OM DENNE EPISODE
We need to show the early church some respect for several different reasons. First, the absolute disrespect shown to the early church by our modern “snobbery” is wrong on so many accounts. Second is the persecution they suffered. It is amazing to me that we judge them so harshly 2,000 years later when we can’t begin to imagine what they suffered for their beliefs.
C.S. Lewis coined the term “chronological snobbery” to describe the tendency to dismiss older ideas, philosophies, or religious beliefs as outdated or irrelevant solely due to their age. He defined it as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited”. C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
“This is because it appears that Christians, especially early in the movement, came for the most part from the lower, uneducated classes. There were always exceptions, of course, like the apostle Paul and the other authors whose works made it into the New Testament and who were obviously skilled writers; but for the most part, Christians came from the ranks of the illiterate. This is certainly true of the very earliest Christians, who would have been the apostles of Jesus. In the Gospel accounts, we find that most of Jesus disciples are simple peasants from Galilee – uneducated fisherman, for example. Two of them, Peter and John, are explicitly said to be “illiterate” in the book of Acts (4:13). Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 2007
“In fact, most of the pagan opposition to Christians during the church’s first two centuries happened on the grassroots level rather than as a result of organized, official Roman persecution. Contrary to what many people appear to think, there was nothing “illegal” about Christianity, per se, in those early years.” Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 2007
“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the source of the first evil, but even in Rome…Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.” Tacitus, The Annuals, 15.44
“I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished…They also declare that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternatively amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a God, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery…This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.” Pliny the Younger, The Letters, 10.96
