_THE HARVEST OF THE GENTILES._
"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."--ACTS
xi. 26.
The eleventh chapter of the Acts is clearly divisible into two
portions. There is first the narrative of St. Peter's reception at
Jerusalem after the conversion of Cornelius, and secondly the story of
the origin of the Antiochene Church, the mother and metropolis of
Gentile Christendom. They are distinct the one from the other, and yet
they are closely connected together, for they both deal with the same
great topic, the admission of the Gentiles to full and free communion
in the Church of God. Let us then search out the line of thought which
runs like a golden thread through this whole chapter, sure that in
doing so we shall find light shed upon some modern questions from this
divinely written ecclesiastical history.
I. St. Peter tarried a certain time with Cornelius and the other new
converts at Cæsarea. There was doubtless much to be taught and much to
be set in order. Baptism was in the early Church administered when the
converts were yet immature in faith and knowledge. The Church was
viewed as a hospital, where the sick and feeble were to be admitted
and cured. It was not therefore demanded of candidates for admission
that they should be perfectly instructed in all the articles and
mysteries of the Christian faith. There were indeed some points in
which they were not instructed at all till they had been "buried with
Christ through baptism into death." Then when they had taken their
stand upon the Christian platform, and were able to view the matter
from the true vantage point, they were admitted into fuller and deeper
mysteries. Peter too must have had his work cut out for him at Cæsarea
in striving to organise the Church. St. Philip may have here lent his
aid, and may have been constituted the resident head of the local
Church.[82] After the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch he worked his
way up to Cæsarea, preaching in all the towns and villages of that
populous district. There he seems to have fixed his residence, as
fifteen years or so later we find him permanently located in that city
with his "four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" (Acts xxi. 8,
9). We may be sure that some such Church organisation was immediately
started at Cæsarea. We have already traced the work of organisation in
Jerusalem. The apostles originally embraced in themselves all
ministerial offices, as in turn these offices were originally all
summed up in Jesus Christ. The apostles had taken an important step in
the establishment of the order of deacons at Jerusalem, retaining in
their own hands the supreme power to which appeal and reports could be
made. At Damascus it is evident that at the time of St. Paul's
conversion there was an organised Church, Ananias being the head and
chief of it, with whom communications were officially held; while the
notices about Joppa and the six witnesses of his action whom St.
Peter brought with him to Cæsarea indicate that an assembly or Church
organised after the model of the Jerusalem Church existed in that
town.
[82] The Church tradition reports, however, that Cornelius was
first bishop of Cæsarea, but without any solid authority for the
statement. See, however, the note in last chapter, p. 141.
Having concluded his work in Cæsarea St. Peter returned to Jerusalem,
and there had to render an account of his action and was placed upon
his defence. "When Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of
the circumcision contended with him, saying, Thou wentest in to men
uncircumcised, and didst eat with them." This simple circumstance
throws much light upon the character of earliest Christianity. It was
to a large extent a Christian democracy. The apostles exercised the
supreme executive power, but the collective Christian assembly claimed
the exercise of their private judgment, and, above all, knew not
anything of the fancied privilege of St. Peter, as Prince of the
Apostles, to lay down on his own authority the laws for the whole
Christian Commonwealth. Here was St. Peter exercising his ministry and
apostolic power among the earliest Christians. How were his ministry
and authority received? Were they treated as if the personal authority
and decision of St. Peter settled every question without any further
appeal? This will be best seen if we tell a story well known in the
annals of ecclesiastical history. The fable of Papal Supremacy began
to be asserted about the year 500, when a series of forgeries were
circulated concerning the bishops of Rome and their decisions during
the ages of persecution. One of these forgeries dealt with a pope
named Marcellinus, who presided over the See of Rome during the
beginning of the great Diocletian persecution. The story goes on to
tell that Marcellinus fell into idolatry in order to save his life. A
council of three hundred bishops was summoned at Sinuessa, when the
assembled bishops are reported to have refused to pass sentence on
the Pope, the successor of St. Peter, saying that the Holy See may be
judged by no man. They therefore called upon the Pope to condemn
himself, as he alone was a judge competent to exercise such a
function. This story, according to Döllinger, was forged about the
year 500, and it clearly exhibits the different view taken of the
position of St. Peter in the Church of Jerusalem and of his alleged
successors in the Church of Rome five centuries later. In the latter
case St. Peter's successor cannot be judged or condemned by any
mortal.[83] According to the Acts of the Apostles the members of the
stricter party in the Church of Jerusalem had no hesitation in
challenging the actions and teaching of St. Peter himself, and it was
only when he could prove the immediate and manifest approval of Heaven
that they ceased their opposition, saying, "Then to the Gentiles also
hath God granted repentance unto life."
