We are going to start this off in a way that we've never started off an Extra History before; with a disclaimer.
These next few episodes are designed to help modern students get a handle
on one of the most confusing and yet most important parts of Roman history.
The topics discussed in these episodes are vital to understanding the Roman mind;
to understanding why Rome fell and how the Western world made the transition
from the Classical Era to the Medieval one.
We're going to try and make this as engaging as we can,
but it is going to involve a lot of nitty-gritty detail about doctrinal disputes.
To a modern mind, these disputes may seem inconsequential,
but they tore empires apart,
and turned father against son back in the waning days of Rome.
Even in our episodes about Justinian, we found that the lack of ability
to easily reference things like the Monophysite Schism
or the difference between Arían Christianity and Orthodox Christianity,
impacted how thoroughly we could tell the story.
So, hopefully, we could rectify that today.
So let's dive in to the Docetic Schism, Judaizing Christianity, and Gnosticism.
Before we can discuss the struggles that changed empires,
we have to discuss the struggles that determined what form of Christianity
the Empire of Rome would come to accept.
And, for that, our story begins on the baked plains of Asia Minor.
It's difficult sometimes for us in the present day
to think of Christianity as something not yet solidified.
It's hard to imagine it without the New Testament.
It's harder still to think of it, not as a religion of its own,
but rather an offshoot of Judaism.
And yet, out here on the plains of Asia Minor,
in the 1st and 2nd century CE,
that's the issue that many early Christians wrestled with.
I mean, were they still Jewish?
Could only Jews be Christians?
Did Christ overthrow the Mosaic Law
or was he simply a continuation of it?
And on the answer to this question hangs everything.
Why?
Circumcision.
I know, it's funny, but the fate of Western society
really did hang on circumcision
because, you see, the Judaizing Christians,
the Christians who wanted to follow the Mosaic Law strictly,
wanted everybody to be circumcised.
And, in an age before anesthetic,
when you're asking grown men to have their foreskin cut off as the entry fee for joining your religion,
you're just not gonna get as many takers.
And this is why Paul rails against circumcision in the Book of Galatians.
He, like many of those we now consider Church Fathers,
knew that, for the religion to really grow, for it to really be a force,
they would have to convert the Gentiles; the people of the Roman Empire.
And the only way to do that was to abandon some of the Jewish practices
those people would find the hardest to accept.
And as this viewpoint won over more practitioners,
the Judaizing forces began to be squeezed out of what we consider mainstream Christianity,
eventually leading to further attempts to distance the two religions
like declaring Sunday as a holy day instead of Saturday.
But, for us, the important part is that,
without the fateful decision to break from Jewish tradition
— a decision which split the Church
and whose consequences in terms of fracturing the early Christian community
are written into the Bible itself —
without that decision, Rome probably would never have become a Christian state,
changing history forever.
But even as the Judaizing forces were waning,
there was another question that tore early Christian society in two.
This question was on the nature of Christ.
Was he a man? Was he a spirit?
What was his relationship to God?
And this would turn into one of those knock-down, drag-out questions
with bishops calling other Christians "Antichrists" and "worse than pagans" because of their views on it.
In fact, this question is gonna come up over, and over, and over again in this series
because this question, which eventually morphs into questions about the Trinity,
sits at the root of so many conflicts in the Church.
But let's start here, in the early 2nd century,
still in the plains of Asia Minor.
A bishop called Ignatius is arrested.
He's going to be taken to Rome;
sentenced to die in the Colosseum for his faith.
But along the road to Rome, he writes to his followers,
time and again, with a warning.
Not a warning against the Romans;
he seems almost eager to meet his fate.
No, a warning against other Christians
— Christians who do not see Christ the way he does,
Christians that inhabit his very city: Antioch —
Docetists.
Docetists believed that Christ was a being of pure spirit;
that he didn't actually exist in human form; that he only seemed to us to exist.
For, after all, didn't it denigrate the Christ to claim that he'd ever been part of our sinful race?
But that sat very, very poorly with some other Christians.
If you've ever wondered why John, in the Epistles, continuosly talks about the importance
of believing in Christ, quote, "in the flesh;"
if you've wondered why that phrase comes up over and over again,
it's actually a dig at these guys.
When he says, "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is not of God, and this is that spirit of antichrist."
Reading that today, it might seem like he's aiming that condemnation at pagans or non-Christians,
but he's actually taking a shot at the Docetists.
Why? Because what happens when you make Christ a being of pure spirit?
What becomes of his sacrifice? A spirit can't suffer.
Without that, where's the pathos? Where's the actual sacrifice of His death?
And what becomes of the resurrection?
A spirit can't die, so what does it mean for it to be "resurrected?"
Can our sins even be forgiven without sacrifice?
Can we be reborn if the Christ was not?
And these were all important questions in a time of persecution and death.
When simply being known as a Christian might mean execution,
you needed something to hold on to,
which brings us back to Ignatius, and what's going on in Rome.
As Ignatius was off to do his last dance with the lions,
he was thinking a lot about martyrdom,
and he wrote to his followers about how glad he was to truly follow Christ, even in this.
And martyrdom was a powerful symbol;
it gave strength to the community to endure persecution,
and it impressed those not yet of the Faith.
It helped to win over Romans and became an ingrained part of the understanding of Christianity.
But to have the symbolic power of martyrdom
and the very relatable, very sympathetic, very human sacrifice of Christ,
the Christian Church had to purge itself of yet another group of people
who called themselves "Christians" — the Docetists —
and eventually reinforce these ideas with things like transubstantiation;
the consumption of the body and the blood of Christ in Communion.
But with this culling of the Church, the stage is now set.
With the inclusion of the gentiles, and the rejection of a doctrine which sees Jesus as pure spirit,
Christianity is set to grow.
As Imperial order falls apart during the third century crisis,
and the state can no longer provide food for the poor or care for the sick,
the Church steps in.
Converts from all walks of life, but especially the impoverished, begin to join the Faith.
These do seem like the "End Times" of which the Christians preach;
to many in the Empire, it seemed like a time of divine reckoning for humanities sins.
But then, as the 3rd century begins to close, order is restored to the world.
Aurelian puts the pieces of the Empire back together,
and Diocletian and Maximian solidify those gains.
And, with this restabilizing of the Empire, comes some of the harshest crackdowns on the Christian faith.
But then, the miraculous — or highly calculated — happened.
In 312 CE, a civil war rocks the Empire.
At the deciding battle — the Battle of the Milvian Bridge —
one of the leaders, Constantine, had a vision.
It told him to have his men paint the letters "chi-rho,"
the first two letters in Greek of the word "Christ," on their shields;
and if this was done, he would conquer.
It was done, and he won the day and became master of the Roman Empire.
Now, whether you buy the vision story whole-hog
or accept some of it as a later bit of revisionism that's come down to us is up to you.
But what we do know for certain is that, after this battle,
Constantine began to repeal the laws banning Christians and even began to support them.
This was a sea-change.
Even with its rapid growth during the turbulent years of the 3rd century,
Christians only comprised 10% of the Roman Empire.
Within 40 years, they would make up over half of it
But before that, there's a rocky road ahead.
Join us next time as we finally get to the heresies that shook the Empire.
Oh, and, uh, for those of you who know the history here
and are wondering about some of the things I've not mentioned,
expect James to talk more about Constantine's faith in the "Lies" episode after we're done.
See you next time!