Chapter 4: The Birth of Christianity 

As subjects of Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman rulers, Jews longed for the establishment of a new Jewish state in which they would be free from oppression. Many Jewish prophets--from Isaiah, who lived during the Babylonian exile, to Daniel, whose writings dated to the end of the Hellenistic period--had predicted that one day a great leader from the line of King David would come and establish a kingdom even greater than ancient Israel. This priest-king would be the moshiach, or Messiah, the savior of the Jews.

Approximately 2,000 years ago, while Judea languished as a Roman province, a man named Jesus appeared in the Galilee region to the north of Jerusalem. Jesus was a Jew who had grown up in the small town of Nazareth, and when he was about 30 years old he began to preach a message of reform and repentance. He emphasized the importance of obeying God's law, but encouraged Jews to focus on spiritual matters and the glorification of God.

As Jesus spoke publicly and performed miracles throughout Judea, he attracted a substantial group of followers. From this group he selected 12 as his apostles, and he spent the better part of three years teaching them. The apostles came to believe Jesus was the Messiah, but they apparently missed the point of his teaching. They thought he had come to free them from Rome. Instead, Jesus explained, he was the Son of God and had come to save humankind from its sins. The Jewish tradition taught that humans had sinned since the time of Adam. Jews believed that when they violated the laws of Moses, their sins could be forgiven if they participated in certain rituals of atonement. Jesus argued that many Jews, particularly the Pharisees, placed too much emphasis on carefully following the forms established by law and tradition, and not enough on true repentance. God was angered by pride but pleased by humble penitence and service to others, Jesus taught.

Though Jesus said that Jewish law must still be observed, his teaching added to God's requirements, making them even more difficult. For example, he taught, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love you neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven" (Mathew 5: 43--45). His followers were told not to fight back when attacked and to share what they had with others. Jewish leaders disagreed with Jesus' teachings and were offended that he claimed to be the Son of God. When Jesus and the apostles visited Jerusalem for the annual Jewish Passover celebration, members of the Sanhedrin collaborated with Roman authorities to have Jesus arrested as a threat to Rome. Jesus submitted to arrest without resisting, and after being humiliated and tortured, he suffered an agonizing death through crucifixion--a Roman method of execution in which the prisoner was nailed to a wooden cross through the wrists and feet, and, after several hours of intense pain, generally died of suffocation. The exact date is uncertain, but Jesus' crucifixion is believed to have occurred around 29 c.e.

Crucifixion should have been the end of the story, but amazingly, it was only the beginning. Three days later, according to his followers, Jesus rose from the grave. Scripture relates that over the next 40 days, Jesus appeared to his disciples on many occasions. During this period of extended teaching, they came to understand that God had sent His son Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice to redeem sinful humanity.

Years earlier, on first seeing Jesus at the start of his public ministry, a prophet named John the Baptist had proclaimed, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!" (John 1: 29). This was a reference to a temple ritual in which an unblemished lamb was sacrificed to atone for sins. The significance of John's words was that Jesus--unblemished by original sin and sinless in his life--would atone for the sins of all humanity through his sacrifice on the cross. Anyone who accepted Jesus and his teachings would have his or her sins forgiven and could develop a closer relationship with God.

The Gospels--scriptural accounts of Jesus' life and ministry--record that Jesus had taught this before his death, but his 12 chosen apostles had not understood. In a passage from John's Gospel, Jesus explains:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. (John 3: 16--21)

At the end of the 40-day period of teaching, the Acts of the Apostles relates, Jesus told his closest disciples to spread his message to all humankind. He promised them the assistance of the Holy Spirit, which God would send to inspire their ministry. He then ascended into heaven, and his apostles went out to spread the message of salvation. The people who accepted Jesus as their savior came to be called Christians, a word derived from Christos, the Greek term for "Messiah."

The Early Christian Church

The Gospels--the four books in the Christian New Testament that detail the life and ministry of Jesus--were written several decades after Jesus' death. A Christian missionary named Mark wrote the first gospel (the Gospel of Mark). This book, which focuses on the miracles and actions of Jesus' life, is written for a non-Jewish (or Gentile) audience. The Gospel of Matthew, by comparison, is written to the Jews. Attributed to a tax collector who was one of Jesus' 12 apostles, it uses many scripture references to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. The Gospel of John is attributed to another of the apostles and contains more of Jesus' teachings than the other gospels. The author of the longest gospel, Luke, was an educated Greek doctor who served as a missionary. Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, which provides an account of the early Christian Church.

