The Early Days of Christianity

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THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY

 

A WARNING FOR THE PRESENT

 

The Apostle Peter probably lies buried under the great St. Peter’s in Rome—so arch­aeologists say, after a careful investigation a few years ago. Imagine, then, the Big Fisher­man waking from his long sleep to observe High Mass or any other of the ornate, elabor­ate Latin services held in that majestic edifice built to honour his name. Would he not come away bewildered and amazed that the simple wholesome Christianity which he helped to establish in Rome should have developed into something so artificial and pompous as this?

 

Or imagine the great evangelist Paul atten­ding a similar service in St. Paul’s in London. Is it likely that he would find himself immed­iately at home there and thank God that his work had continued so effectively?

 

Everyone who reads the New Testament story of the early Church can see for himself that it is a far cry from the simple faith and unpretentious style of those days to the elaborate formality and organisation of the present.

 

What has happened? Perhaps there is a need to get back to the fundamentals of Christianity at the start. This tract is a challenge to you to read and find out. It will supply you with facts. But it will not make up your mind for you.

 

The Church began as a community of men and women all believing the same things about Jesus of Nazareth. It sprang inevitably out of the unorganised group of disciples who had gathered round Jesus during his three-and-a-half years’ ministry. So far as is known, they followed him not so much because he taught a high moral code or because he worked amazing miracles but because these things were themselves evidence that he was their Messiah—the divine and all-righteous king whom God had promised to send.

 

When they became assured through the evidence of their own senses that Jesus, “crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried”, was now risen from the dead, that belief became a certainty in their minds. With the divine help and encouragement which Holy Spirit power added to their untutored efforts, they proclaimed this message incessantly:

 

Jesus is the Son of God; he died for our sins; he has been raised from the dead; and one day he will come again in power as the Christ, our promised King.

 

That was the gist of it. No one—neither humble fireside Bible reader, nor expert highly-trained theologian—would want to quarrel with that as a summary of what Jesus meant to the earliest disciples.

 

So, then, Christianity began as a fellowship of people with the same unshakeable convic­tions about the status and work of Jesus. These convictions about their divine Leader inevitably separated those who believed from those who didn’t. It wasn’t that they became too proud to mix with the rest—“come not near to me, for I am holier than thou.” It was simply due to the inevitable gravitation to­gether of people with the same enthusiasm. There was nothing exclusive about it. They were joyously eager to share with others what they believed to be the best thing in the world. And the first qualification for assoc­iation with the brethren was the sharing of the same beliefs and convictions about Jesus.

 

That assured, the next necessary thing was initiation into the community of believers through the rite of baptism which Jesus him­self had appointed. There was good reason for this. Dipping in water and coming out again was a simple symbolic imitation of the death and resurrection of their Lord. It was also a token of sins washed away.

 

Thereafter the new disciple was received into the warm fellowship of those “of like precious faith.” They met together—in the Temple in Jerusalem at first, and after that for a long time in one another’s homes—for prayers and Bible reading, and especially for what was called the Breaking of Bread.

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This last was the other sacrament which had been explicitly appointed by their Master: “Do this in remembrance of me.” It was a simple thing in itself. After prayer of thanks­giving, they broke an ordinary cake of bread so that each one present could receive a portion. And similarly after another prayer they shared a cup of wine. Thus they remem­bered how the body and blood of Jesus had been given “for the remission (forgiveness) of sins.”

 

So far as one can tell, there was a minimum of formality and ritual. In fact this celebrat­ion usually took place at the conclusion of a pleasant meal of fellowship together.

 

Very quickly Christian communities, called ecclesias (churches), mushroomed all over the Roman Empire. Each one was independent and self-contained. They acknowledged no head save Jesus their Lord. His teaching and guidance, his example and instruction, as conveyed to them in Holy Scripture and the word of his apostles was their supreme auth­ority. Especially were they animated by an eager conviction that in due time they would see their Lord back on earth once again as the Judge of all, and the King of God’s holy kingdom.

 

It was quite inevitable that an outlook so vastly different from what was regarded as normal in those times should express itself in a different way of life which the rest of the world admired, marvelled at, criticized, re­sented or denounced, according to the taste or environment of the individual.

 

Even the label “Christians” which people promptly stuck on them may have been given for more reasons than one. Originally it probably meant “the King’s men”, because they would never stop talking about the time when their Jesus would return to be King of all. But very quickly it became “Christians”—“the kindly folk”, because they lived lives of such unexampled harmlessness and benevolence.

 

Certainly the Christian way of life showed in sharp contrast with all the best, as well as the worst, features of the highly civilized decadence around them.

 

Then, as now, there were temples every­where, with a wide variety of religions to suit every man’s taste. But the Christian by-passed them all for the earnest gathering of the faith­ful where rich and poor, educated and humble, freeman and slave met together on a common level—but it was a levelling up, to the exalted plane of redemption in Christ.

 

Then, as now, for the great majority the highest “good” was the improvement of one’s material standard of living; life was becoming more and more artificial every day. The Christian stood aside from this misguided striving. He lived the simple life in daily thankfulness to God. And if his income ex­panded, he gave the surplus to the poor instead of buying more slaves, or a bigger and better house.

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Then, as now, service in the armies of the Empire was regarded as one of the finest callings a man could follow. It widened his experience, developed his manliness, and con­solidated the Pax Romana. But the Christian would have none of it. The violence of war was the very negation of everything that his Master, slandered as “the pale Galilean”, stood for. The service of the State must yield to that of a higher Authority.

 

Then, as now, sex had become both a religion and an industry. The base exploitation of good God-given instincts was carried to fantastic extremes, and corruption spread through society to an unbelievable extent. From all this the Christian turned away in abhorrence, seeking instead a well-balanced life of wholesome purity.

 

Then, as now, in another score of ways the Christian shook off the rottenness of the life around him. He pursued his education, he bought and sold, he went about his work, he ordered his household and family, he enjoyed his relaxation and especially he followed his religion, yet all the time though in the world he was not of the world. Without shutting himself up behind monastery walls or in a hermit’s cave, he yet contrived to “come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing.”

 

And men hated him for it, because— without a word spoken—his life was a shouting condemnation of theirs.

 

Thus persecution was inevitable. In any time of trouble or unrest, the Christians were always to hand as scapegoats. They could be blamed for almost anything, and they were. Consequently in those days, far more than today, being a Christian called for moral courage of a high order. For most it meant the enduring of contempt and execration. For some it meant a horrible, though not miser­able, death. The man who chooses the life of discipleship today has little prospect of such testing experiences.

 

These recurring persecutions only seemed to stiffen Christian resolution and faithfulness. However, the victory which the world could not win by open antagonism was more efficiently gained in other ways!

 

Even whilst the apostles of Jesus were still alive, ominous cracks began to appear in the edifice of Christian unity. Peter, Paul and John all issued blunt and, as it proved, un­heeded warnings against growing corruption within the church. The danger was not so much that of being seduced by worldly attrac­tions as of apostasy through the infiltration of false teaching. Bit by bit, ever so slowly. Christian truth was to be changed into some­thing which bore a superficial resemblance to the genuine article and yet was really quite different. The apostles saw this process already at work. They died unhappy in the knowledge that much of their work was to be brought to nought by the insidious effects of false doctrine. Christianity was to be con­quered from within.

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Many people today are quite unaware of the existence of such explicit New Testament passages as the following:

 

“I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them”—Paul in Acts 20:29,30.

 

“The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine ... they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables ... evil men and seducers (impostors) shall wax worse and worse, de­ceiving, and being deceived”—Paul again, in 2 Timothy 4:3,4 and 3:13.

 

“There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them ... and many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of”—Peter, in 2 Peter 2:1,2.

 

“Even now are there many antichrists ... They went out from us, but they were not of us ... Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (i.e. with true human nature) ... If there come any unto you, and bring not this (true) doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed”—John in 1 John 2:18,19 and 2 John 7,10.

 

This process of deterioration from within which even the personal influence of the apostles could not prevent, spread rapidly during the first two centuries. Hardly any of the central Christian beliefs and practices escaped the tendency to distortion or corrup­tion.

 

Baptism came to be administered not only to adult converts making confession of faith, but also to little babies incapable of under­standing or confessing anything. The rite of baptism itself was gradually changed from a meaningful burial in water (see Colossians 2: 12 and 3: 1) to a pointless sprinkling or pouring of a few drops of water.

 

Jesus came to be spoken of less and less as the Son of God, having been begotten by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, and instead became more and more God the Son, as though God Almighty Himself lay there, in disguise, as it were, in the manger in Beth­lehem.

 

The hope of a bodily resurrection at the Last Day, which at first was founded so sol­idly on the bodily resurrection of Jesus their Lord, came to be greatly obscured and event­ually abandoned by most, through the adoption of the Greek philosophical teaching about the essential immortality of every human soul. And this in its turn created the problem of what would be the fate of the wicked whose souls were unfit for eternal blessedness. Thus arose the God-dishonouring doctrine of eternal torment in hell-fire—a gross perversion of the true Bible teaching about the punishment of the wicked.

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Subtle changes came over the church org­anisation also, until eventually it was difficult to trace in the pomp and circumstance of a mighty organisation the humble character of those early Christians meeting for worship and fellowship in one another’s homes.

 

Consequently, the great hope of the Lord’s return from heaven to bring in his glorious kingdom on earth lost much of its appeal. Instead the church considered itself to be God’s Kingdom—a tremendously attractive idea this, for some in certain centuries, but one which begins to look rather sick in the twentieth.

 

The attitude of Christians towards public life changed. Whereas in the early days all manner of public office had been studiously avoided in favour of more humble and obscure ways of living. Christians now became judges, politicians, governors and—worst of ail— soldiers in Caesar’s army.

 

The tendency to compromise, both in doctrine and in way of life, has been with the church all its days, and has sparked off many a reformation movement of one kind or another. Here is one of the big reasons for the pitiful fragmentation of Christianity today. The would-be reformer has either left the parent body through inability to stomach its abuses any longer, or else has been thrust out as a “heretic” or disturber of the peace.

 

Such developments were anticipated, and indeed plainly foretold by Jesus himself:

 

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you. Nay; but rather division” (Luke 12:51).

 

And he spoke a parable— which was also a prophecy—of tares being sown among the wheat, both being left by the farmer to grow side by side “until the harvest”.

 

The modern tendency to close the ranks so as to present a united front to the great enemies, and unbelief will be fruitful of little good because it springs from a pretence that drastic differences in both precept and practice, such as the apostles of the Lord deemed to be of crucial importance, are not really important at all. The methods of diplomatists and negotiators are a poor substitute for the wholesome truth of the Word of God.

 

Over against these larger ecumenical move­ments stand the Christadelphians, the spon­sors of this tract. Here is a community of no social influence or reputation, inconsiderable in numbers and negligible in influence, but justifying its existence by a deliberate attempt to get back to the faith and character of the early Christian church. It is not claimed that there has been one hundred per cent success in this, but it is claimed—and the claim is open to the appraisal of all—that a closer approximation to early church teaching and outlook has been achieved than can be found elsewhere.

 

This is no small claim to make. Is it worth your while to investigate it more carefully?

 

H.A. Whittaker

 

TheEarlyDaysOfChristianityWhittaker.pdf