God's Word or Human Words - Part 4

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Part 3 concluded with the following:

 

(p.81) " Irenaeus says that he tells these stories to show " the horror that the

apostles and their disciples had against even speaking with those who corrupt

the truth. " [13] But his stories also show what troubled Irenaeus: that even two

generations after the author of the Gospel of John qualified the claims of Peter

Christians and confronted Thomas Christians, the movement remained contentious

and divided. Polycarp himself denounced people who, he charged, " bear the

[Christian] name with evil deceit " [14] because what they teach often differs

from what he had learned from his own teachers. Irenaeus, in turn, believed that

he practiced true Christianity, for he could link himself directly to the time

of Jesus through Polycarp, who personally had heard Jesus' teaching from John

himself, " the disciple of the Lord. " [15] Convinced that this disciple wrote the

Gospel of John, Irenaeus was among the first to champion this gospel and link it

forever to Mark, Matthew, and Luke. His contemporary Tatian, a brilliant Syrian

student of Justin Martyr the philosopher, killed by Rusticus, took a different

approach: he tried to unify the various gospels by rewriting all of them into a

single text. [16] Irenaeus left the texts intact but declared that only Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John 'collectively'--and only these gospels

'exclusively'--constitute the 'whole' gospel, which he called the " four formed

gospel. " [17] Only these four gospels, Irenaeus believed, were written by

eyewitnesses to events through which God has sent salvation to humankind. [18]

This four gospel canon was to become a powerful weapon in Irenaeus's campaign to

unify and consolidate the Christian movement during his lifetime, and it has

remained a basis of orthodox teaching ever since. "

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 3, p. 81.

 

Notes:

 

[13] Ibid.

 

[14] Polycarp, 'Letter to the Philippians' 6.3.

 

[15] Irenaeus, AH 3.3.4.

 

[16] For discussion and references concerning Tatian's 'Diatessaron', see

Koester, 'Ancient Christian Gospels', 403-430.

 

[17] Irenaeus, AH 3.11.8.

 

[18] Markus Bockmuehl, " 'To Be or Not to Be': The Possible Futures of New

Testament Scholarship, " 'Scottish Journal of Theology' 51:3 (1998), 271-306.

 

Here now, is Part 4.

 

violet

 

 

 

God's Word or Human Words - Part 4

 

(p.82) While he supervised and taught his fellow believers in Smyrna, Polycarp

sent one of his associates, Pothinus, to organize and unify a group of

Greek-speaking Christians from the same region who had settled in the western

hinterlands of Celtic Gaul. Later he sent his protege, Irenaeus, then sixteen or

seventeen years old, to work with Pothinus. In the winter of 167, however, when

public hostility against Christians broke out in Smyrna, Roman police arrested

Polycarp, whom they found hiding in a friend's country estate. Accused of

atheism, and ordered by the governor to swear an oath to the emperor's 'genius'

(the spirit of his family), to curse Christ, and to say " Away with the atheists "

(the Christians), Polycarp refused. Marched into the public stadium, the

eighty-six-year-old bishop shook his fist at the hostile, noisy crowd and

defiantly shouted, " Away with the atheists! " He was then stripped naked, bound

to a stake, and burned alive. [19] Irenaeus, visiting in Rome at the time, says

that on that very afternoon, of February 23, 167 C.E., he heard a voice " like a

trumpet call " revealing to him what was happening to his beloved teacher. From

accounts of eyewitnesses, he (or another of Polycarp's students) later wrote a

moving report of his teacher's arrest, interrogation, and death.

 

Ten years later Irenaeus, perhaps still in his twenties, witnessed mob violence

against Christians at first hand in Lyons, where he lived, and in the town of

Vienne, some thirty miles away. Public officials had banned Christians, as

polluted persons, from entering the baths and markets and, finally, from all

public places protected by the city's gods. Then, when the provincial governor

was away from the city, " the mob broke loose. Christians were hounded and

attacked openly. They were treated as public enemies, assaulted, beaten, and

stoned. " [20] (p.83) Bishop Pothinus, now in his nineties, was arrested and

tortured, along with between thirty and fifty of the most outspoken members of

his congregation. Many were taken to prison and strangled. Ten Christians

changed their minds and recanted but were not released. Those who survived and

still confessed to being Christians were sentenced to be tortured in public and

torn apart by wild animals. When the governor returned and heard that some of

the prisoners were Roman citizens, he wrote to Marcus Aurelius, the so-called

philosopher emperor, to ask whether these should die in a public spectacle in

the arena like the rest or be granted the citizens' usual privilege of a

quicker, more private death--for example, by beheading.

