Few would have expected David and Catherine Carmichael’s eldest daughter, Amy, to grow up to become one of the world’s most famous missionaries.

Born in 1867 in the small village of Millisle, Northern Ireland, there was nothing particularly unusual about this girl, who was known for her wilfulness, tomboyish attitude and a propensity to get into mischievous pranks.

Little did the Carmichael parents realize that their daughter would be God’s tool for rescuing hundreds of children from a life worse than death in the darkness of the Indian jungles.

Though Amy’s father died when she was five, the gap had been amply filled by the widower Robert Wilson. Cofounder of the Keswick Convention, Wilson was a catalyst for the holiness movement in England and a support for many missionaries around the globe. When she was in her young twenties, Wilson asked to be allowed to adopt Amy, for whom he felt a special fondness after the loss of his only daughter. Thus it was that Amy Carmichael moved in with Mr. Wilson and his sons to work as his secretary. The job put Amy in direct contact with many of the missionaries around the world, including Hudson Taylor, Theodore Monod and F.B. Meyer. This was no doubt instrumental in pressing upon Amy the call to mission work.

An Unlikely Missionary

Amy Carmichael was an unlikely candidate for the life of a missionary. She suffered from neuralgia, a disease that stimulates the nerves to feel pain and which caused Amy to have to spend entire weeks in bed. Moreover, she felt reluctant to leave Robert Wilson, as the two of them had grown extremely attached to each other. Yet the call of Jesus upon her would not go away. Around this time she wrote to her mother that

“Everything, everything seemed to be saying ‘Go’, through all sounds the cry seemed to rise, ’Come over and help us.’ Every bit of pleasure of work which has come to me, has had underlying it the thought of those people who have never, never heard of Jesus; before my eyes clearer than any lovely view has been the constant picture of those millions who have no chance, and never had one, of hearing of the love which makes our lives so bright.”

Amy initially had no idea where the Lord was leading her to go. She only knew that she needed to go somewhere. Rejected by the China Inland Mission because of her frailty, she was eventually able to go to Japan as a Keswick missionary with the Church Missionary Society. In the providence of God, however, Amy was only able to stay in Japan for fifteen months because of ill health. God had other plans for this young woman.

Amy remained restless, eager for a new assignment. The opportunity presented itself nine months later when she was accepted by the Church of England Zenana Mission to go as a missionary to India. Sailing for India in 1895, Amy had no idea that she would remain there for the next fifty-six years.

Rescuing Children

It took Amy Carmichael some time to settle down to life as a missionary in India. Having little in common with the other missionaries and being unable to speak to the natives, Amy experienced acute bouts of loneliness. Additionally, she struggled with ill health to such a degree that some of her fellow missionaries predicted that she would not last more than six months. Despite these setbacks, Amy persevered with a rigorous study of the Tamil language, longing to be able to share the gospel in a language the natives could understand.

It was after being appointed to minister in the Tinnevelly District that Amy first became aware of the horrifying practice of dedicating little girls to the Hindu gods. The practice, which had begun sometime around the 6th century, involved grooming girls, some of them only babies, for a life of ritualised prostitution. These girls were a valuable commodity since they would become the sex slaves of the Brahmin priests who ran the temples. Considered to be the property of the gods, the girls had no rights of their own and could be abused and tortured without censure.

Because the Hindus were taught that it was meritorious to donate their children to the gods, and since there were often financial rewards for parents who did so, many children were dedicated even before their birth. Some girls were simply kidnapped and forced to spend the rest of their lives as sex fodder in the darkness of the jungle temples.

Amy’s work in the Tinnevelly District brought her to Dohnavur, a small village thirty miles from the southern tip of India. Originally, Amy Carmichael and her fellow missionaries intended to use Dohnavur merely as a base for a few month’s missionary activity in the region. But again, God had other plans. Dohnavur became a base for one of the world’s most successful missionary endeavours, offering sanctuary to hundreds of girls, and eventually to boys too, who had escaped from a fate worse than death.

Preena’s Escape

It started when a small girl named Preena was given as a gift to the gods at the age of seven (possibly younger). Preena was removed from her mother and placed in the care of a woman charged with teaching her singing and dancing to order to make her more desirable to the Hindu priests. Like all the others in her position, she was also subtlety trained to find sin attractive, in order to break down the natural barriers that might inhibit her usefulness once she reached puberty.

Preena was too young and innocent to understand what it meant to be “married to the god,” but only longed to be back with her mother. When she could endure it no longer, Preena escaped and made the two day journey back to the town of Tuticorin where her mother lived. However, the woman into whose care she had been placed was quick on her heals. No sooner had Preena arrived home than the wicked woman caught up with her and demanded to have the girl returned. While Preena clung to her mother begging not to be sent away, the woman threatened wrath from the gods should she refuse to consent. Fearing the Hindu deities, Preena’s mother unloosed her daughter’s clinging arms and returned her to the temple’s service.

As a punishment for escaping, Preena had her hands branded with a red hot iron. Yet this incredibly painful procedure seems to have only made Preena more eager to be free. Not long after this, Preena overheard her captors making plans to marry her to the god as soon as possible. Misunderstanding the Hindu idiom “tied to the god”, Preena believed she was to be tied with ropes to the figure of an idol she had seen in the dark recesses of the temple. Terrified by the prospect, Preena made up her mind to escape again. This time, she was wise enough not to flee to her mother, but escaped to the town of Pannaivilai where she was found and offered accommodation by a Christian woman. Providentially Amy and her friends happened to be traveling through her old town at the same time and met Preena the next morning. Preena described her first meeting with Amy:

Our precious Ammai [‘Ammai’ means ‘true mother’ in Tamil] was having her morning chota. When she saw me, the first thing she did was to put me on her lap and kiss me. I thought, ‘My mother used to put me on her lap and kiss me – who is this person who kisses me like my mother?’ From that day she became my mother, body and soul.’

The stories Amy heard from Preena filled her with horror and made her more determined than ever to bring down the horrible industry of sex trafficking. Amy began finding out everything she could about the trafficking, developing a growing network of helpers and informants.

The Dohnavur Fellowship

After gaining a reputation for rescuing children, many escaped girls made their way to Dohnavur. But Amy did not just wait around for people to arrive on her doorstep. Whenever she heard about someone in danger, Amy would be proactive in doing all she could to rescue the child. She would sometimes travel incredibly long distances on India’s hot, dusty roads just to save one child.

Amy was even known to engage in covert activities of questionable legality in order to save girls and boys from the horrors of temple service. As the years progressed, Amy Carmichael became a shrewd detective, often finding missing clues supplied by a chance circumstance or even a dream that could only be explained by the Providence of God.

But she was not always successful. One child she had been unsuccessful in saving was drugged and (as she confided to her own private notebook after learning the horrifying facts) “then died in such agony that the one who was responsible fled from the house with his hands over his ears to shut out the sounds of her screams.”

In 1918 a boy arrived, the first in what would become a whole community of boys next to Dohnavur’s small village of girls. Amy loved working with the children, always finding time to play with them and let them know that they were loved and valued. Inspired by her example, many others came and joined the ministry at Dohnavur, offering their unique skills and gifts to the expanding operation.

As more and more children were rescued, Dohnavur became an expanding orphanage. But it was more like a family than an orphanage, with Amy functioning as the mother for hundreds of unwanted children. She was affectionately called ‘Amma’, by the children, the Tamil word for Mother.

The Dohnavur fellowship, as it came to be known, became a model of Christian living. Though not perfect, the growing community had few parallels in modern times for the unity, prayer and love that emanated from it. The following quotation, taken from a little manuscript Amy wrote for some of her closest co-labourers, shows what Amy’s heart was for all of Dohnavur:

We are trusted to spread the spirit of love. Tenderness in judgment, the habit of thinking the best of one another, unwillingness to believe evil, grief if we are forced to do so, eagerness to believe good, joy over one recovered from any slip or fall, unselfish gladness in another’s joys, sorrow in another’s sorrow, readiness to do anything to help another entirely irrespective of self- all this and much more is included in that wonderful word love. If love weakens among us, if it ever becomes possible to tolerate the least shadow of an unloving thought, our Fellowship will begin to perish. Unlove is deadly. It is a cancer. It may kill slowly but it always kills in the end. Let us fear it, fear to give room to it as we should fear to nurse a cobra. It is deadlier than any cobra. And just as one minute drop of the almost invisible cobra venom spreads swiftly all over the body of one into whom it has been injected, so one drop of the gall of unlove in my heart or yours, however unseen, has a terrible power of spreading all through our Family, for we are one body – we are parts of one another. If one member suffers loss, all suffer loss. Not one of us liveth to herself.

Confinement

When she was in her young sixties, Amy Carmichael broke her leg and twisted her spine in a fall. The injury left her bedridden for the remainder of her life and in almost constant pain. Rarely did she sleep through an entire night without waking up in pain.

Being convalescent did not come easy for Amy, who was naturally an energetic and active person. She would later reflect, “I never found patience easy, being by nature a most impatient mortal; even one week in bed seemed impossible in old days.”

Despite her own suffering, Amy Carmichael remained remarkably others-centred. Because of her own trials, Amy was able to have a remarkable empathy for the sufferings others had to endure, offering comfort and refreshment even when those trials were comparatively mild compared with hers.

Legacy

The love of God radiated from Amy like a power magnet, touching so many lives and irresistibly pointing people towards Jesus.

When Amy Carmichael died in 1951 at the age of 83, she left behind herself a remarkable legacy, both in the lives of those she had touched as well as in the literary output that she left behind.

From Dohnavur Amy wrote book after book, including the highly influential Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India (1903) and Gold Cord (1932). As a result of her books, more and more Westerners began following the work, supporting it with gifts and prayer. Moreover, these works alerted the West to the evils of the Hindu temple system and played a key role in the eventual downfall of the industry.

Lessons From The Life of Amy Carmichael

Amy Carmichael did not merely write about her missionary work. Many of her books are devotionals that have inspired countless men and woman into deeper love for their Saviour and a hunger to follow him more completely. Perhaps the greatest lesson that Amy’s life and writings teach us is how to know Christ in the fellowship of His sufferings.

Suffering was a constant companion to Amy Carmichael. Despite the bodily hardships she faced, her worst sufferings were not even physical. Having so much love and tenderness in her heart, words cannot describe her anguish when occasionally she would lose a child she thought she had rescued, sometimes from her very doorstep.

