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2.5.6 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
Primitive Jewish Christianity
The Widening Field - The Name “Christian”
Luke, as is his custom, brings the work in Antioch directly under the control of the church at Jerusalem. He records, in vss. 22 sq., that when the report of what had been done reached the ears of the Christians of that church, they sent Barnabas to Antioch, and that when he had seen the grace of God, he gave his approval to the work there.
It is, of course, possible that the disciples at Jerusalem had no serious fault to find with the spread of Christianity among the heathen in Antioch, if they learned of it after Peter’s experience with Cornelius had led them to admit the possibility of a Gentile Christianity; but it is not likely that they would themselves undertake to carry on the work thus begun; and Luke, as has been seen, so habitually brings all missionary activity under the direct oversight of the mother church of the apostles, that little weight can be laid upon this particular account, which may so easily be due to the same interest.
But there is at any rate no reason to doubt that Barnabas and Paul labored together among the Gentiles at Antioch, as Luke records, and the fact is confirmed, at least for a subsequent period, by Paul himself in Gal. 2:11 sq.
It is in this same connection that Luke reports the interesting and significant fact that the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. Tacitus [Ann. 15:44] says that the Romans called them by this name in the time of Nero, and some scholars have consequently thought that the name had its origin in Rome; but Lipsius [Ueben Ursprung und altesten Gebrauch des Christennamens, 1873] has shown that the work is probably Greek, not Latin, being formed after the analogy of proper adjectives in –anos, -ianos, which were very commonly employed by the Greeks of Asia as party designations. The term might therefore easily have originated in Antioch.
It is not likely, however, that it was first used by the disciples, for they called themselves commonly or "adelfoi" or "agioi"; not is it likely that it was used by the Jews, for they could not have acknowledged the disciples of Jesus as followers of the Messiah. The Jews commonly called them Nazarenes, or the “Sect of the Nazarenes” [Acts 24:5, also 24:14 and 28:22].
The name “Christian” was doubtless first employed by the heathen [ultimately it was adopted by the disciples themselves and in the second century was commonly used by them. In the New Testament the work occurs in only two other passages (Acts 26:28 and 1 Peter 4:16) and both time as applied by an outsider. In the Teaching of the Apostles it occurs once as a self-designation and in Ignatius and the Apologists very frequently.] the word “Christ” being understood by them not as a title, but as a proper name. The invention of the word, if it was due to them, implies that the Christians had already become more of less sharply distinguished from the Jews, and that they were recognized as a separate, if not independent, religious sect.
That this should have been the case at an early day in Antioch is what we should expect, if Luke’s report of Gentile conversions there be accepted. Such Gentile Christians could not become a part of the Jewish church. It was therefore inevitable, as their number increase, that they should constitute, either alone or in company with Jewish Christians that had thrown off the restraints of the law, a community of their own, which had its religious life not within but without the Jewish synagogue.
So soon as this state of affairs existed, the conditions were present which make the rise of the special name “Christian” possible, and it can hardly have been very long before the name was coined.
Used by permission of the publisher.
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