 

We do not know what the emperor replied; but meanwhile those terrified

Christians who managed to escape arrest marveled at how God's power energized

the confessors. At their trial, for example, the young nobleman Vettius

Epagathus dared to defend them before a hostile, shouting crowd. When the

magistrate, apparently irritated by his objections, turned to him and asked,

" Are you one of them too? " the sympathizer who wrote their story says that the

holy spirit inspired him to say yes, and so to die with them. [21] God's spirit

filled the least of them as well: some said it was Christ himself who suffered

in the slave girl Blandina, when she astonished everyone by withstanding the

most agonizing torture; and others told how Christ triumphed in the suffering of

the slave named Sanctus, and inspired Bishop Pothinus's unwavering courage until

he expired. Many testified that they had experienced the power of the holy

spirit as they prayed together in the dark, stinking prison of Lyons.

 

(p.84) But when the imprisoned confessors heard from their visitors that in Rome

'other' " spirit filled " Christians were being persecuted--and not by Roman

magistrates but, worse, by their fellow Christians--they decided to intervene.

Claiming the special authority that Christians accorded those who had given up

their lives for Christ, they wrote a letter to the bishop of Rome, urging him to

deal peaceably with those under attack, who had joined a revival movement called

" the new prophecy. " The prisoners asked Irenaeus, who had somehow escaped

arrest, to travel to Rome to deliver their letter, and he agreed.

 

Irenaeus does not tell us his own attitude toward the new prophecy, but he

probably knew that this movement of charismatic Christians had arisen about ten

years before in rural towns of his native Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), when

the prophets Montanus, Maximilla, and Priscilla, popularly called " the three, "

began traveling from one rural church to another, claiming to communicate

directly with the holy spirit. Wherever they went, the three shared their

visions, spoke in ecstasy, and urged others to fast and pray so that they too

could receive visions and revelations. From Asia Minor the movement swept

through churches all across the empire, to Africa, Rome, and Greece, and even to

remote provinces like Gaul, arousing enthusiasm--and opposition.

 

Apollinarius, who became bishop of the Asian town of Hierapolis in 171 C.E.,

says that when he went to Ancyra (contemporary Ankara, in Turkey) " and saw that

the church in that place was torn in two by this new movement, " he opposed it,

declaring that " it is not 'prophecy', as they call it, but, as I shall show,

'false prophecy'. " [22] Such opponents accused Montanus, Maximilla, and

Priscilla of being opportunists, or even demon-possessed. (p.85) In one town a

Christian named Zotimus interrupted Maximilla while she was prophesying and

tried to exorcise her, ordering her " demons " to leave, until her followers

seized him and dragged him outside the church. Maximilla had received

outpourings of the spirit and had left her husband to devote herself to

prophecy. Speaking in an ecstatic trance, she declared, " Do not listen to me,

but to Christ.... I am compelled, whether willing or not, to come to know God's

'gnosis'. " [23] Priscilla claimed that Christ had appeared to her in female

form. Opponents accused both Maximilla and Priscilla of breaking their marriage

vows, wearing expensive clothes, and making money by deceiving gullible people.

After a group of bishops in Turkey finally excommunicated her, Maximilla

protested: " I am driven away like the wolf from the sheep. I am no wolf; I am

word, and spirit, and power! " [24]

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 3, p. 81-85

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[19] 'Martyrdom of St. Polycarp' 6-15.

 

[20] W.H.C. Frend, 'Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church' (Oxford,

1965; New York, 1967), 5-6.

 

[21] 'The Letters of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne', 1.10.

 

[22] Eusebius, 'Historia Ecclesiae', quoting Apollinarius, in 5.16.5.

 

[23] Ibid., 5.17.12; for a careful account of the controversy, see Christine

Trevett, 'Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy' (Cambridge, 1996);

among ancient authors, a primary source is Eusebius's account in 5.16.1-19.2.

For an edition of the sayings attributed to the prophets, see Kurt Aland, " Der

Montanismus und die Kleinasiatische Theologie, " 'Zeitschrift fur Neue

Testamenten Wissenschaft' 46 (1955), 109-116.

 

[24] Eusebius, 'Historia Ecclesiae' 5.16.17; Aland, 'Montanismus', saying 16.