Church History - What happened to the Apostles?

Easter Rose

I think the mark of a good historian is that he is not in the tank for the subject about which he writes.  Justo Gonzalez then in my view is a good historian.  He has spent a good deal of his life devoted to reading and writing about church history.

Gonzalez:  ‘I first met Irenaeus, Athanasius, and the rest, and as I have read their writings and pondered their thoughts and deeds, they have accompanied me through the many turns and twists of life.’

As dedicated as Gonzalez is to church history, he gives the best information available and then draws conclusions that may be unpopular for those who want only the best light possible shed on their history.

Gonzalez:  ‘Like contemporary friends, they have often been a joy, at other times a puzzlement, and even sometimes an aggravation.’

This is important because as we move away from information recorded in the bible some of the history we encounter may be different than what we thought we knew or different that what we wish it was.

We left off in our last post discussing the culture into which the Christian church was born.  We get a glimpse of what happened from the book of Acts in the bible.  The first Christians of course were the Apostles who were Hebrew Jews (James and Peter were the leaders.) 

The second group of Christians we learn about in Acts was the Greek Jews.  These were Jews who had become Hellenized if you will. 

These two groups were still Jews and tried to evangelize at the temple in Jerusalem about the risen Christ.  After a Greek Jew Stephen was stoned to death we learned that Jerusalem would not be the place where Christianity would take root. 

Gonzalez:  ‘By its ninth chapter, Acts becomes increasingly interested in Paul, and we less and less about the church in Jerusalem.  What was happening was that the ‘Hellenistic’ Jewish Christians were serving as a bridge to the Gentile world, and that Gentiles were joining the church in such numbers that they soon overshadowed the earlier Jewish Christian community.’

In Jerusalem, Peter, James and the others who remained were constantly harassed by authorities.  Some of them were killed.   In 70 AD Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.  Around this time, the church in Jerusalem was moved to the desert city of Pella.  There is not much information about this community. 

Most of what we know about the early spread of the church comes from the letters in the New Testament written by Paul.  But it was not only Paul who spread Christianity.

Gonzalez:  ‘Although the New Testament speaks a great deal of Paul and his journeys, there were many others preaching in various regions.  Barnabas and Mark went to Cyprus.  The Alexandrine Jew Apollos preached in Ephesus and Corinth.  And Paul himself, after complaining that some preach Christ from envy and rivalry, ‘rejoices that by all these Christ is proclaimed.’  Philippians 1:18

Gonzalez:  ‘This missionary task itself was undertaken, not only by Paul and others whose names are known-Barnabas, Mark, et al.- but also by countless and nameless Christians who went from place to place taking with them their faith and their witness.’

So what happened to the original Apostles of Christ?  The ones weren’t killed probably fled to the desert.  A few of them certainly went to other places.  As time passed, some of the newly formed Christian communities began to tell stories about the Apostles.

Gonzalez:  ‘From an early date, traditions began to appear claiming that one or another of the them had preached in a particular region, or had suffered martyrdom in one way or another.  Most of these traditions are not more that the result of the desire of a church in a particular city to claim an apostolic origin.  Others are worthy of credit.’

Peter was most certainly in Rome and died a gruesome death there.  There is a cryptic reference to his death at the end of the Gospel of John.

“Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glory God.  John 20:19

We don’t even know what end befell Paul.  He was left in house arrest in Rome when the book of Acts ends.

What happened to John is more complicated because it was a popular name (and a good one I might add).  The book of Revelation tells of its author John who was exiled on the island of Patmos.  There is another story about a John who was a great teacher in Ephesus who died around 100 A.D.

Stories that circulated about the Apostles after 100 A.D. just don’t have much basis.

Gonzalez:  ‘Late in the second century, a development took place that greatly hinders the task of a historian who seeks to discern the later career of the apostles.  What happened was that after the churches in every important city began claiming apostolic origins.’

For example, Mark was said to have started the church in Alexandria.  The church in Constantinople felt it had to gain credibility so it claimed Philip had started its church.

But there are a few places like Spain and India where it is credible that James and Peter visited.

Gonzalez:  ‘In conclusion, it is certain that some of the apostles-particularly Peter, John, and Paul-did travel proclaiming the Gospel and supervising the churches that had been founded…but most of the traditions regarding apostolic travels date from a later period….In truth, most of the missionary work was not carried out by the apostles, but rather by the countless and nameless Christians who for different reasons-persecution, business, or missionary calling-traveled from place to place taking the news of the Gospel with them.’

‘Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.’ Henri Fredric Amiel

When we think about the roots of the church, we might ask ourselves if it matters how a particular church was founded.  Is it still a true church if it was not founded by an apostle?  As the years unfold, we will see division after division within the church.  It must be made clear at every turn that some churches did well and some did not.  I think we can tell the difference between a legend a particular church held on to for fondness sake but which still did the work of the Gospel and other churches that used the authority of the church to seek advantage over others.

As Ameil suggests, digging in to our history is about much more that facts.  We are challenged with the Gospel message using it as a guide to see where its promoters had it right and where others had it wrong.  And certainly more deeply where we have it right or wrong in our thinking today.

 
Source:  Justo L. Gonzalez from ‘The Story of Christianity, Volume 1, the Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation’