Lessons From Church History

Pentecost: The Birth of the Church

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and instructed them for 40 days, after which he ascended to heaven. While with them, he said: Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). That baptism of the Spirit would be called the birthday of the church.

Jesus’ words were fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), and the apostle Peter preached his first sermon, urging the crowds to repent, to believe in Jesus Christ as their Messiah and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (verse 38). That very day, some 3,000 people were baptized as the people of God (verse 41). The church had begun.

The day called Pentecost is named after the Greek word pentekostos, which means 50th. It is the festival observed by Jews, Shavuoth, sometimes called in the Old Testament the Feast of Weeks (Exodus 34:22; Leviticus 23:15; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). Other names for the day are the Feast of the Harvest and Day of First Fruits (Exodus 23:16; Numbers 28:26). Pentecost was to be observed in ancient Israel on the 50th day after the priest waved a selected sheaf of the first grain that had been harvested in the spring (Leviticus 23:15-21). Seven weeks elapsed between the day of the wave sheaf offering and the beginning of Pentecost, thus the name of the festival — the Feast of Weeks. This festival had come to signify for Jews the commemoration of the giving of the Law of Moses (the Torah) at Mount Sinai in the third month after the Exodus Passover (Exodus 20–24).

Perhaps the Holy Spirit came on the Jewish day of Shavuoth, or Pentecost, to signal that God had now moved to write the Law not on tables of stone, but in the hearts of his people through the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3). The indwelling Spirit, the Comforter or Advocate Jesus had sent, was replacing the external schoolmaster Law of Moses that had supervised ancient Israel’s worship under the old covenant (Galatians 3:23-25).

If I am lifted up, Jesus said, I will draw all people to myself (John 12:32). God had moved once and for all through his Son to rescue humanity from sin and death. The coming of the Spirit into human hearts and minds on that Day of Pentecost in the early 30s was God’s sign that in Christ he was creating a new people — a new Israel — an Israel of the Spirit (Galatians 6:16) that included Jews and Gentiles alike.

Pentecost or Whitsunday

Many Christians celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit in worship activities on Pentecost, or as it is sometimes called, Whitsunday. This name is said to arise from the ancient practice of newly baptized individuals wearing white robes during this time. In the Christian liturgical year, Pentecost is the seventh Sunday after Easter and closes the Easter season.

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Easter in the Church

The death and resurrection of Jesus have been the central events of the church’s faith confession since it was founded (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). It’s not surprising that the Lord’s crucifixion and rising to life should become the focal points of communal Christian worship and remembrance.

There is evidence that the apostolic church celebrated Jesus’ Sunday morning resurrection in its worship gatherings on the first day of each week (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2). The Lord’s death was remembered in the bread and wine communion that was probably part of Christian fellowship meals (Luke 22:19-20).

The Easter festival begins

At some point in the first two centuries, it became customary in the church to have a yearly celebration of the Lord’s death and resurrection called Pascha. It is the same word used for Passover in the Greek version of the Scriptures. Our Easter¹ season has grown out of the old Pascha celebration. In time, the Pascha became observed throughout the church.

The early church saw the symbolic continuity between the slaughtered lamb of the Passover and the crucified Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. When Paul speaks of Christ as our Passover Lamb (Greek, pascha) in 1 Corinthians 5:7, he is affirming that the God who acted mightily in ancient Israel’s release from Egyptian bondage, typified by the Passover, is the same God who has acted in Christ to free us eternally from all spiritual prisons of sin and death.

Originally, the great Paschal celebration of the church was a unified commemoration of the suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord. Only later were the events divided into separate commemorations, with the ascension observance being moved to the 40th day of the Easter season.

Gradually, in the early centuries of the church, with an increasing emphasis on Holy Week and Good Friday, Pascha took on its distinctive character as the Christian celebration of the resurrection. Good Friday commemorated Jesus’ crucifixion and death. The feast of the resurrection, which completed the whole work of redemption, became gradually the most prominent part of the Christian Pascha, and identical with our Easter Sunday.

Since as early as the fourth century, Resurrection Sunday, or what we call Easter Sunday in the English language, has been the center of the Christian liturgical year and calendar.

When to observe Easter?

Before A.D. 325, Christian communities in different regions celebrated Easter on a variety of dates and on different days of the week, and not always on Sunday. However, the Christian Council of Nicea of that year issued the Easter Rule. Nicea decided that the resurrection of Jesus should be celebrated by all churches throughout the world on the same Sunday.

The council standardized the Easter observance date so that Easter is the first Sunday following what is called the Paschal Full Moon for the year. This means that the date of Easter can range between March 22 and April 25, depending on the lunar cycle.

Eastern Orthodox churches use the same calculation, but base their Easter date on the old Julian calendar and use different Paschal Full Moon tables. The Orthodox Easter Sunday in most years follows the Western Easter by one or more weeks.

