Church History — Unit 1: Why Church History?

Jesus said it before any of it happened. "I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." When He said it, He had perhaps a hundred and twenty followers. He had no buildings, no budget, no clergy, no curriculum, no creeds, no concordances. He had a fishing crew, a tax collector, a doubter, a hothead, a thief, and an assortment of fishermen, women, and former demoniacs. He told them they were going to build something the gates of hell could not break.

Twenty centuries later we are still here, looking back at twenty centuries of warfare, plague, persecution, schism, scandal, revival, and recovery, and the church is bigger and broader and more global than it has ever been. The Promise held. That is the whole subject of this course. Church History is not the story of a religion. It is the story of how Jesus has kept one sentence of His promise across two thousand years. We are reading the receipts.

"I will build my church." — Jesus

Welcome to Church History at Chapala Theological Seminary. Ten units. Twenty centuries. One Builder. We will move from the Day of Pentecost in Unit 1 to the explosion of Global South Christianity in Unit 10. Along the way we will meet apostles, martyrs, mystics, monks, missionaries, mothers, magistrates, theologians, translators, tyrants, and a great many ordinary believers whose names we will never know but whose obedience kept the line unbroken.

Before we walk into the first century, three preliminary questions deserve an answer.

Why study church history at all?

Four reasons. First, the Christian message is rooted in history. We do not worship a philosophical idea. We worship a Jewish carpenter who walked Galilean roads under a known Roman governor, who was crucified on a known hill outside a known city, and who walked out of a known tomb. Christianity is uniquely historical, and a church that loses its history loses its grip on its own message. Second, the church's history is the story of how the Holy Spirit has continued to act through men and women of faith. We learn what God does by watching what He has done. Third, without knowing the past, we are unable to understand ourselves. The hymns we sing, the creeds we recite, the categories we think with, even the canon we read — all of these came to us through history. Fourth, knowledge of the past keeps us from repeating its mistakes. Heresies recycle. Persecutions recur. Spiritual fads have all happened before, usually badly. The pastor who knows church history will not waste a season chasing what the third century already buried.

When did church history begin?

About AD 30, on the Day of Pentecost. Some textbooks reach back to the Old Testament covenants, and they are not wrong to do so — the church does not begin from scratch. But as a distinct community with a distinct mission, the church begins at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples in Jerusalem and three thousand souls were added in a single afternoon. From that hinge moment forward, the story we are tracking is one continuous narrative of expansion, opposition, definition, and renewal.

What is the spine of this course?

Beyond the chronological march, this course carries one distinctive thread that comes from my own field of study. My doctorate is in preaching, and my research has focused on the history of preaching. The historical consensus in that field names four centuries as periods of unusually great preaching: the first century, the fourth century, the sixteenth century, and the nineteenth century. When we reach those centuries we will pause and look closely at the pulpit. The pulpit is not the only thing the church does, but it is one of the things the church does best when she is healthiest, and the four centuries when she preached most powerfully are the four centuries we will linger over. Unit 1 is the first of them. Unit 3 will be the second. Unit 7 the third. Unit 9 the fourth. The other six units are the connective tissue, and the connective tissue matters too. But the four pulpit centuries are the spine.

Paul wrote to the Galatians that "when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son" (Galatians 4:4). The phrase is striking. God did not send Jesus into history at random. He waited for a particular convergence of circumstances. Three of those circumstances are visible to any reader of the New Testament, and they explain why the gospel spread the way it did in the first century.

1. Greek language

Three centuries before Christ, Alexander the Great conquered the known world and left behind a common Greek that became the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean. Koiné Greek — common Greek — was spoken in the markets of Antioch, the docks of Corinth, the streets of Ephesus, and the synagogues of Rome. By the first century a traveler with passable Greek could move from Spain to Syria and be understood. The apostles wrote in that Greek. The New Testament is a Greek New Testament. The gospel spread on the back of a language already in place.

2. Roman roads

Two centuries before Christ, the Romans began building the most extensive road system the ancient world had ever seen. By the first century, fifty thousand miles of paved Roman road radiated out from the empire's center. The Pax Romana — the Roman Peace — meant that those roads were patrolled and reasonably safe. A traveler could leave Antioch on foot and reach Rome with no border crossings. Paul did exactly that, several times. The gospel spread on the back of a road system already in place.

