Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 89

Christians were violently and lethally persecuted for most of the first 300 years after the death of Jesus — from the time of Emperor Nero and the burning of Rome, which he blamed on the Christians. So, for the first 300 years, Christianity remained underground. Through word of mouth, Christians learned about Jesus of Nazareth and His preaching, suffering, death, Resurrection, and Ascension.

It wasn’t until A.d. 313, when Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in his Edict of Milan, that Christians were even allowed to publicly admit their religious affiliation. But once Christianity became legal, it soon became predominant and even became the state religion.

Leaving the catacombs (underground cemeteries sometimes used by Christians to hide from the Romans and as places of worship during times of persecution) and entering the public arena, Christians began devoting themselves to theological questions that the Bible didn’t specifically address. For example, Scripture teaches that Jesus was God and man, human and divine. Yet how was He both? How were the human and divine natures of Jesus connected? So the second 300 years after Jesus’s death, the fourth to seventh centuries, became a hornets’ nest of theological debate.

To the Catholic Church, heresy is the denial of a revealed truth or the distortion of one so that others are deceived into believing a theological error. After Christianity was legalized, the Christological heresies that referred to the nature of Christ became rampant. Debates often degenerated into violent arguments, and the civil authorities, such as the Roman Emperor, often intervened, urging or even demanding that the religious leaders, such as the pope, patriarchs, and bishops, cease the unrest by settling the issues once and for all. This section explains some of the heresies, or false rumors, that plagued the Church during early Christianity.