"What answer shall you make to the judge, you who dress walls, but will not clothe a man; who spruce up horses, and overlook an unfashionable brother; who leave grain to rot, but will not feed the starving; who bury your money and despise the oppressed?" It was pastor and theologian Basil of Caesarea who addressed this difficult question to the wealthy members of his congregation in the mid-fourth century. Basil had already put his money where his mouth was when he cashed in his considerable inheritance and built a hospital for the poor and a clinic for lepers. Now he was calling his fellow Christians to do the same.
Basil's example illustrates the radically countercultural commitments of the early Christians. They faced considerable social, economic, and political challenges, many of them very similar to the ones we face today. And they did their best to behave in ways consistent with their understanding of the gospel. Below are just a few examples of how the early church put its faith in action in the public realm.
The early Christians recognized the political implications of the faith.
The earliest Christian confession is recorded in Romans 10:9: "Jesus is Lord." Because we don't typically refer to anyone but Jesus as Lord, we usually understand this passage to be primarily religious in application. Jesus is the one we answer to in spiritual matters and who guides our moral conduct. Because Jesus is Lord, we don't serve other masters—like sin, the flesh, or the devil. But the first-century Roman context was different. In Rome, only Caesar was lord. And lest you forget, messages on billboards and graffiti on buildings were an ever-present reminder. Annually at tax time, the denizens of a city would make their way to the local temple, pay their tax, and proclaim "Caesar is lord." If they didn't make this declaration, they could be executed for treason. Christians knew this, and they took their chances.
Many annual Roman festivals were thinly veiled religious holidays dedicated to Roman gods or even the worship of the Caesar himself. Christians refused to participate in these festivals. This might be analogous in American culture to Christians refusing to celebrate on the Fourth of July or insisting on working on Memorial Day. They wanted to reserve their worship for Christ alone, but their conspicuous absence from these civic festivities marked them as bad citizens (at best) or traitors (at worst). Once they were identified as potential traitors, Christians were feared as a threat to the very fabric of Roman society. This was the primary reason many Christians were persecuted in the church's first few centuries. Despite the political consequences, these first Christians didn't shrink from their bold proclamation—"Jesus is Lord!"
The early Christians experienced ostracism and misunderstanding because of their religious language and practice.
Pliny the Younger was a governor in what is now known as Turkey from A.D. 111-113. In a famous letter to the emperor, Trajan, Pliny describes the worship of the early Christians in this way: "They were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath … not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food—but ordinary and innocent food." This order of worship sounds harmless. But it was these very practices, and the words they used to describe them, that earned the church serious social stigmas. The Christians who met together referred to each other as brothers and sisters, biblical terms for people who are now united in Christ. But this confused outsiders. Sometimes these brothers and sisters married each other, leading the Romans to believe Christians condoned incest. Furthermore, they worshiped Christ as a god, but they denied the existence of the Roman gods. This earned them the title of "atheists" from pagan neighbors, who regarded Jesus as merely a man. Finally, the food they ate together as brothers and sisters was indeed "ordinary and innocent." But, following Jesus' example, they talked about partaking of communion as eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. This was not seeker-sensitive language! The Romans thought the Christians were incestuous, atheist cannibals. This only fueled their suspicions that the Christians were traitors and menaces to Roman society.
The early Christians did many things we now rely upon the government to do.
What really led the Romans to fear Christians was not anything they did wrong but something important they did right. Welfare was not a value in the Roman Empire, but it was for Christians. Christians regularly and consistently cared for the poor, both Christian and non-Christian. One Roman emperor, Julian, noted that this care for the poor was one thing that made the Christian religion compelling. "Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead, and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase unbelief of the pagan gods? For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Christians support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us."
The early Christians were also pro-life, and this played out in their commitment to adopt unwanted children. A Roman child was not part of the family until he or she was accepted by the father. If he didn't want the child, it was discarded—put outside to be killed by starvation, weather, or wild animals. Christians regularly adopted these children and raised them as their own.
Additionally, the early Christians were committed to caring for the sick. A devastating plague decimated the population of the empire in the mid-second century. Estimates put the death toll at nearly five million. Remarkably, more Christians than pagans survived the epidemic. This is because Romans were often afraid to care for their sick; they feared catching the contagious disease themselves. So, like their unwanted children, they would leave their unwanted loved ones to die alone. Christians, by contrast, would care for their sick. They didn't fear sickness or death. And as a result of their care, many sick Christians survived the epidemic.
The early Christians didn't distinguish between theology and practice.
These first three hundred years, during which the church was so radically countercultural, were also crucial years for the development of Christian theology. It was during this time that theologians articulated what the Bible teaches about the two natures (divine and human) of Christ. They described the relationships between the persons of the Trinity and wrote the first book about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. But these activities were not undertaken by different groups. There wasn't a faction of "thinkers" on the one hand and "doers" on the other. And the church didn't engage in these behaviors because they were motivated by a political or social agenda. Rather, they believed their conduct was the direct application of the gospel.
For example, Basil of Caesarea, who helped articulate the nature of the Trinity, connected his beliefs about Jesus directly with care for the poor. God and Jesus share one nature. And humans are made in God's image. That means that regardless of ethnicity, class, or gender, we all stand before God as the human race. We are required to care for all children of God, whether they are Christians or not.
Care for orphans (and widows) was, of course, an ancient biblical commitment (James 1:27, for example).
As for the confidence Christians had in the face of persecution, the theologian Athanasius attributed this to faith in the Resurrection. Unlike pagan Romans, "All the disciples of Christ despise death," he wrote. "They take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead." Christians could care for the plagued and refuse to hail Caesar because they didn't fear death. This set them apart from their pagan neighbors, to be sure. And it motivated their conduct in the empire.
Conclusion
For the last 50 years or so, American Christians have been fighting for influence and input in American culture. In more recent years, we have lamented the declining impact Christianity appears to have on society at large. Churches strive to be culturally relevant in their worship and communication styles. We lobby for policies and legislation that will enforce biblical principles and values. For the first three hundred years or so, Christians approached these kinds of issues very differently. Of course we can't simply mimic the early church. There are many important differences between the world they lived in and ours. Christians couldn't expect to be represented in Congress by an elected official. Only citizens could depend on the state to protect their rights, and only a small percentage of the people who lived in the Roman Empire were full-fledged citizens. In other words, applying the example of the early church might be complicated. More to the point, the example of the early Christians can be uncomfortable. They were unflinching and uncompromising in their language and actions. But their perspectives and principles can be enormously helpful to us as we continue to learn how to live as "strangers in a strange land." Their example compels us to take a close look at our convictions and decide whether we are committed to bring our beliefs and behaviors in line and put our faith in action in a way that truly makes an impact.
Brandon O'Brien is an editor at large with Leadership Journal.
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