This transcript was generated automatically and may contain minor errors.

In the year 1873, and you say, Reagan, we skipped a lot of years. We did, but stick with me. There was a man named Philemon who was the archbishop of Nicomedia. Now Nicomedia is a town 56 miles east of Istanbul in modern day Turkey. And in 1873, he was in the Jerusalem monastery of the holy sepulchre in Constantinople.

And he found among the library there a manuscript, a small thick volume covered in black leather containing a 120 leaves of vellum, closely, closely covered. And the contents, appeared to all be written by the same hand. And so this very thick volume all written by the same person, and he was delighted to find at glance what included the copies of first and second Clement of Rome, which would have been written in the first, and early... Or early second century. The second epistle of Clement of Rome, written at the end of the second century, but not by Clement himself, and the epistle of Barnabas, another writing from the second century AD.

Now he was engrossed by these writings because they were very familiar to him, and there were copies of these writings. And he had them, and yet he knew the manuscript that he held in his hands was, perhaps as old as a thousand years. And so he was reading in Greek these manuscripts that were probably written originally in the second century, copied down in this document around a thousand AD or so. And he was familiar with them, but he was interested in the differences and how they've been copied down and that all of that was really engrossing to him. But there were some other things written at the back of this document, and he didn't really give those a lot of time or attention because he was unfamiliar with them.

But, after about seven years or so, he finally started looking at these other writings, and he was astonished at what he found. He found a writing called the Didache or the teaching of the 12 apostles. And he knew that this was something that existed because other writers, other early Christian writers starting in about three hundred AD or so mentioned this earlier document that described what Christians understood to be the teaching of the apostles after the apostles' death. It was astonishing because that document had been lost for hundreds of years. And the copy that he found, which is still the only intact copy that we have today, was written in ten fifty six AD or so, over nine hundred years after that document was first written.

Now since then, we found a Latin version of the first five chapters that was discovered in 1900. Multiple fragments of parts of that document have been found, in the Coptic language. And in it, we find many practices similar to the New Testament and, hopefully, practices that are similar to our own. So this didache, the teaching of the 12. As one historian put it in reading these chapters, the church organization reflected in the didache seems to be underdeveloped.

The local leadership seemingly only consisted of bishops and deacons. Now if you remember... Now this has been a couple of months ago, but my sermon on the Lord's Supper. I quoted from the Didache and talked about how it is remarkably similar, to the simplicity that we find in the New Testament. It has a long section that deals with the partaking of the Lord's Supper.

It calls it the u... The eucharist, and eucharist just means thanksgiving. And it even has a section where it gives suggested prayers that you could pray for the cup and for the bread. And so the things that we're doing in our men's study, they've been doing that since the second century. Here's some ideas for the way you can administer the Lord's Supper.

Concerning the frequency of the Lord's Supper, it says, but every Lord's day, gather yourselves together and break the bread. And the language that's found there is very similar to the Greek that's found in Acts 20. In this document, eating of meats sacrificed to idols is not totally forbidden, but Christians are advised to only do so very carefully and to understand what they're doing. What does that reflect? That's the teachings of Paul in the...

In first Corinthians. Right? Baptism in this document was to be administered by immersion in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, preferably in what they called living water. We take that to mean probably flowing water. It's better to do it in a stream, and there's some symbolism to that and some health reasons for that.

But if you have to do it in still water, you do what you gotta do. And so we see all of that, and we say, well, that that writing from the second century and the copy we have from the tenth century, eleventh century, well, that sounds very similar to what we're trying to do. Right? Well, there's also some things that show some departures from what we might call biblical doctrine. If sufficient water could not be found for immersion, then they said you could pour water over somebody, but you had to do it three times to make sure that they were fully covered in water.

