The strange thing about studying early Christianity in Turkey is that there are not a lot of Christians left in Turkey, the lands that were home to so much of the earliest growth and development of Christianity and the location of all seven of the first Ecumenical Councils. As we discuss how Christianity displaced, person by person, century by century, the pagan gods that predominated the Mediterranean Basin prior to the rise of Christianity, we reflect in our course on how it could even take place at all. How could a mission started by Paul, John, Barnabas, Peter, Timothy, Priscilla, Lydia and others have any success? We focus a lot on the movement of the Holy Spirit, on the experience of Jesus Christ. The ancients were not looking for gods, necessarily, but they were looking for hope and salvation. If the conversion of these lands and people is a sign of God’s powerful work, what does it mean when these lands converted by the Christians are no longer Christian lands?

This is a difficult question, at least for me and our class, and we face it each time we go to an ancient site in Turkey. We went yesterday to Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, the three cities of the Lycus Valley. Paul wrote to Philemon and the Church in his house in Colossae, and Paul, or a follower, wrote to the Colossians. John wrote to the Laodiceans in Revelation. Paul also wrote, it seems, a letter to the Laodiceans which is now lost. Each of these sites is a ruin, and Colossae is not even excavated, but the Christian communities which were once here are not in the neighboring towns and cities either.  

It is true, of course, that devastations do occur, both to human life and to institutions. The Church is a minimal presence in Turkey, but it can grow, just as it first did in these lands. As we stood on the mound of the ancient city of Colossae yesterday, in the shadow of Mt. Cadmus, we thought of another devastation. My colleague, Paul Gavrilyuk, asked us to reflect on all the lives lost by earthquakes that have occurred in Turkey since ancient times. Ephesus, Smyrna, Colossae, Pergamum, Hierapolis, Laodicea, all were destroyed by earthquakes in ancient times. Turkey has suffered them in modern times too. But what was on Paul’s mind as well were those lost in Haiti, for whom we offered a moment’s silence and a prayer. Human suffering and loss is hard to understand, but we pray that in the fullness of time, God’s will is done.

 

John W. Martens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.