Evangelism in the Early Church by Michael Green

Author:Michael Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

This crude drawing of a youth worshipping a crucified man with an ass’s head bears the mocking inscription ‘Alexamenos worships his God’. It was found in the quarters of the Imperial Pages on the Palatine: third century.

If there was no distinction in the early Church between full-time ministers and laymen in this responsibility to spread the gospel by every means possible, there was equally no distinction between the sexes in the matter. It was axiomatic that every Christian was called to be a witness to Christ, not only by life but by lip. Everyone was to be an apologist, at least to the extent of being ready to give a good account of the hope that was within them.53 And this emphatically included women. They had a very large part to play in the advance of Christianity.

We can trace this prominence of women back to the ministry of Jesus. He attracted many women into his movement, and they were dedicated and persevering in their allegiance. His women disciples were present at the crucifixion; their hands helped Joseph of Arimathea lay Jesus in the tomb. They were there on the first Easter Day, and in the subsequent weeks of waiting in Jerusalem. They were there on the Day of Pentecost, and it was a woman’s house that formed the headquarters of the Jerusalem church. A glance through the Acts confirms this impression of the significant part played by women in the spread of the gospel: Dorcas, Lydia, Priscilla, the four prophesying daughters of Philip whose fame was widespread in the second century, the upper-class women of Beroea and Thessalonica, and the rest. The Epistles confront us with a deaconess, possibly even a female apostle!54 Eight of the twenty-six people mentioned in the greetings in Romans 16 are women, and the rivalries of women workers in evangelism are rebuked in Philippians 4.55 The part played by women is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that in Jewish circles and in paganism alike it was very much a man’s world. It was easy enough to sneer at the ‘stupid women’ who gossiped Christianity at the laundry;56 yet these same women were among the most successful evangelists. Whether we look as early as 1 Peter57 or as late as the Apostolic Constitutions58 the words and example of the Christian wife are taken for granted as the major influence through which the husband’s conversion may be looked for. This was no easy matter, as we have seen in Chapter 2. Tertullian gives us a graphic picture of the problem at the end of the second century, and it will not have changed much from a hundred years earlier.59 ‘Is the husband opposed to his wife’s Christianity? Then he will hinder her from going to worship, preclude her from offering hospitality to Christian visitors, object to her evenings out at Christian meetings, make sexual and social demands which are offensive to her Christian standards. Is he a tolerant type of man? Even so,

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