3. Jewish synagogue

Centuries of Jewish dispersion — the diaspora — had planted Jewish synagogues in nearly every major city of the empire. These synagogues had read the Old Testament in Greek (the Septuagint) for two centuries. They had drawn around themselves a fringe of God-fearing Gentiles who admired Jewish monotheism but were unwilling to take on the full burden of the law. Wherever Paul arrived in a new city, he had a ready-made congregation: Jews who knew the Scriptures and Gentiles who already half-believed them. The gospel spread on the back of a religious framework already in place.

Three preparations. One language, one road system, one synagogue network. None of them was Christian. All of them served Christ. This is the way God has always worked: He prepares the soil long before He drops the seed. Some of you are praying for someone who seems unreachable. Look around at his life. The roads may be already laid. The vocabulary may be already in place. The witness may already be in the room. God's seeds fall where God has prepared the soil.

Acts 2 is the birth certificate of the Christian church. The setting is a Jewish feast day fifty days after Passover. The disciples are gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem — about a hundred and twenty of them — waiting on a promise the resurrected Christ had made before His ascension: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you" (Acts 1:8). At about nine in the morning, the wait ended. There came a sound like a rushing mighty wind. Tongues of fire rested on each one of them. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, and pilgrims gathered from every corner of the empire heard the gospel each in his own tongue.

Peter stood up to preach. The man who fifty-three days earlier had denied Christ to a servant girl now stood in the open and preached Christ crucified and risen to a hostile crowd. He quoted Joel 2 on the outpouring of the Spirit, Psalm 16 on the resurrection, Psalm 110 on the ascended Lord, and reached his conclusion: "Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36). When the crowd asked what they should do, Peter said, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). Three thousand souls believed and were baptized that day.

That sermon is the first artifact of the first great century of Christian preaching. Notice four features. It was Spirit-empowered: Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit before he opened his mouth, and that filling is what changed the man from a denier to a herald. It was Scripture-saturated: Peter preached the Old Testament fulfilled in Christ, three texts in three minutes, with no apology and no padding. It was Christ-centered: from beginning to end the subject was Jesus — His life, His death, His resurrection, His exaltation. And it was response-demanding: Peter ended with a verdict and a call. The first sermon in church history set the pattern. When the four great centuries of preaching get going, they all return to those four marks.

The Jerusalem church grew quickly. The believers "continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42). They held property in common. They worshipped daily in the temple courts and ate together in homes. They were almost entirely Jewish — converted Jews who believed Jesus was the long-promised Messiah. There were no Gentile members yet, no church buildings, no New Testament, no clergy distinct from the laity, no formal liturgy. There was only the apostles' teaching, the breaking of bread, prayer, and the daily addition of new believers as the Lord drew them in.

The first persecution against the Christian church did not come from Rome. It came from the Jewish religious authorities, who saw the new movement as a heresy that needed to be stamped out before it spread. The flashpoint was Stephen, one of the seven deacons appointed in Acts 6 to manage food distribution to needy Hellenistic widows. Stephen was a Spirit-filled preacher in his own right, and his sermon in Acts 7 was a sweeping rehearsal of Old Testament history that ended in a frontal accusation: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you" (Acts 7:51). The crowd dragged him out of the city and stoned him. Stephen died praying for his murderers, the first Christian martyr.

Standing at the edge of that scene, holding the coats of the executioners, was a young Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus. He approved of the killing. The book of Acts tells us that on that very day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and the believers scattered — "except the apostles" (Acts 8:1). Saul went house to house, dragging Christians off to prison. The result, however, was not the destruction of the church. The result was the spread of the church.

The scattered believers carried the gospel with them everywhere they ran. "Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word" (Acts 8:4). Philip preached in Samaria, then on the desert road to an Ethiopian official, then up the Mediterranean coast. Other unnamed believers went north to Phoenicia, west to Cyprus, and east to Antioch in Syria. There at Antioch they began doing something unprecedented: they preached the gospel to Gentiles, not just to fellow Jews. A multi-ethnic church was born — and at Antioch, for the first time in history, the disciples were called Christians (Acts 11:26).

That word "Christian" is itself a sermon. It marks the moment when the movement could no longer be described as a Jewish sect. It was something new in the world: a community defined not by ethnicity, geography, or temple ritual, but by a shared confession of one Person. Persecution had tried to kill the church in Jerusalem; instead it gave the church a new headquarters in Antioch and a new name that stuck.

And then there was Saul. The young Pharisee who had stood at Stephen's stoning was met on the Damascus road by the risen Christ Himself, blinded for three days, baptized by a frightened disciple named Ananias, and turned into the apostle Paul. The persecutor became the missionary. The man who had hauled Christians to prison would soon spend a quarter century planting Christian congregations across the Mediterranean. The first persecution did not destroy the church. It expanded the church and converted its chief enemy.

