Читать книгу The Literature and History of New Testament Times - J. Gresham Machen - Страница 58

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The persecution which arose in connection with Stephen marks a turning point in the history of the Church. Up to that time, the disciples had been content, for the most part, with laboring in Jerusalem. Now they were forced out into a broader field. One result of the persecution was the geographical extension of the Church.

Another result was perhaps even more important. The extension caused by persecution was not merely geographical; it was also, perhaps, intellectual and spiritual. The Church was really from the beginning in possession of a new religious principle, but at first that principle was not fully understood. Persecution probably helped to reveal the hidden riches. The Pharisees were keener than the disciples themselves. Hostility sharpened the vision. The disciples themselves were still content to share in the established forms of Jewish worship; but the Pharisees saw that they were really advocates of a new principle. Christianity, unless it were checked, would supersede Judaism. The Pharisees were right. Jealous fear detected what ancestral piety had concealed.

The hostility of the Jews perhaps helped to open the eyes of the Church. No doubt, a development was already at work. Persecution was the result as well as the cause of the new freedom. Stephen was persecuted possibly just because his preaching went beyond that of Peter. With or without persecution, the Church would have transcended the bounds of the older Judaism. It contained a germ of new life which was certain to bear fruit. But persecution hastened the process. It scattered the Church abroad, and it revealed the revolutionary character of the Church's life.

With the coming of Jesus a new era had begun. Judaism had before been separate from the Gentile world. That separation had been due not to racial prejudice, but to a divine ordinance. It had served a useful purpose. Jewish particularism should never be despised; it should be treated with piety and gratitude. It had preserved the precious deposit of truth in the midst of heathenism. But its function, though useful, was temporary. It was a preparation for Christ. Before Christ it was a help; after Christ it became a hindrance.

Persecution was not the beginning of the new freedom. Freedom was based upon the words of Jesus. It had become plainer again, perhaps, in the teaching of Stephen. Furthermore, if freedom was not begun by the persecution, it was also not completed by it. The emancipation of the Church from Judaism was a slow process. The unfolding of that process is narrated in The Acts. Even after the Church was scattered abroad through Judea and Samaria, much remained to be done. Cornelius, Antioch, Paul were still in the future. Nevertheless, the death of Stephen was an important event. It was by no means the whole of the process; but it marks an epoch.

The gradual rise of persecution should be traced in class—first the fruitless arrest of Peter and John and their bold defiance; then the arrest of the apostles, the miraculous escape, the preaching in the temple, the re-arrest, the counsel of Gamaliel, the scourging; then the preaching of Stephen and the hostility of the Pharisees. The opposition of the Sadducees was comparatively without significance. The Sadducees were not Jews at heart. They might persecute the Church just because the Church was patriotically Jewish. But the Pharisees were really representative of the existing Judaism. Pharisaic persecution meant the hostility of the nation. And it implied the independence of the Church. If the disciples were nothing but Jews, why did the Jews persecute them?

In what follows, a few details will be discussed.