after his death he was
raised from the dead by divine power.
Jesus preached the imminent presence of God's Kingdom, in some texts as
future consummation, in others as already present. The words and acts of Jesus
were believed to be the inauguration of a process that was to culminate in a
final triumph of God. His disciples recognized him as the Messiah, the Anointed
One. He is not recorded to have used the word of himself. The titles Prophet and
Rabbi also were applied to Jesus. His own enigmatic self-designation was
"Son of man," sometimes in allusion to his suffering, sometimes to his
future role as judge. This title is derived from the version of the Book of
Daniel (7:13), where "one like a son of man," contrasted with beast
figures, represents the humiliated people of God, ascending to be vindicated by
the divine Judge. In the developed Gospel tradition the theme of the
transcendent judge seems to be most prominent.
Apocalyptic hope could easily merge into messianic zealotry. Moreover, Jesus'
teaching was critical of the established order and encouraged the poor and
oppressed, even though it contained an implicit rejection of revolution.
Violence was viewed as incompatible with the ethic of the Kingdom of God.
Whatever contacts there may have been with the Zealot movement (as the narrative
of feeding 5,000 people in the desert may hint), the Gospels assume the widest
distance between Jesus' understanding of his role and the Zealot revolution.
With this distance from revolutionary idealism goes a sombre estimate of
human perfectibility. The gospel of repentance presupposes deep defilement in
individuals and in society. The sufferings and pains of humanity under the power
of evil spirits calls out for compassion and an urgent mission. All the acts of
a disciple must express love and forgiveness, even to enemies, and also
detachment from property and worldly wealth. To Jesus, the outcasts of society
(prostitutes, the hated and oppressive tax agents, and others) were objects of
special care, and censoriousness was no virtue. Though the state is regarded as
a distant entity in certain respects, it yet has the right to require taxes and
civic obligations: Caesar has rights that must be respected and are not
incompatible with the fulfillment of God's demands.
Some of the futurist sayings, if taken by themselves, raise the question
whether Jesus intended to found a church. A negative answer emerges only if the
authentic Jesus is assumed to have expected an immediate catastrophic
intervention by God. There is no doubt that he gathered and intended to gather
around him a community of followers. This community continued after his time,
regarding itself as the specially called congregation of God's people,
possessing as covenant signs the rites of baptism and Eucharist (Lord's Supper)
with which Jesus was particularly associated--baptism because of his example,
Eucharist because the Last Supper on the night before the crucifixion was marked
as an anticipation of the messianic feast of the coming age.
A closely related question is whether Jesus intended his gospel to be
addressed to Jews only or if the Gentiles were also to be included. In the
Gospels Gentiles appear as isolated exceptions, and the choice of 12 Apostles
has an evident symbolic relation to the 12 tribes of Israel. The fact that the
extension of Christian preaching to the Gentiles caused intense debate in the
40s of the 1st century is decisive proof that Jesus had given no unambiguous
directive on the matter. Gospel sayings that make the Jews' refusal to recognize
Jesus' authority as the ground for extending the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles
must, therefore, have been cast by the early community.
Saul, or Paul (as he was later called), was a zealous Pharisee who persecuted
the primitive church. Born at Tarsus (Asia Minor), he had come to Jerusalem as a
student of the famous Rabbi Gamaliel and had harried a Christian group called by
Luke the "Hellenists," who were led by Stephen (the first Christian
martyr) and who regarded Jesus as a spiritual reformer sent to purge the corrupt
worship of Jerusalem. While on a mission to persecute the followers of Jesus,
Paul was suddenly converted to faith in Christ and, simultaneously, to a
conviction that the Gospel must pass to the non-Jewish world under conditions
that dispensed with exclusively and distinctively Jewish ceremonies. Paul was
disapproved by Christian Jews who were of conservative opinions and remained
throughout his career a controversial figure. He gained recognition for the
converts of the Gentile mission by the Christian community in Jerusalem; but his
work was considered an affront to Jewish traditionalism, and his program of
being "all things to all men" led to bitter charges that he was an
unprincipled trimmer. He saw clearly and correctly that the universal mission of
the church to all humanity, implicit in the coming of the Messiah, or Christ,
meant a radical break with rabbinical conservatism.
Owing to the preservation of some weighty letters, Paul is the only vivid
figure of the apostolic age (1st century AD). Like his elder contemporary Philo
of Alexandria, also a Hellenized Jew of the dispersion, he interpreted the Old
Testament allegorically (symbolically) and affirmed the primacy of spirit over
letter in a manner that was in line with Jesus' freedom with regard to the
sabbath. The crucifixion of Jesus he viewed as the supreme redemptive act and
also as the means of expiation for the sin of mankind. Salvation is, in Paul's
thought, therefore, not found by a conscientious moralism but rather is a gift
of grace, a doctrine in which Paul was anticipated by Philo. But Paul linked
this doctrine with his theme that the Gospel represents liberation from the
Mosaic Law. The latter thesis created difficulties at Jerusalem, where the
church was under the presidency of James, the brother of Jesus, and the circle
of the intimate disciples of Jesus. James, martyred at Jerusalem in 62, was the
primary authority for the Christian Jews, especially those made anxious by Paul;
the canonical letter ascribed to James opposes the antinomian (anti-law)
interpretations of the doctrine of justification by faith. A middle position
seems to have been occupied by Peter. All the Gospels record a special
commission of Jesus to Peter as the leader among the 12 Apostles. But Peter's
biography can only be dimly constructed; he died in Rome (according to early
tradition) in Nero's persecution (64) about the same time as Paul.
Apart from its success, the supremacy of the Gentile mission within the
church was ensured by the effects on Jewish Christianity of the fall of
Jerusalem (70) and Hadrian's exclusion of all Jews from the city (135). Jewish
Christianity declined and became the faith of a very small group without links
to either synagogue or Gentile church. Some bore the title Ebionites, "the
poor" (compare Matthew 5:3). Among them some did not accept the tradition
that Jesus was born of a virgin.
In the theology of Paul, the human achievement of Jesus was important because
his obedient fidelity to his vocation gave moral and redemptive value to his
self-sacrifice. A different emphasis appears in the Gospel According to John,
written (according to 2nd-century tradition) at Ephesus. John's Gospel partly
reflects local disputes, not only between the church and the Hellenized
synagogue but also between orthodox Christianity and deviationist Gnostic groups
in Asia Minor. John's special individuality lies in his view of the relation
between the historical events of the tradition and the Christian community's
present experience of redemption. The history is treated symbolically to provide
a vehicle for faith. Because it is less attached to the contingent events of a
particular man's life, John's conception of the preexistent Logos becoming
incarnate (made flesh) in Jesus made intelligible to the Hellenistic world the
universal significance of Jesus. In antiquity, divine presence had to be
understood as either inspiration or incarnation. If the Synoptic Gospels suggest
inspiration, the Gospel According to John chooses incarnation. The tension
between these two types of Christology (doctrines of Christ) first became acute
in the debate between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria in the late 4th
century.
Many Palestinian Jews appreciated the benefits of Roman rule in guaranteeing
order and peace. The Roman government could tolerate regional and local
religious groups and found it convenient to control Palestine through client
kings like the Herods. The demand that divine honours be paid not only to the
traditional Roman or similar gods but also to the emperors was not extended to
Judaea except under the emperor Caligula (reigned 37-41). It was enough that the
Jews dedicated temple sacrifices and synagogues in the emperor's honour. The
privileges of Roman citizenship were possessed by some Jewish families,
including that of the Apostle Paul. (see also Index: Greek religion,
Roman religion)
In his letter to the Romans, Paul affirmed the providential role of
government in restraining evil. Christians did not need to be disaffected from
the empire, though the deification of the emperor was offensive to them.
Moreover, although as an agency of social welfare the church offered much to the
downtrodden elements in society, the Christians did not at any stage represent a
social and political threat. The ancient world did not possess a working-class
movement in the modern sense, and Christianity did not create or foster one.
After the example of their master, the Christians encouraged humility and
patience before wicked men. Even the institution of slavery was not the subject
of fundamental Christian criticism before the 4th century. The church, however,
was not lost in pious mysticism. It provided for far more than the cultic
(liturgical) needs of its members. Inheriting a Jewish moral ideal, its
activities included food for the poor, orphans, and foundlings; care for
prisoners; and a community funeral service. (see also Index: church and
state)
The church inherited from Judaism also a strong sense of being holy, separate
from idolatry and pagan eroticism. As polytheism with its attendant
permissiveness permeated ancient society, a moral rigorism severely limited
Christian participation in some trades and professions. At baptism a Christian
was expected to renounce his occupation if that necessarily implicated him in
public or private compromise with polytheism, superstition, dishonesty, or vice.
About military service there was disagreement. The majority held that a soldier,
if converted and baptized, was not required to leave the army, but there was
hesitation about whether an already baptized Christian might properly enlist.
Strict Christians also thought poorly of the teaching profession because it
involved instructing the young in literature replete with pagan ideals and what
was viewed as indecency. Acting and dancing were similarly suspect occupations.
Any involvement in magic was completely forbidden.
The Christian ethic therefore demanded some detachment from society. In some
cases this made for economic difficulties. The structure of ancient society was
dominated not by class but by the relationship of patron and client. A slave or
freedman depended for his livelihood and prospects upon his patron. In antiquity
a strong patron was indispensable if one was negotiating with police or tax
authorities or lawcourts or if one had ambitions in the imperial service. The
authority of the father of the family was considerable. Conversely, a man's
power in society depended on the extent of his dependents and supporters. Often,
Christianity penetrated the social strata first through women and children,
especially in the upper classes. But once the householder was a Christian, his
dependents tended to follow. The Christian community itself was close-knit.
Third-century evidence portrays Christians banking their money with fellow
believers; and widely separated groups helped one another with trade and mutual
assistance.
Women in ancient society--Greek, Roman, or Jewish--had a domestic, not a
public, role; feminine subordination was self-evident. To Paul, however,
Christian faith transcends barriers to make all free and equal (Galatians 3:28).
Of all ancient writers Paul was the most powerful spokesman for equality.
Nevertheless, just as he refused to harbour a runaway slave, so he opposed any
practice that would identify the church with social radicalism (a principal
pagan charge against it). Paul did not avoid self-contradiction (1 Corinthians
11:5, 14:34-35). His opposition to a public liturgical role for women decided
subsequent Catholic tradition in the East and West. Yet in the Greek churches
(though not often in the Latin) women were ordained as deacons--in the 4th
century by prayer and imposition of hands with the same rite as male
deacons--and had a special responsibility at women's baptism. Widows and orphans
were the neediest in antiquity, and the church provided them substantial relief.
It also encouraged vows of virginity, and by AD 400 women from wealthy or
politically powerful families acquired power as superiors of religious
communities. It seemed natural to elect as abbess a woman whose family
connections might bring benefactions.
