CHT | S2E24: Persecutions and Defenses of the 2nd Century

[music] Welcome to Church History and Theology, a study where we glean wisdom from those who came before us. Come, lay aside today's concerns for a bit and join in a study of the church throughout the ages. Our forebearers have shaped our faith in countless ways. Let's go look into one of those influences today on Church History and Theology. [music] Well, good evening everyone and welcome to Church History and Theology. My name is Timothy Easley and it is a delight to be with you this evening. Happy New Year to all of you who are hearing this closer to its production time and I hope you have had a very merry Christmas. It is here January 3rd and in 2026. And I am looking forward to this evening. This evening we have an episode on the subject of the persecutions and defenses of the faith in the 2nd century Church. Before we head back to the 2nd century, let me talk a little bit about this past autumn and just a word of, oh, let me say clarification as far as what has been going on the past couple of months. As many of you know, I recently changed careers and focused much more so in the teaching realm and have taken on a teaching responsibility role at a Christian school here locally. History is a massively fun topic to teach. I teach seven classes daily in history and all over everywhere and one of those classes is very beloved to me is actually the history of Christianity. So I have gotten to teach Christian history every day throughout the past semester and it has been an absolute delight. That has for any of you who have been teachers before, you fully understand that has been an absolute time well of all sorts of production of all sorts of preparations, researches for those things as well. 35 lectures a week is a little bit hefty of a schedule, but it's one of the things that I have learned to enjoy and love and I look forward to going and teaching every single day. So I'm very happy for that. One of the effects that that has had is it is very difficult to figure out what kind of pace of life there is for some of the other, let's say, an extremely exemplary and these projects of my life, church history and theology being one of them and that is hopefully I have found my, my pacing. I needed to take the first semester and figure out what in the world was going on and how do you keep up with that. And I believe I've gotten that pretty much well under the belt and I'm happy for that and looking forward to this return back to the school year here in just a couple of days. Anyway, a lot of fun I've taken my, my 12 students that I have in church history class every day, I have taken them all the way up through the eighth century from the beginnings of church history all the way through and so that's been a lot of fun. We have been just careening through history every day about 45 minutes, just completely different pace than I'm used to. And that, that was one of those things I'll tell you the past couple of months I have sat down to do episodes for church history and theology at least half a dozen times. And it's been particularly frustrating because I never felt like I was completely ready because the amount of time I used to have donated to, to research and for preparation for these things. I did not want to put something up halfway and I wanted something of the same kind of quality I've come to know and love and be able to carry out. And for these first couple of months, that was not very possible. It was more of the moment you get up, get ready, go teach and then come home prep collapse grade and then go to bed. So now I believe I've found the rhythm that I can actually function in and work in. I've actually picked up my writing again in my novels and and also I picked up research and now as you were hearing production of church history and theology again. I'm going to take that time and I appreciate you for being patient and I apologize. It was not something I had forecasted as going to be as hefty as it was, but we should get through it together no doubt. And plus history has to endure such cycles in life as you all well know and we look forward to that as well. Also, I I figure it'd be best to just kind of address this as a whole. I have had a myriad of notes letters texts emails and all sorts of things. So let me address these by theme one advertisers not interested. Thank you. Not going to do that. Those of you who are contacting me to to make video productions out of this and everything else. Look, the show itself. I'm never going to do video production. I despise video production is I love audio. That's kind of my world. I'm a little bit more old school. The show itself is released out to creative commons. You're able to take this and re duplicate it remaster it translate it turn it into a video do whatever you want with it as long as you give attribution. You can see that in the show notes. I specifically do that because I don't care about using this for money. I care about this as as getting this out to people. I want Christians to know their history. So that's why I release it to that. So if you want to make videos about that, go ahead. That is all on you. You're welcome to do so. Just give attribution where it's at and you have to link to the you have to link to the license. Other than that, you know, go nuts. That's perfectly fine. For those of you who have specific history questions, criticisms, challenges or looking for response videos to challenges, criticisms or any of these things, I'm not going to do that. I sort of started to get into that world when I was up in social media and everything else. And I have since pulled the plug on all of that. It is a never ending argument that goes out into the world of everyone trying to make names for themselves making challenge videos or criticisms this