After a split between Christianity and Judaism occurred in the first century, the early Christian church entered the second and third centuries as an independent identity. Things were by no means peaceful during this period, as a conflict of directions arose within Christianity, from which various visions of Christianity emerged. Church leaders also did not always agree with each other, including on the question of whether Christ was divine or human. Despite the various Christian persecutions that took place under the Roman emperors, Christianity continued to grow and was widespread throughout the Roman Empire by the end of the third century.
Contents
- The Church Fathers
- Battle of directions within Christianity
- Drawing up the canon and the confession of faith
- The Church and Gnosticism
- The early Christian church in the second and third centuries
The Church Fathers
We can follow how Christianity developed in the second and third centuries on the basis of the writings written by the so-called ‘church fathers’. According to the Christian church, the church father(s) are all early Christian writers and teachers whose theological works have been preserved.
Classification of the Church Fathers
The writings written by the Church Fathers consist of various documents such as treatises, letters and apologies. The crazy books were written between the 90’s and 750’s and are divided into different periods for convenience.
The first church fathers to be distinguished are the Apostolic Fathers. These writers owe their name to the fact that they often knew the twelve apostles personally and their writings were written between the 90s and 160s. Well-known ‘Apostolic Fathers’ were Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (between 35 and 50 – between 110 and 117), Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (c. 69 – c. 156) and theologian Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 140 – c. 202), all of whom died as martyrs.
Church Fathers who wrote writings between the years 100/120 and 325 were classified as pre-Nicean patristics, where the word patristics refers to the study of early Christian authors. The Church Fathers who wrote theological works after the year 160 were also called apologists because they tried to legitimize Christianity against the pagans.
Church fathers who were considered high patriarchs wrote their theological works between the years 325 and 451. Some well-known authors from that period were Ambrose, bishop of Milan (339 – 397), Ar nobius of Sicca (date of birth and death unknown) and Augustine , Bishop of Hippo (354 – 430).
And the church fathers who wrote their works between the years 451 and approximately the year 750 were considered late patristics, such as Pope Gregory I (circa 540 – 604).
Battle of directions within Christianity
According to the writings of the Church Fathers, Christianity faced a so-called conflict of directions in the second and third centuries. This meant that there were several groups within the church that had their own view of the Christian faith. Naturally, all movements competed for recognition, but the Marcionists, and the movements that resulted from them, were particularly popular in the second and third centuries.
Ebonites
The first ‘school’ to emerge within Christianity was formed by the Ebonites and their adoptianism . The Ebonites were Jewish Christians who believed that the church had strayed too far from Jewish teachings. In line with this, they also did not believe in the virgin birth of Christ, but believed that He was adopted by God after His baptism. The first church father to mention the ‘error of the Ebonites’ was the aforementioned Irenaeus of Lyon. The Ebonites eventually disappeared on their own in the fourth century.
Montanists
The Montanists were followers of converted Christian Montanus. Montanus emphasized that Christ would soon return and that the Holy Spirit would then reign. Montanus considered himself a prophet assigned to serve as the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit. He also called himself the comforter (officially called the Paraclete) whom Jesus had promised he would send in the last days. The Montanists eventually decided to secede from the Church, were fiercely opposed by the Church and eventually disappeared in the course of the fourth century.
Proto-Orthodox
Unlike the Ebonites and the Montanists, the proto-Orthodox did not believe that Jesus was adopted by God or that a prophet served as the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit. They believed that God (the Father), Jesus (the Son) and the Holy Spirit formed a holy trinity (trinity). This idea was also called hypostasis because God was presented by the proto-orthodox as hypostasis, or as ‘absolute reality’. Martyrdom was highly regarded by the proto-Orthodox, as was the fact that they believed that the church should have a leader in the form of a bishop. The Proto-Orthodox became, without much effort, the leading group within the Christian Church in the fourth century, partly because they had large Christian communities in Rome.
Gnostics
The Christians who were considered Gnostics made an attempt to mix Christian doctrine with Gnosticism; acquiring insight into the origins, current situation and destiny of man. The Gnostics therefore believed that Jesus and Christ were two separate persons. Jesus was a human being who received the ‘aeon’ (a deified personification) Christ when he was baptized. This ‘aeon’ was responsible for Jesus preaching the faith and performing miracles. Just before Jesus’ death, the ‘eon’ Christ left Jesus’ body again, which was described by the Gnostics as separationism .
Marcionites
The last ‘error’ within Christianity was formed by Marcion of Sinope (c. 85 – c. 160) and his followers, who were called the Marcionites. Marcion was convinced that there were two gods (called dualism), namely the vengeful demiurge (creator god) from the Old Testament and the Heavenly Father from the New Testament. In line with this, the Marcionites did not attach any value to the Old Testament (also called the Hebrew Bible) and believed that Jesus was fully divine and seemed only human. This idea was also described as docetism .
Drawing up the canon and the confession of faith
In order to explain the coming of Jesus and his teachings to pagans, the early Christian church began collecting writings that supported their claims. Marcion of Sinope was the first to question the authenticity of these writings, as he believed that the writings had been defiled by people who wanted to keep the Christian faith Jewish. The proto-orthodox therefore did everything they could to demonstrate the ‘authenticity’ of the Christian scriptures.
Compiling canon
Because Marcion believed that even Jesus’ own apostles had misunderstood his intentions, he decided to correct the ‘mistake’ by compiling his own canon and rewriting important writings. Marcion’s canon came as a bolt from the blue for the Christians because they had simply never questioned the writings collected by the church. To demonstrate which teachings were ‘correct’ and which were ‘wrong’, the Christian Church, helped by the proto-orthodox, began canonizing (canonizing) writings that they believed had an apostolic origin. The process of canonizing the scriptures took more than two centuries and was not completed until the fourth century. But the process of canonization can be followed reasonably well through the letters of the Church Fathers from the second and third centuries.
Recognition of the canon
Recognition of the canon was first reported around the year 155 when Justin Martyr (between 100 and 114 – c. 165) wrote that he recognized the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Between the years 170 and 180, Tatian (date of birth and death unknown) wrote his ‘Diatessaron’ (Gospel Harmony) and put the four aforementioned Gospels in a specific order for the first time. The other writings that would become part of the canon, such as Acts and Revelations, were also already known at that time because they were mentioned several times in the writings of the Church Fathers. Then, in the year 185, Irenaeus of Lyon recognizes all books of the current New Testament, with the exception of Philemon, Jude, Hebrews and 2 and 3 John and Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170 – c. 235) follows Irenaeus’ example in the year 200. This showed that over the course of the century more and more agreement was reached about the canon to be composed.
The Confession of Faith
The proto-orthodox within Christianity played an important role not only in compiling the canon, but also in drafting the first confession of faith. Under the influence of Gnosticism, more and more questions arose among pagans and people of other faiths about Christianity. The Proto-Orthodox attempted to answer these questions in their twelve-article ‘Apostles’ Creed’. The proto-orthodox had composed this confession based on verses from the Bible and around the year 170 the confession was first put down on paper by Irenaeus of Lyon. The Apostles’ Creed read as follows:
We believe: in one God and Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that therein is; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God our Lord;
who was made flesh of the virgin for our salvation; and in His passion under Pontius Pilate; and in His death and resurrection; and in His bodily ascension into heaven; and in His return from heaven in the glory of the Father for all things to gather together under one Head and to pronounce righteous judgment on them alone;
and in the Holy Spirit; and that Christ shall come from heaven to raise up all flesh, and to consign the wicked and unrighteous to everlasting fire;
and to give to the righteous and holy immortal and eternal glory.
The Church and Gnosticism
Although the early Christian church and its followers did much to spread and ‘explain’ their faith, the popularity of Gnosticism grew rapidly. This popularity was fairly easy to explain since ‘people’ were used to seeing stories about gods as figures of speech, something that Gnosticism conformed to.
Gnosticism; what is it?
Gnosticism was, and is, a so-called wisdom religion in which the interweaving of knowledge (Greek: gnosis) was and is central. The central theme here is that man comes from a divine world and in his earthly situation has a divine core that comes from that divine world. The divine core has become entangled in the evil of the physical world and demonic forces are trying to keep the divine core trapped in its physical shell. Anyone who knows the real situation, and therefore knows about his divine core and the possibility it creates to return to the world of the gods, that person has gnosis.