The religious environment of the Gentile mission was a tolerant, syncretistic
blend of many cults and myths. Paganism was concerned with success; the gods
gave victory in war, good harvests, success in love and marriage, and sons and
daughters. Defeat, famine, civil disorder, and infertility were probable signs
of cultic pollution and disfavour. People looked to religion for help in
mastering the forces of nature rather than to achieve moral improvement.
Individual gods cared either for specific human needs or for specific places and
groups. The transcendent God of biblical religion was, therefore, very different
from the numerous gods of limited power and local significance. In Asia Minor
Paul and his coworker Barnabas were taken to be gods in mortal form because of
their miracles. To offer sacrifice on an altar seemed a natural expression of
gratitude to any dead, or even living, benefactor. Popular enthusiasm could
bestow divine honours on such heroes as dead pugilists and athletes. In the
Roman Empire it seemed natural to offer sacrifice and burn incense to the divine
emperor as a symbol of loyalty, much like standing for a national anthem today.
Traditional Roman religion was a public cult, not private mysticism, and was
upheld because it was the received way of keeping heaven friendly. To refuse
participation appeared to be disloyal. The Jews could gain acceptance for their
refusal by virtue of the undoubted fact that their monotheism was an ancestral
national tradition. The Christians, however, did everything in their power to
dissuade people from following the customs of their fathers, whether Gentiles or
Jews, and thereby seemed to threaten the cohesion of society and the principle
that each racial group was entitled to follow its national customs in religion.
If ancient religion was tolerant, the philosophical schools were seldom so.
Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics tended to be very
critical of one another. By the 1st century BC, an eclecticism emerged; and by
the 2nd century AD, there developed a common stock of philosophy shared by most
educated people and by some professional philosophers, which derived metaphysics
involving theories on the nature of Being from Plato, ethics from the Stoics,
and logic from Aristotle. This eclectic Platonism provided an important
background and springboard for early Christian apologetics. Its main outlines
appear already in Philo of Alexandria, whose thought influenced not only perhaps
the writer of the anonymous letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament but also
the great Christian thinkers Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Ambrose of
Milan. Because of this widespread philosophical tendency, the Christian could
generally assume some belief in Providence and assent to high moral imperatives.
Platonism in particular provided a metaphysical framework within which the
Christians could interpret the entire pattern of creation, the Fall of humanity,
the incarnation, redemption, the church, sacraments, and last things.
In the first Christian generation, authority in the church lay either in the
kinsmen of Jesus or in those whom he had commissioned as Apostles and
missionaries. The Jerusalem church under James, the brother of Jesus, was the
mother church. Paul admitted that if they had refused to grant recognition to
his Gentile converts he would have laboured in vain. If there was an attempt to
establish a hereditary family overlordship in the church, it did not succeed.
Among the Gentile congregations, the Apostles sent by Jesus enjoyed supreme
authority. As long as the Apostles lived, there existed a living authoritative
voice to which appeal could be made. But once they all had died, there was an
acute question regarding the locus of authority. The earliest documents of the
3rd and 4th Christian generations are mainly concerned with this issue: what is
the authority of the ministerial hierarchy? The apostolic congregations had
normally been served by elders (Greek presbyteroi"priests") or
overseers (episkopoi,
"bishops"), assisted by attendants (diakonoi, "deacons").
The clergy were responsible for preaching, for administering baptism and
Eucharist, and for distributing aid to the poor. In each city the president or
senior member of the college (assembly) of presbyters naturally had some special
authority; he corresponded with other churches and, when they were ordaining a
new president, would go as the representative of his own community and as a
symbol of the catholicity--the universality and unity--of the church of Christ.
(see also Index: elder)
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch early in the 2nd century, wrote seven letters on
his way to martyrdom at Rome that indicate how critical the centrifugal forces
in the church had made the problem of authority. The bishop, he insisted, is the
unique focus of unity without whose authority there is no sacrament and no
church. A few years earlier the letter of Bishop Clement of Rome (c. AD
95) to the church at Corinth based the hierarchy's authority on the concept of a
historical succession of duly authorized teachers. Clement understood the clergy
and laity to be essentially distinct orders within the one community, just as in
the Old Testament there were high priests, priests, Levites (Temple
functionaries), and laymen. The principles of Clement and Ignatius became
important when the church was faced by people claiming recognition for their
special charismatic (spiritual) gifts and especially by Gnostic heretics
claiming to possess secret oral traditions whispered by Jesus to his disciples
and not contained in publicly accessible records such as the Gospels.
The authority of the duly authorized hierarchy became enhanced by the outcome
of another 2nd-century debate, about the possibility of absolution for sins
committed after baptism. The Shepherd
of Hermasa book that enjoyed canonical status in some areas of the early
church, enforced the point that excessive rigorism produces hypocrisies. By the
3rd century the old notion of the church as a society of holy people was being
replaced by the conception that it was a school for frail sinners. In spite of
protests, especially that of the schism led by the theologian and schismatic
pope Novatian at Rome in 251, the final consensus held that the power to bind
and loose (compare Matthew 16:18-19), to excommunicate and absolve, was vested
in bishops and presbyters by their ordination. (see also Index: Novatian
Schism)
Early Christianity was predominantly urban; peasants on farms were deeply
attached to old ways and followed the paganism favoured by most aristocratic
landowners. By AD 400 some landowners had converted and built churches on their
property, providing a "benefice" for the priest, who might often be
one of the magnate's servants. In the East and in North Africa each township
normally had its own bishop. In the Western provinces bishops were fewer and
were responsible for larger areas, which, from the 4th century onward, were
called by the secular term dioceses (administrative districts). In the 4th
century pressure to bring Western custom into line with Eastern and to multiply
bishops was resisted on the ground that it would diminish the bishops' social
status. By the end of the 3rd century the bishop of the provincial capital was
acquiring authority over his colleagues: the metropolitan (from the 4th century
on, often entitled archbishop) was chief consecrator of his episcopal
colleagues. The bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch in the 3rd century were
accorded some authority beyond their own provinces. Along with Jerusalem and
Constantinople (founded in 330), these three sees (seats of episcopal authority)
became, for the Greeks, the five patriarchates. The title papa
("father") was for 600 years an affectionate term applied to any
bishop to whom one's relation was intimate; it began to be specially used of
bishops of Rome from the 6th century and by the 9th century was almost
exclusively applied to them.
From the beginning, the Christians in Rome were aware of special
responsibilities for them to lead the church. About AD 165, memorials were
erected at Rome to the Apostles Peter and Paul, to Peter in a necropolis on the
Vatican Hill, and to Paul on the road to Ostia. The construction reflects a
sense of being guardians of an apostolic tradition, a self-consciousness
expressed in another form when, about 190, Bishop Victor of Rome threatened with
excommunication Christians in Asia Minor who, following immemorial custom,
observed Easter on the day of the Jewish Passover rather than (as at Rome) on
the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Stephen of Rome
(256) is the first known pope to base claims to authority on Jesus' commission
to Peter (Matthew 16:18-19).
Bishops were elected by their congregations--i.e.,
by the clergy and laity assembled together. But the consent of the laity
decreased in importance as recognition by other churches increased. The
metropolitan and other provincial bishops soon became just as important as the
congregation as a whole; and, though they could never successfully impose a man
on a solidly hostile community, they could often prevent the appointment falling
under the control of one powerful lay family or faction. From the 4th century
on, the emperors occasionally intervened to fill important sees, but such
occurrences were not a regular phenomenon (until the 6th century in Merovingian
Gaul).
After the initial problems regarding the continuity and authority of the
hierarchy, the greatest guarantee of true continuity and authenticity was found
in the Scriptures. Christians inherited (without debate at first) the Hebrew
Bible as the Word of God to the people of God at a now superseded stage of their
pilgrimage through history. If St. Paul's Gentile mission was valid, then the
Old Testament Law was viewed as no longer God's final word to his people. Thus,
the Hebrew Bible began to be called the old
covenant. There was some hesitation in the church about the exact books
included. The Greek version of the Old Testament (Septuagint) included books
(such as the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and others) that were not
accepted in the Hebrew canon. Most, but not all, Gentile Christian communities
accepted the Septuagintal canon. The 3rd-century Alexandrian theologian Origen
and especially the Latin biblical scholar Jerome (4th-5th century) believed it
imprudent to base theological affirmations on books enjoying less than universal
recognition. The fact that in many English Bibles the parts of the Old Testament
accepted in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew canon are often printed
separately under the (misleading) title Apocrypha is a tribute to these ancient
hesitations.
The growth of the New Testament is more complex and controversial.
First-century Christians used oral tradition more than writing to pass on the
story of Jesus' acts and words, often told in the context of preaching and
teaching. No one thought they needed to be in writing to bear authority. Mark
first conceived the plan of composing a connected narrative. Nevertheless, even
after the Gospels were in common circulation, oral tradition was still current
and could even be preferred. A carefully copied document, however, provided
greater security against contamination of the tradition. The Synoptic Gospels
seem to have been used by the Apologist Justin Martyr at Rome about AD 150 in
the form of an early harmony (or synthesis of the Gospels); to this, Justin's
Syrian pupil Tatian added the Gospel According to John to make his Diatessaron(according
to the four), a harmony of all four Gospels so successful that in Mesopotamia
(Tatian's homeland) it virtually ousted the separate Gospels for 250 years. (see
also Index: oral literature)
On a second grade of authority stood the apostolic letters, especially those
of Paul. The main body of his correspondence was circulating as a corpus (body
of writings) well before AD 90. (see also Index: Pauline letters)
Paul's antitheses of law and grace, justice and goodness, and the letter and
the spirit were extended further than Paul intended by the radical semi-Gnostic
heretic Marcion of Pontus (c. 140-150), who taught that the Old Testament
came from the inferior vengeful Jewish God of justice and that the New Testament
told of the kindly universal Father. As the current texts of Gospels and letters
presupposed some divine revelation through the Old Testament, Marcion concluded
that they had been corrupted and interpolated by Judaizers. Marcion therefore
established a fixed canon of an edited version of Luke's Gospel and some of the
Pauline Letters (expurgated), and no Old Testament at all.
The orthodox reaction (by such theologians as Justin, Irenaeus, and
Tertullian in the 2nd century) was to insist on the Gospel as the fulfillment of
prophecy and on creation as the ground of redemption. Reasons were found for
accepting the four already current Gospels, the full corpus of Pauline Letters,
Acts, John's Revelation (Apocalypse), and some of the Catholic Letters (these
last--I, II, and III John, James, and Jude--were the subject of hesitations). On
the authorship of the Letter to the Hebrews there were doubts: Rome rejected it
as non-Pauline and Alexandria accepted it as Pauline. The list once established
was a criterion (the meaning of "canon") for the authentic Gospel of
the new covenant and soon (by transference from the old) became entitled the New
Testament. (The Greek word diatheke means both covenant and testament.)
The formation of the canon meant that special revelation ended with the death of
the Apostles and that no authority could be attached to the apocryphal gospels,
acts, and apocalypses proliferating in the 2nd century.
