What would it have been like to attend a Spiritualist church a century after the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth?

We know something of what it was like, thanks to a work called the Didache, a Greek word meaning ‘teaching’.  Its full title is The Teaching of the Lord by the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles.

It was discovered in the Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople in 1873 by Philotheus Bryennius, the Metropolitan of Nicomedia.  He published it in 1883.  The date of its composition is thought by some to be AD 130 – 150, but others place it a generation earlier.  It was quoted as Scripture by Clement of Alexandria around 200 or later, and mentioned by Eusebius around 330.

Why is it so important to us?  Because it makes clear, on almost every page, that the most important person in the early Church was not the priest, but the prophet.

The word ‘prophet’ comes from two Greek words: phêmi, to speak and pro, on behalf of.  A prophêtês, or prophet, is therefore one who speaks on another’s behalf: in other words, a medium.  The word ‘prophet’ occurs 142 times in the New Testament, ‘prophesise’ 27 and ‘prophesy’ 19.

What exactly did prophets do?  According to Paul they exercised the most important of the ‘gracious spiritual gifts’.  These gifts, including healing, are listed in the well-known passage in 1 Corinthians, 12: 7-10.  

Towards the end he mentions: “the discerning of spirits” and the speaking of “different tongues”.  In 14:5 he adds: “I had rather that you prophesy, for greater is the one who prophesises than the one who speaks in tongues.”  

             

Why was he so knowledgeable about prophets?  Because he was one himself!  In Acts 9:15 he is described as a skeuos.   This is another Greek word, usually translated as vessel or instrument: but it can also be ‘a vehicle for the soul’, a medium.

According to the Didache, the early Church used mediums in its services, at the centre of which was a simple Eucharist.  After this came the words: “Hosanna to the Son of David” and Maranatha, or “The Lord comes.”  The Didache adds: “But suffer the prophets to give thanks as they desire.”  

An inspired or trance address followed.  There was also clairvoyance, clairaudience and healing.  The corporate name for the spirits who communicated through the mediums was The Holy Spirit.

The Didache makes clear the reverence in which mediums were held.  “Every prophet who is minded to settle among you is worthy of his (or her) maintenance.  You shall take therefore the first fruits of the produce of the winepress and threshing floor, of oxen and sheep and give them to the prophets, for they are your high priests.”  

The early Church did not have priests as such.  The bishop was an episcopus, or overseer, and beneath him was the deacon or deaconess.  (There was also the presbyter, or elder.)  They had not yet begun to replace the mediums.  The Didache makes their status clear:

 “Ordain therefore unto yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men gentle and not fond of money, true and approved, for they too perform for you the service of prophets and teachers.  Do not therefore despise them, for they are the men to be honoured among you with prophets and teachers.”   

Sadly, the Church had its false prophets, just as we do.  The Didache warns: “Not everyone that speaks in the spirit is a prophet.”  

“Every prophet that teaches the truth, if he do not what he teaches is a false prophet.”  And “Whoever shall say in the spirit ‘give me money’, or any other thing, do not hearken to him; but if he bid you give for others in need, let no man judge him.”   

John in 1, 4:1 had also warned his followers.  “Beloved ones, believe not every spirit, but test/examine the spirits if they be of God, because many false/lying prophets have gone forth into the world.”

The early Christian apologists frequently mentioned mediums in their writings.  Tatian, who lived in the first 70 years of the second century, has this to say:  “Our virgins at the distaff utter divine oracles, see visions and say the holy words that are given to them.”

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon wrote later: “We do also hear many brethren in the Church who possess prophetic gifts, and who through the spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men and declare the mysteries of God.”

Elsewhere, he writes of those who used their gifts for the welfare of others.  “Others have foreknowledge of things to come: they see visions and utter prophetic expressions.  Still others heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole.”       

Justin Martyr (c.100-165)) had no doubts.  “I call them prophets who, being out of themselves and their own thoughts, do utter forth whatsoever the impelling power of the spirit wrought in them, while the divine operator (guide) served himself of them, or their organs, even as men do of a trumpet.”

He wrote to Trypho, a Jew: “The prophetical gifts remain with us, even to the present time.  And hence you ought to understand that (the gifts) formerly among your nation have been transferred to us.”  He too warned against false prophets.

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch (martyred early second century), deemed a prophet ‘false’ if he “teaches anything beyond what is commanded” (though he does not say what was commanded and what not).

Already, theology was becoming more important.  His anti-Semitic outburst in the same paragraph shows that he considered the deification of the Nazarene as established beyond doubt.  “If anyone says that the Lord is a mere man, he is a Jew, a murderer of Christ.”   

As the century progressed, the writings of the other Fathers show a similar change of direction.  They were moving away from the simplicity of direct revelation and turning to the Gospels as the ultimate authority.  Some tried to reconcile them with the Hebrew Scriptures and others with Greek philosophy.