Despite the difficulties of her life, the Lord helped Amy to see these sufferings positively, as battle wounds and honours gained in the service of her Saviour. The following poem reveals something of this approach to suffering:

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakening,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God

The above article first appeared in Christian Voice’s May 2010 newsletter.  The monthly newsletter with its confidential prayer and action points goes free to all who join Christian Voice.

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In Wessex England, sometime in the late seventh century, a group of boys gathered on the grass after church. While the rest of the villagers enjoyed their church’s fellowship meal, the boys were being led by one young man in his favorite sport – throwing boulders at one another.

The young man would be known to history by the name he would later adopt: Boniface. As this young man grew, he quickly distinguished himself as the roughest, toughest boy in the village.

Not only did Boniface excel in the virtues of strength, courage and manliness, but he also had a reputation for his aptitude in academics. This may be one of the reasons why, from an early age, he was attracted to the monastic way of life. In those days, the priests were the custodians of knowledge and it was in the monasteries that the great libraries were housed.

The Restless Monk

Still a young man, Boniface entered the monastic life of the Benedictines, where he remained until he was around forty years old, caring for the sick, ministering to the poor and discipling younger monks. He also gained a reputation through his scholastic endeavors, teaching theology and compiling the first Latin grammar ever to be written. Being sensitive to beauty and the arts, he also found time to write poetry.

Because of his devotion to the saints, his reputation in piety and his unequalled intellect, everyone assumed that Boniface would eventually become a bishop. However, Boniface was restless and had other plans. He is quoted as saying:

I yearn to go forth where the dangers are, not because I particular enjoy those dangers, but because I know it is there that the battle rages for the soul of men and nations. God set me before the front lines. Let me not end my days in comfort and complacency.

The restless monk began studying the missionary endeavors taking place throughout the world. He was particularly attracted to the most difficult mission fields, such as the land we now call Germany, where the Teutonic and Saxons tribes were so savage that few missionaries had dared to venture there, while those who did met with extremely limited success. One of the missionaries who had attempted to reach these lands had described them being fields of iron where a man would broken trying to plough them. That was all the prompting Boniface needed. Rejecting the opportunity to become a bishop and live a life of ease, Boniface sailed to the continent and into danger.

Before he could get started, Boniface needed to go to Rome to give the Pope an opportunity to examine him. Impressed with the middle-aged man, Pope Gregory II blessed Boniface in 719 and sent him forward.

Once among the wild Germanic tribes, Boniface encountered a sparse population of believers who had been reached by the efforts of previous missionaries. These Christians were scattered, discouraged and disorganized. Whenever Boniface entered a new area, his first task would be to bring these scattered Christians together, organize them and form missionary cells. When he later left the region, the missionary cells he had begun would continue the work of reaching the lost.

The fierce Norsemen who had settled along the Danish and German coast lived in constant fear of their pagan gods. To pacify the powers of the forest, they engaged in human mutilation, vestal sacrifices, and other brutal practices.

The priests who made their living worshiping these false gods were venomously opposed to the gospel. Boniface knew that every time he opened his mouth to tell people about Jesus he was taking his life in his hands. Yet Boniface unflinchingly proclaimed the truth regardless of consequences. This courageous attitude was demonstrated in the famous the Oak of Thor incident in 723.

The Oak of Thor

Near the present-day town of Fritzlar in northern Hesse (west-central Germany), Boniface had been ministering to the pagans with little success. Being a stronghold for the worship of the Norse god Thor (known among the West Germanic tribes as Donar), Boniface was convinced that reaching this area with the gospel would pave the way for the entire region to follow.

Outside the town stood Mount Gudenberg. At the top of this mountain was a sacred grove which marked the main point of veneration in the Thor cult. In the centre of the grove stood a mighty oak tree, known as the Oak of Thor. Pilgrims would walk for many miles in order to stand before this sacred tree and worship the god of thunder.

As Boniface was staying with the Hessians, it happened that a great ceremony was scheduled to take place in the sacred grove. Boniface spread word that during the ceremony he would be challenging Thor.

When the evening for the ceremony arrived, villagers came from miles around, some to worship Thor, other to see what this monk was up to. As Boniface marched with the procession up to the sacred grove, no one noticed the axe hidden in the folds of his priestly garments.

No sooner had the worshipers formed a circle around the sacred tree than Boniface stood up. Interrupting the chanting of the druid priest, he defiantly marched over to the holy tree and pulled out his axe.

In stunned silence, the worshipers looked on as Boniface began doing the unthinkable: he began hacking at Thor’s sacred tree!

“Stop!” yelled one of the chiefs. “Thor will strike you dead if you do that!” But Boniface, paying no attention, continued to cut.

The crowd, now stricken dumb with horror, expected Thor to intervene at any moment to strike the insolent Christian to the ground. But the fierce red-haired god, known for riding through the sky with a gigantic hammer, did not arrive.

Boniface continued to hack.

As he worked, sweat pouring down the rippling muscles of the middle-aged man, Boniface no doubt thought of Elijah on Mount Carmel. Boniface called upon Thor to strike him with his hammer. But Thor did not arrive. He did not even wield the lightning and thunderbolts with which he was traditionally associated.

Suddenly a great wind arose and the already weakened oak blew to the ground. But Boniface was still standing. Thor had not defended his property.

Realizing that their gods were powerless to protect their own sacred places, the crowd was now ready to listen to Boniface’s message.

In the days that followed, all the villagers were baptized and helped Boniface to build a chapel from the wood of the toppled tree.

A Once and For All Sacrifice

As the pilgrims who had come to watch the ceremony returned to their own villages, they not only took with them the story of what had happened, but they also took with them the good news of Jesus Christ. They told how a monk named Boniface had told them of a God of love who was stronger than the gods of the forest. As word spread, entire villages of Hessians converted en masse. This was a gradual process in those days when news could only travel as fast as a person. Thus, only three evenings after the incident, a young boy rushed into Boniface’s camp from a neighboring village with a report that his 15-year old sister was about to be offered as a vestal sacrifice to the gods of the forest.

Boniface and a small band of disciples wasted no time. They quickly followed the boy back to the site where the terrible event was about to take place. Not a moment too early, they entered the grove just in time to see the witch doctor raising his stone knife.

As the blade began its downwards descent towards the breasts of the young maiden, Boniface hurled himself forward, simultaneously knocking over the priest and receiving on himself the blow of the knife. Providentially, the knife embedded itself in a small wooden cross that Boniface was wearing, piercing it in two but preserving the missionary’s life.

Even as the stunned witch doctor shrieked at the monk, Boniface told of an ultimate sacrifice that had already been offered. Using the druid’s knife to cut down fur boughs, Boniface preached to the crowd about Christ’s finished work on the cross of Cavalry, explaining that because of this there was no longer any need for additional sacrifices. He urged the onlookers to take the branches home as a memorial of the provision achieved by Christ. Legend has it that this occurred on the first Sunday in Advent and that this was the origin of Advent wreaths.

Death

At the age of 73, Boniface decided to sail down the Rhine and preach to the pagan tribes in Fresia (modern day Holland), where he had begun his work many years earlier. While visiting a former mission station, a local warlord slaughtered Boniface and all his companions, thinking they were carrying gold. The distressed villagers found him laying face down in the snow with his head cudgeled.

For many years Boniface had been prepared for his death. “I know I shall die,” he once said, “and I shall die on time. Therefore, I must make the most of the moments between here and there. And the way I can make most of these moments is to live them in terms of that which I know to be absolutely true and unchanging. I will not be swayed from this conviction though my moments be short, though my moments be long.”

Lesson from the Life of Boniface

Boniface was not without his faults. Believing that only a strong centralized church could triumph over the warring pagan tribes, he refused to work alongside Celtic missionaries who would not acknowledge the authority of the Pope and who allowed their clergy to marry. Yet despite his problems there are a number of lessons we can draw from Boniface’s amazing life. In particular, the following four aspects stand out.

First, evangelism for Boniface was not about simply getting someone to pray the sinner’s prayer, securing them a place in heaven and then moving on to the next person. Like the apostle Paul, Boniface realized that evangelism needed to also include discipleship. Thus, wherever Boniface brought the gospel, he also established churches and equipped the saints to continue in the faith. Like the apostle Paul, he would always endeavor to return and visit these churches to see how they were doing and to encourage them to persevere in the faith.

The second lesson we learn from Boniface is the importance of having a generational focus. He believed that the success of his mission should be judged in terms of generations and centuries, not merely the fruit produced during one lifetime. Thus, he put mechanisms in place to assist the progress of the gospel after he was gone. This included planting schools to increase literacy so that the young could be more easily discipled and become strong in the Word.

Third, Boniface helps us to appreciate that the triumph of the gospel results, not simply in saved individuals, but in the total transformation of culture. He worked to bring civilization to the barbaric tribes, introducing them to the arts, to music, to poetry and to learning. He established libraries and put men to work copying manuscripts so that the next generation would have access, not only to the Bible, but to other great works of literature. The gospel was not only about transformed lives, but a transformed culture.

The fourth lesson that Boniface teaches us is the importance of spiritual warfare. When Boniface went into action, there was no doubt that he was waging war against principalities and powers in high places. In the raw paganism of the Germanic tribes, the power of the occult was very strong, but Boniface knew that the power of Christ was stronger. Not only was Boniface unafraid to challenge these powers head-on, knowing that Christ had defeated them through His death and resurrection, but he excitedly rushed towards the battle, always eager for a chance to demonstrate the power of Christ. He said:

Let us stand fast in what is right and prepare our souls for trial. Let us neither be dogs that do not bark nor silent onlookers, nor paid servants who run away before the wolf. Instead, where the battle rages, let us find ourselves. Run towards the roar of the lion! Run towards the roar of battle! That is where Christ’s most glorious victories shall be won.

The above article first appeared in Christian Voice’s May 2010 newsletter. Each month our newsletter has a biography of a different Christian hero, only interrupted occasionally to tell the story of a bad guy. Those who join Christian voice receive our monthly newsletter. Instructions on how to join are given below:

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It was the year 313, and the bishop of Alexandria stood at his window and looked out upon the city he was responsible for.

Beyond the line of houses, Bishop Alexander could see the city’s port bustling with the activity that had made Egypt such a rich trading centre during the height of the Roman Empire. Beyond that, stretching as far into the distance as the eye could see, the bishop looked upon the waters of the Mediterranean.