Third, a check was found in the creed. At baptism, after renouncing "the
devil and his pomps," initiates declared their faith in response to three
questions of the form:
Do you
believe in God the Father almighty? Do you believe in Jesus Christ his Son our
Lord. . . ? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit in the church and in the
Resurrection?
In time, these interrogations became the basis of declaratory creeds, adapted
for use by the clergy who felt themselves required to reassure colleagues who
were not especially confident of their orthodoxy. The so-called Apostles' Creed
is a direct descendant of the baptismal creed used at Rome by AD 200. Each
church (or region) might have its own variant form, but all had the threefold
structure.
The internal coherence given by creed, canon, and hierarchy was necessary
both in the defense of authentic Christianity against Gnostic theosophical
speculations and also in confronting pagan society. The strong coherence of the
scattered congregations was remarkable to pagan observers.
Gnosticism was the greatest threat to Christianity before 150 and somewhat
thereafter. Gnostics taught that there is total opposition between this evil
world and God. Redemption was viewed as liberation from the chaos of a creation
derived from either incompetent or malevolent powers, a world in which the elect
are alien prisoners. The method of salvation was to discover the Kingdom of God
within one's elect soul and to learn how to pass the hostile powers barring the
soul's ascent to bliss. Gnosticism destroyed the notion of a historical
disclosure of God. Its pessimism and dualism (in which matter was viewed as evil
and spirit good) had disturbing moral consequences, involving both asceticism
and libertinism. Its claims to a totally transcendent revelation were
antirational, allowed for no natural goodness in the created order, and
eliminated individual responsibility. Both the orthodox theologians and the
pagan 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus dismissed Gnosticism as a pretentious but
dangerous mumbo jumbo for misleading the half-educated.
The orthodox stressed the need to adhere to tradition, which was attested by
the churches of apostolic foundation. A more hazardous reply was to appeal to
ecstatic prophecy. About AD 172 a quasi-pentecostal movement in Phrygia was led
by Montanus with two prophetesses, reasserting the imminence of the end of the
world. He taught that there was an age of the Father (Old Testament), an age of
the Son (New Testament), and an age of the Spirit (heralded by the prophet
Montanus). Montanism won its chief convert in the Latin theologian Tertullian of
Carthage. Its claim to supplement the New Testament was generally rejected.
The Christians were not respectful toward ancestral pagan customs. Their
preaching of a new king sounded like revolution. The opposition of the Jews to
them led to breaches of the peace. Thus the Christians could very well be
unpopular, and they often were. Paul's success at Ephesus provoked a riot to
defend the cult of the goddess Artemis. In AD 64 a fire destroyed much of Rome;
the emperor Nero killed a "vast multitude" of Christians as
scapegoats. For the first time, Rome was conscious that Christians were distinct
from Jews. But there probably was no formal senatorial enactment proscribing
Christianity at this time. Nero's persecution was local and short. Soon
thereafter, however, the profession of Christianity was defined as a capital
crime, though of a special kind because one gained pardon by apostasy (rejection
of a faith once confessed) demonstrated by offering sacrifice to the pagan gods
or the emperor. Popular gossip soon accused the Christians of secret vices, such
as eating murdered infants (due to the secrecy surrounding the Lord's Supper and
the use of the words body and blood) and sexual promiscuity (due to the practice
of Christians calling each other "brother" or "sister" while
living as husband and wife). The governor of Bithynia in AD 111, the younger
Pliny, told the emperor Trajan that to his surprise he discovered the Christians
to be guilty of no vice, only of obstinacy and superstition. Nevertheless, he
executed without a qualm those who refused to apostatize. (see also Index:
Roman Republic and Empire)
Early persecutions were sporadic, caused by local conditions and depending on
the attitude of the governor. The fundamental cause of persecution was that the
Christians conscientiously rejected the gods whose favour was believed to have
brought success to the empire. But distrust was increased by Christian
detachment and reluctance to serve in the imperial service and in the army. At
any time in the 2nd or 3rd centuries, Christians could find themselves the
object of unpleasant attention. A pogrom could be precipitated by a bad harvest,
a barbarian attack, or a public festival of the emperor cult. Yet, long periods
of peace occurred. In 248-250, when Germanic tribes threatened the empire,
popular hostility culminated in the persecution under the emperor Decius
(reigned 249-251): by edict all citizens were required to offer sacrifice and to
obtain from commissioners a certificate witnessing to the act. Many of these
certificates have survived. The requirement created an issue of conscience,
especially because certificates could be bought by bribes. Under renewed attack
(257-259), the great bishop-theologian Cyprian of Carthage was martyred. The
persecuting emperor Valerian, however, became a Persian prisoner of war, and his
son Gallienus issued an edict of toleration restoring confiscated churches and
cemeteries. The church prospered from 261 to 303, but the empire suffered
external attack, internal sedition, and rampant inflation. In February 303 the
worst of all persecutions erupted under the co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius.
The persecutions ended and peace was reached with the Edict of Milan, a
manifesto of toleration issued in 313 by the joint emperors Licinius and his
Christian colleague Constantine. Disagreements about the point at which the
state must be resisted led to long lasting schisms in Egypt (Melitianism) and
North Africa (Donatism). (see also Index: Donatist)
St. Paul could quote such pagan poets as Aratus, Menander, and Epimenides.
Clement of Rome cited the dramatists Sophocles and Euripides. Educated
Christians shared this literary tradition with educated pagans. The defenders of
Christianity against pagan attack (especially Justin Martyr and Clement of
Alexandria in the 2nd century) welcomed classical philosophy and literature;
they wished only to reject all polytheistic myth and cult and all metaphysical
and ethical doctrines irreconcilable with Christian belief (e.g.,
Stoic materialism and Platonic doctrines of the transmigration of souls and
the eternity of the world). Clement of Alexandria, second known head of the
catechetical school at Alexandria, possessed a wide erudition in the main
classics and knew the works of Plato and Homer intimately. His successor at
Alexandria, Origen, showed less interest in literary and aesthetic matters but
was a greater scholar and thinker; he first applied the methods of Alexandrian
philology to the text of the Bible. (see also Index: Greek religion,
Roman religion, Alexandria, School of)
Nevertheless, both pagans and Christians instinctively assumed the unity of
ancient culture and pagan religion; it was hard for Christians to attack
paganism without seeming negative toward the totality of classical culture as
well as disaffected toward the imperial government. The urgent eschatological
hope of the earliest church had built into its ethic a deep detachment from this
world's goods, however beautiful they might be esteemed. This detachment emerged
in one form in the evaluation of celibacy as superior to marriage, in another in
a conscious renunciation of pretensions to high culture (in the manner of the
not always popular or socially accepted pre-Christian Cynic philosophers with
whom pagans found it natural to compare the Christians). The passionate urgency
of the Christian mission admitted no distraction, an attitude that stamped any
serious interest in science, history, or belles lettres with the stigma of
worldliness.
The attitude of the Christians toward other religions (except Judaism) was
generally very negative. All forms of paganism--the Oriental mystery
(salvational) religions of Isis, Attis, Adonis, and Mithra as well as the
ancient cults of classical Greece and Rome--were regarded as the cults of evil
spirits. Like the Jews, the Christians (unless Gnostic) were opposed to
syncretism. With the exception of the notion of baptism as a rebirth, Christians
generally and significantly avoided the characteristic vocabularies of the
mystery religions. The mysteries of Isis, Attis, Adonis, and (to some extent,
perhaps) Mithra were basically fertility rites to ensure good crops. They
answered to needs different from those addressed by the Christian gospel. A
Mithraic rite with bread and water was noted by Justin Martyr as a counterpart
of the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist. The spring rites mourning
Attis' death and then celebrating his revival at the festival known as the
Hilaria offered a parallel to the ceremonies of Holy Week and Easter as
developed in the 4th century. The point where parallel can be treated as
influence, however, is a delicate matter to determine. Between Christianity and
the pagan cults the most prominent difference consisted in the syncretistic
tolerance of the latter; initiation into the mysteries of Isis did not mean
renouncing allegiance to Apollo or Attis, whereas the Christian baptism required
exclusive devotion.
Many converts naturally brought old attitudes with them into the church.
Amulets and peasant superstitions were long the object of critical attention by
the clergy. The Christians tried to provide counter-attractions by placing
Christian festivals on the same days of the year as pagan feasts. Solar
monotheism was popular in late 3rd-century paganism, and soon the Western
churches were keeping the winter solstice (December 25) as Christ's
Nativity--the East kept January 6. Midsummer Day was replaced by the feast of
John the Baptist. The church fought hard against the heathen celebration of
January 1, but with little success. Only Easter (celebrating Christ's
Resurrection) and Pentecost (celebrating the advent of the Holy Spirit) were
feasts owing nothing to Gentile analogies for their origin; they both were
derived from Jewish feasts. From the 5th century AD on, great pagan temples,
such as the Parthenon in Athens, were gradually transformed into churches.
The Christian Apologists of the 2nd century sought to drive a wedge between
the pagan religion that they abhorred and the Greek philosophy that, with
occasional reservations, they welcomed. Second-century Platonism found it easy
to think of Mind (nous) or Reason (Logos) as divine power immanent within the
world. Philo of Alexandria had spoken of the Logos
as mediating between the transcendent God and this created order. The Logos
theology was developed by Justin Martyr both to make a positive evaluation
of the best elements in the Greek philosophical tradition and to make the
incarnation of Christ intelligible to the Greek mind. But the Apologists upset
some of their fellow Christians by talking of the divine Logos as
virtually a second God beside the Father and thus compromising the monotheism
that the orthodox were defending against Gnostic dualism. The critics of the
Logos theology, labeled Monarchians, affirmed that Father, Son, and
Spirit were one God; the three names were epithets, not substantives. In the 3rd
century a Roman presbyter, Sabellius, was excommunicated for this opinion, and
the defenders of the Logos
theology ousted the opponents of speculative apologetics. Clement of
Alexandria and Origen provided the Greek churches with a Platonizing theology
that was strongly opposed to the Monarchian position.
Paul's letters mention worship on the first day of the week. In John's
Apocalypse, Sunday is called "the Lord's day." The weekly
commemoration of the Resurrection replaced for Christians the synagogue meetings
on Saturdays; the practice of circumcision was dropped, and initiation was by
baptism; continuing membership of the church was signified by weekly
participation in the Eucharist. Baptism in water in the name of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit was preceded by instruction (catechesis) and fasting. Persons about
to be baptized renounced evil and, as they made the declaration of faith, were
dipped in water; they then received by anointing and by the laying on of hands
(confirmation) the gift of the Holy Spirit and incorporation within the body of
Christ, thus concluding the entire rite. Only the baptized were allowed to be
admitted to the Eucharist, when the words of Jesus at the Last Supper were
recalled; the Holy Spirit was invoked upon the people of God making the
offering, and the consecrated bread and wine were distributed to the faithful.
Accounts of these rites are given in the works of Justin (c. 150) and
especially in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome (c. 220).
