Chapter 3: The Church Grows Inwardly (A.D. 33-325)

What Is Meant by the Church's Inward Growth
From the above dates you will see that the things to be discussed in this chapter happened in the same period of time as the things treated in the second chapter.

The inward growth of the Church has to do with its doctrine, or beliefs, and its organization. This is vitally important for it concerns the truth of God and the system of government within the Church.

Gifted men spent their lives searching out the truths in the Scriptures and defending these truths against the false teachings of the day. In doing this they performed a great service for God and His Church. Certainly we want to know something about these men and about the doctrines, or beliefs, which they championed. We also want to see how the Church developed a system of organization and government.



Is Doctrine Important?
Many people today do not like doctrine. They say differences of opinion about doctrine have caused much debate and controversy. They say that the many divisions in the Church have been caused by debates about doctrine. Doctrine is not so important after all. What is important is a good Christian life. So runs their argument.

The effect of this kind of talk has been very bad. In many churches ministers teach the people and the children very little doctrine. The result is a great ignorance of Christian truth. The theory that doctrine is not important is not only shallow and foolish, it is also crafty. It is one of the devil's best tricks.

The history of the controversies about doctrine is a very important part of the history of the Church.

The Apostolic Fathers
After the time of the apostles the foremost leaders in the Church were the Apostolic Fathers. They were called the Apostolic Fathers because they are said to have been taught personally by the apostles. They lived in the ﬁrst half of the second century. We know the names of ﬁve of them. They were Clement and Hermas of Rome; Ignatius of Antioch; Polycarp of Smyrna; and Barnabas, probably of Alexandria. There were two others whose names we do not know.

You will remember that there was much in the teaching of Christ which for a long time the disciples did not understand. From the writings of the Apostolic Fathers we can tell that, more than a hundred years after Christ, they had not as yet penetrated very deeply into the truth revealed in the Bible. Their conception of Christianity was very simple. They thought of Christ chieﬂy as the revealer of the knowledge of the one true God, and the proclaimer of a law of high and strict morality. The Apostolic Fathers wanted to know the truth about Christ. They thought and wrote about Him.

The Apologists
The heathen attacked and persecuted the Christians. They told many false stories about the Christians, accused them of many terrible crimes, and misrepresented the teachings of Christianity. In response some Christians wrote books. Because in these books these writers defended Christianity, they are called Apologists. An apologist is one who defends what he believes to be the truth. In order to explain Christianity to the educated and cultured heathen and in order to defend it against attacks, they were compelled to make a deeper study of the Bible. In that way the Church made progress in the understanding of Christian truth.

The foremost of these Apologists was Justin. He was born in the ancient town of Shechem in the p

rovince of Samaria. There at Shechem was the well of the patriarch Jacob, where Jesus had talked to the Samaritan woman. Justin’s father and mother were both heathen. Justin studied philosophy and even after he had become a Christian he continued to wear the mantle of a philosopher while living in Ephesus he was converted by the study of the Old Testament prophets. “Straightway,” he wrote in one of his books, “a ﬂame was kindled in my soul, and a love of the prophets and of those men who are friends of Christ. Theirs is the oldest and truest explanation of the beginning and end of things and of those matters which the philosophers ought to know, because they were ﬁlled with the Holy Spirit. They gloriﬁed the Creator (the God and Father of all things), and proclaimed His Son the Christ. I found this philosophy alone to be safe and proﬁtable.”

About the year 155, while in Rome, Justin wrote his famous Apology. In that same city, perhaps in the year 165, he was beheaded for his faith. For that reason he is called Justin Martyr.

Celsus was not one of the Apologists. He was a heathen who was well acquainted with the teachings of Christianity, but he never became a Christian. Ori the contrary, in the year 177 he wrote a book, A True Discourse, against Christianity. Celsus was a man with a very keen mind. He brought all his learning and wit to bear, and used many of the arguments still used by unbelievers today. His was the ablest criticism of Christianity produced by heathenism. It was not until seventy years later that Celsus was answered. But when at last the answer did come, it was overwhelming and crushing. This brilliant apology of Christianity was written by Origen in his book, Against Celsus. You will presently hear more about Origen.