Just as Bishop Alexander was about to turn away from the window and prepare for some guests he was expecting for Sunday dinner, his gaze caught something he hadn’t seen before. On the shore of the harbor a group of boys were playing.

In itself this was nothing unusual; what was unusually is what the boys were playing. They seemed to be reenacting a baptism service. One of the boys was actually baptizing the other boys.

Concerned that the boys were making light of weighty matters, the Bishop sent his servant to break up the mock service and bring the boys to himself.

When the boys arrived at his house, the bishop began by asking the boys what they had been playing.

“It wasn’t our fault,” put in one of the company. “It was the bishop’s fault.” As he said this, the boy pointed towards a tall slim lad with ruddy hair, the one whom Alexander had seen baptizing the other boys.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“My name is Athanasius,” the young boy replied, a little nervous to find the bishop taking such an interest in him. “We were just playing,” the boy continued. “I was pretending to be the bishop and these [pointing to his companions] are my catechumens who have been awaiting baptism.”

As Bishop Alexander continued to question the boy, his response turned from one of censure to wonder. It turned out that the child had performed the baptismal rites on his companions with remarkable accuracy, perfectly reciting in Greek the liturgical formula used in the baptism of catechumens.

“Are you a Christian?” Alexander asked.

“Yes.”

Bishop Alexander continued his inquiries. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to be a priest.”

The bishop stood silent for a moment eying the boy. “It is not an easy life,” he said softly, recalling the Diocletian persecution which had only just come to an end and in which many of his friends had been martyred for the faith. “Also, a priest must have learning.”

“I love to learn,” said the boy, “And I am not afraid of anything!”

Impressed by the boy’s enthusiasm, the bishop made inquiries into the names and whereabouts of his parents. Later that week Alexander paid Athanasius’ parents a visit and asked for permission to bring the boy up in order to train and educate him for the ministry. Athanasius’ parents, who always knew there was something special about their boy, gladly accepted the bishop’s offer.

Athanasius quickly grew to love the gentle bishop as a father. But Athanasius was not the only one blessed by the relationship. The busy bishop found his generosity to the boy repaid a hundredfold, as the lad became a most useful assistant. Together the two of them travelled around the vast diocese, strengthening local church leaders and ministering to the needs of the saints.

Six years later, when Athanasius was 23 years old, he was ordained as a deacon and continued to work closely with the aging Patriarch.

The Trouble Begins

In those days the church was expanding drastically under the new freedom afforded by Constantine’s Edict of Milan. The Edict, issued in the same year that Alexander had found Athanasius playing on the harbor shore, brought an end to centuries of persecution that Christians had faced under previous hostile emperors.

But this new freedom also gave new opportunities for the devil to sow seeds of disunity and heresy among the Lord’s flock, even as Paul had warned in Acts 20:29-30:

“I know this, that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also, men shall arise from your own selves and speak perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”

The trouble that would mark Athanasius’ career began one afternoon when Bishop Alexander was lecturing on the Trinity at a pastor’s conference. In the course of the talk, a pastor from Libya named Arius stood up and opposed Alexander’s view that Jesus was co-eternal with the Father.

Like modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses, Arius argued that if Jesus was God’ son, then by definition he must have had a beginning to his existence and could not also be eternal God. Alexander tried to reason with Arius, but to no avail. It wouldn’t be long before Arius gathered a whole retinue of local pastors around himself, chanting “There was a time when he was not, there was a time when he was not,” indicating their belief that Jesus was a creature with a beginning rather than the eternal Son of God.

Soon followers of Arius could be heard throughout the whole empire singing their catchy songs.

It is not surprising that Arius’ heresy found such a ready audience. For hundreds of years Mediterranean culture had revolved around the worship of the emperor and various other demigods. If Jesus was simply a great man or angel, then serving Him was compatible with the worship of these other deities. Arianism was thus found to be highly attractive to those in positions of power.

Contending for the Faith

As the Arian controversy continued to spread like wildfire throughout the empire, it eventually caught the attention of the emperor. Division in the church deeply troubled the Constantine, who considered such in-fighting to be worse than war. In an attempt to resolve the conflict and restore unity to the fledgling church, Constantine convened a council at Nicaea in 325.

An innumerable company of churchmen, including 1,800 bishops, congregated at Nicaea from all over the empire. For three months the pastors debated the Arian heresy and other subsidiary matters.

As the proceedings continued, Bishop Alexander was overshadowed by his young assistant, Athanasius, who used his scriptural knowledge and rhetorical skills to persuade the congregants that this was no small matter. If Jesus is a created being, Athanasius argued, then He is not God; but unless Jesus is both fully man and fully God, He could not save us from our sins. This is because only one who was fully human can atone for human sin, but only one who is fully divine has the power to save us.

Under the force of these and other arguments,

: “We believe… in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

When he refused to say the creed, Arius was pronounced a heretic and exiled.

For Athanasius and Alexander, Nicaea was the beginning, not the end, of trouble.

Banishment

Only a few months after the council, trouble surfaced when the supporters of Arius urged the emperor to end Arius’s exile, persuading him that Arius had repented. Constantine responded by ordering Bishop Alexander to restore Arias to table fellowship. Alexander refused, pointing out that Arius had not actually retracted his view that Jesus wasn’t God.

