The church beyond the empire

Aksum, Armenia and Georgia

Told only from inside the Roman Empire, the story can make the church look Roman from the start. But the gospel crossed the borders early. Acts introduces an African on his way south from Jerusalem:

So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official in charge of the entire treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his return was sitting in his chariot reading Isaiah the prophet.

Acts 8:27-28

Baptised, he "went on his way rejoicing" (Acts 8:39) and appears no more in the record. The Ethiopian church remembers him as the first to bring the gospel to its land, but the church of the kingdom of Aksum, in what is now northern Ethiopia, begins in the record in the fourth century. Rufinus, continuing the church's history after Eusebius around 402, tells how Frumentius, a young Christian from Tyre, was seized with his brother on a coast where their ship had put in and taken to the royal court of Aksum; how he won the court's trust and spread the gospel there; and how he later went to Alexandria and was consecrated bishop for that land by Athanasius Rufinus, Church History 10.9–10.

Around 330 Aksum's king Ezana became a Christian, and on his coins the cross took the place of the old gods' crescent and disc. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of the Oriental Orthodox family, remembers Frumentius as Abba Salama, father of peace. Until 1959 it received its bishop from the Coptic church of Alexandria, and its tradition tells that the Nine Saints, who came from the Roman East at the end of the fifth century, translated the Bible into Ge'ez, the land's ancient tongue.

Armenia, in the mountains to the east, remembers itself as the first kingdom to receive Christ as its faith. Armenian tradition dates the baptism of King Tiridates III by Gregory the Illuminator to 301; many scholars prefer around 314. Believing that its church began with the apostles Thaddaeus and Bartholomew, it calls itself the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The Armenians had no letters of their own yet, and in worship the Scriptures had to be read in Greek or Syriac. Around 405 the monk Mesrop Mashtots, with Sahak, head of the Armenian church, created the Armenian alphabet. By tradition the first words written in it were the opening of Proverbs, "for gaining wisdom and discipline, for comprehending words of insight" (Proverbs 1:2). Within a few decades the whole Bible was in Armenian, and the Armenian church still keeps a yearly feast of the Holy Translators.

To the north, in Georgia, the church remembers a woman who brought the gospel. By tradition Nino, in the fourth century, prayed for the sick Queen Nana, who was healed, and King Mirian too became a Christian. The Georgian church, of the Eastern Orthodox family, honours her as ‘equal to the apostles’.

Persia, and the churches after Chalcedon

In the Persian Empire, Rome's rival to the east, a Syriac-speaking church had grown up early: the Church of the East. When Rome's emperor became a Christian, Shapur II, the Persian king so often at war with Rome, suspected the Christians of siding with the enemy. Through his long reign persecution went on from the 340s, and many were martyred, among them Simeon, bishop of the capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon. What ended persecution in Rome gave a pretext for new persecution of brothers and sisters beyond the border.

When the churches divided in the fifth century over how Christ's divinity and humanity are one, the Church of the East kept the teaching of the Antiochene tradition and did not receive the council of Ephesus. Others called it ‘Nestorian’, a name the church holds does not rightly describe its faith. It spread to India and Central Asia, and in 635 reached Chang'an, the capital of Tang China Xi'an Stele (see The rise of Islam and the churches of the East).

The Coptic church of Egypt, the Syriac Orthodox, and the churches of Armenia and Ethiopia did not receive the council of Chalcedon in 451, and are called today the Oriental Orthodox. Following Cyril, they confess one incarnate nature of God the Word; they condemn Eutyches and do not accept the name ‘Monophysite’. They understand themselves as keeping the faith of Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus. Emperors who held to Chalcedon at times drove their bishops out. The theology of this division is the Theology course's Chalcedon: one person, two natures.

To the island in the west: Patrick

Patrick, a boy in Britain at the western edge of the Roman world, was seized at sixteen by Irish raiders and made a slave on their island. He escaped and came home, but later went back to Ireland to preach the gospel to the people who had enslaved him. We know this from his own Confession. Tradition dates his going to Ireland to 432, but scholars differ over the dates of his work. The stories of his teaching the Trinity with a shamrock and driving out the snakes are later legends.

From every nation and tongue

At Pentecost the crowd in Jerusalem was amazed:

How is it then that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism; Cretans and Arabs— we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

Acts 2:8-11

Matthew Henry writes: "The difference in languages which arose at Babel, has much hindered the spread of knowledge and religion" Matthew Henry. To cross that barrier the church translated the Bible. Before the fifth century was out it was read in Syriac and Coptic, in Gothic, for which Ulfilas had made an alphabet, and in Armenian and Georgian. The gospel did not wear one people's clothes; each people heard it in its own tongue. Whether Christianity is a Western religion is taken further in Is Christianity a Western religion?.

Today many members of these ancient churches are leaving their homelands in the Middle East under war and persecution (see The world church today). In the crowd John saw at the end, they and we stand together:

After this I looked and saw a multitude too large to count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.

Revelation 7:9

The next lesson, Gregory the Great and the mission to Europe, follows the missionaries who set out again from Ireland and from Rome across Europe.

Practice