False Ideas Arise
In the last half of the second century two Heresies (departures from the truth) became a serious menace. They were Gnosticism and Montanism. Gnosticism went so far as to  maintain that Christ never dwelt on this  earth in human form. Montanism taught that Christ's promise of the Comforter had not been fulﬁlled in the upper room on Pentecost, but that the coming of the Holy Spirit was now at hand and that the end of the world was near. Both of these doctrines were gaining a foothold in the Church. These ideas were entirely contrary to Christian truth. Right doctrine is important. Wrong doctrine will hurt the Church. The Church cannot live with false doctrine. The last half of the second century was a time of tremendous crisis for the Church.

How keenly the Church felt the deadly nature of these heresies you can tell from the following incident. One of the leading Gnostics was a certain Marcion. After 33 he made his fortune in Constantinople, he moved to Rome. He gave large amounts of money to charity, but he also made strong propaganda for his Gnostic ideas, and gained many followers among the members of the church in Rome. Polycarp, bishop of the church in Smyrna, at one time made a visit to Rome. Marcion and Polycarp had known each other very well back east. When Polycarp happened to come across Marcion on the street, he was going to pass on without speaking. Marcion stopped him and said, “Don’t you know me anymore, Polycarp?” “Yes,” answered Polycarp, “I know who you are. You are the first-born of Satan.”

The Church Fathers
The ﬁrst great doctrinal controversy in the Church was about the person of Christ. We know that Christ is the eternal Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, Himself God. But at ﬁrst this was not so clear to the Church. It took the leaders in the Church a great deal of hard study, thought, and discussion to come to a right understanding of the person of Christ. That we have the right view today we owe to the long and intense labors of the great Church Fathers. Outstanding among these Church Fathers were Irenaeus and Tertullian in the western, and Clement and Origen in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Irenaeus was born sometime between 115 and 142. He was reared in Smyrna. There he saw Polycarp and heard him preach. From Smyrna he moved to Lyons in Gaul, now France, in the church of which city he became bishop. In the year 200 he suffered a martyr's death. Irenaeus gave much thought to the Scriptural teaching about Christ. The beginnings of a sound doctrine about Christ are to be found in his book Against Heresies.

Tertullian was born sometime between the years 150 and 155 in North Africa in the city of Carthage. Tertullian studied law and practiced in Rome. After his conversion he returned to Carthage, and became a presbyter in the church of his native city. He was a great student of philosophy and history and had an excellent legal mind. In his understanding of Christ he did not advance much beyond Justin and Irenaeus, but he was very gifted in the use of language and so was able to state the true doctrine about Christ more clearly and precisely than anyone before him had done.

Clement of Alexandria (not to be confused with the Apostolic Father, Clement of Rome, who lived a hundred years earlier) was a very able teacher in the theological school in Alexandria.

Origen, a pupil of Clement, became far more famous than his teacher. He was by far the greatest scholar the Church had produced. A deep and original thinker, he wrote many large and learned books. Origen's book, Against Celsus, was the brilliant answer to this critic of Christianity. Both Clement and Origen did much through their writings to lead the Church to a better understanding of the person of Christ.

A Creed and a Canon Emerge
Out of the Church's struggle with the heresies of Gnosticism and Montanism came three things: a Creed, a Canon, and an Organization. All three of these have been of very great and lasting signiﬁcance for the Church. The word creed comes from the Latin word credo, meaning “I believe.” A creed is a statement of belief. The creed that came out of the Church's struggle with Gnosticism and Montanism is known as the Apostles’ Creed. It is so called not because it was composed by the apostles, but because it is a summary of the apostles’ teachings. No doubt you know that creed by heart. It is the oldest creed of the Church. The Church adopted the Apostles’ Creed in order that everybody might know what the Church believed to be true Christian doctrine, in distinction from the false and heretical doctrines of the Gnostics and Montanists.

The word canon has many meanings. As we are using it here it means “a list.”  The canon that came out of the above-mentioned struggle is the canon of the New Testament, that is, a list of the books that belong in the New Testament. In its controversies with the Gnostics and Montanists the Church always appealed to Scripture. But already at that time there were many Christian writings. So it was necessary to know which of those writings possessed absolute authority as inspired writings. Out of all the Christian writings then in existence the Church recognized as inspired those which now make up the New Testament

The Development of the Episcopate
The organization that came out of the struggle with the Gnostics and Montanists is the Episcopal form of church government. The leaders of these heretical groups also claimed support from the Bible. The Church had to establish its position as the authority who decided the meaning of the Bible. It exercised this authority through its rulers who came to be called bishops. The Church from this point down to the time of the Reformation had the episcopal form of government. There are several churches today which have this form, such as the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, the Episcopal, and the Methodist churches.

