The Gray Monk

Letters from the early Church

The formative documents which framed and still frame much of our belief.

The familiar is often something we tend to overlook when we pick up a copy of the Bible, and those, who, like me, have grown up with the familiar round of “Epistle and Gospel” will know what I mean when I say we have heard the epistles “to death”. We have heard the BCP cycle so often we can almost recite them along with the readers. Perhaps for this reason alone, we need to change the cycle and put the letters to the developing Church back into context.

Why have I started my look at the New Testament with the Letters? Surely the Gospels come first? Well, yes, they do, but only in the order of the Canon as it was set by the Council of Nicea and others. The Gospels were almost certainly written later; the letters came first, treatises on conduct, worship, organization, doctrine and theology, written to guide the new faith of converts and fight the schisms already evident among their followers. They take up fully a third of the New Testament and frame much of what we believe today and form the basis of a great deal of our theology and the ethics of Christianity. One interesting aspect of them is that they also give us some insights of how the first Christians saw their age and their expectation that they would see the Second Coming and last judgement.

St Paul is the author of the majority of the letters, and we know this because he put in a greeting and a closing salutation to them in his own name, sometimes even on the originals, scribbling additional comments, observations, and injunctions in the margins. James wrote two, Peter two, John three (although some scholars feel this may have been one letter altered to suit different destinations), and Jude one. We do not know who the author of the letter to the Hebrews was, but we do know roughly when it was written.

Chronologically, 1 Thessalonians was the first to be written in around 48 AD, although some argue that Galatians may have been written earlier, it is generally agreed that the latter was more likely penned in 55 AD. 2 Thessalonians followed swiftly on the heels of the first with the letters to the Corinthians, Philippians, and Romans following between 52 AD and 55 AD. The letters to Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Titus, and Timothy all followed between 61 AD and 65AD. Hebrews was written around 65 AD and most of the letters written by James, Peter, and Jude were penned between 60 AD (Peter and James) and 80 AD (Jude). John wrote all three letters sometime after 90 AD. It is widely believed (and the evidence supports this) that the Gospels did not make their appearance until around 80 AD, and these were originally collections of stories written down for local consumption by those around the Apostles.

The letters are very much the product of the life of the early Church, addressing the variety of matters impacting upon the message, their worship, their beliefs and their status in the community. Not much change there, then! Since the letters are addressing issues that are still pressing upon us two millennia later! What the letters show us more than anything else is that the teaching of the Church was, and still is, dynamic. In a changing world, the underlying principles may not change a great deal, but as people's understanding changes we must also adapt our understanding if we are to make sense of God’s purpose as expressed in our faith.

Scholastically, the letters may be divided into several “groups”. In the Pauline groupings we have the “first letters” - 1 and 2 Thessalonians- then, the “Gospel” letters - Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans - followed by the “prison” letters - Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, and finally, the “pastoral” letters to Timothy and Titus. Hebrews is on its own, and there is some argument as to where it was aimed. The final group of letters is also the whole sweep of the later Apostolic letters, and these are called simply the “general” group, so-called because they were written to be copied to all the communities of the Christian Church. In a sense these are pastoral letters meant to bring together all those who shared the message of the Gospel.

The authors of the letters all draw richly on the Old Testament and upon a number of other “common” sources, some of which are contained in the “extra canonical” books I discussed in an earlier article. Some seem to draw upon, or perhaps are themselves part of, a “proto-gospel” literature. Personally, I would dearly like to see some of the letters that were written TO Paul and the others, as I suspect that these might add something to the way we understand the responses. Since that is most unlikely to occur, we need to rely upon other sources of information to try and glean the background to what Paul and the others were addressing.

From all of this we can safely say that the letters were all written during the latter half of the first Century with the earliest being written some 20 years after the Resurrection. To interpret them properly we need to understand the world to which they were written and then to draw the parallels with our own society in order to see what they say to us today. As ever we need to remember that society moves on and what may well have been relevant and right in the first Century may need to be adjusted in the light of modern knowledge and understanding of the world and people today. So, where do we begin?

Let us look first of all at the setting. The early Church began in a decidedly pagan world. The dominant religions of the Near and Middle East were of Greco-Roman origin, but there were also influences from the Far East, and the further East one traveled the stronger these influences became. Greek or “Hellenic” philosophy was also having a major impact upon Judaism, as witnessed by the Sadducee school of thought, and there is some evidence that Mithraism and some of the Eastern “Mystic” religions were making inroads as well. Into this there was now launched the new “Christian” philosophy, and we must not forget that the term was intended as an insult originally. Be that as it may, it is certain that some of these found their way into the formative thoughts and concepts of the newly formed Church. Indeed, the letter to the Hebrews shows a remarkable similarity in its arguments to the best of those of the Hellenic schools of philosophic debate. Even this early there were arguments about the nature of Christ Himself - was He a human with Godlike powers or a God with merely the appearance of being human? To adopt the latter position, one has to deny that He died, or that He could suffer as a human, and this calls into question the crucifixion and the resurrection! No wonder St John almost foams at the mouth over this issue.

