In this video, we will talk about the first era of church history, the Apostolic Age. And doesn't that make sense? Apostolic, from Apostles.
You'll notice in your reading that after Pentecost, or the Book of Acts, all the people that were formerly called disciples, literally learners, are now called Apostles. Because remember, the wind blew on them all. they all received the power. We've talked about the beginnings of the early church, principally by Christianity's greatest evangelist and writer, Paul. After Paul's death and concurrent with his life, all the apostles of Jesus, the former disciples or learners, each in turn went and proselytized.
around the Mediterranean basin. Mark went south to modern-day Egypt, the Coptic church. We know Peter went north all the way to Rome and so forth. And all the apostles were harassed, martyred, that is, killed for their faith. You might even remember our discussion on John on the penal island of Patmos, where he was put as a prisoner.
The beginning of the early church in the Apostolic Age is not pretty. They were harassed, principally by Rome. Rome, remember, was this monolithic political presence, and they enforced the imperial cult.
They believed that Caesar was of a demigod status, and any Roman soldier could stop you on the street. and force you to do homage to Caesar. Lack to do so would be considered treason.
And you remember how Rome dealt with all those who were charged with treason every Friday at noon on the hill outside of town and take your own cross. So Christians literally went underground. They went into the living rooms, like I talked about, where they met in secret for the agape meal. They would have dinner together, remind each other of Jesus'sacrifice, pray, privately baptize converts, and they would read letters that they were distributing to one another, principally, again, the epistles or letters of Paul.
We also know, then, that Christianity grew. And you might be wondering, how could Christians... grow when they're being so oppressed?
Well, a couple things about that. Pretty much history always shows that when you try to oppress a people it always has the opposite response. They grow. That was true too of Christianity because some people said, wow, this must really be a truth if they're willing to die for it and suffer for it.
Secondly, we know that Christians communicated to each other with sort of a secret handshake, I'll call it. And that leads me to introduce to you the very first symbol of Christianity. You may think it was the cross, and the cross is a very, very late symbol of Christianity. I mean, think about it.
Why would the cross initially be a symbol of Christianity? It was the symbol of Roman torture. It would be like if we started a new religion, and I said for our logo, Let's choose the electric chair.
It doesn't make any sense. We'll talk about this in another video I'm going to do with you called The Bodies of Christ. But just remember, the cross as a symbol is very late.
The first symbol of Christianity is very interesting. But what happened is people would go up to each other in the Agora, the marketplace. They're wearing their sandals. The pavement is sandy.
And if you were talking to somebody and wanted to know whether or not they were Christian or knew of this new... religion, all you had to do is take your toe and in the sand, just with your right toe, just draw a big right arch. And if you were a Christian, you would know what that person was trying to signal to you. And so what you would do is, from the opposite position, do the same thing with your right toe, another big arch, so that together in the ground you drew a very simplistic figure of a fish.
That's the first symbol of Christianity. I put an image of it in your handout that goes with this too, in case I went too fast. You've probably seen it.
It's still around on bumper stickers. The thing about that image, it looks like a fish, and in Greek, this doesn't work in the English language, but in Greek, they made an anagram from the word ichthus, which means fish. Very crudely, it would translate, Iesu Christus, God of sun is.
Jesus Christ is the son of God. That's how they would identify one another as Christians and how Christianity grew. We also know that despite their persecution, Christians nevertheless grew because of the letter of Pliny that I included in your handout. Now, this is an extraordinary piece of evidence on a number of levels.
First, it comes from about 111-113, so we're about, you know, a generation after Jesus had ascended and died. Rome has divvied itself up in different provinces, and each province has a governor. And here we have in Asia Minor a governor by the name of Pliny.
And we know the very reason that he had to write a letter to Trajan IV tells us that Christians were enough of a population that he had to do something. And here was his problem. By law, anybody who professed to be a Christian and would not do homage to Caesar, he had to kill. And the problem is with killing off people in your province is there goes another taxpayer. Further...
As you read this letter, Pliny says to the emperor, and look, I'm not sure what we're killing him for. I did some investigation, and it seems to me their crime is that they meet together for breakfast. It's not illegal. They're having ordinary food. Not illegal.
They're not stealing. Not illegal. So he's kind of rhetorically asking, I don't get their crime.
It would be so much easier to kill these Christians if they were falsifying trust or organizing a gang or something. He said, they're not doing, they're good people. I don't know why we're killing them off.
Those are my words. That's why it's extraordinary. We have a Roman governor kind of starting to question just why are Christians so bad?