[83] See the article on Marcellinus (1) in the _Dictionary of
Christian Biography_, vol. iii., p. 804, where all the facts are
told of this curious story.
We can in this incident see how the Church was slowly but surely
developing itself under the Divine guidance. The incident when the
order of deacons was instituted was the primary step. There was then
first manifested that combination of authority and freedom united with
open discussion which, originating in the Christian Church, has been
the source of all modern society, of modern governments, and modern
methods of legislation. Now we see the same ideas applied to questions
of doctrine and discipline, till we come in a short time to the
perfection of this method in the celebrated Council of Jerusalem which
framed the charter and traced out the main lines of development upon
which the Church of the Gentiles and true gospel freedom were
established.
II. The centre of Christian interest now shifts its position and fixes
itself in the city of Antioch, where a further step in advance was
taken. Our attention is first of all recalled to the results of St.
Stephen's death. "They therefore that were scattered abroad upon the
tribulation that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phœnicia,
and Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to none save only to Jews.
But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they
were come to Antioch, spake unto the Greeks also, preaching the Lord
Jesus." This is clearly a case of preaching the gospel to the
Gentiles, and the question has been raised, Was the action of these
men of Cyprus and Cyrene quite independent of the action of St. Peter
or an immediate result of the same? Did the men of Cyprus and Cyrene
preach the gospel to the Gentiles of Antioch of their own motion, or
did they wait till tidings of St. Peter's action had reached them, and
then, yielding to the generous instincts which had been long beating
in the hearts of these Hellenistic Jews, did they proclaim at Antioch
the glad tidings of salvation which the Gentiles of that gay and
brilliant but very wicked city so much needed? Our answer to these
queries is very short and plain. We think that the preaching of the
Hellenists of Cyprus to the Gentiles of Antioch must have been the
result of St. Peter's action at Cæsarea, else why did they wait till
Antioch was reached to open their mouths to the pagan world? Surely if
the sight of sin and wickedness and civilised depravity was necessary
to stir them up to efforts for the spiritual welfare of the Gentile
world, Phœnicia and Cyprus abounded with scenes quite sufficient
to unseal their lips. But the force of national prejudice and of
religious exclusiveness was too strong till they came to Antioch,
where tidings must have reached them of the vision and action of St.
Peter at Cæsarea.