Three years after the council of Nicaea, Alexander died, leaving Athanasius to become the next Bishop of Alexandria. The Arians in the city saw this as an opportunity to make a come-back, having greatly underestimated the strength of Alexander’s young successor.

When it became clear that Athanasius would not let anyone enter the church who refused to say the Nicean Creed, the Arian party started a mud-slinging campaign. They accused Athanasius of everything from murder to illegal taxation. When these false accusations reached the ears of Constantine, Athanasius was summoned to appear before representatives of the emperor to answer charges. The following account (from Book I of Theodoret’s Ecclesiastical History and adapted by Stuart Bryan for a 2008 edition of Saint Anne’s Public House) tells about some of the charges leveled against Athanasius.

One of these charges concerned a certain Arsenius, a bishop of the faction opposed to Athanasius. The men of his party put him in hiding, and charged him to remain there as long as possible. They then cut off the right hand of a corpse, embalmed it, placed it in a wooden case, and carried it about everywhere, declaring that it was the hand of Arsenius, who had been murdered by Athanasius. But the all-seeing eye did not permit Arsenius to remain long in concealment. The friends of Athanasius hunted Arsenius up, apprehended him and brought him to an inn in Tyre, where they kept him until the council was convened.

On the appointed day, early in the morning, the great Athanasius and his close friend Timotheus came to the council. His enemies first accused him of violating the chastity of a woman in whose house he had lodged. The woman herself was present as witness to the crime. She stood and reported (with loud tears and sighs) how she had invited Athanasius into her house only to be ravished by the unfeeling wretch. When she had finished, the court ordered Athanasius to reply, but Athanasius remained silent. Instead, Timotheus stepped forward, as though he were Athanasius, and addressed her, “Have I, O woman, ever conversed with you, or have I entered your house?” She replied with even greater effrontery, screaming aloud at Timotheus, and, pointing at him with her finger, exclaimed, “It was you who robbed me of my virginity; it was you who stripped me of my chastity.” The devisers of this calumny were put to shame, and all the bishops who were privy to it, blushed, while the woman herself (a local prostitute as it turned out) was dragged from the room still screaming and accusing “Athanasius” of violating her.

But Athanasius’ enemies were undeterred by this turn of events. This was not the only, nor the most serious charge against him. At this point the small, covered box containing the embalmed hand of the murdered Bishop Arsenius was produced. A gasp spread through the room when it was opened and all the spectators uttered a loud cry. Some believed the accusation to be true; the others had no doubt of the falsehood, and thought that Arsenius was lurking somewhere or other in hiding.

When at length, after some difficulty, a little silence was obtained, Athanasius asked his judges whether any of them knew Arsenius. Several of them replying, “Why, yes, of course we knew him!”, Athanasius gave orders that a man who had hitherto stood outside in a long cloak be brought before them. Then Athanasius again asked them, “Is this the right Arsenius? Is this the man I murdered? Is this the man those people mutilated after his murder by cutting off his right hand?” When they had acknowledged that it was the same individual, Athanasius pulled off Arsenius’ cloak, and exhibited two hands, both the right and the left, and said, “Let no one seek for a third hand, for man has received two hands from the Creator and no more.”

When Athanasius’ accusers found that their tricks had backfired, they attempted to murder him. He would surely have been killed had not the emperor’s soldiers stepped in and installed Athanasius safety on board a ship.

Not long after this Athanasius reported to the emperor the unjust treatment he had undergone at the council. The emperor commanded the men Athanasius had complained about to appear before him. Instead of urging any of the former accusations (which had been so easily refuted) they switched their tactics and told Constantine that Athanasius had threatened to prevent the exportation of corn from Alexandria. Believing what they said, Constantine banished Athanasius to a city of Gaul called Treves.

It was only when Constantine died two years later in 337 that Athanasius was able to return to Alexandria. However, upon his homecoming Athanasius found that Arianism had seeped into the city like a poison. This time it was the church leaders who plotted how they might get rid of Athanasius because of his continuing commitment to the deity of Christ. The opportunity presented itself the following year when Constantine’s son, the new Roman Emperor Constantius II, renewed the order for Athanasius’s banishment, even issuing orders that Athanasius should be put to death if he entered his home church.

In 346 Athanasius was finally allowed to return, only to be exiled on three more occasions by the next two Roman emperors (Julian, noted for his opposition to Christianity, and Valens, noted for his Arianism). In 366 Athanasius was able to resume his bishopric for the last and final time, holding it until his death in 373 at the age of 78.

He did not move with the times

Athanasius’ life stands out as one of the most remarkable in the entire history of the church. Rejecting the life of ease that would later come to characterize so many bishops, Athanasius was prepared to live in constant turmoil and suspense rather than compromise on the deity of Christ. Though he would not live to see it, his battle against Arianism was successful, as seen by the fact that the modern descendents of Arius (the Jehovah’s Witnesses) are now exiled from the true church.

Although Athanasius’ enemies had hoped to silence him by removing him, the result was actually the opposite. During the seventeen years that he spent in exile, Athanasius had a chance to visit Christians in far off places, spreading his influence as a learned teacher and opening up wider and wider ministry opportunities. These periods of exile also gave him a chance to write and enabled him to leave behind a rich legacy of books.