According to Acts, after Jesus' ascension the apostles returned to Jerusalem, and were together in one place when the Holy Spirit descended upon them. Under the leadership of Peter, to whom Jesus had given a leading place among the apostles, they began to speak to others about Jesus Christ. First they spoke in the Temple, preaching to the Jews and performing miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jewish leaders were not happy that Jesus' followers had maintained their beliefs, which they considered to be blasphemous and heretical. The Sanhedrin ordered that the apostles be arrested, but Acts records that they were miraculously freed from prison. In one case, however, a Christian named Stephen was placed on trial before the Sanhedrin. When Stephen stated that Jesus was the Son of God, the angry Jews took him outside the Temple and murdered him.

This event set off a great wave of persecution against the Christians, forcing many to flee from Jerusalem. Leading this persecution was a devout Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus, who had been involved in the murder of Stephen. But while Saul was on the way to Damascus to attack the Christians there, he was struck blind and heard Jesus tell him to stop persecuting his followers.

Saul soon accepted Jesus' teachings. With his sight recovered and now known by the name Paul, he became one of the most important teachers and missionaries of early Christianity. Between 46 and 64 c.e. Paul traveled throughout the Roman world to spread the faith and establish churches. He wrote letters to the leaders of these churches, in which he set out the doctrine that would form the basis of Christianity.

Before Paul began his mission to the Gentiles, it was possible that Jesus' followers might eventually return to the greater Jewish community. They continued to worship God in the Temple and obeyed the Jewish law and scriptures along with Jesus' teachings. "The impression we get is that the Jerusalem Church was unstable, and had a tendency to drift back into Judaism completely," writes Paul Johnson in A History of Christianity. "Indeed, it was not really a separate Church at all, but part of the Jewish cult."

Paul did a great deal to change this. He had been born a Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen and an admirer of Hellenistic culture. In his letters Paul explained that Jesus had come to replace Jewish law as the way to God. Salvation, he taught, came through faith in Jesus rather than in obedience to the law. All people, not just the Jews, could therefore be freed from their sin, and it became Paul's mission to spread this "good news" to the Gentile world. "[For Paul] the coming of Christ automatically ended the old Jewish law," writes Johnson. "For him the law had become a curse, for no man could fulfill its 613 commands and prohibitions completely; thus it made sinners of everyone."

Paul taught that anyone--regardless of racial or cultural background, gender, or social position--who accepted Jesus would in turn be chosen by God. This was a significant break from Judaism, which taught that Jews were God's people and had been chosen for greatness as long as they kept the law. Mainstream Judaism also could not accept the idea of Jesus as divine--this was inherently offensive to a religion based on the belief in one God. Most Jews did not convert, and some actively persecuted the Christians.

The rate of conversion was much greater among the Gentiles. Many of the Roman Empire's Greek-speaking people had been attracted to the monotheism and ethical code of Judaism, but had never accepted all of its rituals and dietary laws. Christianity offered an attractive alternative, and soon Christian communities were established in many cities throughout the empire. The spread of Christianity attracted the attention of Rome. Like the Sanhedrin, Roman authorities saw Christianity as a threat to their control. The emperors believed in dealing quickly and efficiently with any movement that might cause political unrest. Christianity posed a potential threat because the movement was not confined to Judea. Imperial leaders construed Christians' refusal to follow the Roman custom and worship the emperors as gods as a sign that the Christians were disloyal to the empire and might be planning to revolt. Christianity's simple message of repentance and charity was also antithetical to the lavish and dissolute lifestyles of many Romans.

Over the next three centuries Christians would regularly be persecuted. During the rule of the emperor Nero (54--68 c.e.), Peter, Paul, and many of the apostles were executed. In 91 the emperor Domitian ordered attacks on Christians as well as Jews within the empire. During the rule of Marcus Aurelius, Christianity was made illegal in order to appease Rome's ancient gods after a rebellion by the Parthians. Other particularly severe persecutions of Christians occurred around 257 under Valerian, and from 303 to 313 under Diocletian.

The fact that Christians were so dedicated to their belief in Jesus that they were willing to die for the faith made others curious, however. Many people converted when they learned more about Christianity. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," wrote a Roman named Tertullian, who became a Christian in 197. But early in the fourth century Christianity's standing in Roman society would change dramatically, thanks to the influence of a powerful benefactor.

Constantine Legitimizes Christianity

When Diocletian became emperor of Rome in 284, the empire was facing serious military and economic troubles. He instituted a program of reforms that included separating the empire into eastern and western divisions. Diocletian took control of the eastern half of the empire and installed an associate to rule in the West. Eventually, he created positions for two lesser leaders (caesars) who served under the eastern and western emperors. This established a form of government called the Tetrarchy, in which four rulers (the two eastern and two western tetrarchs) had a great deal of power.

