Alexander Schmemann

1. The Beginning of the Church (28 pages)

Page 11

The pagans, meanwhile, were showing a growing interest in the East and its religious core; a number of them became Jews, not by blood, but by the faith which gave central place to the expectation of the Messiah. The network of synagogues that covered the whole empire became the means by which the preaching of the Gospel penetrated the milieu closest to Judaism and accessible to its spiritual influence.

Naturally, we cannot explain early Christian preaching and conversion in terms of any single approach; Paul’s epistles make clear how differently he addressed different groups. Yet the center of all preaching was always the kerygma, the proclamation of a new event, the news of the Savior who brought salvation and peace. There was no mass preaching to a crowd nor attraction of popular curiosity by outward ceremonies. More than by words, Christianity was served by the actual renewal of life which appeared in the Christian community and was in the final analysis alone capable of proving the life-giving force of the Gospel.

There was a time when it was assumed that the first Christians came from the international “proletariat” which filled the large cities of the empire and which, because of poverty and social inequality, was assumed to be more receptive to the proclamation of love, hope, and new life. Paul’s words to the Corinthians seems to confirm such a supposition: .” .
. not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble were called” (Cor. 1:26). But one has also to account for James’ reproaches of rich Christians, for Pliny’s report of the number of Christians “of various classes” and for references in other Pauline epistles to the city treasurer, a member of the Areopagus, and a number of the leading women in Thessalonica.

How many Christians were there at first? Tertullian’s claim, “If we alone are your enemies, then you have more enemies than citizens, because all your citizens have become Christians,” is obviously rhetorical exaggeration. There was, however, a rapid geographical spread of Christianity, with large churches in Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, and perhaps in Spain and Gaul. The estimate of historians is that up to the time of Emperor Constantine’s conversion at the beginning of the fourth century they were still less than 10 per cent of the whole population of the empire. Thus the Church retained for a long time its character of a small flock, a minority persecuted by the world.

 

Further Church Development.

Since there are few records of the period from the apostolic beginning of the Church to the middle of the second century, a number of historians have been tempted to look for some sort of metamorphosis within it at this period, some break with the original “idea” of Christianity expressed in the Gospels. The organized Church with its hierarchy, doctrine, and discipline, as we see it again in the middle of the second century, they regard as the product of various crises and adaptations to social conditions; the molten, shapeless faith was Hellenized by being poured into contemporary molds of thought. Today, however, scholars are giving increasing attention to the voice of Church tradition, which so recently seemed to some of them a tendentious invention. The Gospel, it turns out, must not be separated from the Church; it is the witness to the faith of the Church, to its living experience, and cannot be understood apart from this experience. Fragments of prayers, the signs and symbols on the walls of the catacombs, a few epistles from some churches to others, have acquired new significance and are seen to represent part of a single development, not a series of crises and ruptures. What was not recorded may have lived secretly, retained in the uninterrupted memory of the Church, to be written down only centuries later. It has become increasingly clear that the Church has no need to be restored and justified on the basis of the fragments that have reached us. Rather, only in the light of the Church, in the recognition of its primacy, can the meaning of these fragments be discerned and properly interpreted.

In our limited knowledge of the churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire, the emphasis is on the Christian community gathered for baptism and the Eucharist. This double mystery — rebirth from water and the Spirit and the breaking of bread — was not simply a ceremonial service but the source, the content, the very heart of primitive Christianity.

Tertullian’s words, “Christians are not born but they become,” explain why the scanty sources of the period speak most about baptism and the Eucharist. Christians became. This meant that each of them could never forget the day when, after the secret growth of the seed cast into his soul by preaching — after doubts, tests, and torments — he finally approached the water of baptism. When he emerged from the holy water, the newly-baptized Christian was brought into a brotherhood, a unity of love. Such is the everlasting significance of the Eucharist, communion always through Christ with one’s brothers. One bread, one cup, shared by all and uniting all in one, memory transformed into reality, expectation into the Presence. How the words of thanksgiving preserved from the early youth of the Church must have sounded when pronounced by the celebrant over the offered gifts!

 

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