To fall into a grave fault after baptism entailed exclusion. Excommunicated
persons would continue to attend for the first part of the service, which
included psalms, readings, and a sermon. Montanists, such as Tertullian, and the
Roman schismatic Novatian denied the church's power to grant absolution. Even
Cyprian of Carthage found Novatian easier to criticize for schism than for
rigorism. But in the 3rd century a system of public penance emerged; it was
allowed once a lifetime under condition of ascetic discipline. Penitents were
restored to fellowship with church members by the laying on of hands. In time,
less arduous and less public severities came to be required.
Before the 4th century, worship was in private houses. A house church of AD
232 has been excavated at Doura-Europus on the Euphrates. Whereas pagan temples
were intended as the residence of the god, churches were designed for the
community. The rectangular basilica with an apse (semicircular projection to
house the altar) was found especially suitable. The Doura-Europus church has
Gospel scenes on the walls. But many Old Testament heroes also appear in the
earliest Christian art; Jewish models probably were followed. The artists also
adapted conventional pagan forms (good shepherd; praying persons with hands
uplifted). Fishing scenes, doves, and lyres also were popular. In themselves
neutral, they carried special meaning to the Christians. (see also Index:
religious art)
The words of several pre-Constantinian hymns survive (e.g.,
"Shepherd of tender youth," by Clement of Alexandria), but only
one with musical notation (Oxyrhynchus papyrus 1786 of the 3rd century).
The earliest Christians wrote to convert or to edify, not to please. Their
literature was not produced with aesthetic intentions. Nevertheless, the pulpit
offered scope for oratory (as in Melito of Sardis' Homily
on the Pascha, c. 170). Desire for romance and adventure was satisfied by
apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, recounting their travels, with continence
replacing love. Justin and Irenaeus did not write for high style but simply to
convey information. Apologists hoping for well-educated readers, however, could
not be indifferent to literary tastes. By AD 200 the most graceful living writer
of Greek literature was Clement of Alexandria, the liveliest writer of Latin,
Tertullian. Wholly different in temperament (Clement urbane and allusive,
Tertullian vigorous and vulgar), both men wrote distinguished prose with regard
to form and rhetorical convention. (see also Index: religious literature)
By the 3rd century the Bible needed explanation. Origen of Alexandria set out
to provide commentaries and undertook for the Old Testament a collation of the
various Greek versions with the original Hebrew. Many of his sermons and
commentaries were translated into Latin by Tyrannius Rufinus and Jerome (c. 385-400);
their learning and passionate mystical aspiration shaped Western medieval
exegesis (critical interpretive methods).
Constantine the Great, declared emperor at York, Britain (306), was converted
to Christianity (312), became sole emperor (324), virtually presided over the
ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), founded the city of Constantinople (330),
and died in 337. In the 4th century he was regarded as the great revolutionary,
especially in religion. He did not make Christianity the religion of the empire,
but his foundation of Constantinople (conceived to be the new Rome) as a
Christian city profoundly affected the future political and ecclesiastical
structure. Relations with old Rome were not to be cordial either in matters of
church or state. Despite massive legislation (some attempting to express
Christian ideals--e.g., making Sunday a rest day), he failed to check the
drastic inflation that began about 250 and that soon created deep unrest and
weakened the empire before the barbarian invasions of the 5th century.
Constantine brought the church out of its withdrawal from the world to accept
social responsibility and helped pagan society to be won for the church. On both
sides, the alliance of the church and emperor evoked opposition, which among the
Christians emerged in the monks' retirement to the desert. Except for the brief
reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363), pagans relapsed into passive resistance.
The quietly mounting pressure against paganism in the 4th century culminated in
the decrees of Emperor Theodosius I (reigned 379-395), who made orthodox
Christianity an ingredient of good citizenship. Under Theodosius many pagan
temples were closed or even destroyed (e.g.,
the Alexandrian Serapeum). But until the time of Justinian (reigned
527-565), pagans were largely unmolested by the government. Heretics were more
harshly treated. Ecclesiastical censures (from 314 on) were often enforced by
the civil penalty of exile. One heretic, Priscillian, was even executed for
witchcraft (385), but in the face of vehement church protests. (see also Index:
paganism)
The link between church and state was expressed in the civil dignity and
insignia granted to bishops, who also began to be entrusted with ambassadorial
roles. By 400 the patriarch of Constantinople (to his avowed embarrassment)
enjoyed precedence at court before all civil officials. In the writings of
Ambrose (bishop of Milan, 374-397), "Roman" and "Christian"
are almost synonyms. The Arian controversy (involving a denial of the divinity
of Jesus) developed into a conflict between church and state when the emperor
Constantius was supporting Arianism; and Ambrose enforced upon Theodosius
submission to the church as its son, not its master. With an orthodox emperor,
however, most Christians thought of church and empire as virtually coterminous.
The church was significantly slow to undertake missionary work beyond the
frontiers of the empire. The Goth Ulfilas converted the Goths to Arianism (c. 340-350)
and translated the Bible, omitting, as unsuitable, warlike passages of the Old
Testament. The Goths passed their Arian faith on to other Germanic tribes, such
as the Vandals. (The first tribe to become Catholic was the Franks, in about
506, soon to be followed by the Visigoths.) In the 5th century the Western
provinces were overrun by the barbarian Goths, Vandals, and Huns. The Roman Army
had long drawn its recruits from the barbarian tribesmen and was itself now
under barbarian generals. Theodosius I's will placed his two sons under the
guardianship of the barbarian general Stilicho, who effectively ruled until they
were able to assume responsibility. In the 5th century, Western emperors
exercised less power than generals, and the imperial succession ended when a
German leader, Odoacer, decided (476) to rule without an emperor. The end of the
line of Western emperors made little difference to either church or state. In
the West the position of the papacy was enhanced by the decline of state power,
and this prepared the way for the popes' temporal sovereignty over parts of
Italy (which they retained from the 7th to the 19th century).
The barbarian invasions destroyed Western schools. Specifically church
schools were first created in late antiquity. The main preservers and
transmitters of ancient culture, however, were the monks. Monasticism had begun
in the Egyptian desert in the 4th century with Anthony the Hermit and with
Pachomius, the first organizer of an ascetic community under a rule of
obedience. Basil, bishop of Caesarea Cappadociae (370-379), rejected the hermit
ideal and insisted on communities with a rule safeguarding the bishop's
authority and with concrete acts of service to perform (e.g., hospital
work and teaching). The monastic ideal quickly spread to the West but owed its
decisive shape there to John Cassian of Marseille (c. 360-435) and
Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-c. 547). The manual work of monks often
was the copying of manuscripts. Benedict's contemporary Cassiodorus (c. 490-c.
585) had the works of classical authors copied (e.g.,
Cicero and Quintilian) as well as Bibles and the works of the early Church
Fathers.
Until about 250 most Western Christian leaders spoke Greek, not Latin (e.g., Irenaeus
and Hippolytus). The main Latin theology came not from Rome but from North
Africa (e.g., Tertullian and Cyprian). Tertullian wrote Against
Praxeas, in which he discussed the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person
of Christ. But in 251 Novatian's schism at Rome diverted interest away from
speculative theology to juridical questions about the membership of the church
and the validity of sacraments. These questions led to a schism between Rome and
the churches of North Africa, which centred on a controversy at Carthage over
ideas espoused by Donatus (313). The Donatist issue, which raised questions
about the validity of the sacraments, involved the theology of Cyprian (bishop
of Carthage, 248-258) and dominated all North African church life. Cyprian and
the Donatists said that the validity of the sacraments depended on the
worthiness of the minister; Rome and North African Christians in communion with
Rome said that it did not because the sacraments received their validity from
Christ, not man. Thus, even if inefficacious, baptism could be validly
administered by a schismatic. Much of the great theologian Augustine's energies
as bishop of Hippo (from 396 to 430) went into trying to settle the Donatist
issue, in which he finally despaired of rational argument and reluctantly came
to justify the use of limited coercion.
The other major controversy of the Western Church was a more confused issue,
namely, whether faith is caused by divine grace or human freedom. Augustine
ascribed all credit to God. The British monk Pelagius protested that Augustine
was destroying responsibility and denying the capacity of man to do what God
commands. Both men applied inappropriate, impersonal categories of thought to
the problem; and though Pelagianism was condemned, several of the extreme
positions of Augustine (especially on predestination and the transmission of
original sin) failed to receive the church's cordial endorsement. (see also Index:
free will)
In the Greek East, the 4th century was dominated by controversy about the
propositions of Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter (c. 250-336), that the
incarnate Lord who was born, wept, suffered, and died could not be one with the
transcendent first cause of creation who is beyond all suffering. The Council of
Nicaea (325) condemned Arianism and affirmed the Son of God to be identical in
essence with the Father. As this formula included no safeguard against
Monarchianism, a long controversy followed, especially after Constantine's death
(337). Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (reigned 328-373), fought zealously
against Arianism in the East and owed much to Rome's support, which made the
controversy add to the tensions between East and West. These tensions survived
the settlement of the Arian dispute when the Council of Constantinople (381)
eliminated Arianism in the East but also asserted Constantinople to be the
second see of Christendom, as the new Rome. This assertion was unwelcome to
Alexandria, traditionally second city of the empire, and to Rome because it
implied that the dignity of a bishop depended on the secular standing of his
city. Rivalry between Alexandria and Constantinople led to the fall of John
Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople (reigned 398-404), when he appeared to
support Egyptian monks who admired the controversial theology of Origen. It
became a major feature of the emerging Christological debate (the controversy
over the nature of Christ).
The Christological controversy stemmed from the rival doctrines of
Apollinaris of Laodicea (flourished 360-380) and Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350-428),
representatives of the rival schools of Alexandria and Antioch, respectively. At
the Council of Ephesus (431), led by Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria (reigned
412-444), an extreme Antiochene Christology--taught by Nestorius, patriarch of
Constantinople--was condemned for saying that the man Jesus is an independent
person beside the divine Word and that therefore Mary, the mother of Jesus, may
not properly be called mother of God (Greek theotokosor
"God-bearer"). Cyril's formula was "one nature of the Word
incarnate." A reaction led by Pope Leo I (reigned 440-461) against this
one-nature (Monophysite) doctrine culminated in the Council of Chalcedon (451),
which affirmed Christ to be two natures in one person (hypostasis). Thus, the
Council of Chalcedon alienated Monophysite believers in Egypt and Syria. (see
also Index: Antioch, School of)
During the next 250 years the Byzantine emperors and patriarchs desperately
sought to reconcile the Monophysites. Three successive attempts failed: (1)
under the emperor Zeno (482) the Henotikon(union formula) offended Rome
by suggesting that Monophysite criticism of Chalcedon might be justified; (2)
under the emperor Justinian the Chalcedonian definition was glossed by
condemning the "Three Chapters," which includes the writings of
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and Ibas, all strong critics of Cyril of
Alexandria's theology and of Monophysitism; the Syrian Monophysite Jacob
Baradaeus reacted to this by creating a rival Monophysite episcopate and
permanent schism; (3) under the emperor Heraclius (reigned 610-641) the
Chalcedonians invited the Monophysites to reunite under the formula that Christ
had two natures but only one will (Monothelitism), but this reconciled almost no
Monophysites and created divisions among the Chalcedonians themselves.
