First century establishment of the church

Today began the Church history class that I am teaching using Dr. Timothy Paul Jones' book, Chistian History Made Easy. This is a wonderful text - not at all dry or boring like a history text could be. The main story is told as a sort of narrative with a lot of the supporting facts and extra interesting tidbits stripped out and put in the sidebars for the reader who wants to dig deeper into something.

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Today we covered the introduction, which dealt with the questions, "What is the Church" and "Why study Church history?" We also covered the first chapter which dealt with the establishment of the Church in the first century. The following are my notes for today...

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What is the Church?

• "Body of Christ" Col 1:18
• "Bride of Christ" Eph 5:22f
• "God's household...the pillar and foundation of the truth." 1Tim 3:14-15
• "A great cloud of witnesses" Heb 12:1

Westminster COF 25.1 and 25.2

The catholic, or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body; the fullness of him that filleth all in all.

The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

Or, as Dr. Jones puts it more concisely,

The church is the local, visible fellowship of baptized believers as well as the invisible fellowship of all God’s people, living and dead. (p143).

Reasons to study the history of the church…

• As a way to fellowship with the invisible church – like a family reunion.
• As an aid to apologetics (1Peter 3:15) and evangelism (Mat 28:19) – we learn about the different challenges and heresies faced by our predecessors and are encouraged by the examples of the saints.

Chapter 1

Who were the Christians in the first century?

• Jews thought Christians were law-breaking renegades.
• Christians thought they were "The Israel of God"(Gal 6:16)
• The Romans thought Christians were just another sect of Jews (Acts 16:19-20)

Because Judaism was a legally protected religion throughout the Empire, Christians were protected along with the Jews – for a while. Why would they need protection?

• Christianity was a new thing – which was bad in itself. (remember these were the Romans, whose Emperors commissioned their poets laureate, like Virgil, to write poetic pseudo-histories, like the Aeneid, to connect Rome's genealogy and history all the way back to the Greek gods and the heroes of the Trojan war.) These folks were not into new innovations.
• Christians rejected all other gods (including the emperor) – which didn’t win them any friends. The Romans liked to hedge their bets spiritually-speaking.
• Christian rites were widely misunderstood because of their jargon. They spoke of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a child and they referred to themselves as 'brother' and 'sister' which were sexual terms in Egypt at the time, kind like 'hot mama' and 'sugar daddy.' So people mistook them for some crazy, cannibalistic orgy cult.
• Christians challenged the social order (i.e. Philemon).

Social and political events conspired to make the Christians hated…

• Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire of AD 64
• Roman vs. Jewish political tensions erupted in rebellion and war in AD 70
• After the rebellion was put down, Jewish leaders cursed the ‘Nazarenes’ every time they prayed.

…but the Christian churches grew and flourished anyway. How could that happen?

• The real answer is found in Romans 8:28-35. But also…
• Christianity provided moral absolutes in a society tired of decadent relativism.
• Christianity offered equality and respect (i.e. Philemon, role of women).
• Christianity offered a personal relationship with a knowable God (Acts 17:22-23)

And I left folks thinking about the following question:

Sometimes the early church may have noticed that God was using social and political factors. At other times God’s work was unclear. Yet the people’s longings became opportunities for God’s work. What do people long for in our community? How (specifically and practically) can our local, visible church use these longings to help people come to know God through Jesus Christ?

Next Week - Chapter 2 - Gnosticism and Canon