Alexander Schmemann

1. The Beginning of the Church (28 pages)

Page 7

Here, then, is the image of the Church bequeathed to us by the records of her earliest days. Does this mean that she had no failings or weaknesses then? Of course not. The author of Acts mentions many of them, and in the Pauline epistles whole chapters will be devoted to exposing and scoring these sins. But as we begin the history of the Church, in which such sins and weaknesses will too often be painfully obvious, we also need to keep in mind that “icon of the Church” — that image and realization of the first experience of true life in the Church — to which Christians will always have recourse when they seek to cure their spiritual ailments and overcome their sins.

 

Break with Judaism.

The conflict with the Judean religious authorities, the next main topic in Acts, introduces us to the second phase of Church history in the apostolic age. By providing the impetus for the expansion of the new faith beyond the limits of Jewry, it brought the Church out onto the broad highroad of history.

This conflict had been brewing since the very beginning. The members of the Sanhedrin twice ordered the arrest of the heads of the Church, but on both occasions set them free after questioning. After all, the Christians were not breaking the Mosaic law; their sole offense was that they preached “the name of Jesus” and the resurrection of the dead. But the doctrine of resurrection had its adherents, particularly among the Pharisees. Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee, spoke out in favor of avoiding conflict: “If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it” (Acts 5:38f.). The author of Acts constantly emphasizes that the Jews have no objection they can raise against Christian teaching, since it is itself based on the Scriptures and testifies to the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

But difficulties developed none the less, to which the interrogation and stoning of Stephen gave explosive momentum under the zeal of Saul. “And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. . . . Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word” (Acts 8:1,4).
Up to that time the Church had stayed in Jerusalem. We have already seen that the Church, by virtue of her very purpose, at the beginning had to reveal herself as a united, visible company — the messianic community gathered together around the Twelve in the Holy City in order to testify to the advent of the promised kingdom of God. Now she would have to accept as her lot all the heat and dust of her long — and very human and earthly — journey through history, a journey that began with the expulsion of Christians from Jerusalem by force. The Christians of Jerusalem, who were Jews by birth, naturally looked upon the Church as primarily the crowning point of their own Jewish tradition; they did not yet comprehend her universal, pan-human mission. Indeed, the question as to whether or not pagans should be received into the Church was to be one of her first acute growing pains.

 

The Apostle Paul.

The preaching to the Samaritans, St. Philip’s conversion of the Ethiopian nobleman, and the conversion of the Roman Cornelius were still exceptional cases; even missionaries who went further afield — to Cyprus, Antioch, and Rome — at first preached only to Jews, though other converts began at Antioch, and no doubt elsewhere, to share the Good News of Christ with pagans.

The life work of St. Paul, which won for him the title of Apostle to the Gentiles, brought to completion the formative period of the Church. Since Acts was written by his traveling companion and “beloved physician,” and since Paul’s letters to the various Christian communities both describe his spiritual experience and expound his understanding of doctrine, we have more information about him than about any other apostle. An orthodox Jew born at Tarsus in the Diaspora, his religious consciousness was completely conditioned by the insatiable Old Testament thirst for the living God, but he also breathed freely in the atmosphere of the Greco-Roman world. He received his religious education in Jerusalem from Gamaliel, the intellectual spokesman of the Pharisees; his consequent natural enmity to Christianity already revealed the wholehearted ardor with which he applied his religious ideals to life.

 

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