The first generation: from Jerusalem to Rome

A cloud of witnesses

Church history is not a list of dates to memorise but the story of the family we belong to. After calling the roll of those who lived by faith, the letter to the Hebrews turns to its readers:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.

Hebrews 12:1

The motto of this course, Nubes testium, is the Latin Vulgate's wording of this verse: a cloud of witnesses. John Wesley pictured that cloud as "A great multitude, tending upward with a holy swiftness" Wesley. The same letter says, "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you" and "imitate their faith" (Hebrews 13:7), and Moses told Israel, "Remember the days of old; consider the years long past" (Deuteronomy 32:7). We remember those who went before us to learn their faith, and not to fall where they fell.

This course tells the story of one church. Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox churches that did not receive the council of Chalcedon, the Church of the East and the Protestant churches have walked different roads, but all are one family that began in Jerusalem at Pentecost. Each tradition's story is told as its own people would tell it, and the church's sins are told too, against Jews, against those it called heretics and against one another, as Scripture does not hide the failings of David or of Peter. Each lesson tells one chapter of the timeline from Pentecost to today; the first is the apostles' generation, from about 30 to 70.

From Jerusalem to Antioch

Jesus was crucified and rose again around AD 30 (some scholars prefer 33). At the Jewish feast of Pentecost that followed, this happened in Jerusalem:

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a mighty rushing wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. … And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Acts 2:1-4

That day about three thousand who heard Peter were baptized (Acts 2:41). Luke draws the first church as a people given to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer (Acts 2:42), who shared their goods with anyone in need. All the first believers were Jews, who saw themselves not as a new religion but as Israel, having met its Messiah. Our earliest account is Acts itself, traced in the Bible overview course's Acts: to the ends of the earth.

After Stephen was stoned, persecution scattered the believers, and they preached wherever they went. Philip took the gospel to Samaria, whose people most Jews kept apart from (Acts 8:5), and baptized an Ethiopian court official on his way home from Jerusalem (Acts 8:35-38). Many scholars place the Bible's Ethiopia in what is now Sudan; the Ethiopian church, of the Oriental Orthodox family, remembers him as the first to carry the gospel to its land. In the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, Peter saw the Spirit fall on Gentiles and confessed, "I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34).

In Antioch of Syria men from Cyprus and Cyrene began speaking to Greeks as well. Barnabas and Saul taught there for a year, and "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch" (Acts 11:26). Wesley adds, "They were before termed Nazarenes and Galileans" Wesley. The Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox churches of Antioch both trace their beginnings here. As Gentile believers multiplied, some taught that they must be circumcised to be saved, and around 49 the apostles and elders met in Jerusalem. Peter said, "we believe it is through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are" (Acts 15:11), and the council laid no burden of circumcision on the Gentiles.

Rome, 64 and 70

Paul planted churches in Asia Minor, Macedonia and Achaia; arrested in Jerusalem, he appealed to the emperor and was taken to Rome. Acts ends there in the early 60s, with Paul under guard in a rented house for two years, where "Boldly and freely he proclaimed the kingdom of God" (Acts 28:30-31).

In the summer of 64 a great fire swept Rome. Writing around 116, the Roman historian Tacitus tells how Nero, to silence the rumour that he had started it, fastened the blame on "a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace", and that their name came from Christus, executed under Tiberius by the governor Pontius Pilate Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Some were covered in the skins of beasts and torn by dogs, some crucified, some burned as torches at nightfall. Tacitus had no love for Christians, yet he says people came to pity them, dying as they were for one man's cruelty and not the public good.

Tradition holds that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome in these years. The Roman church's letter to Corinth of around 96, known as 1 Clement, says that both apostles suffered through jealousy and bore their witness before they died 1 Clement 5. Around 325 Eusebius records the tradition that Paul was beheaded in Rome and Peter crucified under Nero, and quotes Gaius, a Roman Christian of about 200, who pointed to the apostles' monuments on the Vatican hill and the Ostian Way Eusebius, Church History 2.25. Catholics remember Peter as the first bishop of Rome and the popes as his successors; the Orthodox and Protestants honour both apostles but understand that succession differently, a question taken up in Canon, creed and bishop.

In Jerusalem the church's leader James, the Lord's brother, was killed around 62. The Jewish historian Josephus records that the high priest had James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, stoned, and that the city's most fair-minded men protested until the high priest was removed Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200.

In 66 Judea rose against Rome, and in 70 the Roman army under Titus took Jerusalem and burned the temple. Judaism rebuilt itself around the synagogue and its teachers of the law, while the church, more and more Gentile, gradually went another way. The parting came differently from place to place and over generations, and scholars disagree about when it was complete. Later, many Christians read the fall of Jerusalem as God's punishment of the whole Jewish people and blamed them for the death of Christ, and that belief fed long persecution. On the Day of Pardon in March 2000, Pope John Paul II confessed the sins committed against the Jews and asked forgiveness Memory and Reconciliation. Paul had asked, "did God reject His people? Certainly not!" (Romans 11:1), and warned the Gentile believers:

do not boast over those branches. If you do, remember this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.

Romans 11:18

Wesley's comment is a question: "Do not they do this who despise the Jews?" Wesley.

For the church today

The first generation of the church was small and weak, without buildings or protection in law, its leaders put to death one after another. Yet the gospel crossed every boundary: to Samaritans, to an African official, to a Roman soldier's household. When they disagreed, they gathered to hear the word; when they were persecuted, they bore witness and took up no sword. And most believers today are Gentile branches grafted onto a root not their own. Matthew Henry, on the name first given at Antioch, prays: "Grant, Lord, that Christians may forget other names and distinctions, and love one another as the followers of Christ ought to do" Matthew Henry.

How the church kept the apostles' faith after they were gone is the Theology course's After the apostles: the apologists and Irenaeus. The next lesson, Persecution and the martyrs, follows the two and a half centuries of persecution after Nero and those who kept faith through them.

Practice