Columba
THE EARLY CENTURIES: EVANGELIZING THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The world today—not just the Christian church—would be very different if the zeal to evangelize had not been at the very heart of the Christian faith. Christianity and missions are inseparably linked. It is impossible to imagine Christianity as a living religion today without the vibrant missionary outreach that sprang forth after Pentecost. This missionary vision was part and parcel of the life of the church. The New Testament writers were not religious thinkers who speculated on matters of doctrine. Rather, theology was born out of necessity—the necessity of preaching the gospel. The New Testament is the result of that passion. “The gospels in particular,” writes David Bosch, “are to be viewed not as writings produced by an historical impulse but as expressions of an ardent faith, written with the purpose of commending Jesus Christ to the Mediterranean world.”1
It was the post-Pentecost generation that turned the world upside down—spreading Christianity beyond the borders of Palestine as far west as Rome and into virtually every major urban center in the entire eastern empire. “What began as a Jewish sect in A.D. 30,” writes missiologist-historian J. Herbert Kane, “had grown into a world religion by A.D. 60.”2 Inspired by the leadership of such great Christians as Peter and Paul, and driven abroad by persecution (and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70), many trained and lay evangelists spread out, bringing the message of Christ with them. “Every Christian,” writes Stephen Neill, “was a witness,” and “nothing is more notable than the anonymity of these early missionaries.”3
Fortunately for these early missionaries, circumstances were almost ideal for spreading the faith. In comparison to later missionaries, who would often face almost impossible odds, these early evangelists worked within a system that often paved the way for their ministry. There was great opportunity for mobility within the Roman Empire in the centuries after Christ. The amazingly well-structured Roman roads were an open invitation for people to move about, and the relative peace that prevailed made travel even more appealing. Moreover, unlike most missionaries of later centuries, the early evangelists were not forced to endure years of grueling language study. Greek was the universal language of the empire, and Christians could communicate the gospel freely wherever they went.
Another factor paving the way for a public Christian witness was the availability of synagogues. The book of Acts mentions over and over again the preaching that occurred in Jewish synagogues—public forums that allowed Christian ideas to be disseminated throughout the empire for more than a generation following the death of Christ. Though persecution was an ever-present reality, there was room for public debate in Roman society. There was a spirit of openness to new ideas—“a shifting toward a rational and moralistic monotheism,” while at the same time a shifting away from “polytheistic religions with their capricious and malicious deities.”4
Christianity stood out from other ancient religions in its exclusivist stance. While the knowledge of doctrine was often shallow for most new converts, there was no ambiguity about the uniqueness of the new religion. Christianity alone demanded that followers deny all gods but the one true God. The gospel “was presented in sharply yes-or-no, black-and-white, friend-or-foe terms. Urgency, evangelism, and the demand that the believer deny the title of god to all but one, made up the force that alternative beliefs could not match.” The growth of the new faith was remarkable: “on the order of half a million in each generation from the end of the first century up to the proclaiming of toleration.”5
Christianity penetrated the Roman world through five main avenues: the preaching and teaching of evangelists, the personal witness of believers, acts of kindness and charity, the faith shown in persecution and death, and the intellectual reasoning of the early apologists.
From contemporary accounts we learn that the Christians of the early centuries were very eager to share their faith with others. When the synagogues closed their doors to them, teaching and preaching was done in private homes, usually by itinerant lay ministers. Eusebius of Caesarea tells of the dedication of some of these traveling evangelists in the early second century:
At that time many Christians felt their souls inspired by the holy word with a passionate desire for perfection. Their first action, in obedience to the instructions of the Saviour, was to sell their goods and to distribute them to the poor. Then, leaving their homes, they set out to fulfill the work of an evangelist, making it their ambition to preach the word of the faith to those who as yet had heard nothing of it, and to commit to them the book of the divine Gospels. They were content simply to lay the foundations of the faith among these foreign peoples: they then appointed other pastors and committed to them the responsibility for building up those whom they had merely brought to the faith. Then they passed on to other countries and nations with the grace and help of God.6
Perhaps even more significant than the evangelism conducted by the traveling lay preachers was the informal testimony that went out through the everyday lives of the believers. “In that age every Christian was a missionary,” wrote John Foxe in his classic Book of Martyrs. “The soldier tried to win recruits …; the prisoner sought to bring his jailer to Christ; the slave girl whispered the gospel in the ears of her mistress; the young wife begged her husband to be baptized …; every one who had experienced the joys of believing tried to bring others to the faith.”7 Even the Christians’ harshest critics recognized their fervent evangelistic zeal. For example, Celsus’s description, though very biased, is telling:
Their aim is to convince only worthless and contemptible people, idiots, slaves, poor women, and children…. They would not dare to address an audience of intelligent men … but if they see a group of young people or slaves or rough folk, there they push themselves in and seek to win the admiration of the crowd. It is the same in private houses. We see wool-carders, cobblers, washermen, people of the utmost ignorance and lack of education.8
As important as such witnessing was, the nonverbal testimony of Christian charity may have had an even greater impact. Christians were known by their love and concern for others, and again, some of the most telling evidence of this comes, not from the mouths of Christians themselves, but from the critics of Christianity. Emperor Julian was concerned that Christians not outshine those of his own religion. He was chagrined that Christianity had “advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead.” He found it scandalous that the “godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”9
The testimony that the early Christians displayed in life was also evident in death. Until the fourth century, when Emperor Constantine publicly professed Christianity, persecution was a real threat for believers who openly confessed their faith. Though the total number of martyrs was not unusually high in proportion to the population, and though outbreaks of persecution occurred only sporadically and even then were generally local in nature, no Christian could ever feel entirely safe from official retribution. Beginning with the stoning of Stephen, they faced the grim reality that such might also be their fate—a sobering thought that served to exclude nominal Christians from their numbers. The fire of persecution purified the church, and the courage displayed by the innocent victims was a spectacle unbelievers could not fail to notice. There are many “well-authenticated cases of conversion of pagans,” writes Neill, “in the very moment of witnessing the condemnation and death of Christians.”10 The second-century apologist Tertullian perhaps said it best: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
While persecution and martyrdom drew many unbelievers to Christianity through their emotions, the reasoned and well-developed arguments of the early apologists won still others through their intellects. Christians, beginning with the apostle Paul in Athens, realized that this factor alone could be a drawing card in witnessing to the learned pagan philosophers. These defenders of the faith, including Origen, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr, had a powerful influence in making Christianity more reasonable to the educated, a number of whom were converted.
Even as the church was expanding through various means, however, it was facing setbacks as well. The very persecution that set the stage for testimonies of unbending faith also set the stage for denial of faith. This was the case in Asia Minor around A.D. 112. In a letter to Emperor Trajan, Pliny the Younger, who was then governor of Bithynia, outlined his actions against those people who were brought before him accused of being Christians. “So far this has been my procedure when people were charged before me with being Christians. I have asked the accused themselves if they were Christians; if they said ‘Yes,’ I asked them a second and third time, warning them of the penalty; if they persisted I ordered them to be led off to execution.”11
Pliny did not specify the number of executions, but when threatened with death, many denied the faith and supported that denial by giving homage to the images of the emperor and the gods and cursing Christ. Indeed, the number that denied the faith was apparently far greater than the number who did not, because Pliny reported to the emperor that “the temples, which had been well-nigh abandoned, are beginning to be frequented again” and “fodder for the sacrificial animals, too, is beginning to find a sale again.” And he sums up his success by saying: “From all this it is easy to judge what a multitude of people can be reclaimed, if an opportunity is granted them to renounce Christianity.”12
A similar outcome was reported in Alexandria in the mid-third century during the persecution under Emperor Decius. According to Eusebius, both women and men were brutally persecuted. Among them were Quinta, Apollonia, Metra, and Serapion, who endured terrible torture before they succumbed to death. “Much terror was now threatening us,” writes Eusebius, “so that, if it were possible, the very elect would stumble.”And some did stumble. They approached the pagan altars and “boldly asserted that they had never before been Christians.” Others, “after a few days imprisonment abjured”; and still others, “after enduring the torture for a time, at last renounced.”13
Another factor that impeded the growth of the early church was doctrinal controversy. “The list of major Christian doctrinal controversies during the first five centuries is long,” writes Milton Rudnick. “Among the groups regarded as dangerously false were: Judaizers, Docetists, Gnostics, Marcionists, Montanists, Monarchians, Novationists, Donatists, Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites.” Besides these groups there were factions within the church that fought over such things as the date of Easter and clerical appointments. “It is impossible to measure the negative impact of these controversies,” continues Rudnick. “In all likelihood it was considerable.”14
But the vibrant evangelism that was conducted during the post-apostolic period began to wane in the early fourth century during the reign of Emperor Constantine. Christianity became a state religion, and as a result, the churches were flooded with nominal Christians who had less concern for spiritual matters than for political and social prestige. Christianity became the fashion. Elaborate structures replaced the simple house-churches, and creeds replaced the spontaneous testimonies and prayers. The need for aggressive evangelism seemed superfluous—at least within the civilized Roman world.
On the outskirts of the empire, however, barbarians threatened the very stability of the Roman state. The prospect of converting them to Christianity became a much-sought-after goal of government officials who strongly supported the work of aggressive evangelists such as Martin, Bishop of Tours. Martin was a fourth-century soldier who entered a monastery and went out from there spreading the gospel throughout the French countryside. Some of the earliest and most effective “foreign” missionaries, though, were not aligned in any way with the state or the church at Rome. Ulfilas (an Arian) and Patrick and Columba (both Celtics) had no direct ties with the Roman church or state (though their evangelistic efforts made certain areas of Europe more amenable to the Roman system). Their primary objective was evangelism, accompanied by spiritual growth—an objective that would often become secondary during the succeeding centuries.
The starting point of Christian missions is, of course, the New Testament church. The frightened and doubting disciples who had fled during their master’s anguished hours on the cross were empowered with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and the Christian missionary movement was born. The most detailed and accurate record of this new missionary outreach is contained in the book of Acts, where the apostle Paul stands out, while Peter, Barnabas, Silas, John Mark, Philip, Apollos, and others also play important roles. Apart from Scripture, however, little is known of these biblical figures. According to tradition, some time after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the disciples met in the “upper room” or the Mount of Olives (depending on the source), and there Peter or another disciple divided up the world among them for missionary outreach.15 By some accounts Matthew is said to have gone to Ethiopia, Andrew to Scythia, Bartholomew to Arabia and India, Thomas also to India, and the rest to other regions.
Most of these accounts, except for that of Thomas, have little or no historical support. As the story goes, Thomas disregarded the Lord’s call for him to take the gospel to the East—a defiance that resulted in his being carried off as a slave to India, where he was placed in charge of building a palace for King Gundaphorus. The tradition continues that, while under the king’s service, Thomas spent his time spreading the gospel rather than building the palace—an offense that quickly brought him a prison term. In the end, Thomas had the opportunity to share his faith with the king, who then became a believer himself and was baptized. Though many of the details of the story seem fanciful, the basic outline may have an element of truth. A group of “Thomas Christians” in south-west India still worship in an ancient church said to be founded by Thomas, and archaeological digs have now established that there actually was a King Gundobar who reigned in India during the first century.
Many historians discount this tradition as no more than legend, but the significance goes beyond the actual historicity of the stories themselves. The widely circulated tales of the apostles carrying the gospel to the very ends of the earth infused the early church with a missionary mind-set that has been passed down through the centuries.
The apostle Paul unquestionably ranks as the greatest missionary of the early church. He, in the words of Kenneth Scott Latourette, “has been at once the prototype, the model, and inspiration of thousands of successors.”16 Paul is viewed by many as the greatest missionary of all times—a man who conducted an extraordinary ministry of establishing Christianity on a grassroots level that insured its growth and stability in the centuries that followed. From a strictly human standpoint, however, Paul is a less awesome figure than some adulatory devotees would have him be. In many ways he was a very ordinary man facing ordinary problems that have confronted missionaries ever since.
The biblical record of Paul’s life and ministry is well known. Born into a Jewish family in Tarsus, he grew up a strict Pharisee, violently opposed to the latest threat menacing Judaism, namely, the new “cult” of Jesus. He witnessed the martyrdom of Stephen and was empowered by the high priest to arrest other such heretics. He was on his way to Damascus to carry out this very commission when he was suddenly and miraculously converted. Supremely qualified for the task that lay ahead—a Jew thoroughly immersed in his Jewish heritage—he was now prepared to tell the world that the promised Messiah had indeed come. N. T. Wright sums up Paul’s comprehensive mission that so profoundly bound together the old and the new:
Saul’s vision on the road to Damascus thus equipped him with an entirely new perspective, though one which kept its roots firm and deep within his previous covenantal theology. Israel’s destiny had been summed up and achieved in Jesus the Messiah. The Age to Come had been inaugurated. Saul himself was summoned to be its agent. He was to declare to the pagan world that YHWH, the God of Israel, was the one true God of the whole world.17
Paul’s extraordinary accomplishments in the field of missions have prompted missiologists to argue that his methods should be closely, if not precisely, emulated today. Roland Allen in his book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? makes a strong case for this—if for no other reason than the fact that Paul’s methods worked:
In little more than ten years St. Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Before A.D. 47 there were no Churches in these provinces; in A.D. 57 St. Paul could speak as if his work there was done…. this is truly an astonishing fact. That churches should be founded so rapidly, so securely, seems to us today, accustomed to the difficulties, the uncertainties, the failures, the disastrous relapses of our own missionary work, almost incredible…. Today if a man ventures to suggest that there may be something in the methods by which St. Paul attained such wonderful results worthy of our careful attention, and perhaps of our imitation, he is in danger of being accused of revolutionary tendencies.18
Allen points out that Paul, unlike so many missionaries since his day, concentrated his work in the strategic population centers—centers of trade and political influence from which the gospel would quickly be carried to outlying areas. Moreover, he reached people from all levels of society, providing the church with a broad base. And above all, he established independent churches, not mission stations. He “did not gather congregations, he planted churches,” avoiding an “elaborate” and “foreign system of church organization.”19 In other areas as well, missiologists have seen Paul’s methods as particularly applicable for today. J. Christy Wilson, in his book Today’s Tentmakers, argues that missionaries should consider the advantages of going abroad with secular careers, supporting themselves while conducting evangelism and establishing churches even as Paul did. But Paul did more than merely become a tentmaker. He consciously pursued a course of “downward mobility,” according to Ben Witherington III. “Paul deliberately stepped down the social ladder in order to reach as wide an audience for the gospel as possible.”20
Paul also serves as a model for courage and commitment—especially for those confronting seemingly insurmountable obstacles in Christian ministry. He endured imprisonments and floggings and persecution and hardships of every description:
Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. (2 Cor. 11:25–28 NIV)
There were emotional scars as well—rejection not only from Jewish leaders but also from followers of Jesus. And he confronted interpersonal conflicts, as in the dispute with Barnabas over the worthiness of John Mark as a missionary companion. The sharp disagreement that ensued resulted in a split between Paul and Barnabas, at the same time launching an additional missionary team: Barnabas went out with his nephew, John Mark; and Paul went with Silas. Dealing with cultural and religious traditions also stirred conflict. Eating meat offered to idols and the rite of circumcision were matters Paul faced forthrightly. In doing so, he established a precedent of liberty rather than law in contextualizing the gospel that set a standard for all future generations. Indeed, it is difficult to overemphasize the significance of the apostle Paul in laying a pattern for effectively reaching cross-culturally to those who have never heard the gospel.
Yet some would insist that Paul should not be viewed as a model of success. Michael Duncan, in an article entitled “The Other Side of Paul,” emphasizes the failures in ministry that Paul endured: “It would almost seem as though Paul’s early years produced little fruit…. He had an incredible ministry, yes: but we must not read the current heresy of triumphalism back into his life.” In Paul’s life and ministry, Duncan has derived a theology of failure: “Paul’s ministry grew out of the soil of wilderness years, painful theological debate, ruptured friendships, spoiled church growth, numerous hardships and dubious project success.” But despite the setbacks, “Paul could look back on all the failure, pain and hardships and still conclude that he had been running in the grandest run of all.”21
But more than a “theology of failure,” Paul set forth a theology of mission. Mission is “the mother of theology” was the bold assertion of Martin Kahler, writing in 1908. Theology in the infant church was not a luxury but a necessity. This is profoundly demonstrated in the writings of Paul. According to David Bosch, “the missionary dimension of Paul’s theology has not always been recognized. For many years he was primarily regarded as the creator of a dogmatic system…. It is today widely acknowledged that Paul was the first Christian theologian precisely because he was the first Christian missionary.”22
The succeeding generations of missionaries carried on Paul’s legacy—both the message and the methods. From Eusebius and the Didache there are accounts of itinerant missionaries in the second century who followed the Pauline example. Origen, in the third century, made similar observations: “Some of them have made it their business to itinerate, not only through cities, but even villages and country houses, that they might make converts to God.”23
In life and death Paul set the stage for the next two millennia of missions. Like many of the Christian evangelists who followed him, he met a violent end. According to tradition, he was martyred along with Peter and many other Christians during the bloodthirsty persecution under Emperor Nero in A.D. 64. Even in the example he set in death, Paul inspired future generations not to count their lives dear to themselves, for if they suffered they would also reign with Christ.
The unbending faith of the Christians during the first centuries of the church stood out as a shining example to the pagan world. How could anyone stand unflinching in the face of death and claim the crucified Jesus to be God, if the story was a myth? Such absolute trust in an unseen God was inexplicable to the pagan mind. What was the source of such courage? Many people began their journey of faith asking those very questions.
One of the first widely publicized martyr stories in the post-apostolic era was that of Polycarp, the much-loved bishop of Smyrna. Like all ancient figures, his story is dimmed by the centuries that separate his time from ours, and the most recent scholarly research of his life leaves the reader with more questions than answers. The traditional account is familiar. “He was a venerable figure,” writes F. F. Bruce, “forming the last link with those who had seen Christ in the flesh, for he had sat at the feet of John, the beloved disciple.”24 How or when he became a Christian is unknown, but by the early second century he had a thriving ministry in Smyrna. “Slaves, local aristocrats and … members of the Proconsul’s staff were counted among his tightly knit and well-organized congregation,” according to W. H. C. Frend.25
So forceful was his ministry against paganism that he was denounced throughout all Asia Minor as the “atheist”—“the teacher of Asia, the destroyer of our gods.”26 In the eyes of the pagans he was glorifying a dead man, and his stirring sermons on the teachings and miracles of Jesus, of which he had been told firsthand by John, were particularly upsetting. His writings too were a source of irritation. The only extant document written by him is a letter to the Philippian church, a letter that shows Christology as the pivotal point of his message. “Of Christ it speaks in high terms as the Lord, who sits at the right hand of God to whom everything in heaven and earth is subject.”27
But was Polycarp even a disciple of the apostle John? In Polycarp and John, Frederick Weidmann reviews the ancient literature and provides an English text of Coptic literary fragments on Polycarp that had not previously been available. He points out that Polycarp’s writing more closely parallels Paul’s than John’s, and that the references to his learning at the feet of John may refer to a John other than the apostle.28 Certainly, he revered the apostles, especially Paul, as is evident in his letter to the Philippians: “I write these things, brethren, not in arrogance, but because you have requested me. For neither I, nor any other like me, can attain the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who was among you … and firmly taught the word of truth.”29
But despite such discrepancies, the sources consistently show Polycarp as a man who was deeply devoted not only to preserving the true faith passed down by the apostles but also to spreading that faith as the apostles had. Indeed, like so many “theologians” of this era, Polycarp was an evangelist and missionary who conveyed a deep sense of urgency in his interaction with the pagan culture around him. He was known in Smyrna as a teacher who could be found sitting in his special spot with believers and unbelievers, listening and debating. But he did not confine his ministry to one geographical area. He journeyed to Rome as an old man, and during that visit, according to Irenaeus, he “won many of the Gnostic heretics over to the Christian Church.”30
For some fifty years Polycarp wielded powerful influence in his position as bishop. Yet in the words of Elliott Wright, “He was the gentlest … of men … a case study in humility.”31 He was remembered as a man of prayer—a man who, according to one ancient source, “prayed constantly night and day”—prayer that apparently did not interfere with his daylight hours devoted to teaching and his nights to studying the Scripture.32
In approximately A.D. 156 anti-Christian persecution broke out in the province of Asia. Civil authorities, for reasons not fully clear, decided to kill certain Christians. Realizing that he was a target, Polycarp, with the help of local believers, went into hiding. But after torturing a servant, as one account relates, the soldiers discovered Polycarp in a hayloft and took him into custody.
Polycarp being burned at the stake in Smyrna.
Execution was not what the authorities wanted, however. After all, Polycarp was a very old man, and what could be gained by putting him to death? What they really wanted was a denial of his faith. What a victory that would be for paganism and what a blow to the “cult” of Jesus. “Why, what harm is there in saying, ‘Caesar is Lord’ and offering incense and saving yourself,” the officials pleaded after they had taken him into custody. “Have respect for your age,” the proconsul begged; “swear by the divinity of Caesar; repent and say, ‘Away with the atheists.’… Take the oath, and I will let you go.” Polycarp stood firm, and then uttered the words that will forever be associated with his name: “For eighty-six years I have been his servant, and he has never done me wrong: how can I blaspheme my king who saved me?”33
The authorities carried out their threat, and Polycarp was burned at the stake. But the end result was a victory for the Christians. Many nonbelievers were horrified by the spectacle of burning at the stake this revered man, by some accounts 86, by other accounts 104 years old. His death served as a witness to believers and nonbelievers alike to the suffering of Christ and to the courageous commitment of Christ’s followers.
The cessation of persecution in Asia Minor following the death of Polycarp did not apply to the whole Roman Empire. Persecution continued elsewhere, and during the early years of the third century it became widespread and well-coordinated, especially in North Africa where Perpetua and her slave girl Felicitas were executed. Before this period of intense persecution, however, there were isolated instances that were highly publicized—one in Rome just one decade following the death of Polycarp. This time it was Justin, who since his death has been referred to as Justin Martyr.
Schooled in the philosophy of Plato, Justin was converted to Christianity as a young man and soon became one of the faith’s ablest defenders. He was a forceful writer who intelligently presented Christianity to his pagan readers and openly denounced the persecution of his fellow-believers. In Rome he gave instruction to believers and inquirers in private homes, and it was this crime more than any other, apparently, that led to his martyrdom. After a trial, the death sentence was pronounced by the judge, and Justin, along with five other men and one woman, was beheaded.
Some decades later, under the rule of Emperor Septimus Severus, the first widespread, intense persecution of Christians occurred. In 202 he issued an edict that forbade conversion to either Christianity or Judaism. The emperor himself worshiped Serapis, an Egyptian god of the dead, and he feared Christianity was a threat to his own religion. Although the edict was aimed mainly at prospective converts, its consequences were felt by new believers as well as mature leaders in the church.
The emperor’s persecution was most bitterly felt in Carthage. Here in this great Roman city of North Africa, the growth of Christianity was alarming officials, and the emperor’s edict extended to anyone “teaching or making converts.”34Among the Christians of Carthage was Saturus, a deacon who conducted catechism classes for a group of converts. Vibia Perpetua, a twenty-two-year-old mother of an infant son and her personal slave Felicitas (who was eight months pregnant) had joined the class and were among those affected by the emperor’s edict. Nothing is known of Perpetua’s husband, but historians have speculated that either he was dead or he had abandoned her because of her newfound faith. The others condemned to die were Saturus, their teacher, and three other men.
Perpetua’s plight has been preserved in a third-century document, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, believed to be based on diaries and records of Perpetua and Saturus. “Some part of the story may be legendary,” notes Elliott Wright, “but compared with most hagiography of third-century martyrs the account is filled with convincing human touches.”35 In this account, Perpetua tells of the distress and humiliation that her father, a respected nobleman, endured when he was informed that his only daughter had been arrested and imprisoned as a common criminal. He came immediately and pleaded with her to renounce this new faith about which she had been learning. When she refused, he became so incensed that he threatened to beat her, but she remained unmoved.
Perpetua’s stolid demeanor, however, was soon broken. What her adamant father could not accomplish, her helpless infant could. She was “racked with anxiety,” almost to the breaking point, when two Christians managed to have her baby brought to the prison. “I nursed my baby, who was faint from hunger. In my anxiety I spoke to my mother about the child, I tried to comfort my brother, and I gave the child in their charge. I was in pain because I saw them suffering out of pity for me. These were the trials I had to endure for many days. Then I got permission for my baby to stay with me in prison. At once I recovered my health, relieved as I was of my worry and anxiety over the child.”36
As the time of her execution approached, the family crisis became more acute. Her father came to the prison, and again he pleaded with her to put family considerations above her creed: “Do not cut us off entirely; for not one of us will ever hold up his head again if anything happens to you.” But the stoical young woman would not bend: “This will be done on the scaffold which God has willed; for I know that we have not been placed in our own power but in God’s.”37 The next day when her father heard the news that she was to be thrown into the arena with wild beasts, he sought to rescue her. Though it was a heroic act of compassion, authorities ordered that the aged man be beaten. It was a pathetic sight. “I grieved for my father’s plight,” wrote Perpetua, “as if I had been struck myself.”38
Perpetua’s father was persistent. Again he returned to the prison, laying the ultimate burden of guilt on her. “Then the father laid her child upon her neck, and he … said: ‘Be merciful to us, daughter, and live with us!’” Her response is impossible to comprehend apart from her unbending faith that would testify to the reality of the Christian faith in a pagan world. An account written in the thirteenth century, drawn from early sources, describes her words and actions in blunt terms: “But she threw the child aside, and repulsed her parents, saying: ‘Begone from me, enemies of God, for I know you not!’”39
Once the so-called trial was over, the fate of the prisoners was sealed and the remaining days before the execution were spent in personal reflection, “more concerned about their worthiness, their loyalty to Christ,” according to Wright, “than about the suffering ahead of them.”40 They met for prayer, shared their last meal—their agape love feast—and witnessed their faith to the crowd outside.
On the day of the execution the prisoners were brought to the arena where, according to Roman custom, the men were taken first to be tortured for the entertainment of the crowd before their execution. Saturus stopped at the gate for one last word of testimony with Pudens, the prison governor, who later turned to Christ and became a martyr himself. The men were then sent into the arena with a bear, a leopard, and a wild boar. Saturus was so mangled and bloody after the ordeal that spectators ridiculed him, shouting, “He is well-baptized!” Perpetua and Felicitas (who had given birth to her baby in prison) were stripped and sent into the arena to face a “mad heifer.” The gory torture soon became too much for the crowd, and the people began shouting, “Enough!”41
When this preliminary exhibition was ended and the young women were brought to the executioner, Perpetua called out to some grieving Christian friends, “Give out the Word to the brothers and sisters; stand fast in the faith, love one another, and don’t let our suffering become a stumbling block to you.”42 She was then taken to the gladiator to be beheaded. Whether due to hesitancy or lack of skill, his first blow was not sufficient. Perpetua cried out in pain, took the gladiator’s trembling hand and directed the sword to her throat, and it was over.
After this wave of persecution there followed fifty years of relative peace during which the church grew steadily. Many people who may themselves have never been able to pass such a test of faith were, nevertheless, attracted by the example of Perpetua and her comrades to a faith that demonstrated such serenity and courage.
Following the much-publicized conversion of Emperor Constantine in 312, the Roman Empire became nominally Christianized, and the vibrant testimony of the Christians seemed to decline. No longer did they suffer for their faith, for it was in vogue to be a Christian, and as a result, there was a weakening in spiritual fervor. Martyrdom from official persecution had become a terror of the past. The church and the state became closely allied, and Christianity was being used more and more as a means of fostering imperial expansion. Missionaries were viewed in a political light in the hope that their evangelistic efforts could bring outlying areas within the scope of Roman control.
Ulfilas was one such missionary. Though he himself was motivated by his desire to spread the gospel, in the eyes of Roman policy, his mission was well-suited to territorial expansion. Ulfilas was one of the greatest cross-cultural missionaries of the early church. His ministry was to the Goths, a barbarian tribe outside the Roman Empire living in the area of present-day Romania.
Born in 311, Ufilas was raised in the pagan environment of the Goths. His mother is believed to have been Gothic and his father a Cappadocian Christian who was taken captive by Gothic raiders. When he was in his early twenties, Ulfilas was sent to Constantinople for diplomatic service. Here he spent several years and came under the influence of Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who taught him the Scriptures in Greek and Latin. Under Eusebius he served as a “reader,” ministering possibly to Gothic soldiers in the Roman army.
Eusebius, like most Byzantine bishops of his day, was Arian, or at least Semi-Arian, and this heretical teaching was passed on to Ulfilas. Arius, a contemporary of Ulfilas, was a popular and persuasive Christian preacher who is most remembered for his theological claims relating to the divinity of Christ. From Scripture passages that speak of Christ as “begotten of the Father” and the “first-born of all creation” he concluded that, though Christ was sinless and unchangeable and the Savior of mankind, he was essentially different from the Father and was therefore not God. Although this doctrine was overruled at the Council of Nicaea, many of the churchmen, particularly in the eastern portion of the empire, continued to hold the view—Ulfilas being one. But according to Latourette, “It was a mild form of Arianism which he professed.”43
At the age of thirty, after spending nearly ten years in Constantinople, Ulfilas was consecrated Bishop to the Goths—those living north of the Danube outside the borders of the empire. His assignment was to evangelize the barbarians—“wild and undisciplined,” a “rude and crude sort, with a relatively low standard of living, dwelling often in ‘wagons’ because they had no fixed abodes.”44 To such “simple people,” Stephen Neill suggests, Arianism “may have presented itself as a rather attractive simplification, since it set them free from the knotty controversies about the nature and person of Christ, to follow him as a leader and to concentrate on the already sufficiently difficult task of learning to live a sober, righteous, and godly life.”45
For forty years Ulfilas conducted evangelistic work among the Goths, a work that was highly successful, though hampered by persecution. In 348 fierce opposition from a Gothic chieftain (who believed Ulfilas was seeking to bring the Goths under Roman domination) almost decimated the entire mission enterprise. Ulfilas, with the permission of the Arian Emperor Constantius, moved his Gothic Christian community across the Danube into safer Roman territory. Later some of these Christians returned to their people to serve as missionaries themselves.
The most enduring labor of love that Ulfilas bestowed on the Goths was his translation of the Bible into their native tongue, an unwritten language for which he had to devise an alphabet. This was “probably the first or second instance,” according to Latourette, “of what has since happened for hundreds of tongues—their reduction to writing by Christian missionaries and the translation into them by that medium of a part or all of the Scriptures.”46 Ulfilas was scrupulously accurate in rendering an almost word-for-word translation from the Greek without losing the Gothic idiom, and the Goths and Vandals alike carried it with them as they moved from place to place in Europe.
Though Ulfilas’s translation was a monumental contribution to missions of the early centuries, even this area of his ministry has come under fire. He purposely omitted the books of Samuel and Kings from his translation because, in the words of an early church historian, “They are merely an account of military exploits, and the Gothic tribes were particularly devoted to war. They were in more need of checks on their warlike natures than spurs to urge them on to acts of war.”47
Ulfilas died at the age of seventy while on a mission to Constantinople for the Gothic king. The longtime military rivalry between the Goths and the Roman Empire continued after his death. There were devastating attacks by the Visigoths against the empire, and the plunder continued for decades, climaxing on the night of August 24, 410, when Alaric and his army stormed Rome. But despite the military campaigns, the gospel continued to be preached to the Goths by Ulfilas’s faithful successors. They accompanied the wandering Gothic tribesmen to the battlefield and wherever else their caravans took them, prompting a sarcastic comment from the anti-Arian Ambrose of Milan: “Those who had formerly used wagons for dwellings, now use a wagon for a church.” But sarcasm aside, that “caustic comment,” writes V. Raymond Edman, “becomes a compliment for the men of faith who, like Paul, were ‘all things to all men, that they might by all means save some.’ Their doctrine, perhaps, was defective; their hearts were not. They sought service, not security; comradeship in Christ, not a cathedral; discipleship, not domination.”48
Shrouded in legend and glorified by sainthood, Patrick, Ireland’s great fifth-century missionary is one of the most misrepresented figures in church history. Popular opinion notwithstanding, Patrick was neither a Roman Catholic nor an Irishman, and his promotion to sainthood was bestowed at the Council of Whitby some two centuries after his death, most likely as an incentive for bringing the Celtic church under Roman Catholic domination.
Yet today he has become a man for all seasons. David Plotz sums up his prestige and popularity:
The scarcity of facts about St. Patrick’s life has made him a dress-up doll: Anyone can create his own St. Patrick. Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants, who have long feuded over him, each have built a St. Patrick in their own image. Catholics cherish Paddy as the father of Catholic Ireland. They say that Patrick was consecrated as a bishop and that the pope himself sent him to convert the heathen Irish…. Ireland’s Protestant minority, by contrast, denies that Patrick was a bishop or that he was sent by Rome. They depict him as anti-Roman Catholic and credit him with inventing a distinctly Celtic church, with its own homegrown symbols and practices…. Evangelical Protestants claim him as one of their own. After all, he read his Bible, and his faith came to him in visions…. Utah newspapers emphasize that Patrick was a missionary sent overseas to convert the ungodly, an image that resonates in Mormon country. New Age Christians revere Patrick as a virtual patron saint…. Patrick has even been enlisted in the gay rights cause…. He was a proto-feminist who valued women in an age when the church ignored them…. Now television has invented yet another Patrick.49
Because the birth date is not precisely known and scholars proffer such widely divergent death dates, some have speculated that there were actually two Patricks, Patrick and Old Patrick, the former dying in 461, and the latter in 493. Perhaps so. But one of these Patricks left behind autobiographical writings, and whether he died old or young, his legacy has loomed large over the Christian church and the history of Western civilization.50
Patrick was born into a Christian family in the Roman province of Britain around A.D. 389. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest in the Celtic church. (During the period before Roman domination, most clergy were married.) Little is known of his early childhood, but when he was in his mid-teens, his town near the west coast of Britain was invaded by a band of Irish plunderers, and many of the young boys, including Patrick, were carried away to be sold as slaves. Patrick was sold to a farmer of Slemish, where for the next six years he herded swine.
Although he had been raised in a Christian home, Patrick testifies that he “did not know the true God” at the time of his captivity. During those years, however, he began reflecting on his spiritual condition, and his life changed: “The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelief, that, late as it was, I might remember my faults and turn to the Lord my God with all my heart; and He had regard to my low estate, and pitied my youth and ignorance, and kept guard over me even before I knew Him, and before I attained wisdom to distinguish good from evil; and He strengthened and comforted me as a father does his son.”51
From that time on, writes F. F. Bruce, “Patrick’s life was marked by intense and persistent prayer, and from time to time he was conscious of … divine response to his prayers.” This sense of God’s leading prompted him to escape to a seaport and make his way back to his homeland. “Sure enough he found the ship of which the inner voice had forewarned him.”52 As a free man, Patrick went to an island off the coast of the French Riviera, where he found refuge in a monastery.
He later returned to his home, and it was there, he relates in his Confession, that God called him “in the depth of the night.” It was his Macedonian call: “I saw a man named Victoricus, coming as if from Ireland, with innumerable letters; and he gave me one of these, and … while I was reading out the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voice of those who were beside the wood of Focluth, near the western sea; and this is what they called out: ‘Please, holy boy, come and walk among us again.’ Their cry pierced to my very heart, and I could read no more; and so I awoke.”53
Following this call, Patrick trained for ministry at the church of Auxerre in Gaul. But there were further delays. Even after his ordination as a deacon, his superiors found him unsuited for mission work in Ireland. Palladius was chosen to go instead. But he died less than a year after he arrived, and that opened the way for Patrick, then past age forty.
When he arrived in Ireland in 432, Patrick described the region as “the very ends of the earth.” He was beyond the borders of the empire. “Now he had gone out there to the very end, to the nations that are beyond the reach of everyone.”54 Truly this was an isolated area. Before he arrived, there were isolated enclaves of Christians, but the vast majority of the people were still entrenched in paganism. They worshipped the sun, moon, wind, water, fire, and rocks and believed in good and evil spirits of all kinds inhabiting the trees and hills. Magic and sacrifice—including human sacrifice—were part of the religious rites performed by the druids or priests.
It is not surprising that Patrick immediately encountered stiff opposition from the druids, but he accepted their social and political order, and eventually some of the powerful druid chieftains were converted to Christianity. It was not long before the druids as a class began to lose their power, but their magical beliefs endured through Patrick’s apparent compromise with paganism. He sought to diminish their prestige, according to F. F. Bruce, “not by the power of the Christian message, but by proving himself to be a mightier druid than the pagan druids,”55 a phenomena missiologists term “power encounter.” This type of superstitious magic continued for centuries in Celtic Christianity.
Soon after he arrived in Ireland, Patrick secured an important victory when he convinced King Loigaire to grant religious toleration for Christians. Not long afterward the king’s brother became a convert and granted Patrick land for a church in his domain. After establishing the church, Patrick moved on to new areas where the gospel had never been preached; and by 447, after fifteen years of preaching, much of Ireland had been evangelized. Though by this time Patrick was recognized all over Ireland as a great man of God, his popularity and prestige had not come easily. In his Confession, he recounted the perilous life he had lived. Twelve times he faced life-threatening situations, including a harrowing kidnapping and a two-week captivity. Nevertheless, he continued on for more than thirty years, motivated by fear as much as anything else: “I fear to lose the labor which I began [lest God] would note me as guilty.”56
TENDING flocks was my daily work, and I would pray constantly during the daylight hours. The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more—and faith grew and the Spirit was roused, so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and after dark nearly as many again, even while I remained in the woods or on the mountain. I would wake and pray before daybreak—through snow, frost, rain—nor was there any sluggishness in me (such as I experience nowadays) because then the Spirit within me was ardent.”
(Patrick: quoted in Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization [New York: Doubleday, 1995], 102)
Patrick’s methods of evangelism in some ways were similar to those of so many missionaries before and after him. His first step in evangelizing a new area was to win the political leader in hopes that his subjects would fall in behind him, and he was not averse to lavishing gifts on these local rulers. Unlike so many of the Roman Catholic missionaries, however, Patrick and the Celtic missionaries who followed him placed great emphasis on spiritual growth. Converts were given intensive training in the Scriptures and were encouraged to become involved in the ministry themselves. Women played a significant role in the Celtic churches, though as a single missionary Patrick was cautious in his relationship with them, “refusing the gifts of devout women lest any breath of scandal should arise.”57
Patrick’s success as a missionary evangelist was evident in the some two hundred churches he planted and the estimated 100,000 converts he baptized. Yet he was ever aware of his own shortcomings and credited God with all his accomplishments, concluding his Confession with this testimony: “But I pray those who believe and fear God, whosoever has deigned to scan or accept this document, composed in Ireland by Patrick the sinner, an unlearned man to be sure, that none should ever say that it was my ignorance that accomplished any small thing which I did or showed in accordance with God’s will; but judge ye, and let it be most truly believed, that it was the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die.”58
The evangelism of Ireland by Patrick and others resulted in one of the most extraordinary missionary accomplishments of the Middle Ages. It was a missionary venture conducted largely by the Celtic church as compared with the Western Roman church. “There was a passion for foreign missions in the impetuous eagerness of the Irish believers,” writes Edman, “a zeal not common in their day. Burning with love for Christ, fearing no peril, shunning no hardship, they went everywhere with the Gospel.”59 But though they spread out all over central Europe and as far north as Iceland, it was Britain, the homeland of the first great missionary to Ireland, that became their first “foreign” field. Although the church there would later become part of Roman Catholicism, it would be that land that centuries later would provide the impetus for Protestants in the global evangelism of the nineteenth century.
Celtic missionary monks, according to E. H. Broadbent, conducted “a purer form of missionary work” than that which went out from Rome:
Their method was to visit a country and, where it seemed suitable, fund a missionary village. In the centre they built a simple wooden church, around which were clustered school-rooms and huts for the monks, who were the builders, preachers, and teachers. Outside this circle, as required, dwellings were built for the students and their families, who gradually gathered around them. The whole was enclosed by a wall, but the colony often spread beyond the original enclosure. Groups of twelve monks would go out, each under the leadership of an abbot, to open up fresh fields for the Gospel. Those who remained taught in the school, and, as soon as they had sufficiently learned the language of the people among whom they were, translated and wrote out portions of Scripture, and also hymns, which they taught to their scholars. They were free to marry or to remain single; many remained single so that they might have greater liberty for the work. When some converts were made, the missionaries chose from among them small groups of young men who had ability, trained them specially in some handicraft and in languages, and taught them the Bible and how to explain it to others, so that they might be able to work among their own people. They delayed baptism until those professing faith had received a certain amount of instruction and had given some proof of steadfastness. They avoided attacking the religions of the people, counting it more profitable to preach the truth to them than to expose their errors. They accepted the Holy Scriptures as the source of faith and life and preached justification by faith. They did not take part in politics or appeal to the State for aid. All this work, in its origin and progress, though it had developed some features alien to New Testament teaching and Apostolic example, was independent of Rome and different in important respects from the Roman Catholic system.60
One of the most noted of these Celtic abbot-missionaries was Columba, who was born into a noble Irish family in 521 and brought up in the Christian faith. As a young man he entered a monastery, where he was ordained a deacon and later a priest. His evangelistic zeal was evident early in his ministry, and he is credited with establishing many churches and monasteries in Ireland, including those famous ones at Derry, Durrow, and Kells.
Columba’s switch from “home” missions to “foreign” missions at the age of forty-two was motivated “for the love of Christ,” according to his seventh-century biographer, but there were apparently other factors involved as well. His biographer concedes that he was excommunicated by the synod but claims that it was an unjust action over a trifling matter. However, Will Durant contends that his excommunication and departure for Britain were motivated by more than a trifling matter: “He was a fighter as well as a saint, ‘a man of powerful frame and mighty voice;’ his hot temper drew him into many quarrels, at last into war with King Diarmuid; a battle was fought in which, we are told, 5,000 men were killed; Columba, though victorious, fled from Ireland (563), resolved to convert as many souls as had fallen in that engagement at Cooldrevna.”61
Whatever Columba’s reasons were for embarking on the foreign field, the fact remains that he went, and through his years of service he made a significant impact on Britain. With twelve clerics to serve under him, he established his headquarters just off the coast of Scotland on Iona, a small bleak, barren, foggy island battered year-round by the pounding waves of the sea. Here he established a monastery that fostered the routine monastic life of prayer, fasting, meditation, Bible study, and manual labor; but in addition, and more importantly, it provided training for evangelists who were then sent out to preach the gospel, build churches, and establish more monasteries.
Columba himself was active in missionary work, and from Iona he traveled many times into Scotland proper. He is credited with having evangelized the Picts, who lived in the Scottish highlands. Through his witness, King Brude, who reigned over the northern Picts, was converted. Brude initially refused to allow Columba to enter the gates of his city, but Columba stayed outside and prayed until the king relented. As with Patrick more than a century earlier, Columba faced fierce opposition from the druids; but like his predecessor, he challenged them to match their trickery against the power of God. Columba’s theology, according to Latourette, “was as much a religion of miracles as of ethics and even more than of formal creeds.”62
As important as Columba’s missionary efforts were, many scholars today would disagree with his admiring seventh-century biographer that he and his trainees at Iona were alone responsible for the evangelism of England and Scotland. There were many other missionaries from Ireland and elsewhere doing evangelism in this area who were in no way associated with him. The issue of Columba’s importance relates in part to the importance of Roman Catholic missionaries, and many later historians have attempted to give the missionaries commissioned by the pope a greater share of the credit than may have been warranted. There was strong competition between Roman Catholic and Celtic missionaries, the Catholics eventually gaining the upper hand, but the initial work of evangelizing much of Britain and central Europe was accomplished by the energetic and faithful Celtic monks.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Roland. Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Chicago: Moody Press, 1956.
Bruce, F. F. The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to the Conversion of the English. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Frend, W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. Oxford: Blackwell, 1965.
MacMullen, Ramsay. Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100–400). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984.
O’Loughlin, Thomas. St. Patrick: The Man and His Works. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1999.
Rudnick, Milton L. Speaking the Gospel through the Ages: A History of Evangelism. St. Louis: Concordia, 1984.
Salisbury, Joyce E. Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Weidmann, Frederick W. Polycarp and John. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.
Wright, N. T. What Saint Paul Really Said. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.