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Saint Paul in the context of his world Paul has been called "Apostle to the Gentiles" and it is through his vision and efforts that the early Church evolved into something that could be exported instead of remaining one more Jewish splinter group. Paul prepared the way for Christianity to become a universal faith by focusing on the spirit of Jewish faith in a loving Father rather than the letter of Jewish law that demanded that all men be circumcised and all members comply with the minutiae of Leviticus. Circumcision in particular was an excruciatingly painful and perilous procedure that could lead to infection and even death for adults. The life of Paul was marked by several wrenching conflicts. Saul the Jew also bore from birth the Greek name Paul, sign of his inherited status as Roman citizen. A native of the Hellenistic university city Tarsus, he studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, a great but moderate Pharisee teacher. He began his career fervently opposed to what he considered the heretical followers of Jesus. After his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, he became an equally passionate champion for the yet nameless Christian movement but not without adapting the teachings of Jesus to his own perspective. He worked in the Judeo-Hellenic world of the diaspora--Jews scattered all across the Roman Empire. His new converts in Antioch began to be called "Christians"--followers of the "Anointed One." Thus, it is in the midst of pagan society that Paul came to lay the foundation for organized Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism. No wonder many of his teachings were much closer to Greek or Oriental ways than traditional Judaism, particularly since the Judaism of Jesus' time had already been influenced by ascetic ideals imported from India, Persia, and Greece. The sect known as Essenes, also called "Bathers," for example, practiced a monastic communal life style and celibacy in contrast to mainstream Jewish emphasis on worldly involvement and the holiness of married love. They expected the Messiah to establish an egalitarian Kingdom of Heaven on earth for the morally spotless. John the Baptizer was probably an Essene. Unlike his cousin and friend, the desert-dweller John, Jesus enjoyed the company of friends, attended dinners and parties, and even began his miracle working career at a wedding. Historians believe the Essenes were influenced by Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Pythagorean, Neoplatonic, Stoic, and Cynic world-denouncing ideals. Even married Essenes who lived apart from their community abstained from physical love. This resembles Paul's suggestion in First Corinthians that husbands and wives should live chastely in what he called a "spiritual marriage," an idea subsequently picked up in the developing Church. The world of the Roman Empire was much like our own cosmopolitan, global society--pluralistic, with competing religions and a wide range of conflicting moral codes. Corinthian Christians held vastly disparate views on sexual ethics. While some factions argued for almost unlimited license, others--much like the Essenes and several pagan groups--insisted on complete continence, even within marriage. Both Essenes and members of pagan cults denounced sexual expression because they considered the physical sphere corrupt. In Corinth, emphasis on chastity my well have been an extreme reaction to prevalent indiscriminate sensuality. Paul shared this suspicion of the material world but did not go so far as to condemn marriage and sexuality outright. While he told his congregation that ideally men and women will remain unmarried like himself he absolved them from sin if they wished to lead a "normal" family life. He even called marriage "good"--while making sure that his congregation understand that celibacy was "better." At least part of Paul's attitude is due to the fact that he expected the Lord to return within his life-time or at least within the life-time of his generation. If the end of the world is imminent, adding to the population, worrying about supporting one's family, and preparing for a future here on earth seem frivolous. Several times over the past thirty years, contemporary groups have anticipated the rapture and members have gone so far as to sell their homes, quit their jobs, and take their children out of school. This reaction is as false to the Good News of the Incarnation now as it was in Paul's time. God doesn't want us to repudiate the very capacity for passion he created when he formed us in the divine image--male AND female. In fact, people's natural intuition is much closer to the teachings of Jesus than ascetic dualism. It is precisely when people are afraid of death that they huddle in each other's arms, and find the love of Jesus by loving each other. Yet, for humanity in Paul's times and for many centuries thereafter, celibacy represented a genuine form of unprecedented liberation. Women in particular, were freed from their absolute dependency on the men in their lives--fathers, brothers, husbands, and even sons. It is difficult for us even to imagine what life was like for the average woman in antiquity. Around age thirteen or fourteen, all across the Roman empire, young women were married off, usually to husbands in their late thirties or forties. The ancient Hindu prescription that a man should be three times a potential bride's age also held for the Mediterranean world in general. Upper-class males continued their education into their twenties; females of the same social level turned into commodities to be handed over to the most advantageous bidder at puberty. The only way out of this form of bondage had been either prostitution or consecrated virginity--serving, usually for limited time periods --as temple priestess or attendant in one of the numerous cults that accepted female officials. In that environment, celibacy as a chosen life-time commitment for women was a radical shift toward full personhood. It allowed women to take charge of their lives and pursue careers other than the interminable round of pregnancies. Throughout the medieval period ascetic women, as anchoresses in forests, as nuns and abbesses, as members of secular communities, became like the men of their worlds, in the sense of being able to learn, read, study, lecture, and write. Saint Lioba, for example, an eighth century English abbess called as missionary to Germany was a skilled classicist who was