Exploring Church History

Derek Cooper

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781451488906
• eBook ISBN: 9781451489606
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Kirche

Fortress Press’s Foundations for Learning series prepares students for academic success through compelling resources that kick-start their educational journey into professional Christian ministry.

In Exploring Church History, Derek Cooper invites readers to consider the purpose and significance of church history in the lives of individuals and communities today. Rather than offering an exploration of bygone eras and outdated events, Cooper brings history to life by emphasizing how past events, individuals, and movements shape how we understand the world around us.

Exploring Church History is divided into three convenient sections. While the first and second sections explain why and what we study in church history, the last section teaches readers how to study church history. The combined effect of the book is to present a clear and accessible introduction to the field of church history.

2

What We Study in Church History—Content

In the chapters of part 2, we seek to dirty our hands, as it were, through the interpretation of discovered articles of the past connected to Christianity. These articles come in all shapes and sizes—a grave here, an icon there, a piece of clothing over there. Like you and me, they tell stories about Christians in the past, but unlike us, they cannot speak for themselves. They require discovery and interpretation—often eliciting contrary responses from scholars whose background, biases, and training take them down different paths of understanding and explanation. Just as the Bible draws out as many interpretations as interpreters, so, too, the discoveries in church history create rival schools of thought of the past. As we study the objects of the past, we must always keep before us the more fundamental question of purpose: why we study these articles. As in the first part, we study these objects in the conviction that church history is a family affair and intimately connected to our own spirituality, a corrective to past abuses and events, a check on our blind spots due to theological myopia, and a motivation to stay on the narrow and straight path of Christian faithfulness.

The aim of these chapters is illumination, not encapsulation. When you walk in a dark room and light a candle, the light illumines part of the room but not all of it. In the same way, I have selected different artifacts in major world regions to illumine Christianity in each region without attempting to summarize it in a way that captures all of its distinctives. I fully recognize that no artifact can encapsulate all of Christian history, so I do not attempt the impossible. In writing an introductory book on church history, my goal is to allow important artifacts to tell a part of the Christian story in the hopes that you might later explore the complete history in more detail. On our rapid journey through the global history of Christianity, our first stop will be one of the most controversial discoveries in the history of the church!

5

A Tomb in Italy Illumines the History of Christianity in Western Europe

Saint Peter’s Tomb in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The tomb is located directly below the main altar of the church, Rome. Photo: Holger Weinandt. CC-by-SA 3.0 license (Wikimedia Commons).

In around 325 ce, the first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire examined plans for the construction of the most elaborate church in the ancient world. A dozen years had passed since Emperor Constantine (r. 306–337) had legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, and several churches of varying conditions and styles were scattered across the Mediterranean. In the capital of the empire, these unimpressive churches paled in comparison to the grand temples and public basilicas that adorned the pagan-laden “Eternal City.” Before long, Constantine landed on the location of the project: Vatican Hill, formerly a pagan cemetery, on the west bank of the Tiber River outside of the city.

The Edict of Toleration, issued in 311, ended persecution of the Christian religion following the Diocletian persecution. Two years later, in 313, Constantine and Galerius regarded Christianity as a legal religion in the Roman Empire in the so-called Edict of Milan.

The emperor’s decision to build a church over a pagan religious site was controversial and no doubt cost him political capital to disrupt the remains of countless Romans. To complicate matters, Vatican Hill had to be leveled. It is estimated that the operation required the relocation of more than a million cubic feet of soil as well as the construction of several large walls. Legend has it that Constantine moved twelve buckets of dirt in honor of the twelve apostles. By about 360, decades after Constantine’s death, the church was complete. Although other magnificent churches in Rome and elsewhere were under construction after the legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century, this new basilica had something these other churches could not rival: Below the altar of the newly constructed church rested the bones of Saint Peter himself—the first pope, the successor to Christ’s throne, and one of the greatest relics of the Catholic Church.

The Story of a Tomb

Sixteen hundred years later, in the early twentieth century, the map of the world had changed dramatically, and the Roman Catholic Church was competing with a rapidly changing society. The year was 1941. The world was entering a war of epic proportions—again. In Italy, at the height of power of the dictator Benito Mussolini, locally known as il Duce (“the leader”), Pius XII (r. 1939–1958), universally known as il Papa (“the pope”), issued an order from his tiny stretch of land atop the former Vatican Hill cemetery. Upon the workmen’s discovery of a mausoleum in January 1941, Pius XII ordered a group of experts to secretly excavate the tombs below the altar of Saint Peter’s Basilica, where tradition held that the bones of Peter himself lay.