Chalcedon's "two natures" continues to be rejected by the Armenian
Apostolic Church, Coptic Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and Syrian
Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (Syrian Jacobites).
The continuity of pre-Christian antiquity and Christian society is nowhere
more apparent than in popular religious practice. Pagans were normally devoted
to local shrines of particular gods. The church tried to meet this psychological
need by establishing shrines of martyrs. The martyr cult, a matter of private
devotion from 150 until 250, became so popular after the Decian persecution that
official control was required. Invocation of Mary as "mother of God"
is first attested in a 3rd-century papyrus. At Rome the shrines of Peter and
Paul, where Constantine built basilicas, attracted many pilgrims. The holy
places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, however, were preeminent. Preachers might
warn that pilgrimage did not necessarily bring one nearer to God and that one
must not worship the martyrs being venerated, but at the popular level such
exhortations seemed sophisticated. The bones of martyrs and other holy persons
were so treasured that a traffic in bogus relics was created. By 400, particular
saints were being invoked for particular needs (one for health, another for
fertility, travel, prediction, or the detection of perjury). When the barbarian
leader Alaric's Goths sacked Rome (410), citizens asked why Peter and Paul had
failed to protect their city.
Pagan critics said that the old gods, true givers of success and miracle,
were offended by neglect. To meet such criticisms the churches found it
necessary to provide similar assurances of success, miraculous cures, and patron
saints. By the 6th century, wonder-working shrines, cloths that had touched holy
relics, and pictures (icons) were invested with numinous (spiritual) power.
Because of the antielitist ideology of the Christian tradition, even highly
educated figures such as Augustine and Pope Gregory I the Great (reigned
590-604) were sympathetic to this popular movement. It became a means of winning
the barbarian tribesmen.
The veneration of martyrs and the growth of pilgrimages stimulated liturgical
elaboration. Great centres (Jerusalem and Rome, in particular) became models for
others, which encouraged regional standardization and cross-fertilization.
Though the pattern of the eucharistic liturgy was settled by the 4th century,
there were many variant forms, especially of the central prayer called by the
Greeks anaphora ("offering") and by the Latins canon ("prescribed
form"). Liturgical prayers of Basil of Caesarea became widely influential
in the East. Later, liturgies were ascribed to local saints and heroes:
Jerusalem's to St. James, Alexandria's to St. Mark, and Constantinople's to John
Chrysostom. The spirit of Greek liturgies encouraged rich and imaginative prose.
Latin style was restrained, with epigrammatic antitheses; and the Roman Church
changed from Greek to Latin about AD 370. The Canon of the Latin mass as used in
the 6th century was already close to the form it has since retained.
Music also became elaborate, with antiphonal psalm chanting. Some reaction
came from those who believed that the music was obscuring the words. Both
Athanasius of Alexandria and Augustine defended music on the condition that the
sense of the words remained primary in importance. The Latin theologians Ambrose
of Milan, Prudentius, and Venantius Fortunatus provided Latin hymns of
distinction. The ascription of the Roman chants (Gregorian) to Pope Gregory I
the Great was first made in the 9th century. In the Greek East in the time of
Justinian, Romanos Melodos created the kontakion, a long poetic homily. (see
also Index: religious art, plainsong)
Architecture was stimulated by Constantine's great buildings at Jerusalem and
Rome. The exteriors of these churches remained simple, but inside they were
richly ornamented with marble and mosaic, the decoration being arranged on a
coherent plan to represent the angels and saints in heaven with whom the church
on earth was joining for worship. An enormous number of churches built in and
after the 4th century have been excavated. The outstanding buildings that
survive largely intact belong to the age of Justinian (6th century) and are at
Constantinople and Ravenna. (see also Index: religious architecture)
The veneration of saints led to the production of a specific category of
literature known as hagiography. If available, authentic tradition would be
used; but if there was none, the writers felt quite free to create a biography
from conventional materials and elements of folklore. The lives of saints belong
to the poetry of the Middle Ages but are important to the historian as documents
of social history. (see also Index: religious literature)
The first church historian was Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in the 4th
century, who collected records up to the advent of Constantine. His work was
translated and continued in Latin by Tyrannius Rufinus of Aquileia. The history
of the church from Constantine to about 430 was continued by three Greek
historians: Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Theodoret (whose works were
adapted for the Latin world by Cassiodorus). Ecclesiastical history from 431 to
594 was chronicled by Evagrius Scholasticus. The consequences of Chalcedon as
interpreted by Monophysite historians were recorded by Timothy Aelurus,
Zacharias Scholasticus, and John of Nikiu. (see also Index:
historiography)
The monastic movement produced its own special literature, especially the
classic Life
of St. Antony by Athanasius, the collections of sayings of the Desert
Fathers, John Climacus' Heavenly Ladder, and Moschus' Spiritual Meadow.
The Arian and Christological controversies produced important polemical
writers--Athanasius, the three Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus,
and Gregory of Nyssa), Cyril of Alexandria, and Theodoret. After 500,
Monophysite theology had eminent figures--Severus of Antioch and the Alexandrian
grammarian John Philoponus, who was also a scientist and a commentator on
Aristotle. But much theology was non-polemical--e.g.,
catechesis and biblical commentaries. In the 6th century, "chains"
(catenae) began to be produced in which the reader was given a summary of
the exegesis of a succession of commentators on each verse.
In the West, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, and, above all, the
incomparable scholar Jerome (translator of the standard Latin Bible, or Vulgate)
gave Latin theology confidence and so made possible the massive achievement of
Augustine--the exquisite prose of his Confessions
and his majestic treatises On the Trinity and
The City of God.
The old tensions between East and West were sharpened by the quarrels about
Chalcedon. In Rome every concession made by Constantinople toward the
Monophysites increased the distrust. Justinian's condemnation of the Three
Chapters (Fifth Council, Constantinople, 553) was forced on a reluctant West,
where it created temporary schisms but was eventually accepted. From the time of
Pope Gregory I the Great the papacy--encouraged by the successful mission to the
Anglo-Saxons--was looking as much to the Western barbarian kingdoms as to
Byzantium.
In the 7th century the Eastern Empire was fighting for its life, first
against the Persians and then the Arabs, and the Balkans were occupied by the
Slavs. The submergence of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem under Muslim rule
left the patriarch of Constantinople with enhanced authority, whereas the Slav
invasions drove a wedge between East and West that encouraged separate
developments. The attempts of the Byzantine emperors to force the papacy to
accept the Monothelite (one-will) compromise produced a martyr pope, Martin
(reigned 649-655); the story of his tortures did nothing to make Rome love the
Byzantines. When the Monothelite heresy was finally rejected at the Sixth
Council (Constantinople, 680-681), the imprudent pope Honorius (reigned
625-638), who had supported Monothelitism, was expressly condemned, which
distressed Roman defenders of papal prerogatives. Greek hostility to the West
became explicit in the canons of a council held at Constantinople (Quinisext,
692) that claimed to have ecumenical status but was not recognized in Rome.
From 726 on, Byzantium was absorbed in the iconoclastic (destruction of
images) debate, which became a struggle not only to keep icons but also to
combat the subjection of the church to the will of the emperor. The imperial
attack on images was severely criticized in the West. Yet, after the Greek
iconoclasts were condemned at the Seventh Council (Nicaea, 787), the bishops of
the Frankish king Charlemagne at the synod of Frankfurt in Germany (794)--with
the reluctant consent of Pope Adrian I (reigned 772-795)--censured the decision.
A renewed upsurge of iconoclasm in the East (815-843) produced a counterreaction
in the West, and ultimately the West accepted the decisions of the Seventh
Council. Icons were differently evaluated in the Western churches, where holy
pictures were viewed as devotional aids, not, as was the case in the East,
virtually sacramental media of salvation. (see also Index: Iconoclastic
Controversy)
The greatest protagonist of icons was John of Damascus, an Arab monk in
Muslim Palestine, who was the author of an encyclopaedic compendium of logic and
theology. Within the empire, Theodore Studites, abbot of the Studium (monastery)
near Constantinople, vigorously attacked iconoclasm; he also led a revival of
monasticism and stressed the importance of copying manuscripts. His ideals
passed to the monastic houses that began to appear on Mount Athos from 963
onward.
The hostility between the iconoclast emperors and the popes encouraged the
8th-century popes to seek a protector. This was provided by the rise of Charles
Martel (reigned 719-741) and the Franks. The Frankish kings guarded Western
Church interests, and the papal-Frankish alliance reached its climax in the
papal coronation of Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman emperor at Rome on
Christmas Day, 800--the Holy Roman Empire lasted until 1806. Charlemagne
exercised immense authority over the Western Church, and the revival of church
life produced controversies about predestination (Gottschalk, Erigena, Hincmar
of Reims) and the Eucharist (Paschasius Radbertus, Ratramnus, Rabanus Maurus).
The Christological controversy was revived with a Spanish dispute as to whether
Christ was adopted to be Son of God.
In the chaos of the rapid Frankish decline, the papacy was glad to look again
to Constantinople for protection. The emperor Basil I (reigned 867-886), founder
of the Macedonian dynasty, could not prevent the Arabs from taking Sicily, but
he was able to reestablish Byzantine control in southern Italy.
In the 10th century, however, the West passed under the control of the
Ottonian dynasty in Germany. The Ottos, accustomed to the system in which great
landowners built and owned the churches on their estates as private property,
treated Rome and all important sees in this spirit. Bishops were appointed on
royal nomination and forbidden to appeal to Rome.
The rise of Islam and the Arab campaign to subjugate unbelievers by military
conquest broke upon the Byzantine Empire in 634, just as it was exhausted after
defeating Persia. The will to resist was wholly absent. Moreover, the provinces
initially overrun, Syria (636) and Egypt (641), were already alienated from the
Byzantine government that was persecuting Monophysites in those areas. In 678
and again in 718, the Arabs were at the walls of Constantinople. In the West
their defeat by Charles Martel at Poitiers, Fr. (732), limited their advance to
the Pyrenees. The Monophysite Copts in Egypt and Syrian Jacobites (followers of
Jacob Baradaeus) soon found that they enjoyed greater toleration under Muslim
Arabs than under Chalcedonian Byzantines, just as in later times the Greeks were
to discover more religious freedom under Turkish than under Latin rule. In the
8th century the Muslims were more a military than a theological threat, and a
considerable time passed before Christian and Muslim theologians engaged in
serious dialogue. (see also Index: Coptic Orthodox Church)
The Monothelite and iconoclastic controversies produced herculean theological
endeavours: the criticism of Monothelitism by the monk Maximus the Confessor
(580-662) was based upon subtle and very careful considerations of the
implications of Chalcedon. The great opponents of iconoclasm, John of Damascus
and Theodore Studites, also composed hymns and other theological treatises.