never, her biographer says, without a book, a woman learned in the Holy Scriptures, the Church Fathers, canon law, and the decisions of councils. Most importantly, consecrated virginity allowed man and women to be friends and equals as human beings. It showed that we are not inescapably bound to the program of biology. Roman reactions to Christian growth Why did the Romans persecute Christians despite their longstanding official policy of religious tolerance? The Romans did not understand what Christianity was all about. From the perspective of rational, restrained, somber Roman aristocrats, Christians could not simply be ignored like followers of other common superstitions, they had to be disciplined because they were dangerous anarchists who refused to go through the solemn patriotic acts of emperor worship. In order to give some sort of focus to a far flung collection of diverse peoples this form of state religion was introduced under Tiberius, step son, son-in-law, and unpopular successor to Augustus, the first Roman emperor (r. 27 BC - AD 14). Good Roman citizens were expected to go through the ritual just like we should be willing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sign the loyalty oath as a condition of employment. No rational person could object to a pinch of incense, a mere formal gesture! But Christians could not offer sacrifices to the emperor any more than Jews were supposed to dance before the golden calf. Despite efforts by Christian leaders to keep their flock from antagonizing the civil authorities relations between the parties became strained. The first major persecution occurred in the year 64 CE during the reign of Nero who accused the Christians of arson he had reputedly committed. The Roman historian Tacitus clearly assumed that the Christians were criminals, justly "loathed for their vices," especially their "hatred for the human race" but not guilty of setting the disastrous fire in Rome. Around forty years later Pliny the Younger, an official in Asia Minor, reports that despite excessive superstition, the Christians of his acquaintance lived highly moral lives. Emperor Trajan advised him not to seek out Christians but to punish them if they are denounced and found guilty. Anonymous accusations should be disregarded. A final vicious persecution was ordered in the first decade of the fourth century, just a few years before Christianity was legalized under Emperor Constantine (r. 306-337) and less than a century before Christianity was pronounced the official religion of the Roman state under Theodisius (r. 379-395). Incarnation and Trinity Do you believe that the recent past has been marked by an alarming proliferation of competing interpretations of what it means to be a Christian,, and that this lack of unanimity is a dangerous modern phenomenon? If you find yourself nodding in agreement you need to reconsider. Christians today are doing exactly what their spiritual ancestors were doing nineteen or fifteen or five hundred years ago: they are continuing the process of weaving the fabric of faith by shuttling the story strands of a God who loved us so much that he became one of through the warp of assorted other beliefs and information on the loom of their imagination. In a sense they are continuing the process begun with the incarnation--combining Word and world. The process is not fool proof and all sorts of inappropriate doctrines and opinions can become part of the overall tapestry. Christianity separated from its Jewish matrix around fifty years after the crucifixion and developed most of its unique characteristics--scriptures, liturgies, organization--in the following four to six centuries. From Judaism the seedling inherited a deep appreciation of history and the ability to see God working in and through the historic processes. Hence Christianity was not only indelibly marked by the diverse political, social, and cultural mixtures of soil within which it had taken root, but consciously acknowledged its debt to history--to the stories people told of their ongoing experience of God's justice, power, and love. In this perspective, the different cultural contexts in various parts of the far-flung Roman empire not only encouraged variegation in Christian belief and practice they also legitimized this traditionally grounded pluralism as long as agreement on essential points was maintained. Much of the subsequent history of Christianity can be interpreted as the working out of precisely what those core beliefs were. Theologically, the most crucial, challenging, and paradoxical questions asked by early Christians concerned the reconciliation of opposites--the divinity of Christ versus the humanity of Jesus and the Jewish insistence that God was one versus the growing Christian conviction that God appeared in three distinct persons--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Both issues, the dual nature of Christ and the Trinity are linked, and both were addressed in the first major councils of the Church. Hence, we still affirm those articles of faith as part of the Nicene Creed named for the Council of Nicea that was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine (before he was even baptized!) in AD 325. The concept of the triadic manifestation of divinity goes back into the very earliest documents of the Christian faith, such as Matthew 28:19, 1 Corinthian 7:11, and 1 Peter 1:2. Several of the authors or editors of the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers of the first century clearly held trinitarian beliefs. However, they expected the end of the world within their life-time and were not particularly concerned about improving their reputation among non-Christian Jews and pagans. They considered preparation for a future on earth and justification of their beliefs to outsiders unnecessary, frivolous, possibly even a sign of faltering faith in the Second Coming. Christ did not return as expected, and by the second century a number of writers whom we now call Christian Apologists began to rebut the charge of blasphemy and atheism levelled against them by pious Jews and pagans. They explained their theology in terms that appealed to Hellenistic Jews and made sense to the Greeks and Romans. It is at that point that they began to confront the issues raised by their faith in the divinity of Jesus and the continued presence of the Holy Spirit. The needed to develop some kind of appropriate vocabulary to express the gradually emerging idea of eternal plurality within the