Historian Woodrow Walton helps us look back over the big events and movement of history to see how God was working to make the story of Jesus known throughout the world. In this postscript to the Resurgence of the Gospel series, he ties together what the challenge of the Turkic-Moslem curtain meant and how it affected the people of Europe and the global mission of Christianity. Part of The Gospel in History series.

Part 1: “The Medieval Prologue and the Remapping of the World”

Part 2: “Recharting the Christian World Mission”

Part 3: “The Challenge of the Muslim Curtain”

Part 4: “The Reconversion of Europe”

This postscript and bibliography is Part 5 of the “Resurgence of the Gospel” series.

Part of Eurasia and Africa, with Europe highlighted in green.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

What has been offered in the “Resurgence of the Gospel” series is an overview of Eurasian and African Christian mission leading up to the time of the Ottoman takeover of Asia Minor and the capture of Constantinople, an action which prompted both recovery of the water route and overland roads to central and east Africa and initiation of deep-water navigation. Not only was Europe re-connected with Asia through this process, but this also opened a never-before meeting of Europe with southern Africa and the Asian countries bordering the Indian and Pacific oceans.

A statue of Olaf Tryggvason stands in Trondheim, Norway.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Global navigation also brought about the happy accident of connection with the Americas. Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway and a convert to Christ several years before 1452, was influential in the baptism of the first European discoverer of North America, Leif Ericson, as well as Hallfred, the Scandinavian poet of skaldic verse. About thirty years before 1452, there was a contact with Greenland in the Atlantic, northeast of Canada. Greenland became Scandinavian property. The last Norwegian shipment of Cod and timber left Greenland approximately ten years before the fall of Constantinople.

A replica of John Cabot’s ship.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Portuguese fisherman also had contact with the North Atlantic. On one Portuguese fishing operation there was a visiting sailor from Venice, Italy, by the name of Cristobal Colombo, known better by the English rendition of his name, Christopher Columbus. In the early 1490s, both Columbus and another Italian made attempts to reach Asia by turning west beyond the Gibraltar into the Atlantic. Columbus made landfall in what is now known as the Dominican Republic on a Sunday. He named the bay, Santo Domingo, “Holy Sunday.”

Columbus sailed under the auspices of Spain. Another Italian sailed under the auspices of England. He reached what is now known as Nova Scotia. His name was Giovanni Caboto, better known in North America as John Cabot.

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part Four: The Reconversion of Europe

How did monasteries, hospitality, and persecution lead to the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Part of The Gospel in History series.

The Re-conversion of Europe

At this juncture, I turn my attention back to Egypt and the heritage of the Coptic Church. Coptic Christianity began in Egypt and spread South into the Sudan and into Ethiopia. Through the influence of its institutions, it affected the Christian missions to Ireland and Scotland, of all places, and ultimately, the reconversion of Europe under Irish, Scottish, and British monastics, transforming European Christian life.

John Cassian has already been spoken of [Editor’s note: see also “The Resurgence of the Gospel, Part Two: Recharting the Christian World Mission” and “Spreading from the Frontiers: Another Look at the Gospel in the Medieval Church”] as having visited the monasteries which Pachomius had initiated in the desert lands of Egypt. These monasteries transformed new Christians into missionaries, missionaries who were not only knowledgeable in the Christian Scriptures but were also able artisans and craftsmen who knew how to relate to the common man. Cassian took what he saw and introduced the same concept into Western Europe and even Wales and Ireland. One man who was strongly influenced by Egyptian monasticism was the person we know today as St. Patrick.

A page from The Book of Armagh.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Born in Wales, Patrick was captured by Irish pirates at the age of 16 and enslaved to look after the sheep of his captors. According to his Confessions, he remained in Eire (Ireland) for six years before making his escape and returning to the southern coast of Britain. Soon after returning home, he continued his education at a monastery and entered the monastic life. At some point in his life, as recorded in his Confessions, he traveled to Rome where he gained commission as a missionary to Ireland. He elected to make northern Ireland his field of work. For more than thirty years, he traveled throughout northern Ireland. He also established a Pachomian style of monasticism which encouraged literary education, the arts, the crafts, and intense biblical study. As he had walked the breadth of Ireland with the gospel, he encouraged his students to go by foot as they ministered the Word of God.

Christian historians have referred to this band of foot soldiers for Christ, the perigrini [“pilgrims”], and for the next decades these Irish perigrini traveled the footpaths of Ireland and northern and central and Europe and as far south as southern Italy and into Scotland. The central monastic center was Armagh in northern Ireland.