It is easy to see why this information reached the missionaries at
Antioch. Cæsarea was the Roman capital of Palestine, and was a
seaport. Antioch was the Roman capital of the province of Syria, an
immense extent of territory, which included not merely the country
which we call Syria, but extended to the Euphrates on the west and to
the desert intervening between Palestine and Egypt on the south. The
prefect of the East resided at Antioch, and he was one of the three or
four greatest officials under the Roman emperor. Palestine was, in
fact, a part of the province of Syria, and its ruler or president was
dependent upon the governor of Syria. It is therefore in strictest
accordance with the facts of Roman history when St. Luke tells in his
Gospel (ii. 2) concerning the taxation of Augustus Cæsar, "This was
the first enrolment made when Quirinus was governor of Syria." Antioch
being then the seat of the central government of the eastern division
of the Roman Empire, and Cæsarea being the headquarters of an
important lieutenant of the Syrian proconsul, it is no wonder there
should have been very constant intercourse between the two places. The
great magazines of arms for the entire east were located at Antioch,
and there too the money was coined necessary to pay the troops and to
carry on commercial intercourse. It must have been very easy for an
official like Cornelius, or even for any simple private soldier or for
an ordinary Jew or Christian of Cæsarea, to communicate with Antioch,
and to send word concerning the proceedings of St. Peter and the
blessings vouchsafed by God to any devout person who might be there
seeking after light and truth.[84] It is quite natural therefore that,
while the Christians dispersed into various lands by the persecution
at Jerusalem restrained themselves to the Jews alone throughout their
previous labours, when the men of Cyprus and Cyrene heard tidings at
Antioch of St. Peter and his doings and revelations at Cæsarea, they
at last allowed free scope to their longings which long ago had found
place in their more liberalised hearts, and testified to the Gentiles
of Antioch concerning the gladsome story of the gospel. Here again we
behold another instance of the value of culture and travel and
enlarged intelligence. The Hellenists of Cyprus and Cyrene were the
first to realise and act out the principle which God had taught St.
Peter. They saw that God's mercies were not restrained to the
particular case of Cornelius. They realised that his was a typical
instance, and that his conversion was intended to carry with it and to
decide the possibility of Gentile salvation and the formation of a
Gentile Church all over the world, and they put the principle in
operation at once in one of the places where it was most needed: "When
the men of Cyprus and Cyrene were come to Antioch, they spake unto the
Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus." The method of the Divine
development was in the primitive ages very similar to that we often
still behold. Some improvement is required, some new principle has to
be set in motion. If younger men begin the work, or if souls
notorious for their freer thought or less prejudiced understandings,
attempt to introduce the novel principle, the vast mass of stolid
conservative opposition and attachment to the past is at once
quickened into lively action. But then some Peter or another, some man
of known rectitude and worth, and yet of equally well-known narrow
views and devoted adherence to the past, takes some hesitating step in
advance. He may indeed strive to limit its application to the special
case before him, and he may earnestly deprecate any wider application
of the principle on which he has acted. But it is all in vain. He has
served the Divine purposes. His narrowness and respectability and
personal weight have done their work, and have sanctioned the
introduction of the principle which then is applied upon a much wider
scale by men whose minds have been liberalised and trained to seize a
great broad principle and put it into practical operation.
[84] Cæsarea and Antioch were about two hundred miles distant from
each other by sea. A Roman trireme travelling at express speed
would easily have accomplished this distance in two or at most
three days.
III. "When they came to Antioch, they spake the word to the Greek
also." And verily the men of Cyprus and Cyrene chose a fitting spot to
open the kingdom of heaven to the Greek world and to found the mother
Church of Gentile Christendom, for no city in the whole world was more
completely Satan's seat, or more entirely devoted to those works which
St. John describes as the lusts of the flesh, and the lust of the eye,
and the vain-glory of life. Let us reflect a little on the history and
state of Antioch, and we shall then see the Divine motive in selecting
it as the site of the first great Gentile Church, and we shall see too
the Divine guidance which led St. Luke in this typical ecclesiastical
history to select the Church of Antioch for such frequent notice,
exceeding, as it does, all other Churches save Jerusalem in the
amount of attention bestowed upon it in the Acts of the Apostles.[85]
[85] The various Lives of St. Paul and Gibbon in his _Decline and
Fall_ give minute accounts of Antioch, its grandeur and
wickedness; K. O. Müller's _Antiquities of Antioch_, Göttingen,
1839 is an exhaustive work on the subject; see also Mommsen's
_Provinces_, Book VIII., ch. x.
