A Century of Advance, 200—303 ce

The third century witnessed another transformation in the development of the Church. Up to this time, except for the Aramaic-speaking Christians in eastern Syria and beyond the Roman frontier towards Parthia, the language of the Church had been Greek.

the basis of the patriarchates that came into being in the fifth century.

The third century was a period of continuous advance. The Church recovered its missionary sense that had been lacking largely since the time of Paul. By the 230s, the Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 269-339) declared, ‘Then, as was fitting, the faith was increasing and our doctrine was proclaimed boldly in the ears of all’ (Eales. Hist., vi:36). Those who heard it included increasing numbers of the upper, literate classes in the eastern provinces of the Empire. The Church, too, was beginning to hold property, the first catacomb, that of Pope Callistus (San Callisto) dating from c. 200, and the number increased steadily as the century wore on. The art of the catacombs, realist, serene but powerful, drawing at this stage largely from the Old Testament and the baptismal and eucharistic liturgy, was another sign of self-confidence.

Throughout the century the Church became stronger, wealthier and increasingly a challenge to the religion of the Empire. Not surprisingly, popular hostility to the Christians continued. During the reign of Septimius Severus (193-211), there were vicious outbreaks against the Christians in half a dozen cities of the Empire, including Rome, Carthage and Alexandria. For the government, Christianity had become a major internal issue. First, the Emperor Maximin Thrax (235-8) attempted to strike at the leadership, and then fourteen years later, Decius launched the first official persecution of the Church, in order to force its members to join Empire-wide sacrifices for the welfare of the state (250). Commissions were set up in every large centre, and all were called upon to sacrifice to the Roman gods. Each who had done so received a certificate (libellus) testifying to the fact. Some forty-three of these certificates have been foundin Egypt. Though few were martyred, the blow to the Church’s organisation and self­confidence was great, as when confronted with the choice of showing loyalty to the Empire or the Church, most Christians did their duty by the former. Nine years later, the Emperor Valerian (253-60) again unleashed a persecu­tion, this time aimed at Christian leaders and property. His victims included Pope Xystus II and his deacon Laurence (August 258) and Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (14 September 258). The measure was carried out energetically by the provincial governors. Bishop Frumentius of Tarragona had the following brief discussion with the provincial governor.

Governor Are you the bishop?

Frumentius I am.

Governor You were.

And Frumentius was hurried off to execution.

Even so, these massive storms were weathered and, when in c. 260 the Emperor Gallienus restored to the Church its property and acquiesced in its de facto existence, its survival was assured.

Expansion, however, brought its own problems. By 200, hopes of an immediate Second Coming of Christ had faded, except among some groups of Christians mainly in Phrygia (in Asia Minor) and North Africa. But, if Christ would not be returning, how was he to be worshipped as a God? Between 190 and 230, Rome became the centre of obstinate controversies, involving different schools of thought on this ques­tion. As a preliminary, a dispute over the dating of Easter enabled the Church to move away from dependence on the Jews’ dating of the Passover (14 Nisan) for the Christian celebration of Easter, and incidentally brought the Papacy’s claims to direct the churches’ affairs from Gaul to Osrhoene into public debate for the first time. Then, opposite opinions were canvassed concerning the relations of the Persons of the Trinity. One group (known as Modalists) argued that the Son was simply an aspect (or ‘mode’) of the Father, who therefore himself participated in the suffering on the Cross. Another took the contrary view, that the Son was a human being who had been sanctified at baptism and ‘adopted’ into the Godhead on account of his pre-eminent virtues (Adoptionists). Though both ideas were deemed unor­thodox, much was to be heard of them in the Trinitarian and Chris tological controversies of the next two centuries.

The major division of Christendom, however, resulted from the emergence of a Latin Church in North Africa centred on Carthage (in modern Tunisia). Throughout its history, which lasted until c. 700, the North African Church was to be a church of the martyrs, boasting saints such as Perpetua and Felicitas (executed in Carthage in March 203) and Bishop Cyprian (on 14 September 258), as well as fervent Apologists such as Tertullian.

In the Greek-speaking East, on the other hand, Christianity was seen in spiritual and philosophical terms. The Christian moved towards God step by step and in a way which allowed pagan philoso­phy a positive role in that progress. Scripture was interpreted allegorically and not literally as in the West, and judgement was deemed to be remedial rather than punitive. Ultimately, the harmony of God and his creation lost at the Fall would be restored, and all would achieve salvation.

The differing tendencies of Eastern and Western Christian thought can be illustrated from the careers of two leaders, almost contemporaries, both of whom share the credit of contributing to ultimate Christian victory: Origen (185—254) of Alexandria and Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage from 248 to 258.

Origen was born probably of mixed Alexandrian Greek and Egyptian Jewish parentage, and his father, Leonides, became a Christian. As the historian Eusebius of Caesarea claims, ‘he was noteworthy from the cradle’ (Eccles. Hist., vi.2:2). From the outset, he had an enormous interest in reading both secular literature and the Bible. In 202-3 his father was martyred during the persecution that struck Alexandria that year, and Origen’s first thought was to join him, a venture in which he was frustrated as his mother hid his clothes! At the age of eighteen, he was appointed head of a school for instructing enquirers into Christianity that had been established in Alexandria.

At this stage, c. 210, however, he took a further and quite different step that was to influence his ideas profoundly. He attended lectures on philosophy under the Neoplatonist scholar, Ammonius Saccas. Whatever heritage of classical learning derived from his father was now awoken in him, and henceforth he would interpret the Christian Scriptures and message in terms of Neoplatonic philosophy. Thereby he would set the course for the great tradition of Byzantine and Orthodox theology.