By about AD 49, the church faced its first major theological crisis. Gentiles were pouring in. Some Jewish believers, particularly those who had come out of the Pharisee party, insisted that Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be saved. Paul and Barnabas had just returned from their first missionary journey reporting astonishing Gentile conversions in Galatia, and they pushed back hard. The dispute could not be settled in Antioch. The apostles and elders convened in Jerusalem to decide.

The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) is one of the great hinges of church history. Peter spoke first, recounting his vision and the conversion of Cornelius's household, and concluded that God had given the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles "just as He did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:8–9). Paul and Barnabas reported on the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles. Then James, the Lord's half brother and the leader of the Jerusalem church, gave the verdict: Gentiles would not be required to be circumcised or to keep the Mosaic law. They would only be asked to abstain from things that would needlessly offend their Jewish brothers in shared meals.

The council's decision changed everything. It meant that Christianity would not be a sect within Judaism but a faith for the whole world. It meant that salvation was, finally and decisively, by grace through faith and not by ethnic or ritual conformity. It cleared the runway for the next thirty years of Pauline mission and for the next twenty centuries of Gentile Christianity. Without the Jerusalem Council, there is no church history beyond Israel. With it, the doors swung open to every nation.

One detail deserves attention because it foreshadows what is to come. The council did not silence the men who disagreed with its outcome. There were Pharisee believers who continued to teach circumcision after the council; Paul spent the rest of his life writing letters to combat their influence in Galatia and Philippi. The first church controversy was settled by a council, but it was not silenced by a council. That pattern will repeat in every century. Councils define the line, but the line still has to be defended in pulpits and letters and lives.

This is where we slow down. The first century stands at the head of the four great centuries of preaching, and it deserves a careful look before we move on. What made the first century great in the pulpit? Three things.

1. The preachers had heard Jesus

Peter, John, James, and the other apostolic preachers had walked with Jesus for three years. They had heard Him preach in Galilean synagogues and on Galilean hillsides. They had heard the parables firsthand. They had been corrected by Him in private. When they preached, they preached what they had seen and heard (1 John 1:3). Paul, who had not walked with the earthly Jesus, was caught up to the third heaven and given a direct revelation, and he says he did not receive his gospel "from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). The first-century pulpit had a directness no later century could match. The men in it had stood within arm's length of the Source.

2. The preachers had received the Spirit at Pentecost

Spirit-filled preaching is not a New Testament novelty — the Old Testament prophets preached in the power of the Spirit too. But Pentecost marked a new era. The Spirit was now poured out on all flesh, on sons and daughters, on young and old. The first-century preacher was the first beneficiary of that outpouring. Read Peter's sermon at Pentecost, his sermon at the temple, Stephen's sermon, Paul's sermon at Athens — you are reading messages delivered by men with the wind of God in their lungs. The Spirit who breathed on Pentecost was the same Spirit who carried Spurgeon and Wesley eighteen centuries later, but the first century is where He started.

3. The preachers preached as the New Testament was being written

This is easy to miss. Peter and Paul preached without a New Testament. They preached the Old Testament fulfilled in Christ, and as they preached, the New Testament took shape under their hands. Paul's letters were sermons-by-mail to congregations he had founded. Peter's first epistle was a sermon to scattered believers. The Gospels were written down so that the apostolic preaching would not be lost when the apostles died. The first great century of preaching is the century in which the very text of the New Testament was being written. Every later great century of preaching has been a return to that text. The first century did not need to return to it. The first century was producing it.

Five sermons to remember

If you remember nothing else from this section, remember these five sermons of the first great century of preaching: Peter at Pentecost (Acts 2), the Spirit-empowered birthday sermon. Peter at the temple (Acts 3), where the lame man healed at the Beautiful Gate became an occasion for preaching the resurrection. Stephen before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7), which traced the whole arc of redemptive history and ended in martyrdom. Paul at Athens (Acts 17), where he stood on Mars Hill and preached the unknown God to Greek philosophers, quoting their own poets back at them. Paul to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20), the farewell sermon at Miletus, where Paul declared he had not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God. Five sermons. Five different audiences. Five different settings. One Spirit. One Christ. One pattern that the second century would inherit, the fourth century would refine, the sixteenth century would recover, and the nineteenth century would multiply.

