CHRISTIAN INITIATION#

Tertullian’s treatise On Baptism and the Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus provide sufficiently similar accounts of Christian initiation to show the general pattern of how one became a part of the Christian community in the early third century. By that time the simple procedures recorded in the New Testament and early second-century sources had been elaborated considerably, but the basic pattern remained the same. Much of the elaboration represented the addition of actions designed to embody the doctrinal ideas associated with conversion.

The Apostolic Tradition required that candidates receive instruction for three years, but conceded that conduct—not length of time—was the decisive factor.

Regarding conduct, slaves were taught to please their master, married persons to be content with their spouse, and unmarried persons to avoid fornication. Prostitutes, sodomites, and magicians were not even considered for membership. Brothel keepers, actors in the pagan theater, charioteers, gladiators, officials who put on the public games, pagan priests, military officers, and magistrates had to cease from these professions or were rejected for baptism. Sculptors and painters must not make idols or else they too were rejected.

Educators, who had to teach the pagan literature of the time, would do better to cease but if they had no other craft were permitted to continue. Soldiers should not kill or swear the military oath, and a catechumen or believer who wanted to join the army was rejected. A man who had a concubine must marry her legally or was rejected, and a concubine must be faithful to the man with whom she had relations.

The intensive preparation for baptism began on the Thursday before Easter Sunday (the preferred time for baptism). The time was spent in fasting, prayer, confession of sin, attendance at Scripture reading and instruction, and receiving exorcism of demons. Early on Sunday morning the administrator prayed to God to bring the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit on the water. The candidates removed their clothing—the children, then men, and finally women were baptized separately. The candidates made a verbal renunciation of “the Devil, his pomp, and his angels”—a declaration of repentance—and were anointed with the oil of exorcism.

While the one being baptized stood in the water, the bishop or presbyter conducting the baptism laid a hand on the head of the person and asked in turn,

• “Do you believe in God the Father almighty?”

• “Do you believe in Christ Jesus the Son of God . . . ?”

• “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, and the resurrection of the flesh?”

To each question the one being baptized responded, “I believe,” and after each confession the administrator guided his head under the water (or, alternatively, if the hand on the head was not functional, the water may have been scooped over the head, as often is the practice in later Orthodox baptisms).

Quite notable in the sources is the association of a confession of faith with baptism. The triple immersion is first attested by Tertullian, but appears to have been the general custom and remains the practice in the Eastern Orthodox churches.

There followed the baptismal eucharist, which according to the Apostolic Tradition included also a cup of water, symbolizing the washing that had occurred, and a cup of milk and honey, symbolizing the food of infants and entrance into the Promised Land.

Other than in cases of the lack of sufficient water for immersion, an alternative action was allowed for persons on their sickbed and facing death. Cyprian defended “the divine abridgements” of pouring or sprinkling in place of washing. Not all agreed, however, that sickbed baptism made one a legitimate Christian.

The Apostolic Tradition is one of the early references to the baptism of little children. Tertullian is the earliest certain reference to the practice, and he advised against it, but a half century later in his church in Carthage, Cyprian gave strong advocacy to infant baptism, even of the newborn.

The Apostolic Tradition’s description of the ceremony of baptism shows that it was designed for those who had attained sufficient years to take an active part. The confession of faith was so integral to baptism that provision was made for the parents and or someone else in the family to speak for those unable to do so for themselves. Even the later liturgies show their origin in a time when baptism presupposed believers. The whole catechetical practice of the fourth and fifth centuries likewise presupposed persons of responsible age.

Tertullian alluded to cases of “necessity” as the occasion for bringing small children for baptism. It seems that the threat of imminent death was the probable situation in which infant and child baptism arose. Influential was John 3:5, the most cited baptismal text in the early church, understood as requiring baptism in order to enter heaven.

Burial inscriptions that give information on the time of baptism, and on the age at death of the deceased, show a close correlation in time between the baptism and the death, whatever the age of the person. These inscriptions would argue that infant baptism was not routine, but whenever death threatened (and the infant mortality rate was high in the ancient world, as it still is in some parts of the world today), the family wanted their child to depart this life having received the grace of baptism.

Christian art early developed a standard iconography for baptism, depicting the hand of the administrator on the head of the one being baptized. Literary sources such as the Apostolic Tradition show that this was the moment of the confession of faith.

In the early representations Jesus (or the candidate) is often shown smaller than the administrator. This may be an allusion to the idea of new birth, but the recipient was not shown as an infant and the relative sizes may again have resulted from artistic considerations.

CHRISTIAN ASSEMBLIES#

From the earliest days, the church had established the custom of meeting for communion and worship on the first day of the week, Sunday, to which Christians gave the name “Lord’s day,” in honor of Jesus’ resurrection. This name was consistently distinguished from the Sabbath day. Many Jewish Christians continued to observe the Sabbath (the seventh day) as a day of rest, in addition to meeting for the Lord’s supper on the first day of the week.

The Roman governor Pliny noted the custom of Christians meeting to worship Jesus Christ on a fixed day before sunrise, a practice necessary because Sunday was not a holiday before the time of Constantine.

They met again in the evening for a meal, perhaps the agape (love feast) described by Tertullian as consisting of prayer, holy conversation, and chanting praise, along with the common meal of fellowship at which the needy were also fed. Christian meetings primarily took place in the homes of more well-to-do members. By the third century Christians had begun to rent or purchase property for their own use, remodeling houses and by the end of the century constructing their own meeting halls.

The common name in the early church for the Lord’s supper or communion was “eucharist” (“thanksgiving”), calling attention to its principal aspect. It held a central place in each Sunday assembly. Other aspects associated with the eucharist were fellowship, remembrance, eschatological hope, and offering.

Both the recitation of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper and the invocation of the Holy Spirit might be included in the prayer that effected the consecration of the elements to a new meaning. Realist language about the presence of Jesus Christ was common, often with an anti-heretical thrust, emphasizing that the material elements were the means of spiritual blessings.

Ignatius complained of Docetists who abstained from the eucharist because they did not confess it to be the flesh of Jesus, “who suffered for our sins.” Irenaeus insisted that the eucharist supported the orthodox against the Gnostics, because the invocation of God added a heavenly to the earthly reality and so brought the hope of the resurrection to participants.

In the first two centuries Christian apologists like Justin Martyr noted the difference from pagan religions in the absence of temples, altars, images, and material sacrifices. In the third century, as part of an increasing distinction between the clergy and the laity, the language of priesthood began to be more regularly applied to Christian ministers (perhaps more comparatively by Origen but in a straightforward way by Cyprian).

The Christian assimilation to the environment in cultic terminology increased throughout the third century and became standard in the fourth century. By then, ministers were priests, church buildings were temples, communion tables were altars, and sacred art was common.

CHRISTIAN LIFE#

In addition to the meeting on the Lord’s day, the Didache provided for Christians to fast on Wednesday and Friday in contrast to the fasts by Jews (Pharisees) on Monday and Thursday. It further enjoined praying the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. Different sources reflect other practices for daily private prayer: at meals, three times a day, and at night (Clement of Alexandria) or five times a day and at night (Tertullian).

• The Apostolic Tradition instructed believers to begin the day by meeting together where teachers gave instruction in the Word and prayer was offered, or if there was no instruction on that day, to read the holy book and pray at home.

• “The Two Ways” in the Didache and Barnabas reflect the Jewish moral teaching adopted by early Christianity. The Ten Commandments were elaborated so that the prohibition of killing included abortion and abandoning young children, and the prohibition of adultery included fornication and homosexual practices.

• The Didache expanded its version of the “Way of Life” by adding the teachings of Jesus on non-retaliation and love of others (including enemies) found in the “Sermon on the Mount.”

• The Epistle to Diognetus and the Apology of Aristides give beautiful pictures of Christians living “in the world, but not of the world.” The practices mentioned include honesty in business, sexual purity, family solidarity, doing good to enemies, caring for the poor, obedience to the laws, and daily prayer.

Even allowing for a certain idealizing, there must have been some basis in reality for the appealing descriptions. The Christians’ manner of life and even more the Christians’ manner of dying (willing to accept martyrdom) proved a powerful factor in converting pagans to the faith.

Where Christian moral teaching coincided with the moral philosophy of the times, Christians claimed that their religion gave the motivation and spiritual power for even ordinary, uneducated people to live the life that philosophers felt only the few could attain. Failure by Christians to live according to the standards of the gospel could result in church discipline.

Sexual practices came under careful scrutiny of Christian moralists.

• Moderate moralists like Clement of Alexandria not only opposed fornication, adultery, and homosexuality, but also defended the goodness of marriage against the ascetic tendencies of the time. Like many other Christian writers, he limited the purpose of intercourse in marriage to the producing of children, a view also shared by Stoic moralists of the early empire.

• Tertullian, in his Montanist period, regarded celibacy as better than marriage and advised against a second marriage, even in the case of the death of a spouse. In his treatise On Monogamy he connected marriage (only once) and monotheism (only one God).

Despite his sometimes negative characterizations of women, he nonetheless gave a very positive picture of Christian marriage: the two becoming one in flesh and spirit, sharing one hope, one desire, a common discipline of life and service—together praying, singing, fasting, going to church, and doing good works.

Charity for the poor and the underprivileged was a characteristic of early Christianity. The strong sense of brotherhood brought a corresponding sense of obligation to alleviate the physical needs of other believers. Benevolence toward others was seen as an imitation of God’s philanthropy for human beings.

• Already in the early second century Ignatius had to caution against excesses in the use of church funds to purchase the freedom of slaves.

• Justin and Tertullian report that the contributions collected in the assemblies were used to provide for the sick, elderly, widows, orphans, prisoners, travelers, and burial of the poor.

• Clement of Alexandria counseled that it was better to do good to the unworthy than, by guarding against the unworthy, to fail to do good to the worthy.

Christians were serving in the military by the end of the second century, at the latest, but many leaders in Christian thought—such as Tertullian, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Lactantius—viewed Christian involvement in war negatively and either denied that Christians should be in the army or advised those who were soldiers not to participate in the religious observances of the Roman army and not to kill (much of the army’s time was spent in keeping order and building roads).

CHRISTIAN WOMEN#

The lives of women may not be covered extensively in the surviving literature of the early church, but women certainly were prominent in its story. The names of only a few are known, but the numbers of women believers were greater than those of male believers.

Women are mentioned principally in their traditional roles of wives and mothers, where they were expected to be loving and faithful to their husbands, to manage their households in an orderly manner, and to educate their children in the fear of God.

On the other hand, a celibate lifestyle was adopted by many—both virgins who never married and widows who did not remarry. The ascetic life was initially lived individually and privately in one’s own household, but by the third century there were small communities of virgins living together.

Some of the most heroic martyrs of the early church were women, such as Blandina at Lyons and Perpetua at Carthage. Women were also involved in the missionary outreach of the gospel, accompanying apostles and evangelists on their travels and working in the women’s quarters of households to which men did not have access.

The apocryphal Acts of Paul gave prominent notice to Thecla, who became an object of cult as a saint in Asia Minor.

Despite the feeling of some that women were untrustworthy teachers, they were often engaged in private teaching.

Widows and virgins were recognized as having special serving roles in congregations from early times. Certainly by the third century, if not earlier, there were women appointed with the title deaconesses. Only in Montanism and some Gnostic sects did women engage in public preaching and presiding at liturgical functions. Tertullian, for one, objected to women performing baptism, but other sources indicate their assisting at the baptism of women. New Testament strictures against women doing public teaching in church, and against women filling the position of elders, seem to have been uniformly observed in the mainstream of the church.

CHRISTIAN HOPE#

Two patterns of eschatological hope emerged early in Christianity.

Chiliastic Eschatology#

From a certain strand of apocalyptic Judaism there developed a chiliastic eschatology. According to this view, all the deceased wait in the Hadean world for the coming of the earthly, temporary messianic kingdom, with the righteous and the unrighteous separated in different compartments.

Chiliasm was an integral part of the polemic against Marcion and the Gnostics in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Irenaeus integrated the millennial kingdom into his whole theology by interpreting the millennium as a time in which resurrected bodies are accustomed to spiritual existence and prepared for the heavenly vision of God. Tertullian posited that the martyrs were an exception and did not have to wait in Hades for the resurrection as others did, but went directly to the presence of Jesus Christ. Other champions of chiliasm in early Christianity were Papias, Victorinus, and Lactantius.

Non-chiliastic Eschatology#

An alternative, non-chiliastic, pattern of eschatology understood the future kingdom of God and Christ as heavenly, not earthly. According to this view, also derived from Jewish sources, the righteous dead are already in the kingdom of heaven (i.e., paradise) and there is no trace of an interim earthly kingdom.

In place of the ideas of the abode of the dead in Hades and an earthly millennium, this view embraced the belief in an intermediate stay by the righteous in the heavenly realm in the presence of Christ. Often there was expressed the conviction that Christ at his resurrection delivered the righteous dead of the Old Testament from Hades and took them with him to the intermediate heavenly realm.

This non-chiliastic form of the Christian hope interpreted Revelation 20:3–4 as referring

1. to the binding of Satan by the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus;

2. the coming to life of those beheaded for the sake of Jesus as the resurrection of their souls at death in order to enter paradise with Christ;

3. the thousand years as symbolic of this present interim rule of the faithful with Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem. At the second coming there will occur the resurrection of bodies and final judgment.

This non-chiliastic current of eschatological thought was widely pervasive in early Christianity and is represented in such writers as Hermas, Polycarp, the authors of the Epistle to Diognetus, Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Peter, Martyrdom of Polycarp, and Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian.

There is no evidence of Christian use of separate burial grounds in the early period. About 200 the church in Rome acquired what became the nucleus of the catacomb of Callistus, but the shared use of the same tombs by pagans and Christians continued to be common into the fourth century. Christians followed the usual burial practices of society (these will be examined in the next chapter in connection with the development of the cult of the saints). They sometimes gave expression to their faith and hope by inscriptions, symbolic images, and paintings at their burial places.

Present in all forms of the orthodox eschatological hope was belief in the bodily resurrection, in contrast to Gnostic views of the resurrection of the soul only. Both Gnostic and orthodox non-chiliasts believed the righteous go immediately after death into the presence of God in heaven, but the non-orthodox did not link this belief with a further expectation of a resurrection of the body. Origen emphasized the “spiritual body,” but most (perhaps in direct opposition to Gnosticism) emphasized a resurrection of the “flesh.”

Apart from Origen, who entertained the possibility of universal salvation after a period of purification and education of souls in the afterlife, those who spoke to the subject understood an ultimate division of humanity in heaven or hell. The expectation of eternal reward sustained Christian endurance in the face of persecution and other hardships.