Athanasius’ most influential work, On the Incarnation, continues to help Christians to this day in understanding the importance of Jesus’ divinity and humanity. In other works Athanasius distinguished himself as a leading apologist, defending Christianity not only against the Ariun threat but also against pagan and Jewish opposition. Other influential works include his Easter or Festal Letter of 367 which is often credited as being the earliest surviving statement of the New Testament canon.

“The whole world is against you!” a colleague once exclaimed to Athanasius when it looked like the entire Roman empire was lapsing into Arianism. Unperturbed, Athanasius replied, “Then it is Athanasius against the world.” These words (usually known in Latin: Athanasius contra mundum) have rung out down the halls of history as an inspiration to all those who have held fast to the truth against powerful opposition. Reflecting on this in his introduction to a translation of On the Incarnation, C.S. Lewis commented:

He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, ‘whole and undefiled,’ when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius – into one of those ‘sensible’ synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times…

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The above article first appeared in Christian Voice’s March and April 2010 newsletter. Each month our newsletter has a biography of a different Christian hero, only interrupted occasionally to tell the story of a bad guy. Those who join Christian voice receive our monthly newsletter. Instructions on how to join are given below:

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Persecution Under Severus

The date is 202 and the Roman emperor, Septimius Severus, has just enacted a law prohibiting the spread of Christianity and Judaism throughout the Roman empire.

Alarmed by the steady growth of Christianity (which may have been as much as 40% per decade throughout the second century), Emperor Septimius hopes his decree will contain the Christian threat and strengthen his kingdom.

Persecution was nothing new to Christians in the early third century. But this was the first time there was a universal decree forbidding conversion. If someone was discovered to have become a Christian, the choice offered by the emperor was simple.  One could either curse Jesus and make an offering to the Roman gods or be executed.

“Many martyrs are daily burned, confined, or beheaded, before our eyes,” observed Clement of Alexandria, describing conditions during the “terrible reign” of Severus.

One particularly moving story from this period concerns the martyrdom of the young mother, Perpetua.

Under House Arrest

Perpetua was a noblewoman living in Carthage at the beginning of the 3rd century. Although it was unusual for women of that time to be educated, Perpetua was able to read and write. Indeed, she has left us an account of the events leading up to her martyrdom.  Hers is the earliest known document written by a Christian woman.

In 203, when Perpetua was around twenty-one years old, she was preparing for baptism along with four other converts from Carthage.  They also included a young woman named Felicity, who was eight months pregnant.

When the Roman authorities in Carthage learned of the conversions, Perpetua and her companions were taken to a dwelling.  There they were put under house arrest.

Though under intense pressure from her pagan father to renounce the Christian faith, and still nursing her newborn son, Perpetua was determined to remain faithful to Christ.

From House Arrest to Jail

It soon became clear that the company were to be moved to an actual jail.  Because of that, the local church authorities allowed them to be baptized ahead of their formal training. They received the sacrament of holy baptism and the Eucharist.  Then the five converts prayed for strength to endure to the very end. One can only imagine Perpetua’s agony when the day finally arrived and she was sent to prison.  Her baby, utterly dependent on his mother for sustenance, was stripped from her arms.

A Roman prison was a foul place and this was no exception. The five converts were put in a windowless cellar, where there was no means of escape from the hot stifling air.

Despite the dismal and unsanitary conditions of the dark cell, Perpetua’s worst torment was the thought of her child left helpless without her. However, two church deacons bribed the jailer to move them to a better part of the prison. It was here that Perpetua received a visit from her Christian mother.  She brought her grandson, now faint with hunger, to be suckled. For the remainder of her time in jail, Perpetua was allowed to keep the child with her. Because she was a woman of high birth, she was also allowed to keep a diary.

“I am a Christian”

When the day of the trial finally arrived, the prisoners were brought before a tribunal, where Perpetua’s father was also waiting. Appealing to her love for him and her child, the elderly man tried in vain to persaude his daughter renounce her beliefs. Hilarian the procurator urged her similarly, saying, “Spare your father’s grey hairs. Spare the infancy of the boy. Make sacrifice for the Emperors’ prosperity.”

Perpetua answered simply, “I am a Christian.” This left Hilarian with no choice but to pass sentence. Perpetua, along with the others, was condemned to be killed in the stadium for the amusement of the crowds. Even at this point it was not too late for them to go free if they would simply agree to renounce Christ.

Martyrdom of Perpetua

Thus it was that on March 7, 203, Perpetua and the other converts were marched to the Carthaginian amphitheatre amid jeering crowds. Perpetua and Felicity were stripped naked and made to put on a net before entering the arena. A mad heifer had been prepared for the purpose of kicking, knocking and trampling the netted girls to death.

However, when they were brought into the arena, even the callous Romans shuddered to see the tender girls.  A contemorary account says milk was still dripping from Perpetua’s breasts. Consequently, Perpetua and Felicity were recalled and given robes with which to clothe themselves.

Even after being attacked by the cow, Perpetua did not die, but courageously stood up. Though covered in blood, she helped Felicity to her feet. Then she turned to her Christian friends in the audience.  She encouraged them and urged them to stand firm in the faith and to love one another.