Antioch and Alexandria were towns dating from the same epoch. They
came into existence about the year 300 B.C., being the creation of
Alexander the Great himself, or of the generals who divided his empire
between them. The city of Antioch was originally built by Seleucus
Nicator, the founder of the kingdom of Syria, but was subsequently
enlarged, so that in St. Paul's time it was divided into four
independent districts or towns, each surrounded by its own walls, and
all included within one vast wall some fifty feet high, which
surmounted mountain tops and was carried at vast expense across
valleys and ravines. Antioch was in the first century counted the
third city in the world, Rome being first, Alexandria second, and
Antioch third. It had marvellous natural advantages. It was blessed
with charming mountain scenery. The peaks rising up on all sides could
be seen from every part of the city, imparting thus to life in Antioch
that sense not merely of beauty and grandeur, but of the nearness of
such beauty and grandeur combined with solitude and freedom from the
madding crowd which seem so sweet to a man who passes his life amid
the noise and hurry of a great city. What a change in the conditions
of life in London would be at once brought about could the scenery
surrounding Edinburgh or Lucerne be transferred to the world's
metropolis, and the toiler in Fleet Street and the Strand be enabled
to look amid his daily labours upon cloud-piercing mountains or peaks
clad in a robe of virgin white! Antioch was built upon the southern
bank of the river Orontes, along which it extended about five miles.
The main street of the city, otherwise called the Street of Herod
after the celebrated Herod the Great who built it, was four and a half
miles long. This street was unrivalled among the cities of the world,
and was furnished with an arcade on both sides extending its whole
length, beneath which the inhabitants could walk and transact business
at all times free from the heat and from the rain. The water supply of
Antioch was its special feature. The great orator Libanius, a native
of Antioch, who lived three hundred years later than St. Paul, while
the city yet stood in all its grandeur and beauty, thus dwells on this
feature of Antioch in a panegyric composed under the Emperor
Constantius: "That wherein we beat all other is the water supply of
our city; if in other respects any one may compete with us, all give
way so soon as we come to speak of the water, its abundance and its
excellence. In the public baths every stream has the proportions of a
river, in the private baths several have the like, and the rest not
much less. One measures the abundance of running water by the number
of the dwelling-houses; for as many as are the dwelling-houses, so
many are also the running waters. Therefore we have no fighting at the
public wells as to who shall come first to draw--an evil under which
so many considerable towns suffer, when there is a violent crowding
round the wells and outcry over broken jars. With us the public
fountains flow for ornament, since every one has water within his
doors. And this water is so clear that the pail appears empty, and so
pleasant that it invites us to drink."[86] Such was the description
of a pagan who saw Antioch even as St. Paul saw it, and testified
concerning the natural gifts with which God had endowed it. But, alas!
as with individuals, so is it with cities. God may lavish His best
blessings, and yet instead of bringing forth the fruits of
righteousness His choicest gifts of nature may be turned into fruitful
seed plots of lust and sin. Sodom and Gomorrha were planted in a vale
that was well watered and fair and fruitful, even as the Garden of the
Lord; but the inhabitants thereof were wicked, and sinners before the
Lord exceedingly; and so it was with Antioch. This city so blessed in
situation and in nature's richest and most precious gifts was
celebrated for its wicked pre-eminence amid the awful corruption which
then overspread the cities of the world. When the Roman satirist
Juvenal, writing about this period of which we treat, would fain
account for the excessive dissolution of morals which then prevailed
at Rome, his explanation of it was that the manners of Antioch had
invaded Rome and corrupted its ancient purity:
"Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes."[87]
[86] The same orator informs us that the streets of Antioch were
lighted at night with public lamps. In this respect it stood alone
among the cities of antiquity: see Libanius, I., 363, and the
notes of Valesius on Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv., 1, 9.
[87] Juv., _Sat._, iii., 62. See Farrar's _St. Paul_, ch. xvi.,
for a more minute account of the wickedness of Antioch than we can
give in this place. He well remarks: "Cities liable to the influx
of heterogeneous races are rarely otherwise than immoral and
debased. Even Rome in the decadence of its Cæsarism could groan to
think of the dregs of its degradation--the quacks and pandars, and
musicians and dancing girls--poured into the Tiber by the Syrian
Orontes.... It seems as though it were a law of human intercourse
that, when races are commingled in large masses, the worst
qualities of each appear intensified in the general iniquity."
