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A narrative synthesis of the Hillsdale College Online Course \u201cAncient Christianity,\u201d Lectures 2\u201311, expanded and corroborated with primary sources from the Church Fathers and classical historians.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2726 \u2726 \u2726<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Imagine standing in the Roman Forum in the first century and announcing to the crowd that the Creator of the universe, the uncaused source of all being, had recently been born to a peasant girl in an obscure Judean village, had grown up as a craftsman, had been executed by a Roman governor as a would-be king, and had walked out of His tomb three days later. Few messages could have sounded more preposterous to the ancient ear. The Greeks were sophisticated, and the Romans were deeply religious, but neither people had any category for a God who would enter His own creation as an infant, suffer, and die.<\/p>\n Yet within three centuries that very message had crossed the Mediterranean, penetrated the imperial household, survived the most systematic persecutions the ancient world could devise, and claimed the allegiance of an emperor. When the western half of Rome finally collapsed, it was the Church that preserved the memory of civilization and planted the seeds of its rebirth.<\/strong><\/span> The story of how this happened is the subject of Hillsdale College\u2019s course on Ancient Christianity, and it is among the most remarkable narratives in human history.<\/p>\n What follows is a narrative synthesis of that course, from its account of the world that prepared the way for Christ through the age of Augustine. Along the way, the testimony of the ancient Christians themselves and of their pagan observers has been added so that the reader may hear the voices of those who lived it. Where the course\u2019s outline simplifies or misstates a historical detail, the matter is noted at the end in a brief section on points of historical precision.<\/p>\n In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. \u2026 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 John 1:1\u20133, 14 (King James Version)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u2726 \u2726 \u2726<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The central assertion of both Testaments is that God has not remained hidden. He has spoken through the patriarchs and prophets, and He has finally spoken through His Son. The Incarnation, the eternal God taking on human flesh, is the climax of that self-disclosure. The challenge that faced the earliest believers was not merely to repeat this claim but to make it intelligible to a Greco-Roman world that had no framework for it.<\/p>\n The pagans of the empire were not irreligious. Their cities were crowded with temples, their calendars full of festivals, and their public life saturated with sacrifice. The difficulty lay elsewhere. Pagan religion was polytheistic and transactional; its gods were powerful but finite, and its philosophers spoke of a supreme principle that was remote, impassible, and utterly beyond suffering. To such minds the idea of one exclusive God was strange, and the idea of that God becoming a man who could die was nearly unthinkable.<\/p>\n The course identifies three great inheritances of the ancient world that, in the providence of God, prepared the soil for the Gospel. Judaism supplied the historical foundation, the conviction that there is only one God, and the promise of a coming Messiah. Greek culture and philosophy supplied the vocabulary and conceptual tools by which Christians could explain what they believed. The Roman Empire supplied the unity, roads, and relative peace that allowed the message to travel from Jerusalem to the ends of the known world. The apostle Paul summarized this convergence when he wrote that God sent forth His Son \u201cwhen the fulness of the time was come\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>(Galatians 4:4).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It was Israel that introduced the Mediterranean world to monotheism in its uncompromising form. Scattered through the cities of the empire, Jewish communities bore witness to a God who made heaven and earth and who would not share His glory with idols. Israel also carried a salvation history, a long narrative of creation, fall, covenant, exile, and promise that pointed toward a deliverer who would come to save not only Israel but the nations.<\/p>\n The Hebrew Scriptures also contain a remarkable series of miraculous or unexpected births, from Isaac born to the aged Sarah, to Samson, to Samuel granted to the barren Hannah. Each foreshadowed the far greater wonder announced by Isaiah, that a virgin would conceive and bear a son called Immanuel, \u201cGod with us\u201d<\/strong><\/em> (Isaiah 7:14), and that a child would be born who would bear the titles<\/span> \u201cMighty God\u201d and \u201cEverlasting Father\u201d<\/em> <\/span><\/strong>(Isaiah 9:6).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Alexander the Great\u2019s conquests had carried Greek language and learning across the eastern Mediterranean, and Greek philosophy remained fashionable among educated Romans. Christians therefore faced a delicate task: to employ Greek thought in the service of the faith without allowing the faith to dissolve into Greek paganism.<\/p>\n Two words proved especially valuable. The first was logos<\/i>, which can mean word, reason, or rational discourse, but which in Greek philosophy also denoted the ordering principle that brings rationality and unity to the cosmos. The Gospel of John seized this term and transformed it: the Logos is not an impersonal force but a Person who was with God, who was God, and who became flesh. The second was ousia<\/i>, meaning substance or essence, which would later become central to the Church\u2019s confession that the Son is of one substance with the Father.