During the dig, something unexpected happened. In the evening hours of 1942, after the experts had ended their excavations for the day, the project manager (Monsignor Ludwig Kaas) patrolled the excavations with his assistant as usual. During this patrol, however, he unexpectedly removed a set of bones from a marble coffin that had yet to be discovered by the experts. Along with his assistant, Monsignor Kaas relocated the bones with the intention of burying them once the excavation was complete. For ten long years, the bones lay in an unknown box without anyone discovering them. In the midst of those ten years, Monsignor Kaas died, and the group of experts found another set of bones they believed to be Peter’s. The excitement generated by the excavators led Pope Pius XII, on Christmas Eve of 1950, to broadcast on radio that Peter’s tomb had been discovered and that it was possible that Peter’s very bones had been recovered. After the pope’s death, however, a renowned anthropologist examined the bones and proved that they did not come from an elderly man from the first century. Meanwhile, the bones that Monsignor Kaas had secretly removed in 1942 still lay undisturbed and undiscovered in an inconspicuous, lead-lined wooden box.

This did not change until a new team leader discovered the box through a nonchalant conversation with the assistant in 1953. Through a series of events, the team leader gained approval from the new pope (the third one since the original excavations) to analyze the bones from Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and also study the relics from Saint John’s Lateran Basilica in nearby Rome, since an ancient tradition claimed that this basilica (and not Saint Peter’s) contained the skull of Peter (but not the rest of his body). Although scientific evidence from the skull evaluated from Saint John’s could not confirm with certainty that it matched the relics found in the tomb of Saint Peter’s under the altar, researchers nonetheless concluded they were analyzing the very bones of the apostle Peter, the successor to Jesus Christ. Based on this research, Pope Paul VI (r. 1963–1978) in 1968, nineteen hundred years after Peter’s martyrdom, made a shocking announcement: “New analyses—very patient and very detailed—have been made which led to results which, relying upon the opinion of competent and careful experts, we think positive: the relics of Saint Peter have been identified in a way which we consider as persuasive. It is our duty to announce to you and to the Church this happy news.”^[1] The “happy news” of the Vatican’s discovery was unexpected, and many could scarcely believe that such a story was possible.

The Catholic Church

This story is filled with many twists and turns, and it stretches our imagination. Whether the researchers really discovered Peter’s grave and remains or not, the story of the tomb in this dark cavern does serve as a useful way to throw light on the history of Christianity in Western Europe by highlighting Catholicism, the role of bishops (including the pope) in Catholic Christianity, and Catholic devotion to physical objects like relics. From its beginning, the Catholic Church was the primary tradition for most of Christianity’s existence in Western Europe. In the first centuries after Christ, there was, of course, little difference between the so-called Catholic and Orthodox Churches; over time, however, as the church in the West institutionalized in accordance with its location, it gained a distinct identity.

Basilicas, and not Roman temples, made for a better model for Christian churches since basilicas could accommodate large numbers of people whereas Roman temples were small and designed only to house gods. How do you think Christianity would be different today if Roman Christians would have used temples, and not basilicas, as their architectural models?

The Catholic Church was born and grew into adolescence during the death throes of the mighty Roman Empire. Scholars now refer to the time period between the third and eighth centuries as the Late Antique period to emphasize its continuity with imperial Rome. Not surprisingly, the church adopted and adapted many existing ideas, structures, and terms from the skeletal empire. Without too much exaggeration, the bishop of Rome became a Christian version of the emperor, while other bishops were elevated to the Roman rank of praetor or magistrate. Dioceses (or bishoprics) were based on divisions of imperial administrations, and the dress of bishops and priests developed from the secular dress of the Roman Empire. Money was funneled into dioceses, which created great wealth for the Catholic Church. Christian churches emulated the architecture of Roman basilicas, large public buildings used to conduct business or legal matters, by making the basilica their model for their worship spaces. Altars, based on ancient pagan shrines of the empire, became the centerpiece of all churches and the place on which the Eucharistic prayers were offered. Canon law reflected the legal code of the Romans, and early Christian preachers and writers took as their example the classical orators and authors of Greco-Roman antiquity.

December 25, which is Christmas Day for Western Christians, was the date the ancients celebrated two different religious events. The first was Saturnalia, a winter solstice festival that included decoration of trees and gift giving. The other was the festival of dies natalis solis invicti “the birthday of the unconquered sun.”

Within a few decades after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity in the early fourth century, the church became the state religion of the empire. By the end of the fourth century, pagan sacrifice was banned, and emperors redirected a large part of the empire’s revenues toward the ever-expanding budget of the church. Pagan shrines became Christian churches, and Christian saints and holy days were substituted for local deities and Roman holidays. The day of Christian worship, Sunday, was the day of the Sun (“sol” in Latin), a prominent god in the Roman pantheon. It’s also possible that the adventus (Latin for “arrival”), a ceremony welcoming Roman emperors at the gate of a city after a military campaign, influenced the Christian season of Advent, when Christians welcomed the incarnation of their Lord into human flesh. Either way, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem clearly echoed the Roman practice in the minds of early Christians. In fact, early Christian art resembled pagan art so closely that art historians cannot always distinguish Christian from...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Why We Study Church History—Purpose
• What We Study in Church History—Content
• How We Study Church History—Method