Origen, however, remained a controversialist. His early works, down to 230, were directed mainly against the Gnostics and Jews. In a major work, Peri Archon (On First Principles), begun c. 225, he sought to demonstrate, within the framework of the Alexandrian Rule of Faith, that existence began with God, but that God could never be without the active quality of love, which was transmitted continuously by his Son, or Word and Wisdom. The Holy Spirit was the highest of the angels created by God. Evil, like death itself, was not a positive force as the Gnostics claimed, but a negative element in creation that would gradually be eliminated as mankind achieved progressively greater harmony with God. Evil deeds would be punished but the aim of punishment was always remedial. Finally, God and creation would once more be in complete harmony. It was an optimistic creed, with the weaknesses that it depended too little on a literal understanding of Scripture and that the prospect of universal salvation included Satan himself—which ordinary Christians could not take.

Scripture, even though interpreted allegorically, as a philosopher was wont to interpret Homer or the legends of the Olympian gods, remained Origen’s foremost interest.

Scripture still meant primarily the Old Testament, and many Christians resented that the copies they had to use had been compiled by Jews, whom they suspected of falsifying certain key texts. As early as c. 212, Origen, having gained a working knowledge of Hebrew, set to work to establish as near as possible a true text. The Hexapla, so called because the text was written in six columns, enabled readers to compare the Hebrew text of the Old Testament with the Septuagint and other texts in circulation. Demonstrating his inquiring mind, Origen added an additional text of the Psalms which he claimed to have found in a pot near Jericho. This vast work took nearly forty years to complete but proved that the Church possessed scholars and biblical critics of a high order.

Origen’s career at Alexandria was interrupted in 231 by a long-standing quarrel with Demetrius, the Bishop of Alexandria. He was forced into exile and the last twenty-two years of his life were spent at Caesarea, the capital of Roman Palestine. Here, paganism (he wrote Against Celsus in c. 248), Monarchianism (to Origen, an over-simplified concept of the oneness of God), and the ever-present commentaries occupied his life, but he also left his mark as a teacher. We have a letter of thanks from one of his distinguished pupils, Gregory the Wonderworker, setting out in detail Origen’s method of instruction. Origen believed that nearly all existing systems of philosophy were useful; but that Christianity alone could answer the problems that philosophers posed, and provide a truly rational under­standing of the universe.

Origen was arrested and imprisoned during the Decian persecution, and died in 254. Before that, he had been consulted by the governor of the province of Arabia, and by the wisest of those emperors (Alexander Severus and Philip the Arabian) who had some sympathy with Christianity. His theology was never to be far from the minds of the conten- dents in the doctrinal disputes of the next century, but his true legacy was that he put reason into the forefront of the values for a Christian.

Cyprian was an entirely different person. If he was drawn from a rather higher class of society than Origen, his view of Chris­tianity was almost diametrically opposed to his. If Origen was concerned with the nature of the Trinity and man’s salvation through a right understanding of orthodox doctrine, Cyprian was concerned with the nature of the Church, and how salvation was to be achieved through it. For him the issue was who belonged or did not belong to the Church. Origen believed in the ultimate harmony of interest between Church and Empire, Cyprian did not. Pagan­ism, whether cult or society or philosophy, was the work of the Devil and to be renounced and repudiated. In no way did the learning of this world assist the Christian on his way to salvation. Cyprian saw the Church as a united, hierarchically governed body, each community being under a bishop whose authority was as plain as was his responsibility for his flock on the Day of Judgement. There was no salvation outside the Church governed by Cyprian and his fellow bishops.

His legacy of fifteen treatises and eighty-two letters deals almost exclusively with the period of the Decian persecution (249-50) and its long aftermath. With the onset of the persecution, Cyprian had left Carthage. Control in a confused situation had fallen to the confessors (i.e. those who affirmed or ‘confessed’ their faith when challenged), mostly laymen, and these claimed the right of forgiving those who had lapsed. With no little skill Cyprian wrested control over the reintegration of the lapsed, and consequently the right to forgive sins, from Spirit-inspired laity to councils led by bishops. The council which he assembled after Easter 251 proved to be a major step in asserting the authority of the clergy over penances in the Western Church.

Cyprian’s correspondence shows that the affairs of Carthage and Rome were closely interrelated. While Cyprian conceded to the Bishop of Rome a senior status, and regarded the see ofPeter as providing the origins of episcopacy, he was not prepared to accept jurisdictional authority from Rome. In two disputes with Pope Stephen (254-7), Cyprian established principles which were to be lasting importance in Western Christendom.

First, in the autumn of 254, two Spanish congrega­tions appealed to Cyprian over the head of Pope Stephen to prevent the latter restoring to office their bishops who had lapsed during the Decian persecu­tion. Cyprian’s council decided that no cleric who had committed a deadly sin, such as apostasy, and who no longer possessed the Holy Spirit, could remain in office and administer the sacraments. Congregations were in duty bound to separate themselves from such a minister. In September 256, in a dispute over the validity of baptism dispensed by Novatianist schismatics, another Carthaginian council attended by eighty-seven bishops decided, against Stephen, that no sacrament given by a minister not in communion with the Church was valid. Cyprian’s martyrdom on 14 September 258 set a seal of sanctity on these decisions, though they prepared for the schism which was to rend the Church in North Africa through the whole of the next century.

During the last forty years of the third century, the Church attained the de facto status of an autonomous group within the Empire, under its own law and organisation. Its influence now began to extend to the countryside, the most obvious sign being the emergence of the monastic movement among the native Egyptians of the Nile valley, symbol­ised by the decision of Antony (250-356) to retire to the desert to practise the ascetic life in c. 270. By the end of the century the Church’s power, especially in the eastern provinces of the Empire and in North Africa, would be proof against all efforts by the imperial authorities to reduce it to submission to the pagan state.