How the Early Church Responded to Social Problems

According to the sponsors of a recent forum held at Miami University, liberal leaders in the churches urge Christians “to empower minority people, end the war and racism,” and conservatives “urge Christians to seek inward peace and renewal.” Although this is neither a completely accurate nor a universally valid characterization, it is fair to say that in the last fifty years theological liberals have tended to stress social issues to the exclusion of the preaching of the Gospel to individuals, whereas theological conservatives have done the reverse.

To treat ethical pronouncements on social issues as a substitute for Christ’s redemptive message is a grave error—even from a pragmatic, sociological view. On the other hand, to avoid social issues is to retreat into a reactionary monasticism.

A survey of the responses of the early Christian Church to social issues may help us see the present dichotomy in a better perspective.

I. The Biblical Basis

Although the Old Testament is primarily concerned with Israel’s relationship to God, it also abounds with condemnations of social injustice and with exhortations to be concerned about those in less fortunate circumstances (e.g., Deut. 15:7).

Christ came to die for sinful men and to reconcile them to God. But he was also quite clearly concerned about the physical needs of the masses as he went about feeding the hungry and healing the sick. The criterion he set forth for the judgment of nations was the manner in which they would treat those who were strangers, naked, and imprisoned (Matt. 25:31–46).

Paul, in his earnest concern for the preaching of the Gospel, was at the same time occupied with the collection of funds to aid the poor Christians in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1–3; 2 Cor. 8). Christian benevolence was to be directed especially to believers, but also to all men (Gal. 6:10). According to Paul, all men and women were equal in Christ, where there can be neither (ouk eni negating not merely the fact but the possibility) “Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11; cf. Gal. 3:28).

The earliest Christians even after Pentecost were not instantaneously cleansed from their old prejudices. In Acts 6 we read of a dispute between the Hellenist and Hebraist Jewish Christians because of discrimination against the former group. Wealthy Christians showed gross insensitivity and carnality by appearing drunken at the Communion table while their poorer brethren went hungry (1 Cor. 11:20–22). James 2 describes in vivid fashion the partiality of a Christian church (sunagōgē, possibly “court”) toward a man who is dressed in magnificent garb at the same time that a man in shoddy clothing is treated rudely. James (5:1–6) excoriates the wealthy who have defrauded the poor. He further (2:15, 16) denounces the hypocrisy of some Christians: If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? (cf. 1 John 3:17, 18).

Despite its imperfections, the Christian Church had a dynamic message of salvation that touched the hearts of many in every station of life. Converts included: slaves such as Onesimus (cf. Paul’s letter to Philemon); Africans such as the Ethiopian treasurer of Candace of the Sudan (Acts 8:27) and Simeon Niger (“the Black,” Acts 13:1); women such as Lydia in Philippi (Acts 16:14 ff.); soldiers like the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10); and officials like the governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus—a man who had once filled the highest elective office in Rome, that of a consul (Acts 13:7; the Greek anthupatos stands for the Latin proconsul).

The most striking testimony to the success of Christianity in reaching all classes appears in the letter of Pliny the Younger, an official over Bithynia and Pontus in northwestern Turkey, to the Emperor Trajan early in the second century:

The question seems to me to be worthy of your consideration, especially in view of the number of persons endangered; for a great many individuals of every age and class, both men and women, are being brought to trial, and this is likely to continue. It is not only the towns, but villages and rural districts too which are infected through contact with this wretched cult.

Ii. The Early Church And Social Needs

Even a writer as unfriendly to Christianity as the historian Edward Gibbon acknowledges the importance of Christian benevolence in the triumph of Christendom. The early Christian writers were themselves aware of the transformation Christ caused in their attitudes toward their neighbors. In one of the earliest apologetic works preserved, Justin Martyr (d. 165) writes:

We used to value above all else money and possessions; now we bring together all that we have and share it with those who are in need (cf. Acts 4:34–37). Formerly, we hated and killed one another and, because of a difference in nationality or custom, we refused to admit strangers within our gates. Now since the coming of Christ, we all live in peace. We pray for our enemies and seek to convert those who hate us unjustly … [I Apology XIV].

