There is a reason that Christian history is divided into a pre-Nicene era (before the Council of Nicea in AD 325) and post-Nicene eras. Before the Council of Nicea, the churches were quick to announce the righteousness and virtue that God had produced in them by the salvation of Jesus Christ (cf. Eph. 2:10). For example, around the year 200, a Roman accused the Christians of having a “holier than thou” attitude. A slave named Octavius responded with …

And if you wish to compare Christians with yourselves, then even if in some things our discipline is inferior, yet we shall be found much better than you. You forbid, yet commit, adulteries; we are born men only for our own wives. You punish crimes when committed; with us, even to think of crimes is to sin. You are afraid of those who are aware of what you do; we are afraid even of our own consciences, without which we cannot exist. Finally, from your numbers the prisons boil over, but there is no Christian there unless he is accused on account of his religion or has deserted it. (Christian-history.org)

A few decades later, Origen answered a skeptic named Celsus and comparing the ekklesiai (plural of ekklesia, translated church or assembly) of God with the ekklesiai (the citizens who met to decide town of city matters) in various cities:

“For the ekklesia of God, for example, which is at Athens, is a meek and stable body, as being one which desires to please God, who is over all things; whereas the ekklesia of the Athenians is given to sedition, and is not at all to be compared to the ekklesia of God in that city. And you may say the same thing of the ekklesia of God at Corinth, and of the ekklesia of the Corinthian people; and also of the ekklesia of God at Alexandria, and of the ekklesia of the people of Alexandria.

“And if he who hears this be a candid man, and one who investigates things with a desire to ascertain the truth, he will be filled with admiration of Him who not only conceived the design, but also was able to secure in all places the establishment of ekklesiai of God alongside of the ekklesiai of the people in each city.

“In like manner, also, in comparing the council [different Greek word] of the ekklesia of God with the council in any city, you would find that certain councilors of the ekklesia are worthy to rule in the city of God, if there be any such city in the whole world; whereas the councilors in all other places exhibit in their characters no quality worthy of the conventional superiority which they appear to enjoy over their fellow-citizens.

“And so, too, you must compare the ruler of the ekklesia in each city with the ruler of the people of the city, in order to observe that even amongst those councilors and rulers of the ekklesia of God who come very far short of their duty, and who lead more indolent lives than others who are more energetic, it is nevertheless possible to discover a general superiority in what relates to the progress of virtue over the characters of the councilors and rulers in the various cities.”
(Origen, c. AD 230, “Against Celsus,” ch. 30, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04/anf04.vi.ix.iii.xxx.html)

The Great Apostasy?

We don’t say such things anymore. I know that some, perhaps even many, churches in the USA today could and would say that Jesus has changed their members enough that they live more virtuously than the world. Overall, though, we do not feel free to make that claim, and if we did, non-Christians would throw statistics and anecdotes at us proving that we are no better than the world at all.

A telling example of this came from “The Trial and Testimony of the Early Church,” a video series I saw back is the 1980s. They re-enacted part of “The Octavius” debate, written by Minucius Felix and referenced at the start of this blog. In their reconstruction of the debate, though, when the Roman accuses the Christians of thinking they are better than everyone else, Octavius says they are not. Instead, he says that they took communion every week to remind themselves that they are not better than anyone else but were saved by the blood of Jesus.

I am not sure how The Christian History Institute justified changing Felix’ text, but their change is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Before the Council of Nicea, the churches could argue that their members, even the ones who were more indolent (lazy) than others, still lived lives more virtuous than the average Roman.

They could do this because Jesus does change his disciples. A person who is led by the Spirit–and thus, according to Romans 8:14, all the children of God–will live a far better life than if he/she were not led by the Holy Spirit. If then, they are living a more virtuous life than they used to, then it is simple to be expected that Christians are living more virtuously, in general, than than non-Christians who are not led by the Spirit of God.

What Caused This Drastic Change?

I first noticed just how drastic this change from mainly virtuous people in the churches to worldly people in the churches when I was researching my book on the Council of Nicea. In AD 323, Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, wrote his Church History. It preserves writings and documents from early Christians that we would not have otherwise.

The Council of Nicea, however, was in AD 325, two years after Eusebius’ history. He did cover the Council of Nicea in his Life of Constantine, but for the consequences of Nicea, I had to go to histories written a century later. There are five of them, one each by Jerome, Rufinus, Theodotus, Sozomen, and Socrates Scholasticus. The last three were the easiest for me to access, so I used them to describe the “aftermath” of the council.

