1.02 - Hospitality In The Early Church

Chapter 2 Hospitality In The Early Church (2 John 1:10-11; 3 John 1:5-8)

Importance of the Imperial Roman Roads—Churches echeloned along the Great Highways—W. M. Ramsay upon Travelling at the Christian Era—Hospitality an essential Church Function—Entertainment of Itinerant Ministers—Abuse of Church Hospitality—The Didache—St John’s Solicitude on the subject.

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If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, take him not into your house, and bid him not farewell; for he that bids him farewell, has fellowship with his evil works. —2 John 1:10-11.

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Beloved, thou doest a faithful thing in whatsoever thou workest on the brethren,—and strangers withal; who have testified to thy love before the Church. And thou wilt do well in sending them forward in a manner worthy of God; for they have gone forth for the Name’s sake, taking no help from heathen men. We therefore are bound to receive such as these hospitably, that we may show ourselves fellow-workers with the truth. —3 John 1:5-8        

―—―♦——— THE Second and Third Epistles of John, we have observed, alike turn on the exercise of hospitality within the Church. To understand the matter and its bearing on Christian life and progress in early times, one must take account of the state of society under the Roman Empire and the means of intercourse between the countries of which it was composed. In three things the Romans excelled all other peoples—in military discipline, in civil law, and in road-making. By these arts they won and built up their world-dominion. The whole south and west of Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, and the south-west of Continental Asia were linked by a network of highways, skilfully engineered, solidly built, and carefully guarded, which converged to the golden milestone in the Forum of Rome. In no subsequent period, until the invention of the steamship and the railway, has travel been so practicable and so freely practised over so wide an area of the globe, as was the case in the flourishing age of the Empire when Christianity took its rise. The career of the Apostle Paul would have been impossible without the facilities for journeying which the imperial system and the pax Romana afforded, and without the conception of a single world-order and world-polity which Rome had stamped upon the mind of the age. The nations round the Mediterranean shores formed at the Christian era one community, where “the field” of “the world” lay wide open to the sowers of the Gospel seed.¹

These conditions of life impressed on the organization of the Church from the first a missionary stamp, and gave it the catholic outlook which it has never been able quite to renounce or forget. Each local Church, as the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistles show, was set up as a station in the forward march of the body of Christ. At Ephesus, so soon as Macedonia and Greece, along with Asia Minor, had been evangelized, St Paul’s cry was, “I must see Rome also!” Announcing his visit to the Roman Christians, he writes, “I hope to see you by the way, and by you to be sent forward to Spain.” His Churches were ranged along the great roads, like so many Roman colonies of military occupation, “from Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum.” They were links in a continuous chain, kept in touch with each other and with the general advance of the Christian cause; they served as the means of transmitting messages and reinforcements all along the line. The Church was instituted as an international propaganda; its foundations were laid out by wise “master-builders,” governed by the idea of the Founder and obedient to His marching orders, “Go into all the world, and preach the good news to the whole creation.” Seeds of the new life were borne by all the currents and tides of the age along the routes of government and commerce, which stretched from Armenia to Britain and from the German Ocean to the African desert, from frontier to frontier of the Empire. The Church-system of the New Testament is based on the two vital principles of local spiritual fellowship and world-evangelism,—principles which were applied with freedom and elasticity to the necessities of the situation and the hour. Under these circumstances it is obvious that hospitality was no mere luxury, no external and secondary grace of Church life; it formed a conspicuous feature of early Christianity, and played a vital part in its economy. Ancient society generally gave to the relations of guest and host a larger and more sacred place than they occupy amongst ourselves. The comfortsof the modern hotel, or even of the village inn, were then unknown. Provision of this kind did not keep pace in the old civilization with the improvement in roads and conveyance, and fell far short of the requirements of the travelling public. Another reason forbad Christians on their journeys to make use of the places of common entertainment: “the ancient inns” (says Sir W. M. Ramsay, in the article above referred to) “were little removed from houses of ill-fame. . . . The profession of inn-keeper was dishonourable, and their infamous character is often noted in Roman laws.” This fact alone made organized hospitality imperative amongst Christians; the Church could not expose its members, whether journeying on public or private errands, “to the corrupt and nauseous surroundings of the inns kept by persons of the worst class in existing society.”

