This is an introduction to early Christian history, covering essentially the first 500 years of the interactions of Jesus’s followers. The book draws me in because I want a framework in which to read early Christian writings because they form the basis for my core beliefs and I have only read three documents, all by Athanasius, Bishop off and on at Alexandria.
Chadwick does an excellent job of distilling themes and important players in these turbulent first centuries. For the uninitiated mind of a protestant – whose Christian history might only go back 150 years or 450 years if they are lucky – it is a mess of unfamiliar, though often very similar sounding names (Justin and Justinian or Julius and Julian – not all of these guys are nice). Because Chadwick tries to tie themes together based on geographic movement/authority, theological movements/heresies, worship and art, church interactions with society and the state, and church governance, a bishop from Constantinople may be put together with a bishop of Antioch from 40 years previous because of their common pursuits or influence.
I now wish I had drawn or accessed a time line for each of the major regions (Jerusalem, Antioch, Damascus, Ephesus, Carthage, Cyprus, Athens, Rome, Alexandria, Marseille, Armenia, Ankara, Britain, Ethiopia, etc.) and used colour coding for various dominant teachings through the age – Orthodoxy vs. Paganism, Orthodoxy vs. Gnosticism, Orthodoxy vs. Asceticism, Orthodoxy vs. Arianism, Orthodoxy vs. Iconoclasts (though not discussed at length as it extends beyond the 500s).
While it is a precious mess to wade through, something clear emerges: the church made its own way and there was a determined will among nearly all players to honour God. One could very easily let their view of the church hinge on those disrupters and corrupters who dishonoured the Body of Christ, but I think they would miss the enormous sacrifice and determined effort of imperfect Christians to re-establish orthodoxy (right teaching) over and over again.
A few little nuggets that stuck with me:
When the Pagan Emperor Julian took power, he tried very hard to reinvigorate the the Pagan practices and veneration of Pagan gods. He was so unimpressed at how non-Christians treated one another and at the corruption of the pagan priesthood that he instituted a Christian model of hierarchy and governance in the pagan religion. He noted that no Jews or Christians went hungry, so he tried to get Pagans to look out for the least of theirs too.
I was keen to learn that there was a large contingent of non-Christians who were very nominal Pagans in that they didn’t really believe in the greco-roman gods or soothsayers, but they enjoyed the rituals and veneration as it elevated Roman culture and history. However they really didn’t like that the Christians were not as willing to do the same for the sake of Rome, so they were fine with their emperor putting down the Christians.
Persecution of Christians happened because it disrupted the social order. For instance in Bithynia at around 100 AD, the governor Pliny the Younger (a horrible man) sought his emperor’s advice on how to charge Christians as they weren’t breaking any laws, but the economy was heavily impacted because they weren’t buying meat sacrificed at the pagan and the temples were virtually empty now. He had many Christians tortured and killed on the basis that they had changed the power structure by not valuing what the Empire valued.
The origin and persistence of Gnosticism is still troubling today. It came from some Christians who identified with Plato in that the spiritual realm is far superior to the physical realm, which if it can be avoided should be. The pursuit of pure knowledge to the exclusion of the physical world meant one of two outcomes: it didn’t matter what they did in the physical world so they would become selfish gluttons or they would dismiss the physical world entirely and become ascetics.
The origin and persistence of Arianism is still troubling today. The nature of who Jesus Christ is/was becomes a lasting debate, which I suppose is healthy as long as it is done in a civilized and Christlike way (which it has not always been). The great question of how Jesus’s humanity interacts with his divinity causes great heresies when the answers lie anywhere besides the delicate middle. We see today that the Jehovah’s Witnesses err on the dominance of Jesus humanity while the Evangelical church tends to err on the dominance of Jesus divinity as they become more Gnostic.
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The real challenge presented by the history of the Church is how to deal with opposition to held truth. At some points there is careful deliberation. At other points there were executions and exile imposed by the more powerful. Today we simply endure perpetual schisms.