And some things are emphasized that we don't give much attention to. For example, there's a whole chapter on fasting and what... When you should fast and when you shouldn't fast and what Christian fast look like as opposed to pagan fast and fasting before someone is baptized, not just the one being baptized, but also the one doing the baptizing if possible. And yet at the same time, if you read this document, there is that same kind of desire to follow Christ. The first section, so chapters 1-6 in this document, start this way.

And that whole section is all about here are the things you ought not do. Here are the things that you should do. Sounds a little bit like the fruit of the spirit and the works of the flesh. Right? But it starts this way.

There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between these two ways. Well, we would all say amen to that. Right? And, certainly, that's the case. May I suggest that what I've described here, the circumstantial finding of this document, the examination of document, the compare that document to what we find in the New Testament, and then extrapolating things out of that to try and say, well, this is probably what they believed.

This is probably what they practiced. This snapshot that we have from this time and place, we can kind of draw some conclusions onto what was happening in other times and places around there based on that. That whole process that we've described, this is the discovery of church history. And that same kind of process has been happening for centuries since Christianity was old enough to be called history. Right?

And so what we're gonna cover, in the rest of our time, in the rest of our time this evening is is from that time of the Didache and going forward just a little bit, what is called the anti Nicene period. Anti Nicene, that's from the years 100 or so to the year 325. Does anybody know what happened in 325? I'll give you a hint. The Nicene Creed.

Yeah. The Nicene Creed. So you see Nicene, anti... That's just before Nicea. Okay?

So before the Nicene Creed, and that creed was adopted where? At the council of Nicea. Now the council of Nicea, is a real important breaking point and an important time because it was the first council, the first church council. Now some people who are in favor of church councils will say there was another one in the New Testament, the council at Jerusalem. I don't think it's at all what we find with councils like the council of Nicea.

It's the source of the Nicene Creed, which we will read next week. But, really, what it is is a marking of tangible evidence of the change in the organization in the church where now the church is really closer to something like what we would call the Roman Catholic church and not something like what we would call the first century church or the apostolic church, the church found in the New Testament. It's also a convenient marker of the intertwining of the church and the state. Right? So who was the emperor in 325?

Constantine was the emperor in 325. And Constantine, sometimes called the first Christian emperor, believed to have converted to Christianity at the very end of his life, he was the one who made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire officially. Constantine the Great ruled from 03/2006 to 337. In 313, he legalized Christianity. In 325, the Council of Nicaea took place.

And so there's this intertwining of church and state that you'd not seen before. And we're gonna we're gonna save our conversations about Constantine and the council of Nicaea to next week. And what I'd really like to do is turn our attention, to the events and people before 300. So 325, we find this council of Nicaea. We've got the Catholic church.

We've got, creeds being written, all those sorts of things. Well, what happened in between the end of the first century, the death of all the apostles, the writing of the New Testament to... Okay. Now we've got the holy Roman empire. We've got Constantine legalizing Christianity and converting himself.

What happened in between in those times? So that's what I want us to think for the rest of our time tonight. Terms to familiarize ourselves with. Here are some terms that you need to be familiar with for not just our study tonight, but also next week and moving forward. The early church fathers.

Raise your hand if you've heard that term before. The early church fathers. Okay? If it's not familiar to you, that's okay. The early church fathers is just a designation given to the writers and leaders of Christianity, the Christian from one hundred AD to five hundred AD.

K? So we have these early church fathers is what they're called, and it's especially referring to those for whom we have writings that have survived. So in modern terms, we think about one hundred AD to five hundred AD. If we were gonna go back in time, how far back in modern times? So we're starting now.

You know, we'll say 2000. How far back are we going? At sixteen hundreds. Right? So we think about the sixteen hundreds.

That's actually, I think, a really helpful way for us to think about this time period because 100 to 500 seems like a lot, and it is. But what famous book was published in 1611? Okay. The King James version translation of the bible was published in 1611. Who else wrote?