We can understand, therefore, the stress that is laid on the virtue of hospitality in New Testament ethics, and the fact that φιλοξενία (love of strangers) ranks with φιλαδελφία (love of brethren) in Hebrews 13:1. Devotion to Christ and the Gospel blended with the affections of a humane and Christian heart in the cultivation of this grace; and worldly wealth was valued because it supplied the means for its exercise. A hospitable disposition is marked out in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8) amongst the prime qualifications for eldership in the local Churches; in 1 Peter 4:8-10 “hospitality” is represented as the due manifestation of “fervent love” on the part of those who are “good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” Very significantly the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 5:3-10 specifies this as the mark, at Ephesus, of “a widow indeed,” one who deserves to be placed on the church-roll for honourable maintenance, that she shall have “shown hospitality to strangers” and “washed the saints’ feet.” On the other hand, “the messengers of the churches,” who were the first claimants on such attentions, are described (2 Corinthians 8:23) as “the glory of Christ,” since in their movements His authority and the spread of His kingdom shine forth; those who have Christian strangers at their table are compared with the “entertainers of angels” (Hebrews 13:2).

While inter-Church communication was thus carried on through letter and messenger in Apostolic and Post-apostolic times and missionaries were constantly being forwarded to the front, private Christians and their families (as in the case of Aquila and his wife, and of “the household of Chloe”: Acts 18:2, Acts 18:18; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 1:11) migrated freely in search of employment or to escape persecution. With well-to-do people, in the age of the early Roman Empire, travelling for health or diversion or self-improvement was a fashionable thing; and Christians were affected by corresponding motives. Dr Dobschiitz observes, in his interesting work on the Christian Life in the Primitive Church (p. 326), that “amongst the Christians of that period [A.D. 50-150] there was developed a keen desire to move about. This was due to their release from former narrow notions of home, and to their striving after fellowship with the scattered companions of their faith.” At Rome in particular—a city of continual resort—he thinks that the primitive “bishops” had for their most important office the direction and oversight of hospitality, while the care of the poor was relegated to the “deacons.” All this goes to show the gravity of the question agitated in the community to which St John directed his Second and Third Epistles; for the right exercise of hospitality involved the comity and communion of the Churches generally, the maintenance of Apostolic authority and of unity in faith amongst them, and the continued propagation of the Gospel. On these accounts, and from their bearing on a matter which intimately affected all Churches, the short and semi-private notes preserved in 2 and 3 John fairly deserve the dignified title of “Catholic Epistles.” The reference in 3 John 1:7 to the travellers whom the Apostle accredits, as going forth “taking nothing of the Gentiles,”² is interesting in this connexion. The messengers of the Gospel, it would seem, might in some instances have found entertainment on their way with unconverted Gentile hosts; they are commended for declining such proffers. Liberal men of culture, in the Graeco-Roman cities, here and there kept open house for philosophers or religious teachers of repute travelling their way, who chose to make themselves agreeable; toleration and breadth of view were affected in educated circles. By this time the Christian doctrine held a recognized footing in the Roman province of Asia—the Apostle Paul himself had made “friends” in the rank of “the Asiarchs” (Acts 19:31), the official heads of the provincial Pagan worship; and the profession of faith in Christ, though proscribed by the Government, was not everywhere socially discreditable. Christianity was a phenomenon of the age, and had become an object of curiosity with the students of religion and the philosophical dilettanti, who were tolerably numerous amongst the leisured classes of Asia Minor; so that in some places it may not have been difficult for a distinguished advocate of this remarkable creed to find lodging and entertainment in a fashionable house, by paying the price due for this sort of patronage. One can understand the temptation thus presenting itself to “spoil the Egyptians” and to make the heathen contribute to the furtherance of the Gospel—especially in a neighbourhood where, for any reason, Christian maintenance was not forthcoming or was grudgingly given. When Gaius therefore opened his door to St John’s representatives, despite the attempt of Diotrephes to boycott the latter, he made it possible for them to visit a Church from which otherwise they would have been excluded, since it was their strict rule to lodge in none but Christian homes. Following this maxim, missionaries entering a new sphere of labour would be supported by funds brought with them and by the labour of their own hands, or by help remitted from the nearest Christian station, as in the case of the Apostle Paul and his companions in Macedonia (see Php 4:15-16). At Thessalonica, as at Philippi, the missionaries took up their abode with the first whose “heart the Lord opened” to receive the Good News. But this generous “love of the stranger” became a peril to the Churches. Just as the charity of the brotherhood laid it open to imposition and the Apostle Paul was compelled to warn his converts, in one of his earliest letters, against idlers and mischief-makers who preferred to eat the Church’s bread “for nought” (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12), so their free-handed hospitalities exposed the Christian societies to invasion. “False brethren stole in” for malicious purposes (Galatians 2:4), bringing with them “commendatory letters” (2 Corinthians 3:1) dishonestly obtained: “false apostles” St Paul calls some of these, “deceitful workers” and plausible as “angels of light” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Such intruders—Judaean legalists of the worst type—dogged St Paul’s footsteps during great part of his ministry.

The danger incident to the misuse of Christian benevolence toward strangers became aggravated in later times. The ancient Church Manual entitled The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (or briefly the Didache) devotes two out of its sixteen chapters to this subject; it gives striking evidence of the perpetuation of an itinerant ministry in the early Church, and moreover of the jealousy that proved to be needful in dispensing hospitality and in verifying the credentials of visitors pretending to the Christian name. This Directory seems to have been drawn up for the use of Syrian or Palestinian Churches, and possibly before the end of the first century; in that case it was contemporary with the letters under review, though belonging to a distant province. It shows that the right ordering of hospitality was at this time a matter of universal interest, affecting the well-being of the Christian fellowship everywhere. The following are the chief instructions of the Didache bearing on the point:

Didache, Chapters. xi, xii.

“Whosoever comes, and teaches you the things aforesaid [in the previous chapters], receive him. But if the teacher himself turn aside and teach another doctrine, so as to overthrow these things, refuse to listen to him; but if he teach so as to increase knowledge and fear of the Lord, receive him as the Lord. As concerns the apostles³ and prophets, act according to the rule prescribed in the Gospel; let every apostle coming to you be received in the Lord. Moreover, he shall not stay just one day, but a second also, if there be need; but if he remain three days, he is a false prophet! And when he leaves you, let the apostle take nothing except bread sufficing him till he reaches his next lodging; if he ask for money, he is a false prophet. ... Whoso saith in the Spirit, “Give me money, or other things,” you shall not listen to him; but if he bid you give for others, who are in want, let no one judge him. But let everyone who comes in the name of the Lord be welcomed; afterwards you will get to know him, when you have tried him; for you will have understanding of “right and left.” If the new-comer is on a journey, help him as much as you can; and he shall tarry with you two or three days, if necessary —not more. And if he desires to settle with you, having a trade, let him “work and eat”; but if he has no trade, provide for him as your judgement may suggest, seeing to it that no Christian shall abide with you in idleness. But if he refuses these terms, he is a Christ-trafficker [one, that is, who makes a trade of his Christianity, and (as we should say) sponges on the Church]. Beware of such!”

St John was compelled toward the end of his life to fence his Churches, under circumstances somewhat similar to those above described. They were being overrun by a swarm of “false prophets” and “antichrists,” acting more or less in concert with each other. These were errorists of a new school and type, the forerunners of second-century Gnosticism (see Chapter 6, below). In the second and fourth chapters of the First Epistle he denounces them at length and in definite terms; this whole writing is, as we shall see, a polemic against them. The Apostle warns “the Elect Lady and her children “against them in the Second Epistle: “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in flesh⁴ (compare pp. 315-317): this is the deceiver and the antichrist. ... Every one who goes forward and abides not in the doctrine of Christ, has not God” (1 John 1:7-9). The Incarnate Godhead of Jesus, he declares, is the test by which the character of the teachers of error will be detected, through the “chrism” (the “anointing”) which constitutes true Christians and which they “have from the Holy One” (1 John 2:26-27; 1 John 4:3). The First Epistle discloses this invasion threatening the entire field of St John’s jurisdiction; the two minor Epistles show the “deceivers and antichrists” on the point of gaining entrance into one of the most important communities in this region, through the welcome that might be given to them in ignorance of their real opinions and designs, and under the influence of an ambitious man who has chosen to set himself against the Apostle’s authority.