Sometime before 325, the now-Christian Roman emperor Constantine wrote Shapur a letter, in which he encouraged the young shah to embrace Christianity.9 Constantine pointed out the presence of many Christians in Persia and urged Shapur to treat them well: “Now, because your power is great, I commend these persons to your protection; because your piety is eminent, I commit them to your care. Cherish them with your wonted humanity and kindness; for by this proof of faith you will secure an immeasurable benefit both to yourself and us.”10 In the process of making these suggestions, Constantine inadvertently called the attention of Shapur’s advisers both to the presence of Christians in their midst and to the fact that Rome now favored followers of the new religion.

Abstract: Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the early fourth century brought an end to state-sponsored persecution in the Roman empire. Around the same time, however, the relatively peaceful Persian empire turned violently upon the church in its lands. Though the accurate number of martyrs remains difficult to assess, the most conservative estimates place the death toll in the Great Persian Persecution (339–379) far higher — even ten times higher — than the death toll in the worst Roman persecution. In response to such widespread assaults, many Persian Christians fled if they could. Many others, either unable or unwilling to flee, took courage from stories of faithful sufferers and stood firm. Today, their testimonies still give fresh courage to those who suffer for Christ.
When Western Protestants think of the persecution of early Christians, we often imagine believers being thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum. According to the story as we learned it in Sunday school and elsewhere, Christians were ruthlessly persecuted for their faith for three centuries, until Constantine’s dramatic conversion around the year 312 brought about a sea change in the Roman empire’s attitude toward Christianity.
This Sunday school version of the story, while not wrong, is both misleading and incomplete. It is misleading because it gives the impression that persecution in the Roman empire was continuous, when in fact it was sporadic, varying from nonexistent to severe, depending on where and when one lived. This story is also incomplete because it does not even acknowledge by far the worst persecution of Christians in the ancient world, the Great Persian Persecution instigated by Shah Shapur II in 339.1 Many Western Christians are not aware that Christianity quickly took root in Persia (approximately modern-day Iran and Iraq) in ancient times.2 A look at the differing fortunes of Christians in the Roman and Persian empires, as well as the ways they responded to persecution, yields important lessons for believers today.
Two Great Persecutions Compared
Persecution of Christians in the Roman empire was generally local in character, confined to a region based on the personal antipathy of the governor toward the faith. But there were two major periods of widespread persecution, encompassing most regions of the empire at the same time. These were a persecution under emperors Decius and Valerian in the 250s, and the Great Persecution under Emperor Diocletian, which began in 303 and lasted a couple of years in the western part of the empire and a couple of decades in the eastern part. It was during this Great Persecution that Constantine became a Christian and gained control over the entire Roman empire.
By carefully counting the martyr lists in given regions at given times, modern scholars can gain a general picture of the severity of the persecution and then extrapolate to arrive at guesses of how many believers were killed in total. An estimate that has gained scholarly acceptance is perhaps 3,000–3,500 deaths in all, of which maybe 500 happened in the west and 2,500–3,000 in the eastern parts of the empire.3 When we consider that in the early fourth century, the population of the Roman empire was between 60 and 75 million people, of whom perhaps 10 percent (or about 6–7 million) were Christians, we can see that the total death toll was relatively small.
In contrast, the Great Persian Persecution is traditionally regarded as having lasted forty years, from 339 until Shapur’s death in 379. In actuality, it was frightfully intense for a couple of decades and then ebbed and flowed until the early fifth century, well beyond the life span of Shapur himself. Estimating deaths from this persecution is much harder than in the case of Diocletian’s, but one of the earliest reports we have is sobering.
The church historian Sozomen, writing about 440, declares, “I shall simply state that the number of men and women whose names have been ascertained, and who were martyred at this period, have been computed to be sixteen thousand; while the multitude outside of these is beyond enumeration.”4 This statement, even if exaggerated, points to a huge death toll. Modern estimates have varied from as many as the eye-popping figure of 190,0005 down to a more “modest” figure of 35,000.6 Even the conservative estimate is ten times the number of Christians martyred in the Great Roman Persecution, although the Persian empire’s population (perhaps 18–35 million) was less than half that of the Roman, with a much smaller Christian population as well. By any estimate, the loss of life in the Great Persian Persecution was immeasurably greater than the death toll of the Great Roman Persecution a few decades earlier.
This staggering death toll is all the more surprising when we consider that prior to the fourth century, there had been no significant persecution of Christians in the Persian empire at all. Indeed, early in the fourth century, just as the Roman empire shifted from persecuting Christians (in varying degrees in different places and times) to favoring our faith, the Persian empire changed from basically ignoring Christians to unleashing a savage persecution on them. How did such a shocking change come about? To answer this question, we will need a brief overview of early Christianity in the Persian empire.
Treatment of Christians in the Persian Empire
The early Christian period took place during the long reigns of two great Persian dynasties: the Parthians, who ruled from 247 BC until AD 224, and the Sassanids, who reigned from 224 until they were conquered by the Arabs in 651. The Parthian period was one of relative peace in Persia, and there was essentially no state action against Christians, for several possible reasons.
First, the Parthian regime was benign and decentralized, with a great deal of provincial autonomy. There was little persecution of anyone for any reason. Second, the Romans were the major menace to Persia, and it was common for Persian rulers to take the opposite position on any matter that was important to Rome. Since the Romans were suspicious of their Christian population, the Persians tended to welcome them or at least to leave them alone. Third was the fact that Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in Persia, was much closer to the Christian faith than Roman polytheism. Zoroastrianism was a dualistic religion focused on the conflict between good and evil, and there were superficial resemblances with Christianity, such as a belief in a coming messiah and judgment after death. As a result, Christians did not stand out in Persian society nearly to the degree they did in pagan Roman society.
The political situation of Persia changed dramatically in the early third century. Significant invasions from Roman forces fueled a popular rebellion against the peaceful Parthian dynasty. A much more authoritarian regime, the Sassanids, gained popular favor on a platform of keeping Persia safe from the Romans, and in 224, they took control. The Sassanids were strict Zoroastrians and made that religion the national faith of Persia.
This time period also saw the rise of Manichaeism, another form of dualism that was directly in competition with Zoroastrianism. Its prophet, Mani, combined many features of Zoroastrianism with some specifically Christian language (he even called himself a disciple of Jesus Christ), and Manichaeism spread like wildfire in Persia and beyond. It was clearly a threat to the national religion, and in the 270s Mani was executed by crucifixion.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, October 13, 2024
 I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ. Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.