What was the famous playwright that wrote in the sixteen hundreds? Shakespeare wrote in the sixteen hundreds. Right? There are some really famous Christian writings, a number of them, but two that maybe you even read from the sixteen hundreds, even the early sixteen hundreds, Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost. Raise your hand if you've read one or both of those books.

In college, I, was assigned to read those books. They're fascinating. They're interesting. And I and I think that's helpful for us to think about it in those terms. Even very early American colony writings like the transcribed sermon of John Winthrop, a model of Christian charity comes from the sixteen hundreds.

How do we treat those religious writings? Think about paradise loss, and Pilgrim's Progress. How do we treat those? Are they interesting to study? Yeah.

Absolutely. Did they give a lot of insight into Christian thought during that time? Can they be helpful to you in your walk and in your Christian faith? Yeah. I think they can.

I mean, reading them as a teenager, they were helpful to me in some ways. And so those writings are still interesting and relevant, but they are very clearly from a different time, from a different place, with a different audience than us, dealing with specific issues often outside of our context, right, what we're dealing with today. And while we study them, and though they were written at the same time, would we confuse Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress in terms of authority or impact with the King James Bible? Of course, we wouldn't. We wouldn't make that kind of comparison, and I'm not gonna base my beliefs on those books or assign them that authority.

I guess we should approach the writings of the early church fathers in the same way. They're interesting. Some of them are really interesting because they're kind of wild. They can be helpful. They can provide some valuable insight, but we obviously shouldn't view them as having the same authority over our beliefs and practices as the New Testament text.

And we clearly see as we go forward from, you know, the in the very early second century, the early hundreds, some people even say, well, maybe it backs up into the first century. We see a real difference in the writings as we go forward. And not just a real difference, we can kind of extrapolate what are they dealing with, what were the false doctrines that they were having to address, what were the practical issues that they were dealing with, with these early church fathers. The Internet is incredible. You can read most of these things, on the Internet.

But if, like me, you like a hard copy of books, if you go back in our library... Well, first of all, who knew that we had a library here at the church building? Okay. Good. Good.

If you've been in a library class, you knew. Alright. Now here's the second question. Who in here has ever checked a book out of that library? Alright.

We got a few hands. You can do that. You can check books out of our religious library back there. And so if you walk into the library, just a little bit to your right on the other side of the tables, you find this section right here, that has a lot of history. And so you see these books, these kinda orange ones here, these kinda tan ones here that have the red, then the tan ones that have the green, and the tan ones that have the blue.

Okay? I'm gonna come back to this picture in just a second. When we think about the early church fathers, the early church fathers are divided up this way. Now this is really broad, really general, but, again, this is something to be familiar with if you're studying church history. The apostolic fathers, so these are people that were alive in the early parts of their life while the apostles or at least the apostle John was still alive.

Some of them knew or at least claimed to know John or perhaps another of the apostles, and they're writing right after the end of the New Testament. So this would include Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, the unknown authors of the Didache and the shepherd of Hermes. So we think about the apostolic fathers, thus... That's that fifty years right after, the end of the first century and the end of the New Testament. Testament.

Then you have the anti Nicene fathers. What does anti Nicene mean again? Before Nicea. Right? So before the cancel of Nicea.

These are writers from 150 to 325 AD. That would include writers like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origin. Then you've probably heard of some of those writers as well. And then you have the Nicene and post Nicene fathers from 03/25 to 500. Now we're a long way from Christ.

Right? So now we've got the ESV that was published in 2003 as opposed to the King James sixteen eleven version. Even the language is gonna be different. Right? So you have these writers from 03/25 to 500.

Maybe you would recognize some of these names like Jerome and Augustine and others. So we think about those writers. So you've got these three periods, a 100 to 150, 150 to 03/25, and 03/25 to 500. Go back to our picture from the library. Is that a lot of books?

Well, depends on how you define that. Right? This is from 100 to 500, and these are the predominantly, maybe not all, but most of the Christian writings from that that time period that we still have, right, that we still have in existence. Is that a lot of books? Well, when you put it in that way, maybe it's not a lot of books.