At ﬁrst the organization of the Church was very simple. The officers were the elders and deacons. The elders were known as presbyters, since presbyter is the Greek word for “elder.”

In the early Church the presbyters were all of the same rank. But it was natural that in each congregation one of the presbyters should take the lead. He would be president of the board of presbyters, and he would lead in worship and do the preaching. The presbyters were also called overseers. The Greek word for “overseer” is episcopos, from which we get our word “bishop.” The title of bishop was given to the presbyter who in course of time became the leader of the board of presbyters. So the other presbyters gradually became subordinate to the presbyter who was their overseer, or bishop, and the bishop came to rule the church alone. The Greek word for a man who rules alone is “monarch.” For that reason these bishops, who came to have all the authority in a church, were called monarchial bishops.

Churches were ﬁrst established in the cities. The people in the country continued to be heathen when the people in the cities had already become Christians. The Latin word for country people was pagani. So the name pagani or pagans became equivalent to heathen. From the cities Christianity spread among the heathen, or pagans, in the country. The converts from the country would attend church in the city. The city with its surrounding country district was called a diocese. Then the man who at ﬁrst was bishop only of the city church became bishop of the diocese, and was called a diocesan bishop. You may wonder why all these terms (presbyter, bishop, monarchial bishop, diocese, diocesan bishop, and episcopal) are taken from the Greek language. You will recall from the ﬁrst chapter that the world language of that day was Greek, and Christianity ﬁrst spread in the eastern part of the Roman Empire where Greek was generally used just exactly when the Church came to have bishops we do not know. The development of the episcopal form of church organization or government came about gradually. It came about in some cities sooner than in others. Churches in certain cities had monarchical bishops before the church in Rome had such a bishop. Around the year 110 the church in  Antioch, from which city Barnabas and  Paul had set out on their ﬁrst missionary  journey, had a bishop by the name of  Ignatius, and Smyrna had Polycarp as its  bishop. Both of these men are said to have been personal disciples of the apostles, and both of them are reckoned among the Apostolic Fathers. The ﬁrst bishop of Rome seems to have been a man by the name of Anicetus. He was bishop of Rome from 154 to 165. By the middle of the second century practically all churches had monarchical bishops.

The bishops were supposed to be the successors of the apostles. That idea helped immensely to clothe the bishops with great authority. Ignatius considered the bishop to be the great bond of church unity and the great defense against heresy. To the church in Philadelphia he wrote, “Do ye all follow your bishop as Jesus Christ followed the Father. Do nothing without the bishop.”

For a long time the churches in the various cities were only very loosely connected with each other. By the year 200 they had become welded into one compact whole. The struggle of the churches with the Gnostic and Montanist heretics had done much to bring this about. All the churches how had in common the Apostles’ Creed, the canon of the New Testament as authoritative Scripture, and the episcopal form of church government. The heretics were, of course, outside the Church. They had formed little churches of their own. But the big church was henceforth known as the Catholic (or Universal) Church, and also as the Old Catholic Church. Later we shall hear of the Roman Catholic Church.

The man, who better than anyone else expressed the ideas about the Church, which had come to prevail around this time was Cyprian. He was born in Carthage in North Africa around the year 200 and lived in that city all his life. A rich and well-educated man, he became famous as a teacher of rhetoric, or speech. In 246 he was converted. Two years later he became bishop, and in 258 he was beheaded as a Christian martyr. He wrote, “there is one God, and Christ is one; and there is one Church and one Chair.’  (By one chair he meant “one center of authority.”) He continued: “He who is not in the Church of Christ is not a Christian. He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother. There is no salvation outside the Church. The Church is based on the unity of the bishops. The bishop is in the Church, and the Church is in the bishop. If anyone is not with the bishop, he is not in the Church.”

It was in the midst of persecution that the Church grew in numbers, spread throughout the Roman Empire, and even preached among the barbarian tribes. And it was in the midst of persecution that the Church developed its organization and doctrine. Now it was about to enter a new era.