<\/p>\n Platonism in particular had accustomed many to the idea of a transcendent deity. Yet the differences between the god of the philosophers and the God of the Bible were profound. Plato\u2019s Demiurge<\/strong><\/a> shaped a material world that already existed; the Christian God created everything, matter included, out of nothing. Platonists could not accept that the transcendent One would become a man, and Stoics could not accept a God who loved, wept, and died on a cross. The second-century apologist Justin Martyr nonetheless saw in philosophy a genuine, if partial, preparation for Christ.<\/p>\n Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians. For next to God, we worship and love the Word who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became man for our sakes, that, becoming a partaker of our sufferings, He might also bring us healing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 Justin Martyr, Second Apology, ch. 13<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/fathers\/0127.htm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Rome had unified the Mediterranean during the Republic, but Caesar Augustus brought peace out of the chaos of civil war that ended it. To many Romans he appeared as a kind of savior. He styled himself princeps<\/i>, \u201cfirst citizen,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> to preserve the appearance of republican government, while also serving as pontifex maximus<\/i>, the chief priest of Roman religion. During his reign, the cult of the emperor\u2019s genius<\/i>, his indwelling divine spirit, took root. The result was a striking historical juxtaposition: in the same reign, two figures were proclaimed divine. One ruled from the imperial palace with legions at his command; the other was born to a poor family and laid in a manger in Bethlehem.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u2726 \u2726 \u2726<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Israel’s history is a recurring cycle of faithfulness, apostasy, judgment, and restoration. Because of their unfaithfulness, the Israelites lost the land God had promised them. The Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s Neo-Babylonian armies conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. When Cyrus the Great of Persia overthrew Babylon, he permitted the exiles to return, and under leaders such as Ezra and Nehemiah, the Jewish community rebuilt its temple and walls.<\/p>\n Around 332 BC, Alexander the Great swept through the eastern Mediterranean, and in his wake Greek culture spread to every major city. Jews migrated widely and formed large communities in Hellenized centers such as Alexandria. The encounter was fruitful in many ways. According to tradition, Ptolemy II commissioned a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures<\/strong><\/a> for the great library of Alexandria; this Septuagint became the Bible of the Greek-speaking synagogue and later of the early Church. Jewish thinkers studied Greek philosophy and poetry, and Greek customs, including attendance at the gymnasium, spread among the Jewish population.<\/p>\n Yet the encounter also produced tension. Many devout Jews feared that the allure of Greek culture was eroding loyalty to the covenant and to the ancestral traditions that distinguished them from the nations.<\/p>\n Alexander himself had treated the Jews with relative respect, but his successors were less sensitive. After his empire fractured, two great powers emerged in the region: the Ptolemies in Egypt<\/strong><\/a> and the Seleucids in Asia<\/strong><\/a>. Under the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the conflict reached a breaking point. Antiochus<\/strong><\/a> sought to impose pagan worship, set up an altar to Zeus in the Jerusalem temple, and demanded that Jews sacrifice to the Greek gods. Some young Jewish men who frequented the gymnasium even attempted to disguise their circumcision, a repudiation of the covenant sign itself.<\/p>\n Around 167 BC, the priest Mattathias<\/strong><\/a> and his sons, the family later called the Hasmoneans, raised the standard of revolt. Led by Judas Maccabeus, the rebels recaptured Jerusalem and rededicated the temple in 164 BC, an event commemorated in the festival of Hanukkah, whose later rabbinic tradition remembers a single cruse of oil that burned for eight days. The Maccabees first won religious autonomy within the Seleucid realm and eventually established the independent Hasmonean kingdom, the last fully sovereign Jewish state in the land until the founding of modern Israel in 1948.<\/p>\n In 63 BC, the Roman general Pompey entered Judea and brought it under Roman control. The repeated loss of independence fueled the rise of several parties within Judaism, each seeking faithfulness to the Torah in its own way. The Sadducees, associated with the priestly aristocracy, claimed descent from the legitimate high priesthood. The Pharisees are often caricatured as legalists without love, but their zeal to fence the Law was rooted in a desire never again to be driven from the land. The Essenes withdrew into quasi-monastic communities, separating themselves from what they regarded as a corrupt religious establishment and preparing for the coming Messiah through an even stricter observance.<\/p>\n Around 40 BC, Rome appointed Herod the Great king of Judea. Herod defended Roman interests against the Parthian Empire to the east, driving Parthian forces from the region by 38 BC. The course suggests that the Magi who later arrived at Herod\u2019s court seeking a newborn king may have been emissaries from Parthia, Herod\u2019s old enemy, which would help explain the king\u2019s alarm.