After Diocletian's rule ended in 305, a power struggle broke out among the empire's rulers. After a long struggle Constantine--the son of one of the western tetrarchs--eventually emerged as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Constantine attributed his success to divine intervention. Before an important battle in 312, Constantine saw a sign in the sky that he believed was sent by Jesus Christ, and he told his soldiers to place the symbol XP (the Greek letters Chi and Rho, the first two letters of Christos) on their shields. Winning the battle helped Constantine capture Rome and gave him control over the western half of the empire.

With gratitude Constantine, joined by the eastern tetrarch Licinius, in 313 issued the Edict of Milan, which declared that the Roman Empire would not discriminate against any religion and would cease persecution of Christians. This gave the religion greater legitimacy and led to explosive growth in the Christian population.

The struggle for control over the empire was not over, however. It was not until 324 that Constantine defeated his rival Licinius and became the sole ruler. Constantine soon set to work establishing an eastern capital, which was built on the site of an ancient Greek city called Byzantium. The city, renamed Constantinople, was closer than Rome to the most heavily populated parts of the empire, and in 330 it became the imperial capital.

Although Constantine did not immediately become a Christian, he remained interested in the religion. He was upset when he learned that Christian leaders disagreed on many theological questions. In 325 he invited several hundred of the major Christian leaders to a council at which the core beliefs of Christianity would be established once and for all.

Christian thinkers had begun to disagree over theological matters early in church history. There had been numerous variant movements within Christianity. One of the more famous of these was Gnosticism, a belief system influenced by Greek and Eastern thought in which the intellect was considered divine and the physical world evil. Gnostics rejected the Old Testament and many of the basic Christian teachings and were therefore condemned by mainstream Christian leaders. The nature of Jesus was another question faced by early theologians. How could Christians reconcile worshipping Jesus as the divine Son of God when Jesus himself taught that humans should worship only one God? Was Jesus a man who became God through his suffering, or had he always been God? To explain this mystery, early church leaders developed the doctrine of the Trinity. This explained that the world and all things in it had been created by a single all-powerful God, but that He was composed of three parts: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each element of the Trinity was fully God, and therefore equally knowledgeable and powerful. The doctrine of the Trinity was difficult for both Christians and non-Christians to understand. Some people believed that the Son and the Holy Spirit were less powerful than the Father because they had been created by God and did His bidding. In the early fourth century a Christian priest from Alexandria named Arius began to teach that Jesus, though divine, was a separate entity subservient to God. "[Arius saw] the coming forth of the divine Word as a service to the inferior created order," writes Henry Chadwick, former Regius Professor Emeritus of Divinity at Cambridge University. "He reasoned that the Lord who was physically born of Mary, grew in wisdom, suffered dereliction and death, must be less than the unbegotten, impassible, deathless Father."

This teaching, called Arianism, was accepted by some church leaders and rejected by others. As the doctrinal dispute threatened to split the church, Constantine encouraged Christian bishops to gather at Nicaea, a lakeside village in modern-day Turkey. At the Council of Nicaea, the church leaders rejected Arianism and adopted a creed that stated the basic beliefs of Christianity. With only minor modifications, this creed remains the basic Christian belief today:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Amen

There were other issues that divided Christianity. Churches in the eastern part of the empire observed rites and festivals that differed from the rites and festivals observed by churches in the western part, for example. The Council of Nicaea addressed these practices with the intention of standardizing them throughout the entire church.

When the council ended, Constantine thanked Christian leaders for agreeing on dogma. However, this did not end disputes over theological matters. Arianism, for example, spread to the Germanic tribes outside the empire, where it persisted as a variant Christian belief. Constantine helped Christianity in many ways. He exempted the church from certain taxes and contributed to the construction of ornate basilicas in Rome, Jerusalem, and other places throughout the empire. He eventually outlawed pagan sacrifices and the worship of idols. His patronage encouraged many Romans to convert, as Constantine himself did just before he died in 337.

But there was a downside to Constantine's influence on the church. His role in calling the Council of Nicaea and his interest in resolving other church disputes set a precedent for government involvement in religion. And his support for Christianity led many politically minded people to join the religion to further their career ambitions, rather than because they believed in its teachings.

Within the empire, Christianity gradually became the religion of choice for most people. It spread outside the empire as well, and by the middle of the fourth century it had been embraced by many of the Germanic tribes living on the fringes of Roman power.

Empire and Church Divided

Although Constantine had reunited the empire under his rule, after 395 the empire became permanently divided into eastern and western halves. There were many social differences between the two parts of the empire. Even the languages were different: Latin was spoken in Rome and the West, while Greek was the language of Constantinople and the East. But during the fourth and fifth centuries both sections of the empire were under growing pressure from outside forces. The "barbarian" Goths and Franks attacked the frontiers of the western empire, while to the east the empire had to deal with the growing strength of the Sassanid Persians. There were internal problems as well: regular civil wars over control of the empire and high taxes to support the large military. These factors kept the Roman Empire in a near-constant state of unrest.