Amid the general wickedness of Antioch there was one element of life
and hope and purity. The Jews of Antioch formed a large society in
that city governed by their own laws and preserving themselves by
their peculiar discipline free from the abounding vices of Oriental
paganism. It was at Antioch as it was at Alexandria and Damascus. The
Jews at Alexandria had their alabarch to whom they owed special
allegiance and by whom alone they were ruled; the Jews of Damascus had
their ethnarch who exercised peculiar jurisdiction over them; and so
too had the Jews of Antioch a peculiar ruler of their own, forming
thus an _imperium in imperio_ running counter to our Western notions
which in many respects demand an iron uniformity very foreign to the
Eastern mind, and show themselves eminently deficient in that
flexibility and diversity which found an abundant play even among the
arrangements of the Roman Empire.[88] This Jewish quarter of Antioch
had for centuries been growing and extending itself, and its chief
synagogue had been glorified by the reception of some of the choicest
temple spoils which the kings of Syria had at first carried captive
from Jerusalem and then in a fit of repentance or of prudent policy
had bestowed upon the Jewish colony in their capital city.
[88] We shall have frequent occasions to notice the numerous
varieties of rule, privileges, and local liberties which prevailed
under the Roman Empire. The Romans seem to have scrupulously
respected ancient rights and customs wherever possible, provided
only the supreme sovereignty of Rome was recognised.
Such was the city to which the men of Cyprus and Cyrene were now
carrying the news of the gospel, intending, doubtless, to tell merely
their Jewish fellow-countrymen and religionists of the Messiah whose
love and power they had themselves experienced. Here, however, they
were met by the startling information from Cæsarea. They were,
however, prepared for it. They were Hellenistic Jews like St. Stephen.
They had listened to his burning words, and had followed closely his
epoch-making speeches whereby he confounded the Jews and clearly
indicated the opening of a new era. But then God's dispensations
seemed to have terminated his teaching and put a fatal end to the
hopes which he had raised. Men then misread God's dealings with His
servants, and interpreted His ways amiss. The death of Stephen seemed
perhaps to some minds a visible condemnation of his views, when in
reality it was the direct channel by which God would work out a wider
propagation of them, as well as the conversion of the agent destined
to diffuse them most powerfully. Apparent defeat is not always
permanent disaster, whether in things temporal or things spiritual;
nay, rather the temporary check may be the necessary condition of the
final and glorious victory. So it was in this case, as the men of
Cyprus and Cyrene proved, when the news of St. Peter's revelation and
his decisive action arrived and they realised in action the principles
of Catholic Christianity for which their loved teacher St. Stephen had
died. And their brave action was soon followed by blessed success, by
a rich harvest of souls: "The hand of the Lord was with them; and a
great number that believed turned to the Lord." Thus were laid the
foundations of the headquarters, the mother Church of Gentile
Christianity.
IV. Now we come to another step in the development. Tidings of the
action taken at Antioch came to Jerusalem. The news must have
travelled much the same road as that by which, as we have indicated,
the story of St. Peter's action was carried to Antioch. The
intercourse between Jerusalem and Antioch was frequent enough by land
or by sea; and no synagogue and no Jewish society was more liberal in
its gifts towards the support of the supreme council and hierarchy at
Jerusalem than the Jewish colony and its synagogues at Damascus. And
the old custom of communication with Jerusalem naturally led the
Nazarenes of Antioch to send word of their proceedings up to the
apostles and supreme council who ruled their parent society in the
same city. We see a clear indication that the events at Antioch
happened subsequently to those at Cæsarea in the manner in which the
news was received at Jerusalem. There seems to have been no strife, no
discussion, no controversy. The question had been already raised and
decided after St. Peter's return. So the apostles simply select a
fitting messenger to go forth with the authority of the apostles and
to complete the work which, having been initiated in baptism, merely
now demanded that imposition of hands which, as we have seen in the
case of the Samaritan converts, was one of the special functions of