or articles that right away. And my blessing make make all the stuff you want. I'm not going to be doing any responses or any of that kind of stuff going forward. That's just not what I'm here for. It's not what I'm doing. And yeah, I'll let other people do that. As it is, I want to teach history. And so that's what we're going to come here to do. So tonight we we go into the story of the persecutions and defense of the second century church. Now this is episode or season two, episode 24. And I am particularly fond of the second century because here we actually see the church learning how to walk if there ever was a toddler stage to the church, it was the second century. The first century, you have the you have in some ways, it's actually more grown up ironically in the first century than it is in the second. In the second century, the church is starting to have to deal with the idea that it is on its own that it is no longer in the presence of apostles. Those who knew the apostles personally are starting to die out now what. And there were some very important decisions that were made in the second century, some good, some well and I would say most very well intentioned and then others that were just wrong. And you have heresies that start to crop up. You have bad teachings that are starting to be welcomed in in certain areas. And every time we talk about this section of history, the second century is always just so fascinating to me because of how decisions are arrived at. You don't have one specific group somewhere trying to do something and then that's universally accepted. You don't even have that with persecutions. You certainly don't have that with defenses. Not really until you get to the end of the second century, do you get ecclesial control trying to do things like that and we will see that with a quarter to sit in a decimal controversy in a later episode. But when we open up to the second century, we open up to a Roman Empire at nearly its geographic height. It is powerful, it is strong, nobody seemingly can ever stand in its way, how would it ever end. On the other side, you have a church who, broadly speaking, is still trying to figure out how to stand up with the apostles going. The church is new. The Roman Empire is starting to learn that Christians are somehow distinct from the Jews, yet how exactly and what their effects are. We're not entirely clear. And so they try to understand them. They try to listen to them, but then some governors, some local rulers are, let's just say, more tolerant and have more ears. Others have more swords and more abuses in mind. These types of things have led to exaggerations on both sides. There are misconceptions regarding the persecutions of the second century. I think we've talked a little bit about before. But one of the most prevailing misunderstandings from the second century is to take one thing from one part of somewhere in the Roman Empire with regards to Christianity and then extrapolate it to the rest of the Roman Empire. That is particularly a problem in the second century because our knowledge is so fragmentary with regards to Christians amongst the Empire and the Empire's responses. And the responses that we do have are very localized. The persecutions that we have told to us are very localized. So also are the Roman letters and rescripts, even from the Emperor's are localized. Because of this, and because when you have a more entry-level knowledge of history, you tend to fill in the gaps with what you know. And so you bridge the ignorance with the small amount of knowledge you would necessarily have. And so you say, well, I know this one thing happened in, you know, say 111. And so, and then this next thing happened in 150. And so you kind of draw a linear line between those two things and you try to bridge that 39 year gap with what makes the most sense to you. We all do this. We all do this with every era of history and we all do it no matter how far down your knowledge of history goes. It's one of the nice things is that the plumbing the depths of history, there really is no bottom. You can just keep going deeper and deeper. And for Christian history in the second century, that problem exists as well. We have very fragmentary information regarding persecutions. But what we do have is sporadic is localized. And then throughout the second century becomes increasingly more bureaucratic, procedural, and then later on precedent based. By the time we come to the close of the second century, persecutions start quoting the trajanic approach to all of these things, which is don't hunt them down. But if they're accused interrogate and then kill if they are obstinate. And this is this kind of lends us to the central core legal problem of Christianity in the Roman Empire. The core legal problem was not because they disagreed that Jesus was real or rose from the dead or any of this kind of stuff. The real core legal problem for Christians in the Roman Empire was obstinacy. And that's one of those things that really needs to fall onto the ears hard. Obstinacy to the Roman Empire. Today is an annoyance. Tomorrow could be dangerous. If somebody for instance refuses to recant Christianity and recant, not even just recant Christianity, but to also do what the Roman Empire considers safe for its own continuance, things like making sacrifices to the gods or to the dead emperors in the imperial cults. To refuse to do these things, to refuse to participate in the Roman religious cults is dangerous to the empire. There needs to be a unity inside the empire. Every country has fought for this, especially in times of war. The US itself was a massive progenitor of this World War I, World War II. When a country is at war, the country's main responsibility, as far as its citizens are concerned, is often interpreted as "make sure they