Popularity
The reason that Gnosticism was quite popular in the second and third centuries was that it was surrounded by secrets and mysticism, things that people already knew from Roman mythology and were therefore used to. Many Gnostic sects claimed to follow the instructions that Jesus secretly gave to his apostles, and only by joining the sect could you learn these secrets. Since people were also used to interpreting stories about gods as figures of speech, the dualism of Gnosticism gave a better representation – it was felt – of how evil came into the world than the explanation of the Christians. Finally, it was simply incomprehensible for many pagans (non-believers) that Jesus – according to Christians – was both divine and human and the Gnostic story about the divine aeon in Jesus was easier for most people to understand.
Counterattack
For some inexplicable reason, Gnosticism has always remained a side-effect of the Christian church. A side effect that was at times experienced as very threatening. In the second and third centuries, the early Christian church quickly launched a counterattack when the Gnostics claimed that the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist did not exist. The Christian church combated this by emphasizing that a Christian could only be born again through ‘water and the Spirit’ (baptism). And only a baptized Christian was allowed to participate in receiving the consecrated bread and wine ‘for thanksgiving’ (eucharist) of an agape (communal meal of an early Christian community). In this way, being allowed to participate in the Eucharist quickly became a distinguishing feature of early Christianity and a way to create a sense of solidarity.
The early Christian church in the second and third centuries
Despite the conflict of direction and the various sects that emerged, Christianity managed to maintain itself and the number of followers increased rapidly. It was important that new Christian centers emerged in the Roman Empire from which Christianity was spread further.
Growth of the church
The number of Christians increased rapidly in both the second and third centuries. The growth of the early Christian church was partly due to the efforts of various church fathers and to the fact that Christians brought a message of salvation that appealed to all levels of society. Presumably the fact that the Christians rejected the compulsory circumcision of the Jews also worked to their advantage. Under the leadership of various church fathers, new Christian centers emerged throughout the Roman Empire, with the Christian communities in Alexandria, Carthage and Rome in particular being very important;
- Under the leadership of church father Clement of Alexandria (between 125 and 150 – circa 215), the School of Alexandria was founded in Alexandria, where they worked on developing an allegorical way of reading the Bible.
- Church father and apologist Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 230) was a fierce advocate of Christianity in Carthage; the city where early Christian writings were translated into Latin (the vernacular language at that time) for the first time.
- Church father Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170 – c. 235) was known for his strict morals and probably under his leadership the church of Rome switched from a Greek-speaking to a Latin worship service, making Christianity as a whole bilingual.
Course of the church
Christians did not always agree on which course the early Christian church should take. As early as the first century, Christians found themselves on opposite sides when one half of them decided to follow the (strict) view of Jesus’ brother, James the Just, while the other half chose to follow the (looser) view of the Apostle Paul . Also in the third century a dispute occurred between the leaders of the early Christian church, this time over whether Christ was divine or human. Several Christians, such as Paul of Samosata (c. 200 to 275 AD), bishop of Anatolia, did not believe that Christ was divine. But others, such as priest and theologian Sabellius (date of birth and death unknown), did not believe that Christ was human. After a long discussion, the church finally decided to adopt the statement that ‘Christ is true God and true man’.
Christian persecution
It became clear to Roman leaders at the end of the first century that Christianity was not just a sect within Judaism, but a religion that was rapidly gaining followers. According to early Christian theologians, Christianity was able to connect peoples from all corners of the Roman Empire, which the Romans saw as a serious threat to their power. Partly for these reasons, Christians were regularly persecuted in the first three centuries. For example, in the year 112 the Christians were persecuted by the then emperor because they recognized his political authority but refused to recognize his divine status. Around the year 250 it happened again when the Roman emperor Decius (190 or 201 – 251) ordered the persecution of the Christians and at the end of the third century the emperor Diocletian (circa 244 – 311) banned Christianity. Unfortunately for him, Christianity turned out to be too widespread to actually carry out the ban.