Greek mystical theology had an outstanding representative in Symeon the New
Theologian (949-1022), abbot of St. Mamas at Constantinople, whose doctrines
about light visions anticipated the hesychasm (quietistic prayer methods) of
Gregory Palamas in the 14th century. But the most learned theologian of the age
was beyond doubt the patriarch Photius (see below The
Photian schism ).
Iconoclasm was not an anti-intellectual, anti-art movement. The iconoclasts
everywhere replaced figures with the cross or with exquisite patterns. The
ending of iconoclasm in 843 (the restoration of orthodoxy), however, liberated
the artists adept in mosaic and fresco to portray figures once again, spurring a
new revival of decoration. Music also became more elaborate; the kontakion was
replaced by the kanona cycle of nine odes, each of six to nine stanzas
and with a different melody. The kanon gave more scope to the musicians
by providing greater variety. Byzantine hymns were classified according to their
mode, and the mode changed each week. Besides John of Damascus and Theodore
Studites, the great hymn writers of this period were Cosmas of Jerusalem and
Joseph of Studium. (see also Index: religious art)
The so-called Dark Ages in the West produced virtually no sculpture or
painting--other than illuminated manuscripts, of which marvelous specimens were
made (e.g., the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels). The Irish and
Anglo-Saxon monks did not construct noble buildings but knew how to write and to
illuminate a book. In the age of Charlemagne exquisite calligraphy was continued
(e.g., the Utrecht Psalter), with intricate ivory and metalwork of superb
finesse. Great buildings also began to emerge, partly based on Byzantine models,
such as the churches at Ravenna. The Ottonian renaissance in Germany encouraged
even more confidently the erection of church buildings, producing such
masterpieces as the surviving cathedrals at Hildesheim and Spires and setting
out a characteristically German style of architecture.
The barbarian kingdoms soon produced their own Christian literature: Gregory
of Tours wrote the history of the Franks, Isidore of Seville that of the
Visigoths, and Cassiodorus that of the Ostrogoths. Isidore, utilizing his vast
reading, compiled encyclopaedias on everything from liturgical ceremonies to the
natural sciences. The outstanding figure of this incipient
"nationalist" movement was the English monk Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the
English People was completed in 731 and whose exegetical works came to stand
beside Augustine and Gregory I the Great as indispensable for the medieval
student.
The Arian barbarians soon became Catholics, including, by 700, even the
Lombards in northern Italy. There remained immense areas of Europe, however, to
which the Gospel had not yet been brought. Gregory I the Great evangelized the
Anglo-Saxons, who in turn sent missionaries to northwestern Europe--Wilfrid and
Willibrord to what is now The Netherlands, and Boniface to Hesse, Thuringia, and
Bavaria. In consequence of Boniface's work in Germany, a mission to Scandinavia
was initiated by Ansgar (801-865), and the mission reached Iceland by 996. In
the 10th century the mission from Germany moved eastward to Bohemia, to the
Magyars, and (from 966) to the Poles. By 1050 most of Europe was under Christian
influence with the exception of Muslim Spain. (see also Index:
monasticism)
In the Byzantine sphere, early missions went to the Hunnish tribesmen north
of the Caucasus. The Nestorians, entrenched in Persia, carried the Gospel to the
Turkmen and across Central Asia to China. In the 9th century the mission to the
Slavs began with the work of Cyril and Methodius, who created a Slavonic
alphabet and translated the Bible into the Slavonic language. Although their
labours in Moravia were undermined by Frankish clergy, it was their achievement
that made possible the faith and medieval culture of both Russia and Serbia.
The Benedictine Rule--initiated by Benedict of Nursia--succeeded in the West
because of its simplicity and restraint; more formidable alternatives were
available in the 6th century. By 800, abbeys existed throughout western Europe,
and the observance of Benedict's Rule was fostered by Charlemagne and his son
Louis the Pious. These houses, such as Bede's monastery at Jarrow (England) or
the foundations of Columban (c.
543-615) at Luxeuil (France) and Bobbio (Italy), became centres of study and
made possible the Carolingian renaissance of learning. In this renaissance the
8th-century English scholar Alcuin and his monastery at Tours occupy the chief
place. Around monasteries and cathedrals, schools were created to teach
acceptable Latin, to write careful manuscripts, and to study not only the Bible
and writings of the Church Fathers but also science. Scribes developed the
beautiful script that was known as Carolingian minuscule. The Carolingian
renaissance was short-lived, however, and decay began to set in (850-950) and
was not checked until the foundation of the monastery at Cluny (France) in 909.
Monasticism in 9th-century Byzantium was centred upon the Studites, who came
to be a faction against the court. A remoter and otherworldly asceticism
developed with the foundation of monasteries on Mount Athos (Greece) from 963
onward. A distinctive feature of Athonite monasticism was that nothing female
was to be allowed on the peninsula.
The end of iconoclasm (843) left a legacy of faction. Ignatius, patriarch of
Constantinople intermittently from 847 to 877, was exiled by the government in
858 and replaced by Photius, a scholarly layman who was head of the imperial
chancery--he was elected patriarch and ordained within six days. Ignatius'
supporters dissuaded Pope Nicholas I (reigned 858-867) from recognizing Photius.
Nicholas was angered by Byzantine missions among the Bulgars, whom he regarded
as belonging to his sphere. When Nicholas wrote to the Bulgars attacking Greek
practices, Photius replied by accusing the West of heretically altering the
creed in saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son (Filioque).
He declared Pope Nicholas deposed (867), but his position was not strong enough
for such imprudence.
A new emperor, Basil the Macedonian, reinstated Ignatius; and in 869
Nicholas' successor, Adrian II (reigned 867-872), condemned Photius and sent
legates to Constantinople to extort submission to papal supremacy from the
Greeks. The Greeks resented the papal demands, and when Ignatius died in 877
Photius quietly became patriarch again. Rome (at that moment needing Byzantine
military support against Muslims in Sicily and southern Italy) reluctantly
agreed to recognize Photius, but on the condition of an apology and of the
withdrawal of Greek missions to the Bulgars. Photius acknowledged Rome as the
first see of Christendom, discreetly said nothing explicitly against the Filioque
clause, and agreed to the provision that the Bulgars could be put under Roman
jurisdiction providing that Greek missions were allowed to continue.
The main issue in the Photian schism was whether Rome possessed monarchical
power of jurisdiction over all churches (as Nicholas and Adrian held), or
whether Rome was the senior of five semi-independent patriarchates (as Photius
and the Greeks thought) and therefore could not canonically interfere with the
internal affairs of another patriarchate.
The mutual distrust shown in the time of Photius erupted again in the middle
of the 11th century after papal enforcement of Latin customs upon Greeks in
southern Italy. The patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, closed
Latin churches in Constantinople as a reprisal. Cardinal Humbert came from Italy
to protest, was accorded an icy reception, and left a bull of excommunication
(July 16, 1054) on the altar of the great church of Hagia Sophia. The bull
anathematized (condemned) Michael Cerularius, the Greek doctrine of the Holy
Spirit, the marriage of Greek priests, and the Greek use of leavened bread for
the Eucharist.
At the time, the breach was treated as a minor storm in which both sides had
behaved with some arrogance. As Greeks and Latins became more estranged,
however, people looked back on the events of 1054 as the moment of the final
breach between East and West. (Not until Dec. 7, 1965, were the mutual
excommunications of 1054 abolished, by Pope Paul VI and the ecumenical patriarch
Athenagoras I.) (H.Cha.)
Differences between the Eastern and Western churches. A major factor in the
consolidation and expansion of Christianity in the West was the growth in the
prestige and power of the bishop of Rome. Pope Leo I the Great made the primacy
of the Roman bishop explicit both in theory and in practice and must be counted
as one of the most important figures in the history of the centralization of
authority in the church. The next such figure was Gregory I the Great, whose
work shaped the worship, the thought, and the structure of the church as well as
its temporal wealth and power.
Even while still a part of the universal church, Byzantine Christianity had
become increasingly isolated from the West by difference of language, culture,
politics, and religion and followed its own course in shaping its heritage. The
Eastern churches never had so centralized a polity as did the church in the West
but developed the principle of the administrative independence or
"autocephaly" of each national church. During the centuries when
Western culture was striving to domesticate the German tribes, Constantinople,
probably the most civilized city in Christendom, blended classical and Christian
elements with a refinement that expressed itself in philosophy, the arts,
statecraft, jurisprudence, and scholarship. A thinker such as Michael Psellus in
the 11th century, who worked in several of these fields, epitomizes this
synthesis. It was from Byzantine rather than from Roman missionaries that
Christianity came to most of the Slavic tribes, including some who eventually
sided with Rome rather than Constantinople; Byzantium was also the victim of
Muslim aggressions throughout the period known in the West as the Middle Ages.
Following the pattern established by the emperors Constantine and Justinian, the
relation between church and state in the Byzantine empire coordinated the two in
such a way as to sometimes subject the life and even the teaching of the church
to the decisions of the temporal ruler--the phenomenon often, though
imprecisely, termed caesaropapism.
All these differences between the Eastern and Western parts of the church,
both the religious differences and those that were largely cultural or
political, came together to cause the schism between the two. The break in 1054
was followed by further evidences of alienation--in the 13th century, in the
sack of Constantinople by Western Christians in 1204 and the establishment of
the Latin patriarchate there; and in the 15th century, after the failure of the
union of Florence and after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.
Conflict with the East was both a cause and an effect of the distinctive
development of Western Christianity during the Middle Ages. If popes Leo I and
Gregory I may be styled the architects of the medieval papacy, popes Gregory VII
(reigned 1073-85) and Innocent III (reigned 1198-1216) should be called its
master builders. Gregory VII reformed both the church and the papacy from
within, establishing the canonical and moral authority of the papal office when
it was threatened by corruption and attack; in the pontificate of Innocent III
the papal claims to universality reached their zenith at all levels of the life
of the church. Significantly, both these popes were obliged to defend the papacy
against the Holy Roman emperor and other temporal rulers. The battle between the
church and the empire is a persistent theme in the history of medieval
Christianity. Both the involvement of the church in feudalism and the
participation of temporal rulers in the Crusades can be read as variations on
this theme. Preoccupied as they usually are with the history of the church as an
institution and with the life and thought of the leaders of the church, the
documentary sources of knowledge about medieval Christianity make it difficult
for the social historian to descry "the religion of the common man"
during this period. Both the "age of faith" depicted by neo-Gothic
Romanticism and the "Dark Ages" depicted by secularist and Protestant
polemics are gross oversimplifications of history. Faith there was during the
Middle Ages, and intellectual darkness and superstition too; but only that
historical judgment of medieval Christianity is valid that discerns how subtly
faith and superstition can be blended in human piety and thought.
No product of medieval Christianity has been more influential in the
centuries since the Middle Ages than medieval thought, particularly the
philosophy and theology of Scholasticism, whose outstanding exponent was Thomas
Aquinas (1224/25-1274). The theology of Scholasticism was an effort to harmonize
the doctrinal traditions inherited from the Fathers of the early church and to
relate these traditions to the intellectual achievements of classical antiquity.