Tertullian (160–220) said: “It is our care for the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another’ ” (Apology XXXIX).

Adolf Harnack lists in The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (reprinted by Harper, 1962), ten ways in which the early churches manifested their concern for mankind:

1. Alms in general. Even poor Christians were urged to give alms by stinting and fasting.

2. The support of teachers and officials.

3. The support of widows and orphans. According to Eusebius, the church in Rome in the third century supported 1,500 widows and persons in distress. This was one facet of Christianity that impressed even Julian the Apostate: “These godless Galileans,” he said, “feed not only their own poor but ours; our poor lack our care.”

4. The support of the sick, the infirm, the poor, and the disabled. Christians established hospitals in a number of cities.

5. Care for prisoners and for people languishing in the mines. Licinius, the last emperor before Constantine, passed a law directed at Christians to the effect that “no one was to show kindness to sufferers in prison by supplying them with food, and that no one was to show mercy to those who were starving in prison.”

6. Care of poor people requiring burial, and of the dead in general. Julian remarked, “This godlessness is mainly furthered by its philanthropy towards strangers and its careful attention to the bestowal of the dead.” Lactantius (c. 240–320) explained:

We cannot bear that the image and workmanship of God should be exposed as a prey to wild beasts and birds, but we restore it to the earth from which it was taken, and do this office of relatives even to the body of a person whom we do not know, since in their place humanity must step in [Institutes VI, 12].

7. Care for slaves. Slavery was a major institution of varied character in the ancient world. Slaves in the mines were barbarously treated. On the other hand, prisoners of war from Greece who became slaves were respected for their cultural superiority and were employed as teachers and secretaries. In Rome the slaves of the wealthy were better dressed and better fed than the poor, free citizens who lived off the doles of the emperor. Roman slaves could sometimes save up their own funds and buy their freedom after about seven years.

Unlike the Essenes and some Stoics, early Christians did not believe in the abolition of slavery. After Onesimus, the runaway slave, was converted, Paul sent him back to his Christian master Philemon with the confidence that Philemon would receive him back as a Christian brother. Early in the second century Ignatius wrote to Polycarp, advising: “Despise not slaves whether men or women. Yet let not these again be puffed up, but let them serve the more faithfully to the glory of God, that they may obtain a better freedom from God” [cf. 1 Cor. 7:21; 1 Tim. 6:2].

Slaves could become pastors. The Roman bishops Pius (140–54) and Callistus (217–22) were probably former slaves. To set a slave free was regarded as praiseworthy. Clement in his letter to the Corinthians (late first century), writes: “We know that many among ourselves have delivered themselves to bondage, that they might ransom others. Many have sold themselves to slavery, and receiving the price paid for themselves have fed others.”

8. Care for people visited by great calamities. In the reign of Maximin, an emperor who persecuted Christians, a great plague struck. According to Eusebius IX, 8:

Alone in the midst of this terrible calamity they [the Christians] proved by visible deeds their sympathy and humanity. All day long some continued without rest to tend the dying and bury them—the number was immense; and there was no one to see to them; others rounded up the huge numbers who had been reduced to scarecrows all over the city and distributed loaves to them all, so that their praises were sung on every side, and all men glorified the God of the Christians and owned that they alone were pious and truly religious: did not their actions speak for themselves?

During the famine of 367 Basil of Cappadocia in eastern Turkey preached against the avarice of the rich and organized relief for the destitute. He wrote to governors urging the remission of taxes for the dispossessed and the redress of injuries for the oppressed. In sermons on “The Rich,” “Avarice,” and “In Time of Famine and Need” “he drove home the fact that every man had an inalienable right to a living—a right that was not to be violated by the claims of property or possessions; and in the case of conflict, private rights must cede before common needs” (Francis Murphy, Politics and the Early Christian).