Discussions began in the last century in hopes of forging a possible worldwide agreement on a consistent date for Easter. Various proposals have been put forth by churches, Christian organizations and clergy of various denominations. One idea is to disregard the moon altogether in determining the date of Easter. None of the proposals has been adopted by any church up to now.

Even if the date for Easter changes in the future, it won’t affect our worship. Christians do not worship days or holy time. They use such days and seasons as opportunities to worship Christ. Easter is a time when we can reflect on and contemplate the meaning of the wondrous events of our common salvation — a pure gift of God in Christ.

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¹ Some claim that the word Easter is pagan because it may have once been associated with ancient heathen gods. However, Christian churches were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus in spring long before the English word Easter was adopted by English-speaking Christians. The objection against Easter is irrelevant in other nations because a different word is used for the Christian spring festival. In most other languages of the world, the name for the festival is derived from Pesach or Pesah, the Hebrew name of the Jewish Passover. The holiday is called in French Paques, Italian Pasqua, Spanish Pascua, Scottish Pask, Dutch Paasch or Pashen, Danish Paaske, and Swedish Pask, to name a few.

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Irenaeus and the Second-Century Church

Irenaeus has been called the most important Christian theologian between the apostles and the third century. He was a Greek born in Roman Proconsular Asia, today southwestern Turkey, probably between A.D. 130-140. Raised in a worshipful Christian home, as a youth he heard and knew the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp (c. 70-155). Irenaeus explained how Polycarp spoke of his conversations with John [the apostle] and with the others who had seen the Lord.¹

When a young man, Irenaeus migrated to Lugdunum, Gaul (modern Lyons, in France). He became a missionary to the Celts and eventually an elder in the Lyons congregation. Later, Irenaeus was ordained the second bishop of Lyons, replacing Pothinus, age 90, who had been martyred.

Irenaeus died perhaps around the end of the second century. His last known appearance occurs when he writes a firm but respectful letter of protest to Victor, the bishop of Rome between 189-199. Victor wanted to excommunicate the Christians of Asia because they kept the church’s traditional Paschal festival on Nisan 14.

Against the heretics

His widely-circulated theological work in five books was titled On the Detection and Refutation of the Knowledge Falsely So Called. Written about 175-185, it exposed the heresies of various Gnostic sects, especially the most sophisticated group, the Valentinians.

Irenaeus lived too late to personally hear the apostles and their disciples speak or teach. He relied on the succession of bishops in each major city to provide a theological and faith link between himself and the apostles. He gave special attention to the succession of bishops in the church at Rome as an example of the deposit of apostolic tradition that could be found in other churches. Irenaeus cites this succession as a complete proof that the life-giving faith is one and the same, preserved and transmitted in truth in the church from the apostles up till now.²

Irenaeus also relied heavily on the teaching of the New Testament to refute the claims of the heretics. He explained that in the church’s writings can be seen the unfeigned preservation, coming down to us, of the scriptures, with a complete collection allowing for neither addition nor subtraction.

Irenaeus is the first writer whose New Testament virtually corresponds to the canon that became accepted as traditional.³ He quotes from most of its writings, though he doesn’t cite Philemon, James, 2 Peter or 3 John. We can’t say whether he knew of these letters, or if he did, what his view might have been of their authority for the church.

Irenaeus was the first Christian writer to list all four Gospels as authoritative for the church. He said that through them the tradition of the apostles, manifest in the whole world, is present in every church to be perceived by all who wish to see the truth.

Trinitarian theology

Irenaeus testified to the church’s Trinitarian understanding of God’s nature long before the councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) produced their traditional confessional creed. In his various statements of faith there appear all the essentials of the Creed of Nicaea except its technical terms.⁴

Irenaeus explained that the church received from the apostles and their disciples the faith in one God the Father Almighty…and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit. He also insisted that God’s word witnesses to the Son of God in the Incarnation being fully God as well as true human. All the prophets and apostles and the Spirit itself testify to this, he said.

Irenaeus believed that Jesus’ redemptive work in his Incarnation, perfect life, death and resurrection was a Victory in Christ over all of God’s enemies. He wrote: [Christ] fought and was victorious…for he bound the strong man, liberated the weak, and by destroying sin endowed his creation with salvation.

Irenaeus’ legacy is his struggle to preserve and pass on the revelation of God that had been given to the apostles. It’s no wonder both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches consider him among the special saints of the church. Catholics celebrate a day in his honor each June 28.

Endnotes

1. Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, bk. 5.20.6.

2. Quotes of Irenaeus are from On the Detection and Refutation of the Knowledge Falsely So Called, translated by Robert M. Grant, in Irenaeus of Lyons.

3. Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, 81.

4. Cyril C. Richardson, editor, Early Christian Fathers, 350.

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Persecution, Penance