Church, Government, and Society: The Early Church

The Importance of Church History

There are two reasons it is important to know about Church history.  The first reason is so that the Church today can look to the authority of Church tradition to guide us.  Even if we are Protestants who believe in “sola scriptura,” we must recognize that the Bible itself is a product of Church history.  The canon of Scripture is not something self-evident.  Rather, it was developed over a centuries-long process of discernment by the early Church as it recognized and acknowledged which early Christian writings were Scripture and which were not.  The canon of Scripture is accepted by Christians today, even by Protestants, based on the authority of Church tradition.

Additionally, even if we seek to base our theology solely on the Bible, we will not be interpreting it in a vacuum.  As we interpret Scripture, it is important to be guided by the authority of Church tradition so that our interpretation will not be unduly influenced by the ideas that happen to be popular and fashionable in our surrounding culture.  As C.S. Lewis puts it, “Most of all perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past.  Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.  A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”^[1]C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1980).  Unfortunately, we often hear a “cataract of nonsense” from voices within the Church itself today, and we need to look to the authority of Church tradition to correct it.  And this requires that we learn about Church history so that we can know what Christians have believed in other times and places.  

On the other hand, it is also important to know about Church history so that we can learn from the mistakes of Christians in the past.  Tradition is important and authoritative, but (unlike Scripture) it is not infallible, and it is possible for tradition to take a wrong turn.  Some of the problems in the Church today are a result of recent departures from Church tradition, but some of them are a result of problematic developments in Church tradition that occurred centuries ago.  If we want to be faithful Christians, if we want to contribute to reforming the Church and moving it in a more faithful direction, it is important that we understand the mistakes made by Christians in the past and how these mistakes continue to affect the Church today.  

In this series, I will examine the major developments that have taken place in the relationship between Church, government, and society over the past 2,000 years.  While there have been other major changes that have taken place in the Church during this time, such as the schisms between the Eastern and Western Churches in the eleventh century and the Catholic and Protestant Churches in the sixteenth century, I believe these changes to be relatively superficial compared to the two really major developments in Church history: Christianity becoming the established religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, and the political disestablishment of Christianity in the modern period.  These enormous changes in the relationship between Church, government, and society had a radical impact on the development of Church history that continues to profoundly shape the Church today.  It is important that we understand this history so that we can understand where we have come from, where we are, and where the modern Western Church should go from here.

The Early Church

We should not over-idealize the early Church.  Heresy, hypocrisy, and schism existed in the early Church, just as they have existed in every period of Church history down to the present day.  However, in spite of all the issues and struggles the early Church had, there are good reasons to look to the Church of the first three centuries as a model for what it means to authentically be the Church.

First, because of their historical proximity to the apostles, the early Christians had access to reliable traditions handed down from the apostles in a way no Christians in other periods of Church history have had.  Over time, tradition changes and becomes less reliable, until, over the centuries, it reaches a point where it is uncertain what is original and what is a later addition.  For this reason, we should take the teachings that are handed down to us by our church traditions today with a grain of salt.  For the Christians of the early centuries, on the other hand, we can be pretty confident that they knew what they were talking about when they claimed their teachings and practices were apostolic.  Of course, the best way to access the apostle’s teachings is by studying the New Testament, but the teachings of the early Church provide an important, secondary witness.

Second, the Church of the first three centuries had no access to worldly political power and its corrupting influence.  This is in contrast to all subsequent periods of Church history from the fourth century onward, but in perfect continuity with the assumptions of the New Testament authors about what the political and social situation of the Church would be.  So if we want to know what it looks like to authentically be the Church in a way faithful to the New Testament, we should look to the early Church as a model.

The early Chrsitians did not vote, organize political campaigns, or leverage the government to force their vision of morality and “social justice” onto others.  Living under a brutal, oppressive Roman Empire, they had absolutely no opportunity to do those things, of course, but even if they had, they were too busy doing what Jesus and His apostles had actually taught them to do: advancing God’s Kingdom by making disciples.  The tools the early Christians used to do good in the world were God’s tools: preaching, teaching, worship, the sacraments, love, and service.  In the midst of a Roman culture filled with idolatry, brutality, violence, and depravity, the early Church built a countercultural community that visibly embodied a radically different way of life, one of love, peace, nonviolence, and righteousness.  In the midst of a hostile culture that hated, persecuted, and even killed Christians, the early Church managed, in just a few centuries, to spread this community throughout the Roman Empire and into every level of Roman society.

How did the early Church accomplish this?  First, the early Church engaged in intensive catechesis, often requiring years of instruction before a potential convert could be baptized into the Church.  They were certainly eager to grow the Church as much as possible, but they did not allow this eagerness to lead them to simplify the Gospel into a simplistic theological formula or to water down the radical and costly demands of Christian discipleship.  They understood that genuine evangelism means building a community of genuine disciples who are initiated into a radical new way of life and understand what that means.

Second, the early Church practiced strict Church discipline, as taught by Jesus and His apostles.  The early Christians understood that the Church was a political community, with authority over its members.  They understood that being a Christian is not an individual matter, and that the Church is central to Christian identity and Christian ethics.  They understood that being a Christian means actually following Jesus in a particular Way of life, and that the community of Jesus’s disciples needs to be there to hold Christians accountable to keeping on that Way.  

Third, the early Church embraced suffering.  The early Christians experienced numerous periods of intense persecution, in which many Christians were tortured or executed.  Rather than seeing this as a reason to lose faith or to stop loving their enemies, the early Church honored and venerated the martyrs who were willing to die for the sake of following Jesus and the confessors who were willing to undergo torture for the sake of following Jesus as prime examples of what it looks like to be a Christian.  They simply took seriously the many teachings of the New Testament that Jesus’s followers will be persecuted and suffer, and that this suffering has significance as a sharing in the sufferings of Christ.  They understood that the Cross lies at the center of Christian ethics.  If the early Christians had not been willing to embrace suffering in this way, the early Christian movement never could have survived and spread as it did.  

In short, the early Christians really believed what the New Testament clearly teaches: that Jesus the crucified Son of God is Lord of the whole world, that salvation only comes through following Jesus on the way of the cross as His disciple, and that this discipleship is inseparable from being part of the visible Church, the Body of Christ.  And they acted on this belief.  They knew that their beliefs and actions made them crazy and contemptible in the eyes of the surrounding culture.  They just did not care.  They remained committed to the methods of Jesus’s Kingdom.  

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