Crumbs from the Table

From the very start of Christianity, with the life of Christ and his Apostles, the Christian church lived as a tight-knit community, a religious minority surrounded by a society which, to a greater or lesser degree, was hostile towards it. Within Judaism, the Christian church began life as "the sect of the Nazarenes", while in the eyes of the Roman Empire it was considered an illicit religion (non-approved religion). It is customary to categorise the persecution of the church up to 311 into ten periods. Back in the times of the New Testament, in particular Emperors such as Nero and Domitian persecuted Christians. Later, even those considered "enlightened Emperors" (such Trajan, Mark Aurelius and Septimius Severus) had a dislike for the Christian church and persecuted it. Under these Emperors, there were many who suffered for their faith or were martyred, such as Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Blandina the frail Christian slave-girl at Lyon (who throughout ...

By the mid to late 100s, the Christian faith had spread to places such as Carthage, North Africa (180?), Lyon in what is now France (140?), and Pityus on the Black Sea (a place of refuge from persecutions). The next chapter in the history of the Christian church unfolds in the city of Lyon in what is now France. The Christian church in that city began shortly before 177 thanks to trading links with the province of Asia, and the first bishop of the Lyon church was someone called Pothinus.  One of the young believers at the Lyon church was called Irenaeus. He himself born in Smyrna, in the Roman province of Asia, where he had been discipled by none other than Polycarp. One day Irenaeus met up with someone who had once been a member of the Lyon church but was now "into" Gnosticism. This troubled Irenaeus and he made it his life's work to combat the new false teaching which was making in-roads into the church. Interaction with this and other rival teachings help to formulate ...

The next phase of history in the Orthodox East was overshadowed by the break with the western church (the Great Schism) in 1054, the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, and the threat of conquest by the Turks which finally materialised in 1453. The place which encapsulates this time is Mount Athos, a concentration of monastic settlements in Greece. In 963 the first monasteries were founded on Mount Athos, and this become the centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. A seminal figure at this time was Gregory Palamas from Thessalonica who spent time at Athos. His practice of silent prayer epitomised Orthodox spirituality. Palamas undergirded this mystical experience by a theology which differentiated God's essence from his energies. God-in-himself in his divine essence is unknowable, however we can participate in God's uncreated "energies" (action) - a process of gradual participating in the divine energies culminating in the goal of "theosis". ...

After the fiery passion of the Protestant Reformation "cooled down" and solidified into a new "orthodoxy", there was a need to rediscover inner spiritual life and to get beyond the formalism of church services and rigid theologies.  The next chapter in the history of the Christian church began in Germany in the Lutheran churches. The pioneer was Jakob Philip Spener and the movement he began is called "Pietism". Philipp Spener was and remained a Lutheran and held to all the tenets of his Lutheran faith, including the belief that the body of Christ is literally chewed in the mouth at Communion. However, the focus of his life and work was elsewhere - namely, on spiritual vigour and the need for Christian community. His famous book, Pia Desideria, published in 1675, identifies six important points. For example, the importance of preaching being edifying not merely polemical. Spener put this into practice, first at Strasburg, then in Frankfurt and finally in Dr...

The Roman Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation is called the "Counter Reformation".  Even before the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, others in the Catholic church held views which had much in common with Martin Luther. Luther's spiritual mentor, Von Staupitz, had directed Luther to look to the mercy of God. While Von Staupitz never became a Protestant himself, he did remain in contact with Luther and shortly before his death in 1524 they exchanged letters. In Italy, there was a movement known as the "Evangelical Catholics" associated with the Oratory of Divine Love. It was Evangelical Catholics who compiled the 1537 report into abuses in the Roman Catholic church ( Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia ). A leading figure in this movement was Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542). Between 1521 and 1541 there were various attempts and meetings which sought to overcome the divisions between the two. In many cases, Evangelical Catholics shared the Reformation beli...

Shortly after the western Catholic church achieved the height of its authority and influence in the 1200s, it experienced a sudden decline particularly during the 1300s.  The tumultuous 1300s saw the spread of the Plague and other natural disasters. During this time, the Papacy underwent two major crises, namely the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and the Great Western Schism. At the Council of 1215, Pope Innocent III had asserted the absolute power of the Pope, conceptualised as the Vicar of Christ on earth. However, the King of France then asserted his power and the Pope became his subordinate. The King of France even went to the lengths of relocating the Papacy from Rome to Avignon. This lasted from 1309 until 1377. However, no sooner had this crisis been overcome, than a second crisis followed on: the Great Schism of the western church which lasted from 1378 to 1417. During this second crisis, two and at times three different people claimed to be Pope, mobilising finance and...

The Protestant Reformation of the 1500s began in Germany and Switzerland, and soon spread to many countries across Europe, particularly northern Europe. The German Reformation of Luther took root in parts of Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The Swiss Reformation of Zwingli and Calvin took root in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scotland, as well as having a minority presence in France, Poland and Hungary. (England was a special case; the Church of England was in some ways like the Lutheran churches and in other ways more like the Swiss Reformed Churches.) The Radical Reformation or Anabaptists, a third arm of the Reformation, mainly thrived in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, and later Poland.  By the 1560s, the initial "fire" of the early years had cooled down, and over the next 100 years or so, the various iterations of Protestant Christianity solidified into new "orthodoxies" (rigid beliefs and practices).   The period from 1580 until into the 17...

Since the earliest days, the church has worked to fulfil the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. The work of mission continued throughout the centuries. The western Catholic church converted the Franks, Irish, Angles and Saxons, other continental Germanic peoples (Thuringians etc.), Norsemen, Slavs and eventually the peoples of the Baltic. The last pagans in Europe were the Lithuanians who converted in 1386. Even during the 1300s, when the Western Catholic church was in disarray, there were bold missions in Central Asia (eg Azerbaijan), India, to the Mongols and in China. A leading missionary was John of Montecorvino (d. 1328). Across the Mediterranean, brave monks risked their lives to preach the gospel to Muslims in North Africa. The Eastern Orthodox church headquartered at Constantinople likewise missionised its neighbours over many centuries, including Goths, Arabs, Persians, Bulgars, Slavs, Mongols and Lithuanians. The missionary work of the non-Chalcedonia...

The Protestant Reformation began in the German university town of Wittenberg with a young Christian academic and monk by the name of Martin Luther.  Martin Luther's journey to faith had not been easy; it can be described as "search for a merciful God". Originally training to be a lawyer, he was caught in a thunderstorm and, fearing for his life, vowed to become a monk. In due course he took the vows to become a monk, was ordained as a priest, and from 1508 worked as a lecturer in Holy Scripture at the recently founded Wittenberg university. Despite Luther's intense commitment, he felt he could never do enough and was left without assurance of God's mercy. However, as Luther taught his way through Psalms and then Romans, his search for assurance of forgiveness led him to rediscover the truth of salvation in Christ as a gift given by God and received by mere faith. This new evangelical faith was at odds with his experience of church, which offered an endless cycle o...

After the Apostolic Fathers, the next generation of Christian leaders were called the Apologists. Their focus was external, engaging the society around them. The word "apologist" is from the word “ apologia ” which means a defence in court. The apologists defended the Christian faith vis-à-vis the surrounding non-Christian world, and engaged with the culture to communicate the gospel to Jews and Gentiles. The most prominent Apologist was Justin Martyr (100-165), a philosopher-become-Christian who grew up in Samaria (Holy Land), but was later at Rome where he was martyred. Justin's journey to faith involved various "philosophies", such as stoicism, Aristotelianism and Platonism, but it was a chance meeting with an old man on a beach that convinced Justin that the Old Testament prophets were true philosophers, and that Christianity was the true philosophy. He was also impressed by the dignity with which Christian martyrs met their death. Justin wrote two Apologie...

The Apostles whom Jesus chose fulfilled a central role as unique witnesses to the world of his resurrection from the dead. The first Apostle to die was James the brother of John in the year 44; the last to die was John around the year 100. During this time, the "baton" was passed from the Apostles, like Peter, John and Paul, to the next generation of Christian leaders. Ephesus was the place that Paul had "handed over" leadership of the church, and also the place where John was the last Apostle to die, and thus represents the first stage in post-Apostolic church history.  The first generation of post-Apostolic writers were called the Apostolic Men or Apostolic Fathers. They included Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna (see below) and Papias of Hierapolis. Many of these were men who had been discipled by the Apostles. In Polycarp’s case, he had been discipled by John the Apostle at Ephesus. Besides these individuals, there are also a number of tex...

After decades of attacks on Rome by Germanic tribespeople from the East, in 476, Odoacer, a ruler Ostrogoth finally deposed the last Emperor of Rome, declaring himself “King”. The once all-powerful Roman Empire, at least the western half of it, was no more. Meanwhile, the eastern half of the Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would survive and thrive until 1453. From this point onwards, west (Rome) and east (Constantinople) would follow divergent paths of development. What had been the western half of the Roman Empire was now ruled by peoples such as the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals and others. By the time they settled in the west, these peoples already professed a form of Christianity, but their Arian Christian faith denied the Trinity and viewed Christ merely as an exalted creature (see chapter V). The incoming “Barbarians” (uncivilised tribespeople, in the eyes of the Romans) occupied churches and, in some cases, persecuted the Nicene Christians (those who believed in the...