If part of recovering from our discipleship doldrums is to embed habits—and I think it is—then we will need to do something beyond thinking individually and thinking about the worship of the church. The church’s worship should be our starting point, and then the church should have a wider habitual life—as they all do, this is what a pattern of prayer meetings is for example—that serves the formation of Christian character.
The trickiest element, that I’m going to try and tease out in this post without having clear answers, is the potential for habitual life in the space between individuals and churches. We could go ‘beyond’ churches and think about cities and nations, and I think that could have some value but is entirely theoretical in the UK’s current moment. Instead, I’d like to look ‘between.’
By this I mean that there are a number of small institutions between the individual and the church. The household is the most obvious, whether that dictates a nuclear family, a much looser collection of housemates, or the explicitly Christian concept, but there are other possible forms of community. I suspect most people jump to those that are organised by churches: small groups and sports clubs and knitting circles and such like. These aren’t out of scope, but I want to include something broader, as the group of mates from your church (or many churches!) that hang out together to do a thing regularly should be included too. I’m talking about any loose form of ‘institution’ or ‘community’ that has a habitual life. That habitual life is then open to being thought about theologically and as a locus for formation.
I can sense that my writing is vaguer than I’d like because I’m searching for terms for a concept that I suspect is easier to draw. I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ.
Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.
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Written by Rev. Dave Harvey |
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
God uses disruptions to put us through His school of grace; to remind us that we bring nothing to table. He ordains mundane events to keep us humble. God orchestrates events to create dependent children who come only with hands empty and arms outstretched. 

One night several years ago, my foot began to itch. Looking down, I saw a mosquito bite on my toe. It figures… this is Florida. Mosquitoes are like the state bird. So I ignored it. Around 2:00 a.m., I woke up and my foot was numb. Thinking I must have slept on it in a way that cut off the blood flow, I ignored it. By morning, it occurred to me that there might be a problem. My foot had swollen to the size of my head and was covered in splotches and blood blisters. My strategy of “ignore until it disappears” was proving unfruitful. I just plowed into work.
My wife, ever the sensible one, suggested I go to the doctor. But the doctor meant downtime, so I demurred. Eventually, my foot morphed into a watermelon and my life experienced a work stoppage.
The diagnosis? According to the doctor, it was ant bites–not exactly the most masculine reason for a doctor’s visit. But I live in a state where insects and reptiles are always surprising people.
My foot was fine, but the ants derailed my day. A wrench was tossed into the whirring gears of my productivity. And the more it bothered me, the more my attention shifted from my foot to my heart.
Productivity as Righteousness
I’ve noticed when things are going well, I’m a model of contentment. When I’m working hard and can spot obvious fruits of my labor; when I’m making decisions for the team and we can see progress towards our goals; then God and me are doing great and my imagination runs wild over the conversations in heaven. “God, have you considered your servant Dave? What a wonderful and productive of a Christian leader he is–such a shining specimen!”
The assumed righteousness of my productivity delivers me peace and a sense of right-standing. But my confidence is not in the righteousness of Christ. It’s really me falling back to reliance upon my own works.
This is precisely the message that Paul was combating when he wrote 2 Corinthians. Opponents had come into the church and were carrying a message that did not align with the gospel. They were telling the Corinthian church that they needed a little help from the Law of Moses. Christ’s righteousness wasn’t enough. They needed to keep the Jewish law as well. They contended that Moses’s ministry was impressive–that it came in glory and power! And they were leading people astray from the gospel message that Paul had first proclaimed.
So in 2 Corinthians 3, Paul defends his ministry against these opponents. He tells the Corinthians that while the ministry of the Law (the ministry of death), came with glory, the ministry of the Spirit is much superior and carries greater glory (see 2 Corinthians 3:7–11). He was calling on the Corinthian believers to renounce any message that demanded they mingle their righteousness with the righteousness of Christ.
Why The Law Did Not Produce Righteousness
You see, keeping the Law of Moses had never produced life because no one was ever able to keep it perfectly! “The letter kills,” he wrote (2 Corinthians 3:6). Or, as Paul says to the Galatian Christians, “If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin” (Galatians 3:21–22). The law held people captive (Romans 7:6) because it demanded a righteous perfection that no one could attain. It held up to the people the picture of perfect obedience and through its requirements, revealed that no one was able to measure up.
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