are unified." And the perspective of the Roman Empire was that Christians were not interested in being unified with the Roman Empire as a primary goal. And so for the Roman Empire, then if you're not going to see that as a primary goal, then the continuance of your life is not a primary goal for us. You will actually have certain instances of persecution break out, where there are those who go and try to just make accusations against them to get rid of them, because they are distrusted, even by their own neighbors in certain instances. And you do not have even when they're localized persecution, you don't even have it breaking out of all Christians in that locale. You will actually have Christians that are there supporting or bringing food to or taking care of the children of. Christians who are in prison and sentenced to death, and other Christians from their church are able to come in and visit and be with them and encourage them and so forth. That kind of thing is at first glance a little off-putting. Like if you have this basic idea that Christians are being killed simply for being Christians, then why won't they just arrest these other Christians right there? And that's because in a lot of instances, what you will have is there needs to be a named accuser that comes forward, that challenges that person, that they are Christian in such a way that is dangerous and/or threatening or even potentially dangerous in their obscenancy to the Roman Empire. Because of this, you have accusations that come forth sometimes accusations at this point and we're still talking early on in Roman history as far as for the empires concerned. You will still have procedural problems where you will have someone who is an anonymous accuser that is coming up and just turning in names of people they don't like as far as for Christians. And one of the main responses to this is in Emperor Trajan's response to a local governor of Pliny, named Pliny, who was a governor of Bethinia. This happens in the early 2nd century. Some are about 111, 112 right around there. And the real question that Pliny has for the emperor, for Emperor Trajan is whether someone being a Christian in name alone is itself criminal. And the way that Trajan responds is to actually define what becomes the backbone of all Christian persecutions for the empires throughout the 2nd century. It is specific in its declaration that Christians are not to be sought out just because they are Christians. And there needs to be a testing of them if a clear, known and definitive accusation is made, then they are inquired of them. One, this person that is being accused of being a dangerous sort of Christian needs to have worship of the gods on their terms, on the Roman terms. They need to burn incense to the emperor and they need to curse Christ. And those who persist in their obstinacy are to be put to death. It seems a strange thing to, I think, a lot of our ears to hear about something that you're not going to go find these people, but if you happen upon them and they persist in this, just put them to death. That seems a very non-sequitur way to deal with this presumed crime. And this is really the question of it. And for a lot of people, it gets confusing because they come with the expectation that Christians are being persecuted because of their belief. But that's not really what's going on in the Roman mind. In the Roman mind, Christians are less Roman when they are obstinate. Don't actively hunt down Christians, but if they are accused and most importantly, unrepentant, they are to be punished. Anonymous accusations cannot be made. We're not going to go outside the legal framework. Trajan says to Pliny, but we are going to inspect. If this is going to do so, we are going to give them a chance to repent. If they recant, we pardon them completely and they carry on. This becomes the imperial policy for all of the second century. Most of the other emperors will quote this in the coming century and there's not going to be much of a change of that because most of the not most of the all of the persecutions are going to be local and sporadic but this adds a layer of bureaucracy to it and at least precedent as far as the legal approach to Christians being persecuted on the local level. This is one of the things that makes as in the previous episode I addressed the issues with Ignatius is one of the things that makes his story so kind of bizarre. There is not an empire wide persecution that would really lead to traveling across from Antioch to Rome. That just is not the way of it that supposedly happened during the reign of of Trajan. That kind of travel that kind of way and that whole story does not fit things that were going on in the early second century just doesn't but that's a whole other story that we addressed it another time. But this is kind of the same thing right what what Rome really found in Christianity was dangerous. There was charges of atheism because Christians reject visible gods and they refuse sacrifice. This this to the Roman Empire is dangerous not because you're just not taking part in Roman society that's dangerous on its own but this threatens what is perceived as the peace that Rome has with the gods and if you if you maintain citizens who refuse to offer appropriate sacrifices or to worship the visible gods then that puts the peace that Rome has with the gods and this this this larger peace around the Mediterranean basin inside the Roman Empire. It puts a lot of question marks about the possibility of that continuing. For the Christians this this leads to them being questioned about how they can withdraw from things that are festivals that are are made to a particular god or or or they're staying away from sacrificial meals. I mean these types of things even show up in the New Testament with regards to meat being