Jesus and his disciples were of course proselytizing during his life (Matthew 10:5). His followers expanded their mission outside of Judea and Galilee following his death. Their efforts helped to spread various interpretations of Jesus into the Hellenic cities of the Roman Empire. This first wave eventually led to the Roman Catholic church and the Byzantine Church, which we in the West call Eastern Orthodox.
The political and social context in which Christianity developed was complex. Both Jesus and Saul/Paul were swept up in tensions within Judaism. In 40 CE, a decade after Jesus’ dramatic death, Roman Emperor Caligula attempted to have his own statue placed in the Jewish temple as a deity. This never happened, but stirred Jewish anxieties. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the temple after another revolt. This ended temple-centered, priest-centered Judaism and caused the start of rabbinic Judaism, which was built on Pharisaic practices. A second Jewish revolt occurred from 115-117 CE, and a third from 132-136.
In the Hellenic world, the cult of theos hypsistos is first attested in the 2nd century BCE. [Freeman 2005, p. 69] The term means “highest god,” and the idea is the concentration of divine power into a single divine actor. Paganism was syncretic in most places and at most times, which meant that divine identities proliferated and became confused. Political leaders began asserting their own divine identity around the time of Jesus, further confusing the order of things. The practice of theos hypsistos was derived from Judaism, but differed, for example, in omitting circumcision. By the 2nd century CE it was common in the Roman world to consider one god as being superior, or as subsuming the other gods.
The introduction of Christianity among pagans was eased by some common elements. “Christianity, through its initiation rites (baptism), communal meals and the promise of a blessed afterlife, had much in common with these [Greek mystery] cults, not least in the idea that a priestly elite had privileged access to the cult’s secrets and the absolute right to interpret them for others.” [Freeman 2005, p. 71]
Roman and Greek religion, which very much overlapped, didn’t provide an entire system of ethics. They were largely centered around public ritual. Philosophers worked on various systems which were often focused on the good. Platonic systems were somewhat unique; they incorporated Plato’s conception of Forms, which were linked in a variety of ways with God or some more abstract form of godhead. [Freeman 2005, p. 71]
Platonic thinkers in the period 60-204 CE, the “middle Platonic” period, generally held that Plato’s Forms (or “the Word,” as it is described at the start of the gospel of John) coexisted with God or were contained within God, and that the Forms were of a rational rather than an emotional nature. Reason was held to be superior to sense or emotion in discerning the Forms, and in fact worldly existence tended to obscure or even oppose the Forms or “logos.” [Freeman 2005, pp. 72-5]
Early Christians believed in spirits or demons. They believed that spirits or demons were the offspring of fallen angels with human mothers, but otherwise they were much like the pagan daimonoi. Expulsion of demons was often used in their recruitment efforts. There are multiple references to purges by Jesus in the synoptic gospels and by Paul in Acts. [Freeman 2005, p. 142]
Early Christianity evolved not just in a Roman context, but under Roman supervision, and the Roman Empire was nothing if not authoritarian.
There was no separation of church and state here, no constitution and no bill of rights. Synagogues in the Jewish quarters of Roman cities were held responsible for the behavior of their congregants, and the same principle was applied to Christian congregations when they assumed their separate identities. This conferred civil authority and political power on church leaders.
This was also a time of consolidation of wealth and power by local elites, who maintained power by leave of the Romans. The phenomenon of a church leader who was the educated and wealthy son of the local power set was common as the number of Christians grew. The role of church leader had its benefits, but also entailed serious risks if the congregation’s behavior was discomfiting to their rulers. The early church was in opposition to Judaism, paganism, and Greek philosophy, priming the cities for heated ideological disputes. Freeman says, “As Christianity became as much a political as a religious movement, the fear that without eternal punishment there would be insufficient incentive for being good predominated.”
This turned out to have big effects on our received image of the nature of God. Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185-254 CE), wrote that, because of God’s nature, everyone including Satan will eventually come to a joining with God. This view was decisively rejected by the early church. [Freeman 2005, p. 149]
In 302 CE Emperor Diocletian issued the following decree: [Freeman 2005, p. 79]
The immortal gods in their providence have so designed things that good and true principles have been established by the wisdom and deliberation of eminent, wise and upright men. It is wrong to oppose these principles, or desert the ancient religion for some new one, for it is the height of criminality to try and revise doctrines that were settled once and for all by the ancients, and whose position is fixed and acknowledged.
In 314 CE, Emperor Constantine declared universal freedom of worship within the Empire, specifically mentioning Christians. He also spread his story of being given victory by God at the Milvian Bridge. Although powerful while they maintained power, the emperors depended on coalition-building for their very physical survival. In propagating this story that supported the strength of the Christian God, Constantine also associated God with militarism. [Freeman 2005, p. 159]
Church clergy became civic officials beginning in the fourth and fifth centuries, at uneven rates in the Eastern and Western Empires. Bishops were designated as public magistrates, with responsibilities to uphold both church and secular norms. The bishops were increasingly the sons of the local elites, not members of the congregation but placed over it. Christian theology became exceedingly conservative and authoritarian.
Imperial subsidization of the church put the Emperor in position to promote bishops who supported his governing strategies. This institution, the political selection of church officers, continued up to Henry VIII in England, longer in many Continental jurisdictions.
The early church was in opposition to Judaism, to paganism, and to Greek philosophy, in short, to all other religious and moral ideologies. As I’ve shown (see The Gospels and Paul nee Saul), the form of this opposition wasn’t passive disapproval but hostile intolerance. In addition there was increasing intolerance among Christians in the third and fourth centuries, as the church become increasingly powerful and leaders became increasingly vulnerable.
Entire books have been written about these intrafaith disputes. (See, for example, “Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years,” Philip Jenkins, HarperCollins, 2010.) Some of the episodes are reminiscent of the storming of our capitol on January 6, 2021. Violence was not only sanctioned but organized by bishops of churches.
And like January 6, it’s difficult to make sense of either the motivations, the rationalizations, or the choice of tactics. The stakes in these arcane theological disputes are hard to make out, at this distance, partly because they were decided and made dogma at the time. Alternatives are no longer discussed.
It is possible to say confidently that such disputes had increasing secular consequences for the church leaders. Different bishoprics had different political weight, different status, and different pecuniary vicissitudes, so they were competed for. Rival churches within walking distance competed for membership. The Emperor and the imperial bureaucracy had pretty much arbitrary power to make and terminate assignments. Losing a church appointment could have practical consequences like the consequences of being exiled.
Major disputes played out about faith, about the nature of the Holy Spirit, and about the relationships among God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
While Jesus had used “faith” to mean the belief in his personal potency, in this period the question of faith was, “Who and what should you believe?” Ultimately Plato’s concept of the powerful but obscure Forms won the contest. When John began his gospel by equating Jesus with The Word (logos), he linked Christianity with Platonism. The Platonic philosophy supported the church’s monopoly on doctrine, because of the super-human challenge of discovering what the Forms really are. The early church changed the meaning of “faith” from a willingness to accept Jesus’ message to a willingness to accept the view that correct theology was only ascertainable by the church hierarchy. [Freeman 2005, p. 144] Freeman wrote, “With the elaboration of Christian doctrine, faith came to mean acquiescence in the teachings of the churches—to be seen as a virtue in itself.” [Freeman 2005, p. 5]
The Holy Spirit was conceived, by Matthew and by the writer of Acts, to provide a linkage from God into the spirit of the believer. However, the fear of diversity of belief which Paul first expressed had become the sole authority of bishops to determine orthodoxy by the mid-third century CE. Prophecy or inspiration was deemed to have ended with the writing of Revelations. Reliance was to be placed on sacred texts henceforth. This tight control of belief may have been important to the early Christians as a way to define the boundary between Christian and non-Christian, since paganism was very soon recruiting Jesus into their divine cast. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage during persecutions there in 251, was chagrined that many of his members had worshiped idols rather than accept martyrdom. Rather than accept failed members back, he and other North African bishops agreed that members would not be readmitted except under the supervision of their bishop, and that they must be re-baptized by officials who had not failed this test. He said, “Does anyone who acts against the bishops of Christ think that he is with Christ?” From this time, the Holy Spirit was seen as a source of miracles, but not of revelation. [Freeman 2005, p. 140]
The relationships among God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit became the subject of extremely fractious disputes among the bishops. In 381, the new Emperor Theodosius declared those not accepting the Trinity to be heretics. Those who didn’t were decreed to be “foolish madmen.” If they were financially dependent upon the church, they were deprived of income. This established the emperor as the arbiter of theological truth. The Emperor Valens (364-378), for political reasons, had required Goths who immigrated into the Empire to convert to a Homoean belief (a belief that the three are not of the same substance, but of similar or related substances). [Freeman 2005, p. 192] The defeat of the prior Emperor Valens by the Homoean Goths, which had occurred in 378, was recast as an attack by “enemies of the faith.”