unitary Godhead and eternity somehow expressed in space and time. Apologists, such as Justin Martyr used a concept known to Jews, common to several Greco-Roman philosophies, and used by the writer of the Fourth Gospel: Logos, the "Word." Six hundred years earlier, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus had described the divine Logos as the cosmic "fire" of transformation that engenders everything that is. Around the same time, Pythagoras believed that reality consists of mathematical structure. A century later, Plato described divine ideas as the underlying patterns of all material things. Some later Pythagoreans referred to Plato's structuring ideas as a divine person. The Stoics believed that the universe was sustained by what they called Logos, a term that can be translated as "Rationality," "Ordering Principle," and "Word." The Jewish philosopher Philo wrote of the Logos of God that allowed Yahweh to communicate with the world. Hence it made sense to the ex-pagan philosopher Justin to explain the incarnation in familiar terms after he became a Christian around AD 130. He and members of his group identified faith in Christ with something both Jews and pagans had anticipated. Justin considered the Logos the Father's agent of creation and communication, much like a word we speak causes things to happen and yet remains part of us or one candle lights another without going out. The Father and the Logos were both one and distinct. While the Apologists did not yet deal with the Spirit, they offered illustrations of how the Christ could both exist in the temporal world and be eternally within the Father. Toward the end of the second century Irenaeus compared the Son and the Spirit with God's hands. He spoke of the Word (the Christ) and Wisdom (the Spirit) of a single person (the Father). In the third century strongly unitarian reactions against trinitarian teachings began to emerge. Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, for example, taught that the unity of God demanded that the terms Son and Spirit were simply elaborate names for the prophet Jesus and the grace given the apostles. Other so-called Monarchians--from the Greek words monos (one) and arche (beginning)--insisted that one and the same Godhead could be called Father, Son, or Spirit at different times. According to Sabellius, God was a monad that manifested itself in three functions. The Monophysites saw only one nature. The Monothelites insisted on a single divine will. Eventually all of those speculations would be rejected as heresies by the Church but it is important to understand that in order for some idea to be branded heretical another related idea must have first been judged orthodox, and orthodoxy has a way of shifting, particularly in times of questionable leadership. Early third century Popes, such as Zephyrinus and Callistus, disapproved of Logos theology and were much closer to some form of Monarchianism. Zephyrinus was described by contemporaries as a "simple and unlettered man" who decided to compensate for his limitations by choosing an able assistant, Callistus. According to persistent rumors, Callistus had started his career as a slave, had opened a bank, embezzled funds deposited with him, spent some time at hard labor, started a riot in a synagogue, was condemned to the mines of Sardinia, escaped by having his name inserted on a list of pardoned convicts, and ended up in charge of the papal cemetery. When he succeeded Zephyrinus, several respected priests, including the theologian Hippolytus, denounced him as unfit because he was in favor of readmitted baptized and penitent mortal sinners to the Church, a policy his critics considered far too lenient, but a policy that is entirely consistent with his life's story, and a policy that continues to be practiced by the Church. Callistus promptly excommunicated Hippolytus and strengthened the throne of Saint Peter's. Sixteen years later in 251 Pope Cornelius found himself in similar straits; the theologian Novatian was elected antipope; he was a trinitarian but on a far less sophisticated level than Irenaeus or Tertullian. Novatian's papal ambitions were thwarted by both the Council of Rome under Cornelius and the Council of Carthage under Cyprian, the powerful and erudite Carthaginian bishop who proclaimed the See of Peter in Rome as the summit of Christendom, and enunciated the principles of solidarity, unanimity, and persistency that have served the Church well for almost two millennia. Cornelius remained in power until his death in 253. The following year Pope Stephen took over for three years until he died. If we look at the upheavals in Rome it seems nearly miraculous that Roman prestige and power continued to grow, but grow it did, so much so that within a couple of hundred years the Roman Church would take over when the political Empire ceased to function. Despite their marginal status, Tertullian and Hippolytus enunciated teachings that would eventually culminate in a nuanced trinitarian theology. Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, the son of a Roman centurion was born in Carthage, a university city, around the middle of the second century. He was a lively student of rhetoric as well as Greek and Latin literature. Eventually he moved to Rome to practice law. There he was converted to Christianity, married a Christian woman, was ordained a priest, and became increasingly somber and acerbic. Henceforth, he used his sharp and practical Roman legal mind to infuse speculative Greek Christianity with an ethical, pragmatic spirit. His married state, by the way, did not make him particularly well disposed toward women or sexuality--he extolled the spiritual rewards of virginity, called women demon portals who occasioned the death of Christ, gave his wife written instructions to refrain from remarriage if he should die, and argued in at least two works that women should be veiled at all times. When he was around sixty, he repudiated the official Church as too worldly and joined the heretical sect of the Montanists who called for a return to primitive austerity, communal property, and severing of all family ties. However,
as far as the trinity is concerned, Tertullian was not only the first to
use the Latin expression trinitas but he came close to distinguishing between
three divine persons within one single Godhead. His formulation of three
persons of one substance will become the basis for the definition of the
trinity the Council of Nicea would work out in the next century.