Right? When we think about... Alright. Remember our list, the apostolic fathers from 100 to one fifty. That's those orange ones right there.

K? So we have some writings, but is that a lot of writings? No. Not a ton. We think about the anti niacin fathers from 150 to 325.

That's that section right there. Though two books are missing, I assume Preston has them somewhere. He's been looking for... If you're the one who checked these out and didn't return them, make sure you with Brenda, and we'll get them back on the shelf. So there's two missing there, but you see that?

Is that a lot? Well, that's a ton when we're talking about 150 to 03/25. Right? And then we think about... Again, we're talking about the early church fathers.

So then we think about the Nicene and post Nicene fathers. Well, that's all these in green and blue. Well, we got a lot more, right, from 03/25 to 500. So this is helpful to you when you're studying church history and you're looking at these sources and their time periods, but it's also helpful for you when you're having conversations with people who are from Catholic backgrounds and especially Eastern Orthodox backgrounds. When they talk about the early church fathers and the writings of the early church fathers and place authority...

Now if you press them, they would say that authority is not equal to the authority of the New Testament. But in terms of applying the New Testament and the practices that we're supposed to do, in practicality, they are almost of the same authority. This is the traditions that have been handed down and all these sorts of things. Want you to notice a couple of things. First of all, we're not talking about a lot of writing.

Were more things written by Christians and about Christianity than just what we have from that time period? When was the dedicate discovered? Rediscovered? In the eighteen hundreds. Right?

I don't remember. Good grief. 1873. 1873. And he didn't actually read it and realize what it was till 1880.

Right? And that copy was from the ten hundreds. Right? So we don't have a lot, and most of what we do have is from when? 03/25 and later.

And so as we examine those things, are these writings beneficial to us? I think they can be. I don't think you have to know them in order to be a Christian. I don't think you have to know them and under... To understand what the first century church did.

I think they can give us some insight and background, especially some that were much earlier. Right? But to place these on the same level is what we find in the New Testament is not something that I think we should fall into the trap of doing. Okay. So we think about that that time period.

This period was dominated really by two things. So we're thinking about before 300. Right? Some pro... From 100 to 300.

It was dominated by persecution from various sources and departures away from the biblical pattern. Now the first century church, we think about persecution in the first century church that's written about in our New Testament. What were the two main sources of that persecution? Jews and Romans. Right?

So we've got Jewish persecution, which makes sense because first century church is gonna be primarily made up of Jews, although more and more Gentiles are being added. And then you have Roman persecution from the authorities. They're looking at Christianity almost as an offshoot of Judaism, a sect of Judaism. There's not a lot of understanding there. But with the destruction of the temple in seventy AD, what happens to the Jewish persecution?

Most of it dries up. Right? Without the temple and that grounding, Judaism doesn't cease to exist, but the type of Judaism practiced in the first century really does kinda cease to exist because you don't have the pilgrimages to Jerusalem. You don't have the sacrifices in the temple. And so, really, persecution of Christians by Jews doesn't have any teeth anymore.

They really can't do that. Plus, the makeup of the church changes a lot. Instead of being primarily Jewish, now it's primarily gentile in nature, and it spreads, you know, all the way from India to Great Britain in terms of people who are Christians in different places. And so persecution becomes primarily then what? Roman in nature.

So we have Roman persecution. We have Roman persecution that starts with Nero. We have Roman persecution with Domitian. And we know in the late nineties, the Christians of Asia Minor endured intense persecution. And we can argue about the exact nature of that persecution and how it applies to the book of Revelation, but here's what we can all say with certainty.

It was a culture that had little use for Christians because of paganism and emperor worship. Loyalty to Rome was expressed in different ways, and that was the norm. And if you live differently than that, if you didn't worship the Roman gods, if you didn't go to the Roman festivals, if you didn't roam... Worship the Roman emperor, you could lose your livelihood. You could be a common outcast of society.