The adoption of the Trinity doctrine highlighted the discrepancies between that doctrine and the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), in which Jesus refers to God as “Father” and even addresses him directly as “Father.” This objection was met by fanciful reinterpretations of scripture, and eventually by the claim that the church has authority over the interpretation of scripture. Eventually, as can be seen in the writings of Augustine (354-430), this led to the doctrine that the written text of the Bible must be interpreted as needed to correspond to church orthodoxy. Variance from dogma was made a serious thing indeed, preparing the way for excommunications and inquisitions. He who was convicted of it was ostensibly blocked from the chance for eternal peace and joy, and consigned to eternal torment. Back on Earth, he was deprived of power and income. [Freeman 2005, p. 194-8]
Asceticism came over the church beginning in the fourth century. The common view of sin was that it originated internally, whether via intrusive demons or generated by one’s own body. The belief was that no one could be assured of their own eternal fate, and that God knew your internal thoughts and impulses, so no one could do too much in their attempt to be holy. The authors of orthodoxy had no modern conception of how minds operate, and inquiry into this was not allowed.
One result of this was the institution of cloistered living, Christianity for the privileged, which was organized as an extreme hierarchy. Conformity and obedience were cultivated as holy virtues. The belief developed that, by submitting yourself to church authority, you could remove yourself from moral responsibility in the sight of God. Responsibility fell upon one's superiors, which seems to have suited everyone involved. The idea became deeply embedded in Christian thinking. Jesus’ message of forgiveness, hope, and personal responsibility had become the ideology of a total institution. Meanwhile, the Roman Empire which created the conditions for these developments was persistently troubled and on the verge of collapse.
The battles within the Christian community over orthodoxy and heresy extended across the fourth and fifth centuries and resulted, on the one hand, in official dogma, and on the other, in a deep sense of the personal and institutional dangers inherent in speculative or analytic thought. Any systematic theological analysis was sure to be contradicted by the canonical scriptures, by endorsed dogma, or by traditional practice. A consensus developed among the churchmen that the answers to central questions were unknowable and beyond human understanding, unless directly “revealed.” Privileged scripture and dogma displaced both philosophy and empirical knowledge, which then had to yield, and faded from interest within the Christian world. The realm of nature shrank while miracles, the active intercession of the godhead, became so ubiquitous as to almost push aside natural regularity. “While the miraculous had long been part of everyday life, in the Christian world it was further highlighted as a mark of status. In short, the subversion of the natural order of things by miracles becomes one of the distinguishing features of Christianity and, necessarily, goes hand in hand with the waning of scientific thought.” Curiosity and independent thought were recast as sinful pride. [Freeman 2005, pp. 319-321]
Next: Off the Straight and Narrow: The Quest Myth
© 2021, Ross A. Hangartner