the apostles and chiefs of the Church at Jerusalem. And in choosing
Barnabas the apostles made a wise choice. They did not send one of the
original Twelve, because not one of them was fitted for the peculiar
work now demanded. They were all narrow, provincial, untravelled,
devoid of that wide and generous training which God had given to
Barnabas. It may be too that they felt restrained from going beyond
the bounds of Canaan before the twelve years had elapsed of which
ancient Christian tradition tells as the limit of their stay in
Jerusalem fixed by our Lord Himself.[89] He was a Hellenistic Jew, and
he could sympathise with the wider feelings and ideas of the
Hellenists. He was a man of Cyprus, a friend and perhaps connexion of
many, both Jews and Gentiles, among those whose new-born faith and
hope were now in question. And above all he was a man of kindly heart
and genial temper and loving thought and blessed charity, fitted to
soothe jealousies and allay suspicions, and make the long alienated
and despised Gentiles feel at home in the Church and family of Jesus
Christ. Barnabas was a person peculiarly fitted to prove a mediator
and uniting link in a society where divergent elements found a place
and asserted themselves. He was not the man to take a new step or to
have decided the question of the admission of the Gentiles if it had
not been already settled. He must have come therefore fortified by the
authority of the apostles, and then, knowing right well what they
approved, he was just the man to carry out the details of an
arrangement requiring tact and skill and temper; though he was by no
means suited to decide a great question on its own merits or to
initiate any great movement. In the Church of God then, as in the
Church of God still, there is a place and a work for the strong man of
keen logic and vigorous intellect and profound thought. And there is
too a place and a work for the man of loving heart and a charity which
evermore delights in compromise. "Barnabas, when he was come, and had
seen the grace of God, was glad; and he exhorted them all, that with
purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. For he was a good
man, and full of the Holy Ghost and faith; and much people was added
unto the Lord." Barnabas had another virtue too. He knew his own
weakness. He did not imagine like some men that he was specially
strong where he was eminently weak. He felt his want of the active
vigorous mind of his friend of boyhood the new convert Saul. He knew
where he was living in comparative obscurity and silence; so after a
little experience of the atmosphere of Antioch he departed to Tarsus
to seek for him and bring him back where a great work was awaiting his
peculiar turn of mind. There is an ancient historian of Antioch who
has preserved for us many stories about that city in these apostolic
and even in much earlier ages. His name is John Malalas; he lived
about six hundred years after Christ, but had access to many ancient
documents and writers that are no longer known to us. He tells us many
things about the primitive Church of Antioch. He has his own version
of the quarrel between St. Paul and St. Peter which happened in that
city; and he fixes even the very spot where St. Paul first preached,
telling us that its name was Singon Street, which stood near the
Pantheon. This may seem to us a minuteness of detail too great to be
believed. But then we must remember that John Malalas expressly cites
ancient chronologers and historians as his authorities, and he himself
lived while as yet Antioch retained all the ancient arrangements of
streets and divisions. And surely Saul, as he travelled from Tarsus
responding at once to the call of Barnabas, must have seen enough to
stir his love to Christ and to souls into heartiest exertion. He came
doubtless by sea and landed at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, some
sixteen miles distant from the city. As he travelled up to Antioch he
would get distant glimpses of the groves of Daphne, a park ten miles
in circumference, dedicated indeed to the poetic worship of Apollo,
but dedicated also to the vilest purposes of wickedness intimately
associated with that poetic worship. Poetry, whether ancient or
modern, can be very blessed, ennobling and elevating man's whole
nature. But the same poetry, as in ancient paganism and in some modern
writers, can become a festering plague-spot, the abounding source to
its votaries of moral corruption and spiritual death.[90]
[89] See Eusebius, _Eccles. Hist._, v., 18.
[90] There is a good description of Daphne as St. Paul may have
seen it in Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, ch. xxiii. We borrow a few
extracts from it to give a more vivid idea of Antioch in St.