sacrificed to idols. To the Roman eye this looks like disloyalty. It looks like anti social behavior and almost a contempt for being in Rome. That is a huge threat to an empire of that magnitude especially at that time in the way they conduct themselves. When they refuse to recant that is seen as straight up disobedient obstinancy. Refusal to comply at trial with an instruction to curse Christ is a challenge to the court and the imperial authority and dignity. These are not small issues and to the Roman Empire that kind of a concept of an empire must be held together with obedience. It must be held together with authority and it must be held together with proper decorum. To their eyes Christians were not doing this. Christians had allegiance to another king. Christians had a different god that they worshiped. While that's fine you just need to pay obeisance to the gods of Rome that we are at peace with. Otherwise you risk out and out contempt from the gods. And Christians looking at this say we can't do that. Romans looking at that says but you must in order to continue to live in this empire without us killing you and the response says but we can't. The good emperors or so they are called in Roman history the five good emperors of the second centuries. Ironic when you're studying Christian history because all of them in one way or another persecuted Christians not on an empire-wide level but certainly allowed for and let and even supported local persecutions of Christians. I even going all the way up to I think the last one that I'll focus on here would be Marcus Aurelius who was emperor from 161 to 180. It seems at first this kind of odd mix where you have a stoic philosopher turned emperor that seems okay for Christians to be persecuted under his rule. In fact we have some of the more extreme versions of persecution locally admittedly but happening under his reign with his you know go ahead type allowance and that is strange for some people to pay attention to. In fact one of the students in my classes is doing a a a year-long project on addressing how Marcus Aurelius and his leadership is shows up in persecution of Christians specifically like the martyrs of Leone in 177 how that is allowed under a stoic emperor's reign so fascinating subject looking forward to that presentation this year and so that kind of a question comes up how is it that such a such an emperor would allow for and support Christian persecution well he really hates their stubbornness and this is a recurring theme throughout the second century is stubbornness obstinacy you will not bow the knee to the empire that makes you an individual authority and because of that that we can't just have you you are a loose cannon going about the deck of a ship in the middle of a battle you're just going to have friendly fire is kind of the idea also when Christians are martyred he doesn't see it as valuable because they don't value their own life this martyrdom is meaningless and without reason what's the point and these types of these types of things only get worse when when plagues break out and and wars or battles are lost natural disasters there are those who begin to shift blame to the Christians they've angered the gods they've they've they've they've hindered public sentiment they've undermined the army a lot of these things and again the none of this is empire wide but these types of criticism show up at various points throughout if you are ever curious specifically about stories of of what happened there at the time we will spend an evening talking about the martyrs of leon later on but if you want to go read about that ahead of time you welcome to do so and you can see how quickly mobs can take over the legal framework how torture begins to be a part of this how throwing Christians to the lions in in in in the next century really becomes the the call inspired by things here that take place in like the 170s Christians being executed just for confessing that they are Christians that kind of stuff is where we end up towards the end of the second century but again still not empire wide but very very real when I say Christian persecutions and defenses of the second century it really draws into focus that the Christian persecutions are not ended or they are not defended against by Christians taking up arms this is something that I must say in their defense the vast majority if there is a unanimous opinion of the earliest church pacifism would be a massive one a massive what would you say a massive oh there I am losing words again a massive option if you are going to imagine anything being a universal opinion of the early church pacifism would be one of them yeah their complete allergy to using images and worship another but that's a whole another story for another time but the way that the church responds to persecution is not by taking up arms and defending themselves guys I say sorry to all of my American brothers and sisters that's not our that's not our heritage going back to the beginning our heritage was that we do not defend ourselves with weapons when it comes to this if persecution comes we accept it and we we are to fight with our words Christians in the second century learned quickly that good behavior alone doesn't save them. It doesn't end persecution. In fact, silence allowed slander to grow significantly. And you had all manner of misunderstandings of Christianity and what they were doing. There was challenges to what they did when they came together. It sounded like their agape meals or their love feasts were some level of immorality going on. There was challenges of things like cannibalism. There was all sorts of stuff that goes along. But Christians started to find out that if they were going to be understood properly and if they were going to ever be able to lay out their case, they're