<\/p>\n Roman officials frequently misunderstood Jewish religion, provoking unrest through their treatment of the temple and its treasury. Under the emperor Caligula, violent persecution of Jews broke out in Alexandria, and the emperor resolved to place a statue of himself in the Jerusalem temple. A Jewish delegation led by the philosopher Philo of Alexandria pleaded with him without success. Only Caligula\u2019s assassination by his own Praetorian Guard in AD 41 averted catastrophe.<\/p>\n In AD 64, a great fire devastated Rome. Thousands perished, and much of the city was destroyed. Nero, who had grand plans to rebuild the capital on a lavish scale, was widely suspected of having started it. To deflect suspicion, he blamed the Christians, a group that Romans already distrusted. The Romans understood that this new sect had emerged from Judaism but could not grasp the relationship or the reasons for the split. Nero\u2019s persecution was savage, and tradition holds that both Peter and Paul died in Rome during this period. The historian Tacitus, no friend of the Christians, preserves the most vivid account.<\/p>\n Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 Tacitus, Annals 15.44 (trans. Church and Brodribb)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0078:book=15:chapter=44<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Tacitus goes on to report that Christians were convicted less for arson than for \u201chatred of the human race.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Because they refused to sacrifice to the gods, Romans regarded them as atheists and enemies of the social order, an accusation that would shadow the Church for the next two and a half centuries.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u2726 \u2726 \u2726<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Jesus of Nazareth defies every ready-made category. He fulfilled the Jewish hope of the Messiah, yet many who longed for the Messiah did not recognize Him because He did not match their expectations. He was God incarnate, yet Greek philosophy recoiled at the thought that the divine could become human. He was born as a baby to Mary, a fact that would later lead Christians into searching reflection on the beginning of human life and on Mary\u2019s unique role. Despite their distinct perspectives, all four Gospels present a Jesus who understood Himself to be divine.<\/span><\/p>\n The Gospel narratives are deeply embedded in the political realities of the Roman world. The Magi presented gold, frankincense, and myrrh, the kind of gifts that passed between royalty. Herod, threatened by any rival claimant to the throne, ordered the slaughter of the male children of Bethlehem two years old and under. Joseph fled with Mary and the child into Egypt, fulfilling the prophetic word, \u201cOut of Egypt have I called my son\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>(Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15). The course draws attention to a subtle detail: because Egypt and Judea were both within Rome\u2019s orbit, the family could leave Herod\u2019s jurisdiction without crossing a hostile frontier, a small illustration of how the Roman order had prepared the world for Christ.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n At the crucifixion, the charge placed above Jesus read \u201cKing of the Jews,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (John 19:19\u201320). The three languages represented the religious, cultural, and political authorities of the Roman world, and each regarded Him as a rebel king. Jesus was not executed for healing the sick or teaching love of neighbor. He was executed because He spoke with unprecedented authority, because crowds sought to make Him king, and because the Jewish leadership feared that His movement might provoke Roman reprisal and perhaps another exile.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Jesus was condemned by every level of authority in Judea. The Sanhedrin, the council of priests and elders entrusted by Rome with religious discipline, judged Him guilty of blasphemy. Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and present in Jerusalem for Passover, mocked Him. Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, found no political threat in a man who declared that His kingdom was not of this world, but he yielded to pressure. Offered the release of a prisoner, the crowd chose Barabbas, likely a revolutionary and would-be messiah, over Jesus. Jesus was crucified between two men who were probably insurrectionists.<\/p>\n As Jesus died, Roman onlookers mocked His cries, for they could not imagine a god who suffered and called out in agony. But the Christian story does not end at the cross. The Gospels proclaim His bodily resurrection and ascension, and these claims became some of the hardest for the ancient world to accept. Jewish authorities disputed the resurrection, while Platonists could not conceive how flesh and blood could enter the heavenly realm. Yet it was precisely the resurrection that the apostles preached as the foundation of the faith: \u201cif Christ be not raised, your faith is vain\u201d<\/strong><\/em> (1 Corinthians 15:17).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u2726 \u2726 \u2726<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n After the resurrection, the disciples carried the Gospel outward from Jerusalem. Ancient tradition sends Thomas eastward toward Persia and India, Mark to Alexandria, and both Peter and Paul to Rome. The arrival of the Gospel in the imperial capital signified that Christianity was not a tribal faith but a message for all nations. By the end of the first century, the four Gospels had been written, sacred sites associated with Christ\u2019s life were being remembered, and the apostles had produced letters to correct, encourage, and instruct the young churches. Peter, Paul, and John alike emphasize the person of Christ, the reality of His Incarnation, and the unity of believers in Him.