The origin of Lent The English term "Lent" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for spring, "lencten" or "lengten" (lengthening [days]). In German the season is called "Fasten," a cognate of the English "fast." Fasting is a religious ritual observed in many faith traditions (i.e. Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, and Native American). In the Old Testament, fasting is recommended in Judges 20:26; I Samuel 14:24; 31:13; II Samuel 1:12; 12:16?23; I Kings 21:27; and II Chronicles 20:3. The whole people was supposed to fast at the Day of Atonement, and a number of other penitential fasts were observed by the Jews. Extended, severe fasting can cause hallucinations which were considered otherworldly communications until the present age of medical science. The Christian season of Lent also coincides with a period of fasting kept by the women of Rome in early spring. Gnostic Christians and Manichaeans fasted as well--at times for up to thirty days--in order to awaken the spiritual New Man to defeat the carnal Old Man. Gnostics were dualists who believed that the physical world and the body are totally evil. For Gnostics and Manichaeans, death liberates the soul of light from the body of darkness, and fasting is seen a speeding up the process. We have already seen that early Christian thought was affected by Gnostic and Manichaean ideas. Tertullian, for example, considered Christianity too soft and worldly; that's why he joined the severe Montanists who practiced something like a permanent Lent. Saint Augustine was a Manichaean before he converted to Christianity, and introduced a strong element of dualism into the early Church. Hence it makes sense to associate Lent with some of the life- and flesh-negating tendencies of the early Church. Lent is obviously a tangled interweaving of many historical strands. Nevertheless, Lent reminds us primarily of the suffering and death of Jesus. In the liturgical year, Lent is the forty?day period of penance that precedes the celebration of Easter. Forty days evoke Jesus' forty day fast in the wilderness immediately after his baptism by John the Baptizer. Lent has been observed almost from the beginnings of Christianity; Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus refer to brief periods of fast, ranging from forty hours to a week. The Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) fixed Lent at forty days including Sundays, and by the seventh century, Ash Wednesday was observed four days before the first Sunday of Lent and our current custom of forty days of Lent, excluding Sundays, established. I presume that Sundays are not part of Lent proper for theological reasons since every Sunday is a mini-Easter, a weekly celebration of the resurrection. In the Byzantine tradition neither Saturday nor Sunday are days of fasting; hence Lent for Orthodox Christians lasts for eight weeks and begins on a Monday. Lent both reminds us of Christ's passion and prepares us to celebrate his resurrection. Observing Lent allows us to participate and re-enact the founding events of Christianity--our Lord's life, agony, crucifixion, and victory over death. Ideally, Lent is a period for Christians to renew their baptismal preparation and deepen their faith. Lent culminates in Holy Week, reminiscent of Jewish Passover celebration. Holy Week, in turn leads up to Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection, the victory of Jesus Christ over death, the birthday of the Church. The early Church kept the first day of the week holy as "The Lord's Day," the day of the week that commemorates the resurrection. That is why Sunday is not part of Lenten observance. By the end of the first century, Christians had begun to celebrate an annual commemoration of the resurrection, Pascha (the Greek translation of the Hebrew feast of Pesach or Passover). Almost from the beginning, Easter was the season for preparing converts, leading to baptism, confirmation, and communion. In fact, the period of teaching new converts became one of the sources for the Lenten season. From
the beginning, the Easter season was observed with fasting, vigils, and
celebrating the Eucharist. This vigil of fasting came to be extended
over Saturday night to Sunday. It sometimes involved baptism and concluded
with communion at dawn. Holy Week began with the practice of annual Christian
pilgrimages to Jerusalem, where the faithful could celebrate the early
liturgy of the Mass and reenact the events of Jesus' last week. Holy Week
eventually came to extend from Palm Sunday to Easter. Later, the
commemoration was expanded to forty days, and with the designation of Ash
Wednesday the Lenten season was complete. Easter was then joyously celebrated
for fifty days until Pentecost.
© 1997 Ingrid H. Shafer
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