You could even be put to death, and that's a tough scenario for anyone. So that brings us to the end of the New Testament. Well, Trajan, the emperor Trajan, followed Domitian, and he reigned from 98 to 117 AD. And he also persecuted Christians, but not to the same degree. And what's interesting is we have a letter, a letter that was written to Trajan and a letter that was written back.

The letter was written from governor Pliny the Younger, and he asked Trajan how to deal with with people who were accused of being Christians. And Trajan replied to Pliny and told him what the Roman policy ought to be on that, and that's important because it's really an encapsulation of Roman policy for the next two hundred years. And this whole section, until the reign of Diocletian in 303, this was the Roman policy in regard to, persecution of Christians. So what I would like to do, and we have time, what I would like to do is read the letter from Pliny to Trajan and then Trajan's short reply. And here's what I want you to do.

You're a Christian living from 100 to three hundred AD, and this is the Roman policy regarding you and your faith in Jesus Christ. So give me a thumbs up if you can follow me on that. K. Listen carefully to this letter. Pliny to Trajan, the emperor.

So Pliny's governor in Bithynia. Remember, Bithynia is north of Galatia there. That's where Paul wanted to go, but then he gets the Macedonian call, and he goes over to Philippi. Okay? So here's the letter.

It is my custom, sire, to refer to you in all cases where I am in doubt for who can better clear up difficulties and inform me. I have never been present at any legal examination of the Christians, and I do not know, therefore, what are the usual penalties passed upon them or the limits of those penalties or how searching and inquiry should be made. I have hesitated a great deal considering whether any distinction should be drawn according to the ages of the accused, whether the weak should be punished as severely as the more robust, or whether the man who has once been a Christian gained anything by recanting. Again, whether the name of being a Christian, even though otherwise innocent of crime, should be punished or only the crimes gather around it. In the meantime, this is I have adopted in the case of those Christians who have been brought before me.

I ask them whether they are Christians. If they say yes, then I repeat the question a second time and also a third, warning them of the penalties involved. If they persist, I order them away into prison. For I do not doubt that, be their admitted crime what it may, their per per... Their inflexible obscenity should to be punished.

Well, I mean, that's not a way to be described if it's turn... In terms of your face. Right? There were others who showed similar mad folly whom I reserved to be sent to Rome as they were Roman citizens. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah. The apostle Paul. Later, as is commonly the case, the mere fact of my entertaining the question led to a multiplying of accusations, and a variety of cases were brought before me. So that wasn't just true in the social media age. One person is accused, and now there's lots of accusations that come along with it.

An anonymous pamphlet was issued containing the... A number of names of alleged Christians. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians were called, and called upon the gods with the usual formula reciting the words after me. And those who offered incense and wine before your image, which I had ordered to be brought forward for this purpose along with the red... Regular statues of the gods, all such I considered antiquated, especially as they curse the name...

Or all such I considered acquitted if they were willing to do this, especially as they cursed the name of Christ, which it is said bona fide Christians cannot be induced to do. So in other words, if you're a real Christian, you're not gonna curse the name of Christ. Still others that were whose names were supplied by an informer. These first said they were Christians then denied it, insisting they had been Christians but were no longer so, some of them having recanted many years ago and more than one, a full twenty years back. These all worshiped your image in the god statues and cursed the name of Christ.

But they declared that their guilt or error was simply this, on a fixed day, they used to meet before dawn to recite a hymn among themselves to Christ as though he were a god. So far from binding themselves by oath to commit any crime, they swore to keep from theft, robbery, adultery, breach of faith, and not to deny any trust money deposited to them when called upon to deliver it. In other words, live like a Christian. This ceremony over, they used to depart and meet again to take their food, but it was of no special character and entirely harmless. They also had ceased from this practice after the edict I issued by which, in accord with your orders, I forbade all secret societies.

