The fall of the Roman Empire
The ascendance of Christianity came too late to redeem the social fabric of Rome and the western half of the empire. The Roman world was culturally and spiritually impoverished and no longer had a unifying common core of belief. Its citizens had abandoned their reverence for the old Roman virtues that had once provided cohesion within its far-flung empire. It had been in decline long before the Edict of Milan in 313, and the newly sanctioned Christian virtues had not time to infuse life into the dying empire. The Roman world was culturally and spiritually spent and in a slow motion death spiral during the latter part of the fourth century and early fifth century.[1]
Historians mark certain milestones in the demise of the once mighty empire. To the north lay the barbarian German tribes and behind them were the Mongolian Huns. In 376 the German Visigoths (west Goths) crossed the lower Daube and were the first barbarian tribe to enter the eastern half of the Roman Empire (Byzantine). They were soon followed by the Ostrogoths (east Goths). Even though declining, the empire was still large and had strength enough to drive out the barbarians in 378. The barbarians moved their attacks to the West, and for the next one hundred years hordes of barbarians plundered the western portion of the empire and killed or brought into captivity many of its citizens. The sack of Rome at the heart of the empire by barbarian warlords occurred in 410, and the city was again plundered by the Vandals in 455. The dying body of the empire had its head cut off in 476 when the last western emperor was killed by a Germanic warlord exactly one hundred years after the first invasion of the Goths. The date is more symbolic than meaningful as the empire had ceased to function long before 476. However, that year was far more significant in another way for it marked the beginning of the Middle Ages which lasted for a thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453.[2]
Emergence of the papacy and doctrinal compromise
The second major event to dramatically influence the course of the church’s history occurred in 461 within the church. Out of its second century struggle with the Gnostics and Montanists, the church developed the episcopal form of government (church recognition of a governing authority of bishops) to establish its authority and to determine the meaning of the Bible because even heretical groups claimed biblical authority in promotion of their heresies. At first the organizational structure of the church was relatively simple in that the officials of the church were elders and deacons. Elders were called presbyters. In Greek, overseer meant episcopos or bishop. Bishops were deemed to be the successors of the apostles, and in time the office of a bishop became the leader of group of presbyters.[3]
As the church grew and spread, so did the hierarchal nature of church leadership. Bishops in larger cities (metropolitan bishops, later called archbishops) were eventually looked upon to be of higher rank than bishops from smaller churches. Over time, the bishops of five cities in the Christian realm were recognized as having the greatest authority. Four of these cities were in the eastern and Greek portion of the Roman Empire: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Muslim conquests eventually removed forever the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. Only the patriarch of Constantinople in the east and the bishop of Rome in the west were left. In time the bishops in the western and Latin portion of the empire recognized the bishop of Rome as their superior. By the year 461, the papacy had been fully established under Pope Leo I in the western portion of the empire. As previously noted, the last western emperor was killed as the Germanic tribes of the north conquered Rome fifteen years later in 476. Remarkably, the barbarian conquest of the Roman Empire enhanced the power and prestige of the Roman popes who were successful in mitigating much of worst excesses of the invaders. Many of the barbarians who invaded Italy had become Christians and were in awe of the bishops of Rome. Soon the church sent missionaries to the barbarous, unlearned, and diverse tribes of the harsh wilds of northern of Europe. Among these uncivilized peoples, many churches were established which became the foundation of Christendom over the next one thousand years.[4]
When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi with his disciples, He asked them who men said the Son of man is. Following their response, He asked his disciples who they said He was.
Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” [Matthew 16:13-20. RSV]
Since the second century many Christians believed that the bones of St. Peter were buried on the site of the Vatican church in Rome. Over time the belief grew that the presence of Peter’s bones was proof that he was the first bishop of Rome. Based on Christ’s words that Peter was the rock upon which he would build His church [Matthew 16:18], the Roman church eventually declared that Peter was the founder of the episcopal line of successors (popes) which has never been broken. But the Roman church’s reliance on Matthew 16:18 to establish the papal chain did not exist until approximately 250 and then only marginally until the fifth century.[5] Although the power and authority of the papacy over the Roman church had not come into full flower until the rule of Leo I (440-461), the Roman Catholic Church lists 48 popes before Leo I.[6] Once the papacy had established its supreme authority over the church in the late fifth century, thereafter, all subsequent popes wanting to exert or expand their authority did so based on the church’s interpretation of Christ’s words to Peter. As an example, Gelasius I (492-496) claimed that the popes had ultimate authority to change the decisions of any bishops.[7]
With the authority of church government fully consolidated and vested in the head of the Roman church, a single man now had the power to change or ignore the meaning of scripture, and the church began to deteriorate. Church historian B. K. Kuiper lists many of the unscriptural doctrines that had infiltrated the church by the end of the fifth century.