There were also more serious matters to consider. Almost the only meat available for food was purchased in the market places in the cities - and that came from one exclusive source. You’ve guessed it, the pagan temples! It was the product of animal sacrifice, for the budding Christian, meat tainted by having been offered to a false God, and the money from its sale flowed back into funding the Temples and the debauched communities that they encouraged. Added to this was the practice of encouraging the worshippers in the temples to “drink the blood of sacrifice” - quite literally in some cases - and to see the temple gods and goddesses as being quite as valid as any other. Some of the philosophies that went with the worship in these temples conflicted dramatically with the basic message of the Christian teachers and the entire ethos of the Judeo-Christian school of ethics and morality. Small wonder Paul and the others went to such lengths to discourage their followers from having anything to do with the pagan rituals, feasts, or festivals.

Judaism, by contrast, was the most ethical form of religion anywhere. It was precisely this that had begun, long before the beginning of the Christian mission, to attract proselytes to Judaism from among the Gentile communities. An example of such a family is contained in the Gospel account of the Centurion and his servant. Throughout the Middle East there were already Gentile families who followed the Jewish religion, even though to the stricter members of the Jewish nation such as the Pharisees, they could never be fully “Jewish”. It was among these proselytes that Paul won many of his early converts and it is in the thrust of the argument put forward in Hebrews that we can see the case being made that Judaism has its spiritual fulfillment in Christianity.

Against this background then, the letters follow three main “themes”. Firstly they set out a vision of God - a Holy God, who expects holiness from His people. He is the pattern for their behaviour. It is He who controls the world, but there is a more characteristic view - which sets this vision of God completely apart from any similar pagan philosophy - that this Holy God is also the Father. A loving God who seeks to reconcile His wayward children with Himself. This intensely personal view of God is one shared by all the letter writers and it has no parallel anywhere.

The second theme is on the nature of Christ. Here the position gets more difficult, but is equally unequivocal. The early Christians expressed their view of Christ in a number of different ways, and this is reflected in the letters. Hebrews describes Him as wholly God and wholly Man, thus He is able to represent His people as their High Priest before the throne of the Almighty Father. Throughout the letters a variety of titles are used to describe Him, from Jesus, Jesus Christ (a Greek rendition of the Hebrew for “Messiah”) and Christ Jesus (one of Paul’s variants!) to Lord Jesus Christ, an acknowledgement of His sovereignty over us all. In essence, as seen by the writers of the letters, through Christ God the Father brings salvation to mankind. Jesus Christ is therefore the supreme expression of God’s love for His creation.

The last theme is simply put - Humanity and its salvation. The world is corrupt and in thrall to evil - through Christ there is a new start, a way to bring a new era and bring about a new creation in which humanity and God can be reconciled. Here there is no more room for the old ways; it must be a new and willing start to prepare the way for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s plan. There is no more room for the immorality of the old ways; all must now be in accord with the new laws of love and holiness in the grace of God.

In closing this short look at the letters to the young churches, it would be remiss of me not to point out that almost all the writers had, by the time they started writing them, been practicing their “new” religion for some time. They had had time to mature in their faith; even St Paul had spent some time in Tarsus teaching and debating but also growing and maturing. By the time they started to write they had some pretty clear ideas to put forward, and the rest, as they say, is history.

If you are looking for background information on this period there are a number of sources. Probably the easiest, provided you don’t mind the fact that the facts have been “spun up”, are the books by Taylor Caldwell, “Dear and glorious physician” and “Great lion of God”. Although these are novels and therefore fiction, the author has in fact captured the morality and spirit of the period extremely well. Good recent histories of first Century Rome will also help, and if you can get a good translation, the letters of Pliny can fill in a number of gaps. If you search for them there are also books on the worship of the Greek and Roman Gods, and there are also works available on Mithraism and the Mystic Religions of Persia which were also influential at this time.

As with the prophets, the letters can be uncomfortable at times, but then they were uncomfortable reading even when first copied. I hope that you will find them enlightening, thought-provoking, and above all faith-building.

May the Lord give us all the grace to grow in understanding and in faith.