The first century church was not run by clergy in robes. It was run out of homes — and in those homes women carried much of the load. Lydia, a Gentile God-fearer and dealer in purple cloth, hosted the first European congregation in her home in Philippi (Acts 16). Phoebe, called a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae, carried Paul's letter to the Romans (Romans 16:1–2). Junia is named among the apostles in Romans 16:7. Priscilla and her husband Aquila hosted house churches in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. When the eloquent Apollos turned up in Ephesus preaching an incomplete gospel, it was Priscilla and Aquila who took him aside and explained the way of God to him more accurately (Acts 18:24–26). Priscilla's name is listed first in most New Testament references — an order that in the ancient world signaled prominence. The first-century church wove women's gifts into the fabric of its mission in ways that the next century, under social pressure, would partially withdraw. We will follow that thread carefully across the course.

By about AD 70, the first-century church faced two seismic shocks. The first was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies under Titus. The temple where Peter and John had once preached was leveled, the priesthood scattered, and the sacrificial system that had defined Jewish worship for a thousand years was ended forever. Christianity, which had been born in Jerusalem, now had no center in Jerusalem. The center had already moved to Antioch and was moving toward Rome.

The second shock was slower but just as decisive: the apostles were dying. James the brother of John was beheaded by Herod Agrippa in Acts 12. Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome under Nero around AD 64–67, Peter crucified upside down (by tradition) and Paul beheaded. James the Lord's brother was thrown from the temple wall and clubbed to death around AD 62. By the end of the century only John was left; Revelation associates him with exile on the Aegean island of Patmos, though the record of his own death is less certain. By around AD 100, as the apostolic generation itself passed from the scene, the apostolic age was over. The men who had walked with Jesus were gone. The men who had laid the foundation were gone. Scripture — what we call the New Testament — was now the church's most authoritative written connection to its own origins, though not its only one; oral memories, traditions carried in worship, churches with direct apostolic ties, and the bishops and elders the apostles themselves had appointed all carried that living witness forward as well.

And the church did not collapse. The church kept growing. The next units of this course will trace what happened next: the Apostolic Fathers who had known the apostles and sought to preserve and transmit their teaching to the generation that followed (Unit 2), the persecutions that tested whether the church could survive the loss of imperial favor (also Unit 2), the heresies that tested whether the church knew what it actually believed (Unit 3), and the slow, costly work of definition that produced the creeds we still recite today.

The pastor who reads Acts as church history rather than as a closed Bible book gets four working principles that will serve him every Monday morning of his ministry.

First, persecution is not the end. When the church loses ground, watch where the scattered believers land. The Jerusalem persecution that scattered the church gave the world Antioch. Every closing door God uses to open another. The pastor who panics at every setback has not read Acts 8 carefully enough.

Second, God prepares the soil before He drops the seed. The fullness of time is not a one-time miracle — it is a pattern. Before God moves in your community, He has already laid roads, planted vocabulary, and stationed witnesses. Your job is not to manufacture readiness. Your job is to recognize it.

Third, councils define but do not silence. When a doctrinal question is settled in your church, expect the dissenters to keep teaching. Plan for it. The line that was clear at Jerusalem in AD 49 had to be defended in Galatia, in Philippi, in Rome, in every city Paul visited. Defining truth and defending truth are different jobs, and a church needs to do both.

Fourth, the pulpit you stand behind is descended from Peter's at Pentecost. When you open your Bible to preach this Sunday, you are doing exactly what Peter did with the scroll of Joel in his hands. The Spirit who filled him is the Spirit who fills you. The Christ he proclaimed is the Christ you proclaim. The text he had under his thumb is the same text you have under yours, plus the rest of the New Testament he helped write. There is more continuity between your sermon and his than there is between your sermon and last week's pop song. Stand in that line. Preach as if you stand in it. Because you do.

We began this unit with a sentence Jesus spoke in Caesarea Philippi to a small group of mostly illiterate followers. "I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."

Across the rest of this course we will watch that sentence get tested against everything hell could throw at it. Roman emperors will try to kill it. Heretics will try to redefine it. Barbarians will try to overrun it. Politicians will try to capture it. Theologians will try to over-explain it. Reformers will have to recover it. Missionaries will have to carry it across oceans. Liberals will try to dilute it. Persecution will try to silence it. Every century will throw something new at the Promise, and every century will fail to break it.

That is not propaganda. That is the historical record of twenty centuries. The church Jesus said He would build is here, larger and more global than at any point in its history, with more believers in Africa and Asia and Latin America than ever before, and the gates of hell still have not prevailed. Welcome to Unit 1. Pass this examination, and we will meet the second century in Unit 2 — the century of the Apostolic Fathers, the great persecutions, and the costly defense of a faith the apostles had only just delivered.