Paul's day. "At the distance of five miles from Antioch the
Macedonian kings of Syria had consecrated to Apollo one of the
most elegant places of devotion in the pagan world. A magnificent
temple rose in honour of the God of light; and his colossal figure
almost filled the capacious sanctuary which was enriched with gold
and gems and adorned by the skill of the Grecian artists. The
deity was represented in a bending attitude, with a golden cup in
his hand, pouring out a libation on the earth, as if he
supplicated the venerable mother to give to his arms the cold and
beauteous Daphne; for the spot was ennobled by fiction, and the
fancy of the Syrian poets had transported the amorous tale from
the banks of the Perseus to the town of the Orontes." "The temple
and village were deeply bosomed in a thick grove of laurels and
cypresses, which reached as far as a circumference of ten miles,
and proved in the most sultry summers a cool and impenetrable
shade. A thousand streams of the purest water, issuing from every
hill, preserved the verdure of the earth and the temperature of
the air; the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and
aromatic odours; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health
and joy, to luxury and love. The soldier and the philosopher
wisely avoided the temptations of this sensual paradise, where
pleasure, assuming the character of religion, imperceptibly
dissolved the firmness of manly virtue." Gibbon's notes abound
with ample proof of the statements he makes. To them we may refer
the reader curious about the details of ancient paganism.
Daphne and its associations would rouse the whole soul, the healthy
moral nature of Saul of Tarsus, inherited originally from his ancient
Jewish training, and now quickened and deepened by the spiritual
revelations made to him in Christ Jesus. It is no wonder then that
here we read of St. Paul's first long and continuous period of
ministerial work: "It came to pass that even for a whole year they
were gathered together with the Church, and taught much people." The
results of the new force which Barnabas introduced into the spiritual
life of Antioch soon became manifested. "The disciples were first
called Christians at Antioch." Saul of Tarsus possessed what Barnabas
did not possess. He possessed a powerful, a logical, and a creative
intellect. He realised from the beginning what his own principles
meant and to what they were leading him. He taught not Judaism or the
Law with an addition merely about Jesus of Nazareth. He troubled not
himself about circumcision or the old covenant, but he taught from the
very beginning Christ Jesus, Christ in His Divine and human nature,
Christ in His various offices, Jesus Christ as the one hope for
mankind. This was now at Antioch, as before at Damascus, the staple
topic of St. Paul's preaching, and therefore the Antiochenes, with
their ready wit and proverbial power of giving nicknames, at once
designated the new sect not Nazarenes or Galileans as the Jews of
Jerusalem called them, but Christians or adherents of Christ.[91]
Here, however, I prefer to avail myself of the exposition which one of
the great spiritual teachers of the last generation gave us of this
expression. The well-known and learned Archbishop of Dublin, Dr.
Trench, in his _Study of Words_ (21st Ed.: Lond. 1890), p. 189, thus
draws out the lesson connected with this word and the time of its
appearance: "'The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.'
That we have here a notice which we would not willingly have missed
all will acknowledge, even as nothing can be otherwise than curious
which relates to the infancy of the Church. But there is here much
more than a curious notice. Question it a little closer, and how much
it will be found to contain, how much which it is waiting to yield up!
What light it throws on the whole story of the Apostolic Church to
know where and when this name of Christians was first imposed on the
faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly was, not devised by
themselves, however afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as
the name of highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves,
but, as is expressly recorded, they 'were called' Christians first at
Antioch; in agreement with which statement the name occurs nowhere in
Scripture, except on the lips of those alien from or opposed to the
faith (Acts xxvi. 28; 1 Peter iv. 16). And as it was a name imposed by
adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and
not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the
followers of Jesus of Nazareth 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the
very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was not the
Christ, but a false pretender to the name. Starting then from this
point that 'Christians' was a title given to the disciples by the
heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At Antioch they first
obtained this name--at the city, that is, which was the headquarters
of the Church's mission to the heathen, in the same sense as Jerusalem
had been the headquarters of the mission to the seed of Abraham. It
was there and among the faithful there that a conviction of the
world-wide destination of the gospel arose; there it was first plainly
seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth. Hitherto the faithful
in Christ had been called by their adversaries, and indeed were often
still called 'Galileans' or 'Nazarenes'--both names which indicated
the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been nursed, and that the
world saw in the new society no more than a Jewish sect. But it was
plain that the Church had now, even in the world's eyes, chipped its
Jewish shell. The name Christians or those of Christ, while it told
that Christ and the confession of Him was felt even by the heathen to
be the sum and centre of this new faith, showed also that they
comprehended now, not all which the Church would be, but something of
this; saw this much, namely, that it was no mere sect and variety of
Judaism, but a Society with a mission and a destiny of its own. Nor
will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the coming up of this
name is by closest juxtaposition connected in the sacred narrative,
and still more closely in the Greek than in the English, with the
arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of that Apostle who
was God's appointed instrument for bringing the Church to a full sense
that the message which it had was not for some men only, but for all.