Because many of the early Fathers both in the East and in the West had developed
their theologies under the influence of Platonic modes of thought, the
reinterpretation of these theologies by Scholasticism required that the
doctrinal content of the tradition be disengaged from the metaphysical
assumptions of Platonism. For this purpose the recovery of Aristotle--first
through the influence of Aristotelian philosophers and theologians among the
Muslims, and eventually, with help from Byzantium, through translation and study
of the authentic texts of Aristotle himself--seemed providential to the
Scholastic theologians. Because it managed to combine a fidelity to Scripture
and tradition with a positive, though critical, attitude toward the
"natural" mind, Scholasticism is a landmark both in the history of
Christianity and in the history of Western culture, as a symbol (depending upon
one's own position) either of the Christianization of society and culture or of
the betrayal of Christianity to the society and culture of the Middle Ages.
The latter interpretation of Scholasticism and of the medieval church itself
animated the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism differed from the various
protest movements during the later Middle Ages by the thoroughness of its
polemic against the ecclesiastical, theological, and sacramental developments of
Western Catholicism. Initially the Protestant Reformers maintained the hope that
they could accomplish the reformation of the doctrine and life of the church
from within, but this proved impossible either because of the intransigency of
the church, the extremism of the Protestant movements, or the political and
cultural situation--or because of all of these factors. The several parties of
the Reformation may be conveniently classified according to the radicalism of
their protest against medieval theology, piety, and polity. The Anglican
Reformers, as well as Martin Luther and his movement, were, in general, the most
conservative in their treatment of the Roman Catholic tradition; John Calvin and
his followers were less conservative; the Anabaptists and other groups in the
left wing of the Reformation were least conservative of all. Despite their deep
differences, almost all the various Reformation movements were characterized by
an emphasis upon the Bible, as distinguished from the church or its tradition,
as the authority in religion; by an insistence upon the sovereignty of free
grace in the forgiveness of sins; by a stress upon faith alone, without works,
as the preconditions of acceptance with God; and by the demand that the laity
assume a more significant place in both the work and the worship of the church.
The Reformation was launched as a movement within the established
Christianity that had prevailed since Constantine. It envisaged neither schism
within the church nor the dissolution of the Christian culture that had
developed for more than a millennium. But when the Reformation was over, both
the church and the culture had been radically transformed. In part this
transformation was the effect of the Reformation; in part it was the cause of
the Reformation. The voyages of discovery, the beginnings of a capitalist
economy, the rise of modern nationalism, the dawn of the scientific age, the
culture of the Renaissance--all these factors, and others besides, helped to
break up the "medieval synthesis." Among these factors, however, the
Reformation was one of the most important and, certainly for the history of
Christianity, the most significant. For the consequences of the Reformation, not
in intention but in fact, were a divided Christendom and a secularized West.
Roman Catholicism, no less than Protestantism, has developed historically in the
modern world as an effort to adapt historic forms to the implications of these
consequences. Established Christianity, as it had been known in the West since
the 4th century, ended after the Reformation, though not everywhere at once.
Paradoxically, the end of "established Christianity" in the old
sense resulted in the most rapid and most widespread expansion in the history of
the church. The Christianization of the Americas and the evangelization of Asia,
Africa, and Australasia for the first time gave geographic substance to the
Christian title "ecumenical." Growth in areas and in numbers, however,
need not be equivalent to growth in influence. Despite its continuing strength
throughout the modern period, Christianity retreated on many fronts and lost
much of its prestige and authority both politically and intellectually.
During the formative period of modern Western history, roughly from the
beginning of the 16th to the middle of the 18th century, Christianity
participated in many of the movements of cultural and political expansion. The
explorers of the New World were followed closely by missionaries--that is, when
the two were not in fact identical. Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen were
prominent in politics, letters, and science. Although the rationalism of the
Enlightenment alienated many people from the Christian faith, especially among
the intellectuals of the 17th and 18th centuries, those who were alienated often
kept a loyalty to the figure of Jesus or to the teachings of the Bible even when
they broke with traditional forms of Christian doctrine and life. Citing the
theological conflicts of the Reformation and the political conflicts that
followed upon these as evidence of the dangers of religious intolerance,
representatives of the Enlightenment gradually introduced disestablishment,
toleration, and religious liberty into most Western countries; in this movement
they have been joined by Christian individuals and groups that advocated
religious freedom not out of indifference to dogmatic truth but out of a concern
for the free decision of personal faith.
The state of Christian faith and life within the churches during the 17th and
18th centuries both reflected and resisted the spirit of the time. Even though
the Protestant Reformation had absorbed some of the reformatory energy within
Roman Catholicism, the theology and morals of the church underwent serious
revision in the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. Fighting off the attempts by
various countries to establish national Catholic churches, the papacy sought to
learn from the history of the Reformation and to avoid the mistakes that had
been made then. Protestantism in turn discovered that separation from Rome did
not necessarily inoculate it against many of the trends that it had denounced in
Roman Catholicism. The orthodox dogmatics of the 17th century both in
Lutheranism and in the Reformed churches displayed many features of medieval
Scholasticism, despite the attacks of the Reformers upon the latter. Partly as a
compensation for the overemphasis of orthodoxy upon doctrine at the expense of
morals, Pietism summoned Protestant believers to greater seriousness of faith
and purpose. Valid though its summons was, the subjectivity of Pietism
unwittingly played into the hands of its enemies, helping to make it possible
for the rationalism of the Enlightenment to undermine traditional Christian
belief.
In alliance with the spirit of the Enlightenment, the revolutions of the
18th, 19th, and 20th centuries aided this process of undermining Christianity.
Roman Catholicism in France, Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia, and Protestantism in
former European colonies in Africa and Asia were identified--by their enemies if
not also by themselves--as part of the ancien régime and were nearly
swept away with it. As the discoveries of science proceeded, they clashed with
old and cherished notions about the doctrine of creation, many of which were
passionately supported by various leaders of organized Christianity. The age of
the revolutions--political, economic, technological, intellectual--was an age of
crisis for Christianity. It was also an age of opportunity. The critical methods
of modern scholarship, despite their frequent attacks upon traditional Christian
ideas, helped to produce editions of the chief documents of the Christian
faith--the Bible and the writings of the Fathers and Reformers--and to arouse an
unprecedented interest in the history of the church. The 19th century has been
called the great century in the history of Christian missions, both Roman
Catholic and Protestant. By the very force of their attacks upon Christianity,
the critics of the church helped to arouse within the church new apologists for
the faith, who creatively reinterpreted it in relation to the new philosophy and
science of the modern period. The 20th century saw additional challenges to the
Christian cause in the form of Communism, of resurgent world religions, and of
indifference. Both the relation of church and state and the missionary program
of the churches thus demanded reconsideration. But the 20th century also saw
renewed efforts to heal the schisms within Christendom. The ecumenical movement
began within Protestantism and Anglicanism, eventually included some of the
Eastern Orthodox churches, and, especially since the second Vatican Council
(1962-65), has engaged the sympathetic attention of Roman Catholicism as well.
By the late 20th century Christianity had become the most widely disseminated
faith on Earth. Virtually no nation has remained unaffected by the activities of
Christian missionaries, although in many countries Christians are only a small
fraction of the total population. Most of the countries of Asia and of Africa
have Christian minorities, some of which, as in India and even in China, number
several million members. The concentration of Christians, however, remains in
the domain of Western culture. Each major division of Christianity--Eastern
Orthodoxy , Roman Catholicism , and Protestantism --is treated in the Macropædia in
a separate article where its history, tenets, and practices receive a fuller
exposition than this article can give them and where a bibliography on the
denominations of the division is supplied. The purpose here is to provide an
overview of the principal divisions and thus to set the articles about the
individual traditions into their proper context.
The Roman Catholics in the world outnumber all other Christians combined.
They are organized in an intricate system that spans the structure of the church
from the local parish to the papacy. Under the central authority of the papacy,
the church is divided into dioceses, whose bishops act in the name and by the
authority of the pope but retain considerable administrative freedom within
their individual jurisdictions; the principle of "collegiality"
articulated by the second Vatican Council has expanded that freedom. Similarly,
the parish priest stands as the executor of papal and diocesan directives.
Alongside the diocesan organization and interacting with it is a chain of
orders, congregations, and societies; all of them are, of course, subject to the
pope, but they are not directly responsible to the bishop as are the local
parishes. It would, however, be a mistake to interpret the polity of the Roman
Catholic Church in so purely an organizational manner as this. For Roman
Catholic polity rests upon a mandate that is traced to the action of Jesus
Christ himself, when he invested Peter and, through Peter, his successors with
the power of the keys in the church. Christ is the invisible head of his church,
and by his authority the pope is the visible head.
This interpretation of the origin and authority of the church determines both
the attitude of Roman Catholicism to the rest of Christendom and its relation to
the social order. Believing itself to be the true church of Jesus Christ on
earth, it cannot deal with other Christian traditions as equals without
betraying its very identity. This does not mean, however, that anyone outside
the visible fellowship of the Roman Catholic Church cannot be saved; nor does it
preclude the presence of "vestiges of the church" in the other
Christian bodies. At the second Vatican Council the Roman Catholic Church
strongly affirmed its ties with its "separated brethren" both in
Eastern Orthodoxy and in the several Protestant churches. As the true church of
Christ on earth, the Roman Catholic Church also believes itself responsible for
the proclamation of the will of God to organized society and to the state. This
role brought the church into conflict with the state throughout church history.
Yet the political activities of individual churchmen must not be confused with
the fundamental obligation of the church, as the "light of the world"
to which the revelation of God has been entrusted, to address the meaning of
that revelation and of the moral law to the nations, and to work for a social
and political order in which both revelation and the moral law can function.
Both in democratic and in totalitarian societies, whether Fascist or
Communist, during the 20th century, the relation of the Roman Catholic Church to
the state continued to engage the attention of political leaders and of prelates
and theologians.
The understanding that Roman Catholicism has of itself, its interpretation of
the proper relation between the church and the state, and its attitude toward
other Christian traditions are all based upon Roman Catholic doctrine. In great
measure this doctrine is identical with that confessed by orthodox Christians of
every label and consists of the Bible, the dogmatic heritage of the ancient
church as laid down in the historic creeds and in the decrees of the ecumenical
councils, and the theological work of the great doctors of the faith in the East
and West. If, therefore, the presentation of the other Christian traditions in
this article compares them with Roman Catholicism, this comparison has a
descriptive rather than a normative function; for, to a considerable degree,
Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy have often defined themselves in relation to
Roman Catholicism. In addition, most Christians past and present do have a
shared body of beliefs about God, Christ, and the way of salvation.