I was shocked at the violence. There is no violence at all in Eusebius’ Church History. Yes, there were disagreements and even schisms. The Novatian churches arose in the mid-third century, and there was a lot of name-calling between Cornelius, the duly elected bishop of Rome, and Novatian, who tried to usurp his seat. There was, however, no violence.

Let me give you two quotes so that you can be shocked with me at the difference:

By this internal war among the Christians, continuous seditions arose in that city, and many lives were sacrificed in consequence of these occurrences. (The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, 439, Bk. II, ch. 12)

Dissension arose among the people [of Rome]; their disagreement being not about any article of faith or heresy, but simply as to who should be bishop. Hence frequent conflicts arose, insomuch that many lives were sacrificed in this contention. (The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, 439, Bk. IV, ch. 29)

You can read the context of those quotes at the links provided. The churches of the fourth century were very little like the churches of the third century.

What happened?

This is how I put it in my booklet, “How to Make the Church Fail.” In the spirit of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, I wrote it from the devil’s perspective, even though the history is accurate. This is the devil speaking:

Eusebius of Caesarea, though a brilliant theologian and meticulous historian, was one of my favorite tools, all the more effective because of his acknowledged wisdom and scholarship.

He authored The Oration of Eusebius in Praise of Constantine for the emperor who became his dear friend. He calls Constantine the beloved of the Word of God, and refers to the emperor’s “holy services,” when he offered to God, my Enemy, the souls of his flock.

I laugh at the very thought. Who is that flock? What souls does an earthly emperor offer to God? Are they his souls, or are they mine? Am I the ruler of this world, or was Constantine?

It was my flock that Constantine, the 
unbaptized emperor, offered to God’s kingdom. (pp. 16-17)

After the churches allowed the emperor Constantine to preside over and intervene in that first ecumenical council, the public rapidly followed him into the church. Before Constantine, the churches were often persecuted. Non-Christians did not “attend” Christian meetings because being a Christian could be fatal. In fact, Constantine and his co-emperor in the East, Lucinius, put an end to “the Great Persecution,” which lasted from AD 303-311. Many of the bishops at the Council of Nicea bore the scars of torture. One at least, Paphnutius, came to the council missing an eye, which Constantine famously kissed.

After Constantine, though, the persecution of Christians by the emperors ended (with some exceptions during the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363), and the public came in.

This is a worse problem than we might think. Paul distinguishes between Christians, who are new creatures created in Christ Jesus for good works (Eph. 2:10) and “the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:1-3; 5:5-7). The apostle John goes further and says there is an “manifest” difference between the righteous children of God the unrighteous and unloving children of the devil (1 Jn. 3:10).

The entrance of Constantine’s flock, former pagans who honored the gods of Rome, into the churches has never been corrected. In fact, it got worse before it got better. Throughout the Roman Empire and even through Europe in the Middle Ages, the public was baptized into the Church and the Christians were the public, regenerated by God through Christ or not.

I read a Barna poll some years ago that said most evangelical pastors were willing to admit that no more than 40-60% of their church members were born again. Just four years ago, an assistant pastor scoffed under his breath when I suggested that it was possible 80% of people who pray the sinner’s prayer fall away. He thought that number was too small.

How can the saints possibly build one another up in their most holy faith if more than 50% are actually children of the devil? We greatly underestimate the influence of spirits in human lives. Hebrews 3:13 tells us that we are to [encourage, console, help, admonish] one another so that sin does not deceive and harden us. Yet many of those with whom we fellowship are now being moved by “the spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:1-3).

Hebrews 10:24-25 tells us that our assemblies should consist of us exhorting one another and stirring one another up to love and good works.

I don’t want our Sunday morning outreach services to end. My application would be to continue to use Sunday morning services as a way to evangelize, but we must also give opportunity for the saints to meet with just saints and speak to one another. Some churches do that now, which is wonderful, but if there is no stirring one another up to love and good works (see 1 Thess. 5:12-14 as well as Heb. 10:24-25), we’ll have to keep telling seekers that we don’t live much differently than the world does.

May God grant our apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers wisdom and revelation to train the saints in the work of service so that every part can do its share and we can speak the truth in love to one another in order overthrow the deception of sin, of riches, and of crafty, self-seeking men (Eph. 4:11-16).

Finally, to answer one objection to what I have written here, yes, we are not to separate the tares from the wheat. That is because it is very hard to tell the difference between tares and wheat until the harvest is near. Paul nonetheless commands us to get the leaven out of the loaf and the wicked out from among us (1 Cor. 5). The fruit since we stopped doing that looks a lot like great apostasy.