1. Church History Month Week 1 Proclaim or Defend?: Proclaim or Defend?: Growth and Persecution in the Early Church March 1 /March 4, 2010 March 1 /March 4, 2010 Their Story Our Story History

2. The Roman Empire during the 2 nd Century

3. Let no one come to us who has been instructed, or who is wise or prudent (for such qualifications are deemed evil by us); but if there be any ignorant, or unintelligent, or uninstructed, or foolish persons, let them come with confidence. By which words, acknowledging that such individuals are worthy of their God, they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the silly, and the mean, and the stupid, with women and children.”…( from Origen, Contra Celsus, 3.44)

4. God is good, and beautiful, and blessed, and that in the best and most beautiful degree. But if he come down among men, he must undergo a change, and a change from good to evil, from virtue to vice, from happiness to misery, and from best to worst. Who, then, would make choice of such a change? It is the nature of a mortal, indeed, to undergo change and remoulding, but of an immortal to remain the same and unaltered. God, then, could not admit of such a change."...( from Origen, Contra Celsus, 4.14)

5. Justin Martyr (100-165)

6. Marcion (85-160)

7. As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.10.1-2)

8. It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.1).

9. Irenaeus of Lyons

10. Tertullian (c. 160-220) “no one would be willing to die unless he possessed the truth” (Scorpiace, 8)

11. Emperor Domitian (c96 A.D.)

12. Christianity is “nothing more than a depraved and extravagant superstition.” ~Pliny the Younger

13. Roman Amphitheatre at Amman, built in the 2 nd century

14. Polycarp, (c69-155 A.D.)

15. Felicity and Perpetua (Early 3 rd century)

16. “They declared that the sum of their guilt or error had amounted to only this, that on an appointed day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak and to recite a hymn to Christ, as to a God, and to bind themselves to an oath … to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery and breach of faith, and not to deny a deposit when it was claimed. After the conclusion of this ceremony it was their custom to depart and meet again to take food; but it was ordinary and harmless food, and they had ceased this practice after my edict in which … I had forbidden secret societies.” ~ Pliny, Letters, 10.96

17. Early Christian Sarcophogi

18. “These gifts are not taken and spent on feasts and drinking bouts and eating houses, but to support and bury poor people; to supply the wants of boys and girls who have no means or parents; and of the old persons confined now to the house; such too as have suffered shipwrecks; and if there happen to be any in the mines or banished to the islands or shut up in prisons, for nothing but their faithfulness to the cause of God’s church, they are cared for by Christians. It is mainly the deed of a love so noble that it led many to put a brand on us. ‘See,’ they say, ‘how they love one another.’” ~ Tertullian, Apology

19. “For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind in country or customs-- they do not live somewhere in cities on their own or use some distinctive language or practice a peculiar way of life. Though they … follow local customs in dress and food and the rest of their living, their own way of life which they display is wonderful and admittedly strange… They take part in everything like citizens and endure everything like aliens…like everyone else they marry, they have children, but not a common bed…they remain on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.” ~letter from an unknown Christian to Diogentus (ca. 150-180 A.D.)

20. “the blood of the martyrs is seed of the church” ~Tertullian

21. Emperor Constantine at the Battle of Mivian Bridge, 312