Roman Catholic doctrine is more than this shared body of beliefs, as is the
doctrine of each of the Christian groups. It is necessary here to mention only
the three distinctive doctrines that have achieved definitive formulation during
the 19th and 20th centuries: the infallibility of the pope, the immaculate
conception, and bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary. On most other major issues
of Christian doctrine, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are largely in
agreement, while Protestantism differs from both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman
Catholicism on several issues. For example, Roman Catholic theology defines and
numbers the sacraments differently from Orthodox theology; but, over against
Protestantism, Roman Catholic doctrine insists, as does Eastern Orthodoxy, upon
the centrality of the seven sacraments--baptism, confirmation, Eucharist,
extreme unction, penance, matrimony, and holy orders--as channels of divine
grace.
The Roman Catholic doctrine of the sacraments is a summary, in liturgical
form, of that which is affirmed by Roman Catholic liturgy. The church is not
primarily an organization, nor is it a school of doctrine. It is the place where
God approaches humanity through grace and where humanity approaches God through
worship. Hence the focus of Roman Catholic piety is the Eucharist, which is both
a sacrament and a sacrifice. Other forms of corporate worship and of private
devotion radiate from this point of central focus. The obligations of church
membership are also derived from the sacramental system, either as preparations
for worthy participation in it or as expressions of the obedience sustained by
it. Instruction in these obligations and in the implication of the faith for the
moral and intellectual life is the responsibility of Roman Catholic educational
institutions all over the world. The missions of the church and its institutions
of mercy, like the schools, are largely in the hands of religious orders.
Separated from the West, the Orthodox churches of the East have developed
their own way for half of Christian history. Each national church is autonomous.
The "ecumenical patriarch" of Constantinople is not the Eastern pope
but merely the first in honour among equals in jurisdiction. Eastern Orthodoxy
interprets the primacy of Peter and therefore that of the pope similarly,
denying the right of the pope to speak and act for the entire church by himself,
without a church council and without his episcopal colleagues. Because of this
polity Eastern Orthodoxy has identified itself more intimately with national
cultures and with national regimes than has Roman Catholicism. Therefore the
history of church-state relations in the East has been very different from the
Western development, because the church in the East has sometimes tended toward
the extreme of becoming a mere instrument of national policy while the church in
the West has sometimes tended toward the extreme of attempting to dominate the
state. The history of ecumenical relations between Eastern Orthodoxy and
Protestantism during the 20th century was also different from the history of
Protestant-Roman Catholic relations. While keeping alive their prayer for an
eventual healing of the schism with the Latin Church, some of the Orthodox
churches have established communion with Anglicanism and with the Old Catholic
Church and have participated in the conferences and organizations of the World
Council of Churches. (see also Index: Eastern Christian church, papal
primacy, church and state)
Doctrinal authority for Eastern Orthodoxy resides in the Scriptures, the
ancient creeds, the decrees of the first seven ecumenical councils, and the
tradition of the church. In addition to the issues mentioned in the discussion
of Roman Catholicism above, the chief dogmatic difference between Roman Catholic
and Eastern Orthodox thought is on the question of the procession of the Holy
Spirit from the Father and from the Son, or the Filioque.
But "orthodoxy," in the Eastern use of the term, means primarily
not a species of doctrine but a species of worship. The Feast of Orthodoxy on
the first Sunday of Lent celebrates the end of the iconoclastic controversies
and the restoration to the churches of the icons, which are basic to Orthodox
piety. In Orthodox churches (as well as in those Eastern churches that have
reestablished communion with Rome), the most obvious points of divergence from
general Western practice are the Byzantine liturgy, the right of the clergy to
marry before ordination, though bishops may not be married, and the
administration to the laity of both species in the Eucharist at the same time by
the method of intinction.
The rediscovery of Eastern Orthodox liturgy and piety by Western Christians
is an interesting by-product of the ecumenical contacts of the 19th century and
of the Russian Revolution. Russian Orthodox scholars and theologians emigrated
to the West, especially to France and the United States, where they became
active participants in the dialogue among the separated churches.
Formulating a definition of Protestantism that would include all its
varieties has long been the despair of Protestant historians and theologians,
for there is greater diversity within Protestantism than there is between some
forms of Protestantism and some non-Protestant Christianity. For example, a
high-church Anglican or Lutheran has more in common with an Orthodox theologian
than with a Baptist theologian. Amid this diversity, however, it is possible to
define Protestantism formally as non-Roman Western Christianity and to divide
most of Protestantism into four major confessions or confessional
families--Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Free Church.
The largest of these non-Roman Catholic denominations in the West is the
Lutheran Church. The Lutheran churches in Germany, in Scandinavian countries,
and in the Americas are distinct from one another in polity, but almost all of
them are related through various national and international councils, of which
the Lutheran World Federation is the most comprehensive. Doctrinally,
Lutheranism sets forth its distinctive position in the Book of Concord,
especially in the Augsburg Confession. A long tradition of theological
scholarship has been responsible for the development of this position into many
and varied doctrinal systems. Martin Luther moved conservatively in this
reformation of the Roman Catholic liturgy, and the Lutheran Church, though it
has altered many of his liturgical forms, has remained a liturgically
traditional church. Most of the Lutheran churches of the world have participated
in the ecumenical movement and are members of the World Council of Churches, but
Lutheranism has not moved very often across its denominational boundaries to
establish full communion with other bodies. The prominence of Lutheran societies
in the history of missions during the 18th and 19th centuries, after the
relative inactivity following the Reformation, gave an international character
to the Lutheran Church; so did the development of strong Lutheran churches in
North America, where the traditionally German and Scandinavian membership of the
church was gradually replaced by a more cosmopolitan constituency.
The Anglican Communion is not only the established Church of England but also
the Christian denomination of many believers throughout the world. Like
Lutheranism, Anglicanism has striven to retain whatever it could of the Roman
Catholic tradition of liturgy and piety, but after the middle of the 19th
century the Oxford Movement in Anglicanism went much further in the restoration
of ancient liturgical usage and doctrinal belief. Although the Catholic revival
also served to rehabilitate the authority of tradition in Anglican theology
generally, great variety continued to characterize the theologians of the
Anglican Communion. Anglicanism is set off from most other non-Roman churches in
the West by its retention of and its insistence upon the apostolic succession of
ordaining bishops. The Anglican claim to this apostolic succession, despite its
repudiation by Pope Leo XIII in 1896, has largely determined the role of the
Church of England in the discussions among the churches. Anglicanism has often
taken the lead in inaugurating such discussions, but in such statements as the
Lambeth Quadrilateral it has demanded the presence of the historic episcopate as
a prerequisite to the establishment of full communion. During the 19th and 20th
centuries many leaders of Anglican thought were engaged in finding new avenues
of communication with industrial society and with the modern intellectual. The
strength of Anglicanism in the New World and in the younger churches of Asia and
Africa confronted this communion with the problem of deciding its relation to
new forms of Christian life in these new cultures. As its centuries-old reliance
upon the establishment in England was compelled to retrench, Anglicanism
discovered new ways of exerting its influence and of expressing its message.
Protestant bodies that owe their origins to the reformatory work of John
Calvin and his associates in various parts of Europe are often termed Reformed,
particularly in Germany, France, and Switzerland. In Britain and in the United
States they have usually taken their name from their distinctive polity and have
been called Presbyterian. They are distinguished from both Lutheranism and
Anglicanism by the thoroughness of their separation from Roman Catholic patterns
of liturgy, piety, and even doctrine. Reformed theology has tended to emphasize
the sole authority of the Bible with more rigour than has characterized the
practice of Anglican or Lutheran thought, and it has looked with deeper
suspicion upon the symbolic and sacramental traditions of the Catholic
centuries. Perhaps because of its stress upon biblical authority, Reformed
Protestantism has sometimes tended to produce a separation of churches along the
lines of divergent doctrine or polity, by contrast with the inclusive or even
latitudinarian churchmanship of the more traditionalistic Protestant communions.
This understanding of the authority of the Bible has also led Reformed
Protestantism to its characteristic interpretation of the relation between
church and state, sometimes labeled theocratic, according to which those charged
with the proclamation of the revealed will of God in the Scriptures (i.e.,
the ministers) are to address this will also to civil magistrates; Puritanism
in England and America gave classic expression to this view. As the church is
"reformed according to the Word of God," so the lives of the
individuals in the church are to conform to the Word of God; hence the Reformed
tradition has assigned great prominence to the cultivation of moral uprightness
among its members. During the 20th century most of the Reformed churches of the
world took an active part in the ecumenical movement. (see also Index:
Presbyterian churches, theocracy)
In the 19th century the term Free churches was applied in Great Britain to
those Protestant bodies that did not conform to the establishment, such as
Congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists (and Presbyterians in England); but
since that time it has come into usage among the counterparts to these churches
in the United States, where each of them has grown larger than its British
parent body. Just as the Reformed denominations go beyond both Anglicanism and
Lutheranism in their independence of Roman Catholic traditions and usages, so
the Free churches have tended to reject some of the Roman Catholic remnants also
in classical Presbyterian worship and theology. Baptists and Congregationalists
see the local congregation of gathered believers as the most nearly adequate
visible representation of Christ's people on earth. The Baptist requirement of
free personal decision as a prerequisite of membership in the congregation leads
to the restriction of baptism to believers (i.e.,
those who have made and confessed such a decision of faith) and therefore to
the repudiation of infant baptism; this in turn leads to the restriction of
communion at the Eucharist to those who have been properly baptized. In
Methodism the Free-church emphasis upon the place of religious experience and
upon personal commitment leads to a deep concern for moral perfection in the
individual and for moral purity in the community. The Disciples of Christ, a
Free church that originated in the United States, makes the New Testament the
sole authority of doctrine and practice in the church, requiring no creedal
subscription at all; a distinctive feature of their worship is their weekly
celebration of Communion. Emphasizing as they do the need for the continuing
reformation of the church, the Free churches have, in most (though not all)
cases, entered into the activities of interchurch cooperation and have provided
leadership and support for the ecumenical movement. This cooperation--as well as
the course of their own historical development from spontaneous movements to
ecclesiastical institutions possessing many of the features that the founders of
the Free churches had originally found objectionable in the establishment--has
made the question of their future role in Christendom a central concern of Free
churches on both sides of the Atlantic.
In addition to these major divisions of Protestantism, there are other
churches and movements not so readily classifiable; some of them are quite
small, but others number millions of members. These churches and movements would
include, for example, the Society of Friends (or Quakers), known both for their
cultivation of the "Inward Light" and for their pacifism; the
Unitarian Universalist body, which does not consistently identify itself as
Christian; Christian Science; Unity and other theosophic movements, which blend
elements from the Christian tradition with practices and teachings from other
religions; Pentecostal churches and churches of divine healing, which profess to
return to primitive Christianity; and many independent churches and groups, most
of them characterized by a free liturgy and a fundamentalist theology.
Separately and together, these groups illustrate how persistent has been the
tendency of Christianity since its beginnings to proliferate parties, sects,
heresies, and movements. They illustrate also how elusive is the precise
demarcation of Christendom, even for those observers whose definition of
normative Christianity is quite exact. (J.J.Pe.)
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