Student Handout pp. 1-16 [PDF] - Grace Church of Mentor

I. Introduction: Persecutions of the Early Church.
A. What were the actions and reactions of the early church during persecutions?
1. Christianity originally produces declarers of truth – charismatic and administrative
leaders.
2. Anti-christianity produces infamous offenders – external persecutors and internal
heretics were produced.
3. Thus, Christianity produces defenders: apologists (defenders of doctrine against
Christian persecutors) and polemicists (attackers of heretics’ false doctrines) by their
words; martyrs by their lives.
B. Reasons for persecutions of Christians.
1. Christianity exclusive – refusal to pay divine honors to the emperor or to take part in
heathen idolatrous ceremonies; seen as a form of atheism (no temples; no images).
2. Christianity unpatriotic – first allegiance is Christ, not Caesar; persecuted as
traitors.
3. Christianity disloyal – aversion to military service.
4. Christianity immoral – cannibalism, incest, orgies.
"Three things are alleged against us: atheism, Thyestean feasts, Oedipodean intercourse" (Amenagoras,
Legatiopro Christianis, III:12)
5. Christianity counter-productive – interfering with the profits of the pagan priests
(Cf. Acts 16:19; 19:19, 24-29)
6. Christianity mysterious – natural catastrophes and political decadence of the empire
blamed on this new cult (cf. Acts 18:13).
They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the
people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters
up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is a famine or
pestilence, straightway the cry is, “Away with the Christians to the lion” (Tertullian, Apologeticus,
xl).
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