<\/p>\n An early Christian writer, in the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus<\/i><\/strong><\/a>, captured the paradoxical identity of these first believers as citizens of earth and heaven at once.<\/p>\n They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 Epistle to Diognetus, ch. 5<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/fathers\/0101.htm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In a largely illiterate population, few believers could read the Scriptures for themselves. Creeds, brief statements of faith that could be memorized and recited, therefore served a vital function. They allowed the essentials of the Gospel to travel quickly and served as a safeguard against false teaching. By the late second century, an early form of what would become the Apostles\u2019 Creed functioned as the \u201crule of faith,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> the summary of doctrine handed down from the apostles.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The apostles\u2019 disciples served as bishops, from the Greek episkopos<\/i>, \u201coverseer,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> charged with preserving faithful teaching and the unity of the churches. Clement of Rome was associated with Peter and Paul, and Polycarp of Smyrna was remembered as a disciple of the apostle John, as Ignatius of Antioch was by later tradition.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The most consequential early disputes concerned the meaning of the Incarnation. The Ebionites<\/strong><\/a> denied that Jesus was divine, regarding Him as a human prophet. The Docetists<\/strong><\/a>, part of the wider Gnostic movement, denied that He had a real physical body. The Gnostics<\/strong><\/a> more broadly despised the material world as the creation of an inferior or evil deity and denied that God had truly become man; some even taught that Jesus did not die on the cross but substituted Simon of Cyrene in His place as a jest against the creator god. Against these errors Ignatius of Antioch<\/strong><\/a>, writing on his way to martyrdom, insisted on the reality of Christ\u2019s flesh and its presence in the Eucharist.<\/p>\n They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, ch. 7<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/fathers\/0109.htm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Schismatic movements also arose. Montanus<\/strong><\/a> claimed that he and his prophetesses spoke by the Holy Spirit with an authority surpassing the apostolic tradition, and his followers actively courted martyrdom, contrary to the Church\u2019s teaching that martyrdom should be accepted but not sought. Even within Rome, controversy broke out over discipline. Hippolytus accused Bishop Callistus of excessive leniency toward converts from the Roman elite. Remarkably, both men were later exiled together to the mines of Sardinia, where tradition holds that they were reconciled before dying as martyrs.<\/p>\n As they contended with error, church leaders also sorted through the many writings that circulated among Christians. Marcion<\/strong><\/a>, who taught that the God of the Old Testament was a lesser and harsh deity distinct from the Father of Jesus, assembled one of the first canons, consisting of an edited Luke and ten Pauline letters. In response, Irenaeus of Lyons<\/strong><\/a>, a disciple of Polycarp, defended the fourfold Gospel as the Church had received it.<\/p>\n It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the \u201cpillar and ground\u201d of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.11.8<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/fathers\/0103311.htm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Church\u2019s criteria for recognizing canonical writings were, in essence, four: early origin in the apostolic age, connection with an apostle, widespread use across the churches, and consistency with the received rule of faith.<\/p>\nIntroduction: The Most Audacious Claim in History<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
Part One: The Message and Its Preparation<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
The Gospel Confronts the Ancient World<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Three Streams That Prepared the Way<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Jewish Foundation<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Greek Vocabulary<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Roman Order<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Part Two: The World Before Christ<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
Exile and Return<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Hellenization of the Jews<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Maccabean Revolt<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Judaism Under Rome<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Nero and the First Imperial Persecution<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Part Three: The Life of Jesus<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
Who Is Jesus?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Jesus in the Roman World<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Three Trials, One Verdict<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Death, Resurrection, and Ascension<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Part Four: Apostles, Creeds, and Scripture<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
The Apostolic Mission<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Role of Creeds<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Heresies and Schisms<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Formation of the Canon<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Martyrdom of Polycarp<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n