going to have to do so publicly. They're going to have to do so verbally. There's going to have to be an actual defense of the faith. And this is where the earliest apologists come from. This idea of giving a defense, whether philosophical, like Aristides or Justin Martyr, or you're going to have much more of a theological treatise type defense, people like Ironaus of Lyon, for instance. You will have those who say that there is a responsibility of unity in the church in order to maintain these things. Obviously you will get some of the early bishops of Rome at the end of the second century, start to have this idea about themselves. But the apologists of the faith take on this responsibility to themselves of giving legal explanations for Christianity defenses, writings against those who would slander the church. And here I will even expand it into the early part of the third century and include in figures like origin. Origin, Justin Martyr, even Tertolian, these people will all disagree with each other on various topics. But they all have one goal in mind. And that is we want to be able to represent Christianity to the Roman Empire well. We want to be able to defeat those who represent us. And we want to be able to put forward what Christians believe. Well, there's a lot of rumors that pass around. Brother and sister language led to rumors of incest, descriptions of communion led to rumors of cannibalism. When infants were abandoned in the Roman Empire, it's typically Christians who came up and took care of them. And then there was rumors again about infanticide, you know, all sorts of things. They were very effective to the common person. But the real criticisms of Christianity never really landed on what the actual Christians believed. Elites in the Roman Empire would typically criticize Christianity because it appealed to the educated and uneducated alike. And so it was more of a base thing. It was barbaric. It was derived from the Jews, which we all hate them. And so there it is. Their God is far too transcendent to care. He's not involved in protecting them. And if they don't value their lives, why should we? And all sorts of other criticisms and issues arose about this. Some of the apologists that we're going to talk about here in the coming episodes, one is Justin Martyr, massive one. He is a platonic philosopher turned Christian by seeing Christianity as the true philosophy. He writes the same word that we get apologetics. The first apology and his second apology. In there, he'll describe Christian living, he'll describe Christian life, but he'll describe Christian belief and practice, trying to appeal to people who would actually give him an ear to say, this is what we actually do. This is who we are and this is what we believe. That is, as it turns out, the only way that Christians could feasibly defend themselves. Problem is, and this is something that doesn't really get much traction, but it's something we'll pay attention to. It doesn't work. There really is no defense against persecution. The defense of the faith is not necessarily defense of the Christians. This was what was attempted. It was attempted to actually preserve Christian's lives. If we have our opponents understand us well, they may spare our lives. But if not, at least the faith itself has been defended. We defend it successfully when we express it well, when we preach it rightly, and when it is biblical from our mouths. You will find the concepts that come out of the pens of people like Justin Martyr, and Athanagoras, and Tertolian, while they disagree with one another, what they will say is that a defense of the faith is necessary in order for the faith to continue on. In order for Christians to know what they believe and in order for Christians to be well versed in these things, and hopefully for our opponents to actually be flummoxed by what we believe. Because we believe that what we have is the truth. If somebody is looking for truth, you should be able to find it in Christ. You will find people like Justin Martyr, for instance, who will say whatever is true belongs to Christ, and that idea of that all-truth meets at the top in Christ. For him, Christ is the answer to Plato's divine light. For Tertolian, for instance, he wants nothing to do with philosophy, or any of this sort of things. He comes at it more with more of a legal mind. You see this distinction in approaches, even amongst the apologists, as we get to the middle and the latter part of the second century. Tertolian will actually go on the legal attack against Rome directly. This would be about the most, rather than the defense of the faith, one of the most offence of the faith, where he actually challenges them with inconsistency. Specifically, inconsistency of the Trigianic precedent that was set early in the second century, which is you don't even investigate, and yet you will kill us for these things. You don't even ask all the right questions. You just have this breakdown, this non-sequitour approach to these things. Tertolian goes, "This doesn't make any sense legally or even morally, even in accordance with Roman concepts." These. Athanagoras will actually do the same thing. He will make plea for the Christians, which is a work that I hope we will actually have time to go into here later on, where he defends the concepts of monotheism and even the bodily resurrection and how Christian ethics are actually on a higher category than Roman ethics. In all of this, we start to see that the church is holding its own, that is learning how to engage with these things. It quotes the scriptures all over the place, which is helpful, some more than others. They're trying to address to them. They are trying to address to the Roman world who Christians are and what they are to dispel myths against us, but then also to describe the