A swordsman was appointed with the task of completing what the cow had started. The man was a novice, so instead of piercing Perpetua right through, the blade accidently hit her collar bone. She shrieked but did not die.

Unafraid of death, the bleeding Perpetua picked up the blade and set it upon her own neck, in order that the swordsman might finish the job.

Why Were the Christians Persecuted?

So why were gentle Christians like Perpetua seen as such a hazard to Rome? Why did the emperor Severus believe that Christianity threatened the very being of his empire?

This question is especially puzzling when we realize that Rome tolerated all manner of different religious movements. In the city of Rome, for example, there was an array of various mystery cults. These were imported from all over the empire, but especially from the East. They offered their votaries privileged access to certain divinities but – and this is crucial – they did not dictate how life should be lived in the public world. It is this last point which helps to explain why Christianity was so different. Like the new age movements of today, the mystery cults occupied themselves entirely with one’s interior spirituality.

Over and above the vast array of mystery cults available to Romans stood the religion of the State. In contrast to the mystery cults, the imperial religion was public, structuring the lives of loyal Roman citizens.

The main feature of the imperial religion was not emperor worship, as is often imagined. It is true that many of the Julio-Claudian emperors claimed to be sons of a god, with some of them even claiming divine honors for themselves. However, this emerged out of, and did not form the basis of, the imperial religion.  The latter revolved around loyalty to the empire. Such loyalty involved more than merely paying taxes and defending one’s country. It involved bringing all of public life, thought and allegiance into subjection to the priorities of the state.

Rome’s Religion – Public and Political

The Roman state offered a vision of the good life and peace for its citizens.  It brought together previously warring pluralities.  Moreover, the Roman state offered a sense of eschatological progress.  Above all it provided a framework of meaning to answer the question “how should we live?” In short, the commitment that Rome demanded of its citizens was so complete that it can only be adequately described in religious terms.  This was despite the fact that many votaries of the state would not have considered themselves Rome-worshipers.

Unlike the mystery religions, which were private and personal, the religion demanded by Rome was public and political. As Stephen Perks observed in his book Common-Law Wives and Concubines:

“The Eastern cults that were popular in ancient Rome, such as the cults of Mithras and Isis, did not structure the lives of their adherents – at least not if they were good Roman citizens. What structured the lives of the Romans was the religion of Rome, which was a political religion.”

Against this backdrop it is not hard to see why Christianity threatened the imperial credo while the mystery cults did not. The Christians, like the Caesars, applied the language of evangelion (“gospel” or “glad tidings”) to their movement. Like Rome, the Christians taught that they held the answer for bringing justice, order and peace to the world. (See Luke 2:13-14; John 14:27).  Christianity, like the Romans, claimed that a single man had rightful dominion over the whole earth (See Matt. 28:18-19). Christianity, like the imperial religion, offered a sense of community to previously warring pluralities (See Gal. 3:28). Furthermore, Christianity, like the religion of Rome, was intent on evangelizing the world.

The Good News is bad news for Caesar

But whereas the Caesars sought to Romanise the world through brutality, force and bloodshed, the Christians sought to evangelize the world through love, self-giving, and sacrifice. The glad tidings of Jesus was therefore bad news for Caesar, since it proclaimed there was another way to transform the world superior to Caesar’s way. It announced that God had called out a people whose vocation was to work for peace and justice on Jesus’ terms, not Caesar’s.

Had Christianity been merely one more mystery cult, offering its followers a new kind of spiritual experience, the Romans would have taken little or no notice of individuals like Perpetua. It was precisely because the totalising claims of Christ’s lordship competed at the level of the public imperial religion that Christianity could not be ignored.

Gospel is transforming nations

As Peter Leithart has observed in his book, Against Christianity, in the early church we do not find an essentially private gospel only secondarily applied to the public sphere, as if the public implications of the gospel were a second story built on the private ground floor. Rather, the Gospel is the announcement that a new creation has burst in upon the old order, transforming, not just individuals, but nations.

Even when the early Christians submitted to the ruling authorities, there was an implicit challenge. In writing to the Romans, Paul made clear that the reason Christians were to submit to the civil magistrates is because they have been placed there by the higher authority of God (See Romans 13:1). Though the Caesars liked to think of themselves as autonomous and subject to no one, Christians proclaimed that earthly rulers are God’s ministers, responsible for carrying out His business here on earth (cf Rom. 13:2-7). The idea that Caesar’s authority was derivative rather than ultimate was nothing less than fighting talk.

Personal Challenge

This helps us to understand why simply claiming the name of Christ was seen by Emperor Severus as being a subversive act. It also presents a challenge to us. We live in an age when there is mounting pressure to keep religion as a personal, private experience detached from the outward realm of public life.  By coincidence, much modern Christianity resembles a 1st century mystery religion.  It offers a new type of religious experience but makes little or no demands in the public square.

It is against such pressures that the witness of Perpetua still challenges us. Her martyrdom should convict us for accepting watered-down versions of the Gospel that may be devotionally inspiring but make no demands on our public life.

Perpetua challenges us to be a challenge to today’s Caesar.  Her courage to stand firm for Jesus against the entire Imperial system inspires us to play our part against the ungodly political systems of our day.

The above article first appeared in Christian Voice’s June 2010 newsletter. Those who join Christian voice receive our monthly newsletter. More information about joining are given below: