Читать книгу What is Christianity? - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 13

During the late second and early third centuries, a group of Christian bishops from the major cities of the Roman Empire launched a concerted effort to bring more structure, order, and male control to the movement. The immediate goal was to establish their own authority to govern the movement, and their proposals were based on a new theory called “apostolic succession.” Apostolic succession operates along the same lines as a modern self-perpetuating board of trustees that chooses its own successors. For the early Christian movement, apostolic succession was established when Jesus selected his disciples and invested them with special authority to lead the movement in his post-ascension absence and when Christ’s apostles then chose their successors and gave them special authority to lead the church. Those leaders subsequently had chosen their successors, and so on right up to the present day.

Bishops who could trace their lineage of leadership succession back to Jesus viewed themselves as having special authority within the movement and as having a special responsibility for imposing order on a movement that many of them considered to be much too freewheeling. Slowly these bishops formed themselves into a network of orthodox (“right-believing”) Christian leaders who began establishing boundaries around their wing of the Christian movement, which they called the Great Church or simply the Church. Identifying heresy (wrong belief) became a focus of attention, and volumes with titles like Against All Heresies, written by Irenaeus who was bishop of the city of Lyon (France) from around 180 to 202, became standard texts for deciding who was in and who was outside the Great Church. Formal church membership now became a major concern, and Cyprian (208–258), the bishop of Carthage, bluntly declared that no one could “have God as Father who does not have the church as mother.”³ The bishops were never able to attract or corral everyone who called themselves followers of Jesus into the Great Church, but over time a majority of Christians became associated with their version of Christianity, and it developed into the mainstream of the movement.

There were advantages and disadvantages to Christianity’s new organization and visibility. On the plus side, better organization helped the movement grow, since a standardized faith was easier to explain to others. On the negative side, persecution of Christians increased. Before 200, Christians in the Roman Empire were only occasionally subjected to persecution, primarily because the movement was too inconsequential to attract much attention. Once Christianity became better organized and more socially visible, Christians became useful scapegoats and popular targets for abuse. Persecution was especially intense between the years 250 and the early 300s when the Roman economy weakened and social unrest increased. It is estimated that five to ten thousand Christians were put to death during these years. That number represents less than 1 percent of all the Christians who lived in the empire at the time, but the executions were highly visible events – they were part of the “entertainment” that was staged in the colosseums and circuses in every Roman city – and having the courage willingly to die for one’s faith became woven into the fabric of Christian identity.