Similarly, it would be wrong to think that the Christianity we know today was the only brand of Christianity operative in the 1st century. A close reading of the NT literature indicates there were a variety of preachers and prophets all trying to spread their own version of Christianity. Paul regarded his opponents as “false prophets” and, in all likelihood, they would have said the same of him. The average Gentile convert had no idea which of these competing gospels were authentic.
The Baptism of John
Acts 18:24-28 and 19:1-7 present us with some Christian odd-fellows in the form of Apollos and a dozen believers who were unfamiliar with the Holy Spirit and only knew the baptism of John. Previously, I wrote about how John’s baptism of Jesus and Jesus’ continuation of John’s ministry were suppressed in the NT. In his time, the Baptist was very popular but Jesus eventually came to supplant him and the Baptist was re-cast as a precursor of Jesus. So it is not impossible that some of the Baptist’s disciples would have spread outside of Judea alongside traditional Christian missionaries.
Apollos, a Jewish convert from Alexandria, is introduced upon his arrival in Ephesus in Acts 18:24-28. Although he was described as eloquent, well-versed in Scripture, and “taught accurately the things concerning Jesus,” he “knew only the baptism of John.” Fortunately, Prisca and Aquila were able to explain Christianity to him “more accurately.” Luke does not describe how one could both “teach accurately” yet still need instruction to be “more accurate.”
The next episode (19:1-7) presents a similar scene in Ephesus. Paul found some dozen disciples who, like Apollos, had only received John’s baptism of repentance and knew nothing of the Holy Spirit. After being baptized in the name of Jesus, Paul laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophesying. (In the previous episode, no mention was made of Apollos being re-baptized.) There is insufficient information to be sure but my impression is that Apollos and the other twelve were early disciples of Jesus – and not the Baptist’s disciples – who did not possess the charismatic gifts associated with the Holy Spirit.
We know from Paul’s correspondence that Apollos was a popular teacher in Corinth. Indeed, divisions developed in Corinth among those who considered Apollos their spiritual leader (1 Cor 3:4-6). Factionalism was an apparent problem not only in Corinth but Philippi as well. This seems to be a logical outgrowth of Paul’s missionary program: he would establish a church, provide some basic instructions on how to live according to the Spirit, and then move on. Without any explicit rules to follow, it was only natural that individual Christians would disagree as to how a Christian was to behave.
Church Divisions
While Corinth and Philippi faced divisions from within, the churches of Galatia were confronted with outsiders who undermined Paul’s work. After the Council of Jerusalem, we saw how Paul had a falling out with Peter and Barnabas over whether Jewish Christians would be allowed to have table fellowship with Gentile Christians. Paul lost that battle and it may have also led him to cut his ties with the Antiochene church. He therefore missed the subsequent letter from the Jerusalem authorities that required Gentile Christians to follow Jewish restrictions on diet and sexual unions.
The opponents Paul attacks in his letter to the Galatians went beyond the requirements of the Jerusalem decree. A linchpin of their teaching was strongly encouraging – if not compelling – Gentile Christians to become circumcised. They also wanted the Galatians to observe Jewish feasts and festivals. To win over the Galatians, they had to discredit Paul as an apostle and explain why the Mosaic Law was the foundation on which Christians could ground their new life in Christ.
Paul spends the first two chapters of Galatians defending himself as an apostle commissioned by the risen Lord and accepted by recognized authorities in Jerusalem like Peter and James. After establishing his bona fides, Paul spends the rest of the letter elaborating on how it is faith in Jesus Christ and not obedience to the Law which justifies a person before God. The Law was the disciplinarian until Christ came, but after one has received the Spirit, that person is no longer subject to the disciplinarian. He pleads with the Galatians to reclaim the freedom of the gospel and not turn to the slavery of the Law, which is what accepting circumcision would entail.
There were other flavors of Christianity in the air. Notable among them is the version seen in the Gospel of John and the three Johannine epistles. The Johannine Christians seem to have evolved from Hellenist Christians like Stephen who taught that Jesus replaced the essentials of Judaism like Temple worship and festivals. They had an elevated view of Jesus, almost to the point of denying his humanity. Over the decades, without a church authority structure to combat false teaching, the Johannine churches were torn apart by divisions. Some finally accepted the authority of the greater church, while the rest spun off into Gnosticism, the belief that one is saved by a secret knowledge (gnosis).
All of these Christianities competed in the marketplace of ideas. The more extreme elements – Judaizers on one side and Gnostics on the other – fell by the wayside. The Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine elements combined together to give us the church that we see emerging in the 2nd century writings of the early Church Fathers like Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr. This is the brand of Christianity that was refined in the crucible.
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