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part Three: The Challenge of the Muslim Curtain Introduction

Through upheaval and suppression, being despised by civil governments and facing outright persecution, Christians survived on the other side of the Muslim Curtain. This is part of their story.

“The Turkic-Moslem Curtain” is the more appropriate explanation for what “shut-off” for an untold breadth of time any social intercourse between the East and West. It also deals more realistically with the relationship between the Arabic speaking Moslems and the increasingly Christian West. As terrible as the militancy of the Arab Conquests were, they never cut-off contact between Europe and Asia. Under the Arabic umbrella, Christians were consider dhimmi [under-class] by the Arabic-speaking Moslem rulers. At the same time, the Christians were admired for their talents, skills, and abilities and utilized according to their particular talents. Even the Jews were so treated. Some were physicians to the caliphs. It was also dependent upon the origin of the Arabic speaking Moslems.

This article is part of The Gospel in History series by Woodrow Walton.
Image: The Books of Kells by way of Wikimedia Commons.

Islam is not a monolithic religion. Historically, there are two distinct political practices. The Shi’a combine religion and political into a single system with their religious leaders doing the governing. The Shi’a also believe they are the legitimate descendants of Mohammed. The Sunni and Alawite Moslems separate Mosque from the body politic. Islam is sectarian. The Sufi are the Moslem mystics and are off in another direction and sometimes fade in and out.

Before Mohammed and his hegira (flight) to Medina, Christians from Antioch and from Egypt came into upper Arabia and down the western coast along the Red Sea. Most of the Arab Christians in southwestern Arabia were the product of Coptic missionaries out of Egypt and shared the Coptic understanding of the Trinity. Those who lived just east of the mountains east of the Dead Sea and northward toward Damascus came out of Antioch and shared the Nestorian understanding which stressed the humanity of Jesus. Mary was not a thetokos, but the mother of Jesus the man in whom dwelt the fullness of God.

The best reading on the Arab Christians are the books of Kenneth Cragg, an Anglican missionary and scholar from Great Britain who wrote such works as The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East (Louisville, KY: Westminster/Joh Knox, 1991) and The Call of the Minaret (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). In 2008, Sidney H. Griffith published a study entitled The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press).

Even then, there was no let-up of interchange between Asia and Europe until 1452 when Ottoman Turks invaded Anatolia, known variously as Asia Minor (geographically) or Turkey (geopolitically). While there was no direct west-to-east route going through either Antioch or Caesarea on the Mediterranean eastern seaboard travel, travel was possible from points north and northeast of Antioch.

One could also travel east from Alexandria to the Red Sea and travel it to where it empties into the Arabian Sea and thence to the Malabar Coast of India. Another point of departure was by way of the southern coastline of the Euxine Sea (Black Sea). One could board ship from Chalcedon, Amastris, and Sinope, all port cities in the Roman provinces of Bithynia and Pontus and to the Ukraine, one of the sources of grain for first Rome and then Constantinople. One could sail east along the coastline to Armenia and Georgia.

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part Two: Recharting the Christian World Mission

Church councils, a changing geo-political landscape, invasion and upheavals had a radical impact on how followers of Jesus participated in the Christian mission.

This article is part of The Gospel in History series by Woodrow Walton.
Image: The Books of Kells by way of Wikimedia Commons.

It may seem strange but it is from Ephesus that the re-charting of the Christian world mission takes place. It is, however, not as strange when one considers the fact that Ephesus, situated in Asia province of the Graeco-Roman world and facing the Aegean Sea and looking westward is the western entrepot of a vast East-to-West commerce where goods from oriental sources were readied for trans-shipment either into Europe or into Africa. There had a been long history of commercial intercourse between East and West.

The other factor is that Ephesus, like Antioch-on-the Orontes, is an important Christian Center where Paul the Apostle once preached. Ephesus lies south of Nicaea and of Troas, also crossroads, between East and West. From Troas, Paul and Silas took voyage toward Philippi and Thessalonica. On the other side of the Aegean from Ephesus stood Athens and Corinth.

As a result, Ephesus became an eminent Christian Center and by the late 300’s and early 400’s, and became the host for conciliar meetings of Christian leaders from places in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. In A.D. 431, a council was held in Ephesus to clarify, for the sake of evangelism and Christian instruction, the meaning of the Trinity particularly with attention on the Person of Christ Jesus. There were three eminent Christians who differed over what to stress. One was Cyril of Alexandria who was strong on the redeeming work of Jesus and on the divinity of Jesus. The second was Theodore of Mopsuestia who was as strong on the humanity of Jesus as Cyril on the divinity of Jesus as Son of God. The third part was Nestorius from Antioch who was made Patriarch in Constantinople. Nestorius differed on referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a theotokos, mother of God.

The amphitheater of Ephesus.
Image: Jordan Klein / Wikimedia Commons

The Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 came out in Cyril’s favor putting both Theodore and Nestorius in an unfavorable light. A second Council was held in A.D. 449 which amended the verdict but did not exonerate either Theodore or Nestorius. The controversy simmered for twelve long years. Then in A.D. 461, a greater number of Christian leaders gathered from all over the then Christian world, from York in Roman Britain, to John, a Bishop in western Persia. The Council at Chalcedon came down hard on the Second Council of Ephesus and called it a “Robber” Council. It was a partial victory for both Nestorius and Cyril and for the Apostle Paul’s statement found in his second letter to the Corinthians: “God was in Christ” reconciling the world to himself (II Corinthians 5:18-19ff). Though neither Cyril nor Nestorius was fully satisfied, it did free both of them to go back to Egypt and to Antioch to do that which was most important, to preach the gospel as each understood the gospel. In the years between A.D. 431 and A.D. 461, Nestorius wrote a defense, first done in Greek, then translated into Syriac between A.D. 525 and 533. The Bazaar of Heracleides must have been written between A.D. 451 or 452, as he mentions the death of Emperor Theodosius in A.D. 450.

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part One: The Medieval Prologue & the Remapping of the World  

This article is part of The Gospel in History series by Woodrow Walton.
Image: The Books of Kells by way of Wikimedia Commons.

In Retrospect

By looking backwards to the beginning of the spread of the Gospel that Jesus is both Lord and Christ and considering the results of both the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the message that Peter spoke at the Feast of the Pentecost, we are struck by the Power of the Holy Spirit to change lives and change the course of history and why, no matter the opposition and oppression, that gospel continued to spread. Other things factor in. The first factor is that of those who heard.

Those who heard Jesus were the Jews of the circle of the Gentiles (Galilee), the Jews of Judaea, and a mixture of peoples, Jew, Greek, Syro-Phoenician, and Samaritans to begin with, and a centurion or two within the Roman military system and stationed within Galilee and Judaea. There was a mixture of peoples and a mixture of social classes ranging from shepherds, to high status people, including a rich young ruler. The Gospel reached from those at the bottom to those at the top and officials as tax-gatherers. The news spread horizontally and vertically from among those who heard.

The visitors who were present when the Church began returned home and told of what they heard. When Peter, John, Philip the Deacon, and later Paul, started their missionary journeys, they were simply following up where these visitors came from: The Mediterranean world and its northern, southern, southeastern shorelines, up the Nile and the Gulf of Suez as well as northeast to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and following their courses toward the Arabian Sea. The significance of this spread west and east is in the mode of travel. The early Christians traveled the waterways more so than by way of roads which were few and dangerous to travel. Even the Roman-built roads were not all that good across Anatolia [Asia Minor/modern Turkey], going from Antioch to Ephesus facing the Aegean Sea.

Rodney Stark, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome.

Most travelers went by ship, boat, or along the shores of rivers. As a result, most Christian communities were found in port cities such as Antioch, Caesarea, Troas, Ephesus, Corinth, Alexandria going west in the Mediterranean. The Roman military road from Capernaum and the upper shore line of the Sea of Galilee took one up to Damascus, Dura-Europos, and the towns along the Euphrates-Tigris waterways. Seldom were Christian churches found in the hinterlands. Most were found in shoreline cities. It was Wayne Meeks who first noticed that the earliest Christian churches were in urban areas; then it was Rodney Stark who wrote of how Christianity became an urban movement in his Cities of God (Harper San Francisco, 2006).

This was the situation of the resurgence of the gospel throughout the following centuries when persecution or invasions occurred. The Christians took to the sea or the waterways to spread the gospel to more distant lands. When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, Acts 8: 25-49 tells of Philip the Deacon’s ministry with a Treasurer of the Candace of Ethiopia (Roman name for modern Sudan). The roadway he traveled goes along the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile river and then up the Nile to the city of Meroe, the capital of Ethiopia. The Angel of the Lord then turned Philip around and had him introduce the gospel along the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean from Azotus to Caesarea, a major port for ships from Rome and the Aegean Sea. Acts 11:19 to 30 informs the reader that Christians from the Island of Cyprus and from Cyrene, the main port city of what is now Modern Libya in Northern Africa, were among the forerunners of the church in Antioch (modern Antakya), another major port city. This is but the start of the story.