And like I already said, it shows us that Christians were very numerous that he had to write this. But the third and maybe the most intriguing importance of this letter comes on, what is it, the fourth paragraph about the second line in your reader where Pliny says as he describes Christian worship that they get together to sing a hymn to Christ as though to a god. There it is. The first evidence we have outside of the Bible, extra canonical, that people were worshiping Jesus as God. It's extraordinary.
And there you have it. Of course, it's an English translation. The original would have been Greek.
You can also read then the emperor's reply to Pliny. He kind of says, again, this is a very crude paraphrase of mine. but it'll just help you understand, I hope, as you're reading it.
He basically says, you know, you have a good point. And he says, let's do this. No longer will we just stop people for the sole crime of being a Christian. You're right. Let him go.
Don't round him up just for that. However, if you arrest somebody for shoplifting and he's a Christian, well, then you can double book. So it's kind of a little crack there in the Roman. penal code that will come wide open, as we'll see in our next lecture.
Two more things, and then we can be done with this first era, the Apostolic Age. The apostles then, because they went around the whole Mediterranean, and because they couldn't openly communicate, or preach, or publish, or write, except those secret letters, they kind of said, you know, we all need to be teaching the same thing. We all not... need to be on the same page. And so we have one of the earliest statements of Christianity, and doesn't it make sense, called the Apostles'Creed.
And please note in the grammar, apostles is plural possessive. It was written by the apostles, is the belief. There were 12 apostles. There happened to be 12 lines.
It's only 12 lines because it needed to be something memorizable. easily to memorize and carry around so you won't get in trouble by having it in print. And because this is so early verbal, oral, later about in the fourth century, it will finally be written down, but the origins are much earlier.
Because it was so early, to this day, pretty much Christians of any denominational stripe will use the Apostles'Creed because it predates any division in Christianity. So you can go today to a Roman Catholic Church, a Chaldean Church, an Orthodox Church. a Christian Reformed Church, a Presbyterian Church, all of them will affirm the Apostles Creed. Kind of like the Lord's Prayer, how everybody attests to it and uses it in their worship. So is the Apostles Creed.
Maybe you've heard of it. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord. I put the modern English in there and then the Latin that it came from. but of course the original would have been Greek.
The final thing I want to say then introduces us very briefly to the second era of church history, which is the Desert Fathers. The Latin word for father is patri, p-a-t-r-i, so sometimes this is also called the patristic age. Doesn't it make sense to you that if you were a first century Christian and you were being harassed by Rome, And the Roman soldiers pretty much congregated in the heavily populated areas, Jerusalem, Damascus, Alexandria. Well, you could escape the harassment, right, by moving to the desert. It's not that Rome's jurisdiction didn't control you in the desert.
It's just that you were less likely to run into a Roman soldier in the desert. So many people fled to the desert. There, some of them lived alone or mono.
One, the origin of our word monk. They could pray, they could live in communities, they could talk, argue, theologize, and publish. Those are the era that we call the desert fathers or the patristics.
All of that will set the stage for my next era of church history that we'll talk about. And that is the conversion of Constantine. Imagine everything I told you, all the persecution from Rome, all the power tripping they were doing, all the enforcement of the imperial cult. But what if I told you, what would happen, do you think, if a Roman Caesar became a Christian? Wouldn't that be world game changer?
Way up there maybe with the Industrial Revolution, the birth of Jesus. In the Protestant Reformation? Yeah.
And that's exactly what happened. A Roman emperor became a Christian. Not till about 300 years in.
So the first 300 years of Christianity, they're in hiding, they're being persecuted, even as they grow. We'll talk about that amazing story of the conversion of Constantine in our next video and all the resultant effects of that. But for today, remember, we learned the first era, Apostolic Era. Connected and right off of that, the Patristic Age or the Desert Fathers. Just makes sense.
If I wanted to escape Rome, I would go to the desert. We talked about this really important letter from Pliny to the Roman Emperor Trajan. Important because it proves that Christianity must have been of such a size that you have to write a letter. It shows a crack in the Roman... Ahem.
penal system against Christians, but most important perhaps, it's the first extra canonical evidence we have of somebody who's not a Christian identifying Christians as that group that sings and observes, honors Jesus as though he were a God. We learned the word Patry, and I think that's about everything for today. Icthus we learned, which is fish.
the very first symbol, and there's some more information for you on your handout. And we'll be back next time to talk about the next era, the third, the conversion of Constantine.