faith. Sometimes in terms that are very, very good. The core arguments for them, basically we are not atheists simply because we reject the gods of Rome. We reject the gods of Rome because they're false gods. We worship the creator of all things. And some of them will actually argue, some people like Justin Marta will actually argue that the philosophers that we based all of us on did the same thing. They argue that there's not immorality going on. There's sexual restraint in some places far more than should be, even to the point of no marriages. But that's a whole another discussion when we come to the Ancretites. We'll get to that. We care for the poor. We rescue abandoned infants and trying to appeal to almost a moral sense within people to say that the pagan gods are actually morally far inferior to most Christians. Which if you've read like the Metamorphoses of Ovid or any of these other foundational texts that sits in the background of these things, you would, yeah, that's true. And one of the appeals that they really try to make is is putting forward that Christians are also good citizens. They pray for the emperor. They obey their laws. And we only refuse idolatry. We don't want, and we do not have as our goal, the undermining of the state. The idea is that Christians have simply come to grips with morality that is deeper and that is more in tune with the God who created this world than the Roman Empire is. They argue against their irrationality by saying if God has created from nothing than the irrationality that they are accused of with believing in bodily resurrection is actually not irrational at all. If God creates from nothing then recreation or resurrection is not difficult. But at the end of all of this, apologetics didn't end persecution. Persecution continued throughout the second century into the third century again localized, sporadic, North Africa, the outskirts of the empire, Bethinia, Leone, and Gaul, and so forth. But as we go into it, we finally get into the broad persecutions, don't even come out until the mid-third century and then you do get empire-wide persecutions. Then you do get massive persecutions that are meant, oh goodness, when we get to the DC in persecution, what a brutal one. It wasn't long, it was just a couple of years, but the whole purpose of that persecution, when we get to that one in the about the year 250, the DC in persecution was meant to create apostates, not martyrs. Because martyrs started to be heroes in the Christian world. And as Tertolian would say, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and it caused it to grow wherever it went. But what Emperor DC is up doing is making a persecution specifically designed empire-wide to create apostates rather than martyrs. And that is devastatingly successful in certain areas. So we'll talk about that when we get to the empire-wide persecutions. But apologetics didn't end persecution. Persecution continued on and it just got worse and worse and worse and worse until we finally get to the empire-wide persecutions of the late third century. Rome in order for Christianity to be persecuted, Rome doesn't need to prove it to be false. It- it- Rome was not interested in whether it's true or false or any other things. It just needed Christians to be controllable and they could have no concept. Even from all of the, uh, the apologetic defenses of the faith in the church and Christian life and all that, there was no concept, the Roman mind or to the Roman emperor, that Christians were actually safe as Roman citizens. They weren't controllable. They would not recant and that is something that really honestly, the clarity really only increased the hostility against Christians. It kind of just looks like you have traders living in your midst. And the more the second century lived out its faith and explained its faith, you say, well, then what was the point? What did they defend? They weren't defending themselves as it turns out God was using apologists to defend and preserve the faith, not their lives. And here we sit 18 centuries later talking about it. Here we realize that we, just the same as them, are part of the same flow of church history. Whether we live in a section of the world that is safe, as far as our lives are concerned, maybe we live in a place where our lives are safe, but the proclamation of the historical faith of Christians is not. I think this is one of the warnings that we can pull out of the second century is that if we are to engage in the church, if we are to engage in church history, understand that we are part of this does not necessitate that you and I personally live on, but that our defense of the faith should outlast our own lives that it shouldn't be about the preservation of life. It should be about the preservation of the faith. And this is why the apologists are called the defenders of the faith. It really comes down to the fact that at the core of who we are as Christians, we are not about saving our own lives. Even Christ himself said this to us. The one who seeks to save his own life is going to lose it, but the one who loses it for Christ's sake will truly find it. I don't know about you. For me, I am satisfied to live my life however many years in God's grace he gives me to proclaim the gospel, to teach people his word, and then to lay my head down knowing that my life was not given to me just to link in its duration, but to preach the gospel, to give a defense of the faith that it would be handed down to other Christians yet unborn. Someday, we will all join the grave just the same. And a whole new crop of Christians that is not alive yet will one day fill our seats in our rolls and our pulpits. And it is to us to defend and to disseminate the faith so that the future will know Christ as we do. Lord's blessings here in this new year. [Music]