Cursed are the men who turned the most exciting stories and interesting facts of all time–for those are what history is–into dry, boring academia. ~Paul Pavao (that’s me!)
My forté is early church history, before the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. I’ve spent almost twenty years reading the writings from that period. I also have a somewhat solid knowledge of Christian history since the Reformation era (and a little earlier).
Now, however, I’m working on a new web site on church history, so I have to brush up on that missing thousand years of history known as The Dark Ages.
I read something in a history book I want to tell you about.
(Note: the following quotes are from Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, vol. III, p. 432-435, most cheaply obtained from Christian Book Distributors. It’s available online at http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/About.htm and http://www.bible.ca/history/philip-schaff/.)
Evidence for the Fall of the Church in the Nicene Period
I’ve always maintained that the church completely fell after the Council of Nicea (actually, after the Edict of Milan just over a decade earlier). My proof for that is the drastic difference between the history written by Eusebius in A.D. 323 and that of Socrates Scholasticus in A.D. 375. One is about holy living, the growth of the church, theology, and overcoming persecution. The other is about corruption, violence, and political intrigue.
Today, I found as clear a statement as any in a history book that Constantine’s reign was the destruction of the church’s power.
In the first three centuries the veneration of the martyrs in general restricted itself to the thankful remembrance of their virtues and the celebration of the day of their death as the day of their heavenly birth.
Okay, I knew that. The Pre-Nicene church honored the martyrs, encouraged martyrdom, and the day of a martyr’s death was celebrated each year as their birthday.
But in the Nicene age it advanced to a formal invocation of the saints as our patrons and intercessors . . . and degenerated into a form of refined polytheism and idolatry.
In the Nicene age!!!
That would be the early 4th century. The Council of Nicea (or Nicaea) was in A.D. 325.
I didn’t know that started so early.
Augustine’s Role
The author, Philip Schaff, is right. It did start that early. Even Augustine, who was converted in the A.D. 390’s, was forced to defend the practice:
But here rises the inevitable question: How can departed saints hear at once the prayers of so many Christians on earth, unless they either partake of divine omnipresence or divine omniscience? . . . Augustine felt this difficulty, and concedes his inability to solve it. He leaves it undecided . . .
He leaves it undecided, but he defended the practice! He even defended building altars with martyrs’ names on them! He simply argued that Christians built altars to offer [spiritual] sacrifices with these departed saints, not to them.
Harumph!, I thought.
So did the author:
But in spite of all these distinctions and cautions, which must be expected from a man like Augustine . . . we cannot but see in the martyr-worship, as it was actually practiced, a new form of the hero-worship of the pagans.
Okay, the Nicene Church began to pray to dead saints and even build altars to them. That’s bad, but here’s . . .
. . . The Real Evidence of the Fall
For the great mass of the Christian people came, in fact, fresh from polytheism, without thorough conversion . . .
Conversion that is not thorough is not conversion at all.
Jesus did not say, “Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me is not thoroughly converted.” He said, “Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
When Constantine became a Christian–in fact, as soon as his fondness for the Christian religion became clear, since he was not baptized until on his deathbed in A.D. 337–when this happened, the church was no longer the gathering of those willing to lose their lives for Christ. It became instead the preferred religion and set of religious beliefs for an empire.
Those two things are not the same. They’re not even comparable.
God is with the one. He will have nothing to do with the other.
In fact, I highly suspect he hates the other.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they are trouble to me; I am tired of bearing them. When you spread your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; yes, when you make many prayers, I will not listen. (Isaiah 1:14-15)
Interesting Facts
Remember that quote at the top of this post? The one about the most exciting stories and interesting facts?
Here’s some interesting facts. The latest gossip, since this gossip is about 1700 years late
.
<whisper>Did you hear that the emperor Julian “the Apostate” (reigned A.D. 355-363) said that he was glad the Christians had decided to reintroduce polytheism [by the worship of the saints], but with all their relics, he couldn’t participate due to the “stench of graves and dead men’s bones.”
Ouch!
Even the somewhat Gnostic Manichaeans, later guilty of polytheism themselves, reproached the Christians for this martyr-worship. “Ye have changed the idols into martyrs, whom ye worship with the like prayers, and ye appease the shades of the dead with wine and flesh.”
This was the 4th century, just a hundred years after this sort of thing would have been unthinkable!
I want to tell you more about how the church could have fallen into this sort of state. Why’d they let it happen? But that will have to wait until next post. (Which I trust will be quicker than this one was!)
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