Therefore, having been apprehended as the instigator and ringleader of a criminal conspiracy … you will be executed. Christian could still be arrested, however.
For example, a Christian soldier, Marinus, lost his life when a jealous fellow soldier found that Marinus was to be promoted to the rank of centurion and denounced him as a Christian.
Yet bishoprics multiplied, and church building seems to have gone on unhindered. In the imperial capital at Nicomedia on the opposite side of the Bosporus to Constantinople , the Christian church stood in full view of the imperial palace.
More important, the church now became a movement of the countryside as well as of the towns. How and why, after 43 years of peace, did this happen? First, while the church appeared to be accepted, opposition to it was never far below the surface. Since the pagans, inspired by the Neo-Platonist philosopher, Porphyry, had begun to mount a serious intellectual assault on Christianity. In March he appointed a comrade-in-arms, Maximian, as co-emperor Augustus in the West; and on March 1, , the two Augusti appointed two other military men, Constantius and Galerius, as their assistants, or Caesars.
They imposed a uniform system of administration, currency and, in , prices throughout the Empire. Uniformity and discipline were the watchwords of the age, yet Christian remained a standing challenge to the unifying and conservative ideals of the emperors. Persecutions might not have occurred, however, but for the fortunes of war. In Caesar Galerius, who was strongly anti-Christian, won a decisive victory over the Persians.
With his victory his influence over Diocletian increased. The die was now cast. On February 23, , the Feast of Terminalia, repression would start. Churches were destroyed, Christian services banned, and the Scriptures seized and burned. One concession Diocletian secured: no bloodshed. A second edict imposed an obligation on all clergy to sacrifice, but the prisons became too full, and in the autumn of this was modified and most of those imprisoned for refusing were released.
So far the persecution had not been as severe as under Valerian. Scriptures were seized, but among Christians there was often consternation and grudging compliance. Only a minority of determined souls held out. In , with Diocletian ill in Rome, Galerius seized his chance and imposed a universal obligation to sacrifice on pain of death. Up to then only the clergy had been involved directly; now the pressure was on every Christian. The number of martyrs increased, as did the defiance of the Christians.
This phase ended on May 1, , when Diocletian and his western colleague, Maximian, formally abdicated, to be succeeded by Galerius and Constantius respectively. In the West, Constantius took no further action, and on his death, his son Constantine was proclaimed emperor by his troops.
In the East, however, Galerius renewed persecution, accompanied by anti-Christian propaganda and a great effort to reorganize paganism along Christian hierarchical structures.
It was too late. Steam gradually ran out of the enforcement of the edicts, and no martyrs are recorded in this phase after In April , Galerius, realizing that he was dying, decided that enough was enough and revoked the edicts of persecution. This last request was in vain, for Galerius died six days later.
In the spring of , Constantine entered on a final bid for supremacy in the West. Campaigning against his rival, Maxentius, through north and central Italy, he reached within five miles of Rome on October That night he had a vision or dream that convinced him that his own destiny lay with Christianity. All individuals were to be free to follow their own consciences. In fact, the Edict proved to be the deathknell of the immortal gods. Eleven years later in , Constantine defeated Licinius and proclaimed his adherence to Christianity and his aim that Christianity should become the religion of the Empire now united under his sole rule.
The church had triumphed. First, they had become too strong to be defeated. In some provinces, such as Bithynia and Cyrenaica [today, northern Egypt and Libyal, they may already have formed a majority, and they were well organized. Further, Christians attracted people, as a Neo-Platonist philosopher explained c.
More than that, Christianity had never lost its martyr spirit. Thus, as soon as sentence was given against the first, some from one quarter and others from another would leap up to the tribunal before the judge and confess themselves Christians. Popular opinion had been changing in favor of Christianity in the previous 30 years. Against such spirit the pagan authorities were powerless. They might sometimes win intellectual combats, proving Plato was a cleverer man than St.
Paul, but those who regarded death as liberation had the last word. When you study the Book of Acts — the history of the early church — and Paul's Epistles, you can see quite clearly why God set Paul apart for this crucial role. Paul was fluent in the Greek language and Greek culture and learned in Greek literature, which enabled him to relate to the Greeks gentiles on their level.
In some cases, he cited their poets to get his foot in the door as a prelude to revealing God to them. He was a Roman citizen, which entitled him to legal protections unavailable to noncitizens and which, in some cases, facilitated his presentation of the message.
He was highly intelligent, and he would call on his intellect to expound on critical matters of Christian doctrine in his letters, 13 of which are preserved for us in the New Testament as Holy Scripture.
Ironically, Paul's Jewish background greatly enhanced his evangelistic efforts. His intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and the Mosaic law perfectly equipped him to explain the Gospel as part two of God's two-part story of His salvation plan for mankind.
Paul confirmed that Christ had come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Christ fulfilled the messianic promises of the Old Testament prophets. He inaugurated the New Covenant, which superseded the Old Covenant and provided a means for all mankind — Jews and gentiles alike — to be saved, by faith in Him. No one in human history understood better than Paul how God's salvation plan was integrated from start to finish, and no one could better communicate it.
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