I then thought it to be more needful to get the facts behind their statements. Therefore, I placed two women called... This translation called them deaconesses, just the word for servants, under torture. So I'm torturing these two women, But I found only a debased superstition carried to great lengths, so I postponed my examination and immediately consulted you. This seems a matter worthy of your prompt consideration, especially as so many people are endangered.

Many of all ages and both sexes are put in peril of their lives by their accusers, and the process will go on for the contagion of this superstition has spread, not merely through the free towns, but into the villages and the farms. Still, I think it can be halted and things are set right. And he goes on to describe how, hey, it's a good thing. More people are coming to the temples even though they didn't used to be coming for the temples. And I think if we can turn this whole Christianity thing around, if I just know the right way to treat them, vast numbers can be reclaimed to ends if only there were a chance given for repentance.

Repentance from being Christians and coming back to being Romans in the in the true sense. So here's Trajan's response to Pliny much shorter. You have adopted the right course, my dear Pliny, in examining the cases of those cited before you as Christians. For no hard and fast rule can be laid down covering such a wide question. The Christians are not to be hunted down.

But if brought before you and the offense is proved, they are to be punished. But this with reservation. If anyone denies he is a Christian and makes it clear he is not by offering prayer to our gods, then he is to be pardoned in his recantation no matter how suspicious his past. As for anonymous pamphlets, they are to be discarded absolutely whatever crime they may charge for they are not pertinent of a, for they are only a precedent of the very bad type, but they will not accord with the spirit of our age. So anonymous accusations, we're not gonna do it.

But what does he say we should do? Somebody's... Mark Dickerson is accused of being a Christian. He's brought before him. What do we do?

Are you a Christian? If you say no, curse the name of Christ, offer worship to the gods, offer worship to the emperor, and you're free to go your way. And that was the Roman policy for the next two hundred years. What would your reaction and feelings be in an environment like that? Would it be easy to avoid punishment?

Yes. Would it be easy to avoid death? Yes. But in so doing, what would you have to do? Yeah.

Give up your life? Give up your life in Christ. I wanna talk about martyrs every class period because you see martyrs in all of these time periods. What's a martyr, first of all? Someone who dies for belief.

So we're thinking about someone who dies for their belief in Jesus Christ, dies because of their faith. Sometimes, but not always, martyrs are given a choice to give up that belief or die, But either way, they die because of their faith. Who is the first martyr in the Bible? Okay. That's a good question, is it?

We have James. Steven. Steven. K? Who is the first one who died?

Jesus. Let's keep going back. Who is the first one who died because their worship was accepted by God and somebody else's wasn't? John the... Go back further.

Abel. You ever thought about that? Abel was a martyr. And what does God say when he comes to Cain? The blood of your brother, what?

Cries out to me. And what was the blood of Abel crying out for? Justice. It's wrong that I've died. Well, I want you to turn to Hebrews for just a second.

Abel is mentioned in those heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. But I want you to turn to Hebrews 12. In verse 24 because we're running low on time. He's talking about the better mountain that we've come to, and he says to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, verse 24 of chapter 12, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. Abel's blood cried out for justice.

What does Jesus' blood cry out for? Forgiveness and mercy. And we think about these martyrs. I've got a minute. Stick with me.

We think about these martyrs in the New Testament and then the martyrs thereafter. And what we see consistently is that they cry out in a manner similar to their lord. The first Christian martyr in the New Testament was Stephen after the death of Christ. And what was his response as they took up stones to stone them? Father, do not charge this to their account.

And so what we see is that these martyrs, as we will study over the course of our study, very much were imitators of Jesus Christ. That they were willing to go to their deaths, not with hatred in their heart, but in imitation of their lord, with a desire for the salvation of those who are putting them to death. And we will begin next class period with the martyrdom of Polycarp and what that means for all of us. Thank you for your good attention. We'll talk about Polycarp and his martyrdom, and then we'll get into the Nicene Creed, Constantine, and the years that follow.