As so often happens with the rise of new names, the rise of this one
marked a new epoch in the Church's life, and that it was entering upon
a new stage of development." This is a long extract, but it sets forth
in dignified and aptly chosen words, such as Archbishop Trench always
used, the important lessons which the thoughtful student of the Acts
may gather from the time and place where the term "Christians" first
sprang into existence.
[91] The Antiochenes were always famous for the dangerous power of
ridicule and giving nicknames. They quarrelled on this account
with the emperors Hadrian, Verus, Marcus, Severus, and Julian. The
last mentioned has celebrated these tendencies in his celebrated
treatise entitled _Misopogon, or the Beard-hater_. Even in its
final overthrow the city preserved this distinction. In the year
540 the Persian king Chosroes Nushirvan took it by storm. When he
appeared before the city he was received with a shower of arrows
mingled with obscene sarcasms, which so enraged him that he
removed the inhabitants when he had taken the town to a new
Antioch in the province of Susa.
Finally, we notice in connexion with Antioch that the foundation of
the great Gentile Church was marked by the same universal impulse
which we trace wherever Christ was effectually preached. The faith of
the Crucified evermore produced love to the brethren. Agabus, a
prophet whom we shall again meet many years after in the course of St.
Paul's life, and who then predicted his approaching arrest and
captivity at Jerusalem, made his earliest recorded appearance at
Antioch, where he announced an impending famine. Agabus exercised the
office of a prophet, which implied under the New Dispensation rather
the office of preaching than of prediction. Prediction, indeed,
whether under the Old or the New Dispensation, formed but a small
portion of the prophetical office. The work of the prophet was
pre-eminently that of telling forth God's will and enforcing it upon a
careless generation. Occasionally indeed, as in the case of Agabus,
that telling forth involved prediction or announcement of God's
chastisements and visitations; but far oftener the prophet's work was
finished when he enforced the great principles of truth and
righteousness as the Christian preacher does still. Agabus seems to
have been specially gifted in the direction of prediction. He
announced a famine as impending over the whole world, which came to
pass in the age of Claudius, offering to the Gentile Church of Antioch
an opportunity, of which they gladly availed themselves, to repay
somewhat of the spiritual obligation which the Gentiles owed to the
Jews according to St. Paul's own rule: "If the Gentiles have been made
partakers of their spiritual things, they owe it to them also to
minister unto them in carnal things."[92] We can trace here the force
and power of ancient Jewish customs. We can see how the mould and form
and external shape of the Church was gained from the Jew. The Jewish
colony of Antioch had been of old famous for the liberality of its
gifts to the mother community at Jerusalem. The predominant element in
the Church of Antioch was now Gentile, but still the ancient customs
prevailed. The Gentile Christian community acted towards the Jerusalem
Church as the Jewish community had been used to treat their
countrymen: "The disciples, every man according to his ability,
determined to send relief unto the brethren that dwelt in Judæa: which
also they did, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and
Saul."
[92] This famine is thoroughly historical. It is noticed by
several who wrote of this time, as Dion, lx., 11; Suetonius,
Claud., 20; Aurelius, Victor; and is confirmed by the testimony of
the coins: see Eckhel, vi., 238, 239, 240. Cf. Lewin's _Fasti
Sacri_, p. 274, A.D. 42.