• Prayers for the dead
• Belief in purgatory (place in which souls are purified after death and before they can enter heaven)
• The forty-day Lenten season
• The view that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice, and that its administrators are priests
• Sharp division of the members of the church into clergy (officers of the church) and laity (ordinary members of the church)
• The veneration (adoration) of martyrs and saints, and above all the adoration of Mary
• The burning of tapers or candles in their honor (martyrs, saints, and Mary)
• Veneration of the relics of martyrs and saints
• The ascription of magical powers to these relics
• Pictures, images, and altars in the churches
• Gorgeous vestments for the clergy
• More and more elaborate and splendid ritual (form of worship)
• Less preaching
• Pilgrimages to holy places
• Monasticism
• Worldliness
• Persecution of heathen and heretics[8]
Church and state joined under the papacy
We have previously written that the intertwining of the affairs of church and state began with the legalization of Christianity in 313 under Emperor Constantine and later establishment as the official religion of the empire in 380. This mixing of affairs was a corruption of God’s design for each realm and would last for more than a thousand years.[9]
At first it was the state that interfered with the church. But three hundred years later the church was fully involved in the affairs of state. The most important pope in the first half of the Middle Ages was Gregory I who ruled the church from 590 to 604. He became the example for all subsequent popes that assumed broad political powers over the barbarian kingdoms following the vacuum left by the failed Western Roman Empire. Not only the head of the church, Gregory was heavily involved in the secular realm of European politics and governments including appointment of heads of cities, raising armies, and making peace treaties. Simultaneously, the church also cared for the poor, educated the people, and pursued a measure of justice. Much of Gregory I and his successors’ involvement in civil affairs appear to have been the lesser of two evils during the period in which the church dealt with the trauma and transition of a primitive society that existed in the first centuries following the barbarian invasions. Without the church’s involvement in its civil affairs, European civilization would have remained far longer and deeper in the valley of cultural and spiritual darkness.[10] Nevertheless, the consequences of mixing the ecclesiastical and civil governments would haunt the church until the Reformation and beyond.
The division of the eastern and western churches
At the end of the church’s first millennium, its two branches had grown apart to the point of complete separation. In the west the church was located in Italy but with the fall of the western portion of the Roman Empire had expanded into France, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, and Russia. The church in the eastern half of the empire lasted another thousand years until it fell to the Muslim conquerors in 1453. But even though the eastern branch of Christianity survived the on-slough of the barbarians, its history in the Middle Ages was one of retrenchment having lost Syria, Palestine, and Egypt to the Muslim Arabs. It was confined to Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula. Unlike the vibrant, vigorous, and expanding western church, the east was comprised of an old and exhausted people treading water in a stagnant pool.[11]
The character of the two churches had become significantly different. The western church had changed dramatically and had taken on a decidedly Germanic character. The eastern church had a distinctive oriental flavor.[12] Their language, literature, and cultures had drifted apart. The final schism occurred because of differences in the exercise of church authority. Eventually, push came to shove, and Pope Leo IX of Rome sent a letter of excommunication to Michael Cerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople. Cerularius in turn excommunicated the pope. The Greek Eastern church and the Latin Western church had completely divided by 1054 and would go their separate ways.[13] Hereafter in this commentary on the history of the church, the discussion shall be confined to the western branch of Christianity.
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The accomplishments of the church in the first thousand years of its history are truly remarkable. In the first five hundred years a tiny Jewish sect that claimed a Jewish man named Jesus was the Son of God had suffered, grown, and eventually conquered heathenism in the highly civilized Roman Empire. In the next five hundred years following the collapse of the empire, the church conquered the highly uncivilized barbarians of northern Europe.[14]
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991), p. 132.
[2] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), pp. 48-51.
[3] Ibid., pp. 18-20.
[4] Ibid., pp. 39-42, 75-77.
[5] Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 166.
[6] Kuiper., p. 139.
[7] Johnson, p. 167.
[8] Ibid., p. 44.
[9] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), p. 266.
[10] Kuiper, pp. 57-58.
[11] Ibid., pp. 88-90.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid. p. 98.
[14] Ibid., p. 58.