9. The furnishing of work. The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies advised: “For those able to work, provide work: and to those incapable of work, be charitable.” The author of the Didache was aware that there might be abuses of the Church’s generosity: “But if he has no craft, according to your wisdom provide how he shall live as a Christian among you, but not in idleness. If he will not do this, he is trafficking upon Christ.”

10. Care for brethren on a journey. The oldest account of worship on Sunday (Justin’s Apology I) reports that part of the collection was used to support strangers on their travels.

To be sure, there were also tensions and excesses in the early Church. Fanatical bands of circumcellions, extremists of the Donatist movement in North Africa during the time of Augustine (c. 400), used physical force to promote the equalization of wealth, burning the houses of those who resisted. They coerced landlords to free their slaves, and, reciting “deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles” (“He put the powerful down from their seat and exalted the humble” [Luke 1:52]), they forced wealthy men traveling in carriages to exchange places with their footmen.

Iii. The Early Church And Human Lives

Christians also expressed their compassion for their fellow humans by condemning practices that held life in cheap regard. Christians condemned suicide, abortion, and infanticide. They rescued and raised unwanted babies abandoned on dung heaps.

Entertainment in the Roman Empire was provided primarily by the sanguinary gladiatorial games. By the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41–54), 93 days of the year were devoted to games, and by the fourth century no fewer than 175. Trajan (early second century) celebrated his Dacian victories with four months of games involving 10,000 gladiators. Of all the Roman writers, Seneca’s voice was a lone one raised in protest. But Christian writers were unanimous in denouncing the carnage of the games. They finally ended in A.D. 404 when the monk Honorius rushed into the arena to stop the games and was killed in the process.

Though soldiers who were converted to Christ were not required to leave the army, the early Church retained a generally pacifist position down to Constantine. Christians did not take part in the defense of Jerusalem in the First Jewish-Roman War (A.D. 66–73), but were warned by a vision to flee to Pella in Transjordan before the fall of the city (Eusebius III, 5). According to the Latin recension of Eusebius’s Chronicle preserved by Jerome, Bar Kochba killed Christians because they refused to join the Second Jewish-Roman War (A.D. 132–35).

Roland H. Bainton, professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale, writes: “The age of persecution down to the time of Constantine was the age of pacifism to the degree that during this period no Christian author to our knowledge approved of Christian participation in battle” (Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace). Tertullian declared that “Christ in disarming Peter ungirt every soldier.” Cyprian held that God had designed iron for tilling and not for killing. Arnobius even thought it was preferable for Christians to die rather than stain their hands with the blood of others. We read of a boy who was killed for his refusal to join the Roman army on the basis that he was a Christian (A.D. 295).

On the other hand, from the end of the second century A.D. there is evidence for the increased participation of Christians in the army, including the famous Thundering Legion under Marcus Aurelius. The conversion of Constantine and his military victory in the sign of the cross at the Milvian Bridge marked a turning point in the Church’s attitude toward war. Under Theodosius II in the early fifth century A.D., only Christians could serve in the army.

In an empire threatened by barbarian invasions, Ambrose and Augustine developed the doctrine of the just war, upheld by the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestants today. A just war is one that is just in intent—to restore peace and to vindicate justice—and just in conduct—without wanton violence and atrocities. According to Augustine, a war need not be waged on the basis of hate: “No one indeed is fit to inflict punishment save the one who has first overcome hate in his heart. The love of enemies admits of no dispensation, but love does not exclude wars of mercy waged by the good” (Epistle 138, ii, 15).

Iv. Historical Perspective

As historian George M. Marsden notes in a similar examination of the evangelical Church’s attitudes toward social concerns in more recent history (“Evangelical Social Concern—Dusting Off the Heritage,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 12, 1972), “tradition, of course, is not a sufficient guide in our discussions of how we should apply the Gospel.” The early Church may have been mistaken in some of its interpretations and practices. Or, granting their correctness for past periods, we need to take into account changed social and political conditions. At the very least, however, a review of the early Church’s attitudes should force us to examine whether our attitudes toward social issues are as biblical as those of former generations.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

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