LESSON 13
Formation of the Christian communities outside Jerusalem. Expansion and conversions among the Gentiles. St. Peter. The Church of Antioch: Christianity, universal religion. The first Christians of Rome.
In contrast with the national character of the Jewish religion, the catholicity of Christianity soon expressed itself. Disciples of Jesus, in flight from Jerusalem, as a result of the persecution that began after the martyrdom of St Stephen, ("everyone except the apostles fled to the country districts of Judaea and Samaria" Acts 8:1) reached Antioch in Syria, one of the great cities of the East. We know from the activity of Saul that they were also present in Damascus. Some of these Christians were Hellenists, with an outlook more open than that of the Palestinian Jews, and they began to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles as well (cf J Orlandis, A Short History of the Catholic Church, pp 12ff). The Acts (11:18b-21) says:
Those who had escaped during the persecution that happened because of Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, but they usually proclaimed the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, who came from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch where they started preaching to the Greeks, proclaiming the Good News of the Lord Jesus to them as well. The Lord helped them, and a great number believed and were converted to the Lord.
This universality of the redemption and of the Church of Jesus Christ was formally confirmed by a miraculous event in which the Apostle Peter was the protagonist. The extraordinary signs surrounding the conversion of Cornelius, a centurion at Caesarea, and his family, cleared up any doubts Peter had on this subject; as he put it, "Truly I perceive that God shows no particularity, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35). The news that Peter had given baptism to uncircumcised Gentiles caused a stir among the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Peter was required to report his experience in great detail before they were ready to change their minds and relinquish their deeply held prejudices. They began to realise that the redemption brought by Christ was universal: the Church was open to everyone: "When they heard this they were silenced. And they glorified God, saying, 'Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life'" (Acts 11:18). Also significant is the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch: a disciple of Christ, moved by the Spirit, promptly obeys his command, preaches basing himself on the Scriptures and administers baptism. It is like a summary of the missionary activity of the early Church.
The great promoters of the spread of Christianity were the Apostles, acting in obedience to Christ's commandment to proclaim the Gospel to all the nations. Acts tells us of Philip the deacon who preached in Samaria (8:5) Due to lack of historical documents it is difficult to find out much about the missionary activity of most of the Apostles. We know that Peter, on leaving Palestine where he preached in Lydda, Jaffa, Caesarea, etc., made Antioch his base (where there was already an important Christian community). It is possible that he also lived in Corinth for a while, but his final base was Rome, where he was the first bishop. In Rome he suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Nero around 64 or 65 AD. John the Apostle, the Evangelist, stayed for a long time in Palestine, later moving to Ephesus. Very early traditions speak of James the Greater in Spain, of Thomas in India, of Mark the Evangelist in Alexandria, etc. (cf J Orlandis, A Short History of the Catholic Church, p 12)
In cosmopolitan Antioch, the universality of the Church became patent; and it was there, for the first time, that Christ's followers were called Christians (Acts 11:26).
In Antioch the Gospel was proclaimed not only to Jews and proselytes. The Hellenist Jews who come from Jerusalem preach the Gospel to everyone and anyone. The mission at Antioch played an important part in the spread of Christianity. Evangelization of non-Jews becomes the norm, not just something that happens in a few isolated cases. Nor is it limited to "God-fearers"; it extends to all the Gentiles. This is a first stage where the centre of gravity of the Church begins to move from Jerusalem to Antioch, as a springboard for the evangelization of the pagan world. (cf Navarre Bible, Acts of the Apostles 11:19-30, footnote)
The work of the Apostles does not complete the picture of the spread of Christianity in the ancient world. For the most part, the bearers of the first tidings of the Gospel must have been ordinary, humble people. Generalising, one could say that in the first centuries Christianity was to be found more in the cities than among the rural communities. By the time the Church obtained its freedom, in the fourth century, Christianity was already deeply rooted in many parts of the Near East, such as Syria, Asia Minor and Armenia; and in the West in Rome and its surrounding area and in Latin Africa. There was also a considerable presence in the Nile valley and in various parts of Italy, Spain and Gaul. St Alban, the first British martyr died around 304 AD, so Christianity arrived here before St Augustine of Canterbury in 597AD. (cf J. Orlandis, A Short History of the Catholic Church, p 12)
But there were also very serious obstacles in the way of people embracing the Christian faith. For Christians of Jewish background it meant breaking with their community of origin -which now regarded them as deserters and traitors. Gentile converts, especially those belonging to the upper classes, encountered similar difficulties: their faith did not allow them to take part in a series of traditional pagan religious practices involving the worship of Rome and the emperor, yet these practices were part and parcel of a citizen's everyday life and were a conventional sign of loyalty to the empire. Hence the accusation so often levelled against the Christians that they were "atheists". This was a reason why they were threatened with persecution and martyrdom -a threat which hung over them for centuries and meant that to become a Christian involved taking risks; and demanded a high degree of moral courage. (cf J Orlandis, A Short History of the Catholic Church, pp 15ff)
An explanatory footnote in the Navarre Bible, Acts of the Apostles, 28:15 says:
We do not know anything about the first Christian community in Rome or how it came to be founded. The tradition is that it was founded by St Peter, which does not mean that no other Christians arrived there before him, or that there had not been conversions there of pagans or of Jewish residents.
The Navarre Bible, in its introduction to the letters to the Romans and Galatians tells us:
It has been calculated that in Nero's times the city of Rome had around a million inhabitants. On the day of Pentecost Acts 2:10 tells us there were visitors from Rome in Jerusalem; perhaps some of them converted that day (cf Acts 2:41). It is also known that Rome had a Jewish community of some 50,000 with 13 synagogues. The historian Suetonius in his Vita Claudii says that in the reign of that emperor (AD 41-54) the Jews were expelled from the city because "under the instigation of a certain Chrestus they stirred up frequent riots". That is how Aquila and Priscilla found themselves in Corinth where they met St Paul; but they were Christians already at that point (Acts 18:2). Similarly, at the end of his epistle to the Romans Paul greets Andronicus and Junias who became Christians before him, i.e., before AD 38. While there were very probably Christians in Rome before, the foundation of the Church as a body was due to St Peter. The unanimous tradition concerning St Peter's stay in Rome focuses on two pieces of information: that Peter arrived in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (AD 41-54) [Eusebius the historian], and that he spent 25 years preaching in Rome [Catalogus libri Pontificalis]. Certainly St Paul writes to the Church in Rome (around AD 58) as to an already flourishing community (cf Rom 1:8; 16:16).
It was probably made up of Christians coming from a Jewish background as well as Gentile converts. St Paul in his letter makes several references to Judaism and the books of the OT (e.g., Rom 3:10-18): he recalls the call of Abraham (Rom 4), and the history of Israel (Rom 9-11). However, he also speaks in the epistle very directly to those (possibly more numerous) who do not belong to the Israelites according to the flesh (Rom 4:11-12; 9:3; 10:1), and tells them not to think themselves better than the Jews (Rom 11:20, 24). Indeed towards the end of his letter he makes an appeal for unity: "Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy." (Rom 15:7-9a)