Christianity officially became the state religion in 381, and other religions were outlawed. However, because in ancient Rome the rulers had also been pontifex maximus, or leader of the state religion, the emperors felt entitled to involve themselves in religious matters. Over centuries, Christianity developed a sophisticated organization of church leaders. In the original churches established by the apostles, local leaders had been chosen to teach the believers, lead worship services, and induct new members into their community. By the third century, however, a hierarchy of church leaders was established to govern the Christian community more efficiently. A priest was appointed to lead each individual church. A bishop would oversee the activities of all of the churches in a particular city or region, to make sure priests were following the accepted church teachings. The bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome were considered the most important, because they led the largest Christian communities or apostles had founded their churches. The accepted practice was for smaller communities faced with doctrinal questions they could not resolve to appeal to the closest major bishopric for a ruling on the issue.

The Roman church had a connection to two apostles: Peter and Paul had both been executed in Rome during Nero's rule. In the third century a church leader named Irenaeus claimed that Peter had been the first bishop of Rome, and that because of Peter's importance in the early church the Roman bishop (who eventually became known as the pope) should be considered the final authority for all decisions related to church doctrine. Because Rome was the most important bishopric in the western empire, its leadership was ultimately accepted by the churches of western Europe and North Africa.

The eastern Christian churches did not accept Rome's supremacy, however. They preferred to resolve disagreements over doctrine through consensus of church leaders. To achieve consensus, they called ecumenical councils of bishops. These first of these was the Council of Nicaea in 325; other important early councils were held at Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451). Although representatives of the Roman church participated at these councils, in which orthodox doctrine was established, they had no more influence than any other bishops. By the fifth century the Byzantine Empire, as the eastern part of the empire came to be called, was the uncontested center of imperial power. The wealthiest provinces, such as Syria and Egypt, were located in the east, and the tax revenue they provided allowed Byzantine emperors to equip armies and protect their territories. The western emperors had fewer resources and so could not prevent invasions by Germanic tribes. Rome itself had fallen into decline, and the capital of the western empire was moved to Milan. As the western empire grew weaker, the popes gained greater power over both religious and secular life. When the Huns threatened Rome in 452, for example, it was Pope Leo, rather than the western emperor, who convinced their leader Attila not to attack the city. But even the church could not stop the ultimate collapse of the western empire in 476, when the last Roman emperor was deposed by invading German tribes. The "fall" of the empire did not immediately cause an upheaval in European life. Rome itself was hardly damaged, and the lives of most people continued relatively unchanged. Many of the Germanic peoples had respected Roman laws and culture. Most tribal leaders had accepted Christianity--although of the variant form of Arianism--and they expected Christian bishops and priests to maintain order in their cities. "Hence the environment in which the Church now found itself was not, on the whole, hostile," writes Paul Johnson in A History of Christianity. "In the cities and the towns the bishops provided the natural elements of stability and local leadership. They were identified with conservation of the worthwhile past, continuity of administration, and the Roman tradition of peace and order."

Despite the collapse of the western empire, in the east Constantinople remained at the center of a brilliant civilization. The Byzantine Empire would survive the fall of Rome by nearly 1,000 years. But as differences in doctrine emerged, the two major branches of Christianity grew further apart. Although the eastern and western churches would remain in contact over the next 600 years, by 1054 Christianity officially separated into two churches: the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, each of which believed its was the "true" church based on apostolic tradition and teachings.

Christianity would undergo other divisions in the centuries that followed. The most significant break occurred after the Reformation, which began in Europe during the 16th century as an effort to reform certain practices of the Roman Catholic Church and evolved into the establishment of new Christian churches, the Protestant denominations. But long before this, Christianity would find itself faced with a new challenge from outside: the rise of a new monotheistic faith that would turn the world upside-down in the seventh century.

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Contributed by Shams Inati, Dr. and Dorothy Kavanaugh

General Editor Dr. Shams Inati is Professor of Islamic Studies at Villanova University and was a Fulbright scholar at Balamand University during the editing process of this work. She is a specialist in Islamic philosophy and theology and has published widely in the field. Her publications include Remarks and Admonitions, Part One: Logic (1984), Our Philosophy (1987), Ibn Sina and Mysticism (1996), The Second Republic of Lebanon (1999), The Problem of Evil: Ibn Sina's Theodicy (2000), and Iraq: Its History, People, and Politics (2003). She has also written a large number of articles that have appeared in books, journals, and encyclopedias. Dr. Inati has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors, including an Andrew Mellon Fellowship, an Endowment for the Humanities grant, a U.S. Department of Defense grant, and a Fulbright grant. For further information about her work, see www.homepage.villanova.edu/shams.inati.

Dorothy Kavanaugh is a freelance writer who lives near Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the mother of four children. This is her first book.