Their goal was the ultimate revelation that would tell them how the universe had been created, the nature of matter and the Spirit World, God’s plan for mankind and all eternity – everything!  They came to believe that the revelation had already been given: and that Scripture, rather than the Spirit World, held the key.

The New Testament, of course, did not exist as such.  The Gospels and Epistles were circulated separately among non-Jews in Greek, copied and re-copied.  Later there were Latin versions.  Other gospels, later excluded from the cannon, also existed; and these were circulated along with the works of the Fathers.

There was therefore plenty of scope for conjecture as to what the Word of God might be.  The Church was moving away from mediumship and becoming a scripture-based religion.                 

Around the year 156, there was a movement to restore it to its Spiritualist origins.  It originated in the east of Phrygia, in the Roman province of Asia, or modern Turkey.  Its leader was Montanus and he was joined by two women, Prisca and Maximilla.  

He was later said to have been a prophet of Cybele who converted to Christianity.  Many would have thought this shocking, because apologists like Justin above, claimed that genuine mediumship was exclusive to Christians!  Anyone who had practised outside the Faith must necessarily be a false prophet!  

Montanism was an austere, Unitarian sect that practised abstinence and fasting.  Martyrdom was prized and flight from persecution discouraged.  Tertullian, a later convert, quoted Montanus as saying: “Those who receive the Paraclete (Comforter, or Holy Spirit) know neither to flee persecution, nor to bribe (their captors).”

Tertullian also quoted Prisca’s advocacy of chastity as essential to mediumship.  “The holy (celibate) minister knows how to minister holiness.  For those who purify their hearts both see visions, and placing their heads downwards (sic), also hear manifest voices as saving as they are sacred.”

   

The three were all deep trance mediums whose guides spoke in the first person.  This gave offence to those accustomed to hearing addresses end with the words “Thus says the Lord.”  

It was objected that Montanus was saying: “I am the Lord.”  Though this was also said (by his guide).  “Behold the man is like a lyre, and I dart like a plectrum.  The man sleeps and I am awake.”

Maximilla said: “Hear not me, but hear Christ.  ‘I am driven off from among the sheep like a wolf.  I am not a wolf, but I am speech and spirit and power.’”

       

Practically everything else said of Montanus is derogatory and comes from a later period.  Modern references are generally dismissive, describing the sect as primitive, schismatic and heretical.  Its prophets are said to have spoken in ‘strange tongues’ and in ‘enraptured seizures’.

All this is called into question by an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, quoted by Spiritualist historian, Arthur Finlay in The Psychic Stream, 1939.  It describes a dispute between three bishops and the entranced women.  (This article has long since been replaced by one echoing the ‘primitive’ theme above.)  

“The disputation which Bishops Zoticus of Cumana and Julian of Apamea arranged with Maximilla and her following turned out most disastrously for its promoters.  The spirit (guide) of Maximilla gained a singular victory.  

“A certain Themison in particular, having reduced the bishops to silence, Sotas, Bishop of Anchialus, attempted to refute Prisca, but with no better success.  He too had to retire from the field in disgrace.  

“These proceedings were never forgotten in Asia Minor and the report of them spread far and wide.  This was the commencement of the excommunication or succession, whichever it may have been, of the Montanists in Asia Minor.”      

                       

Maximilla passed about 179, some time after Prisca.  What happened to Montanus is unknown.  

The sect’s most important convert was Tertullian who joined about 190-5.  In On the Soul he wrote of a medium who possessed spiritual gifts in abundance.  “We have now among us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord’s Day in your church.   

“She converses with the angels and sometimes even with the Lord; she both hears and sees mysterious communications; some men’s hearts she understands, and to those who are in need she distributes remedies.  Whether it be in the reading of the Scriptures, or in the chanting of psalms . . . matter and opportunity are afforded her of seeing visions.”

A Tertullian offshoot of the sect survived until reconciled to the Church by Augustine of Hippo. The sect otherwise survived secretly in Phrygia, long after Constantine and later emperors legislated against it.  The report of Montanus’s bones being dug up in 861 indicates that people at least remembered his name.  

When asked about the Montanists, Jerome, the man most responsible for the Latin translation of the Bible, was characteristically sarcastic.  

He wrote in 385: “We do no so much reject prophesy – for this is attested by the passion of the Lord – as refuse to receive prophets whose utterances fail to accord with the Scriptures old and new.  No doubt their object is to make their religion more pretentious by putting that last which we put first.  

“When God had failed to save the world by Moses and the prophets, and by speaking under the form of the Son in Christ, he last of all descended by the Holy Spirit upon Montanus and those demented women, Prisca and Maximilla: and that thus the mutilated and emasculated Montanus possessed a fullness of knowledge such as was never claimed by Paul.”     

Interestingly, ‘failing to accord with the Scriptures’ is a charge still made by Christians against spirit guides.  Indeed, the guides do not endorse everything Scripture teaches: but then neither is everything Orthodoxy teaches endorsed by Scripture!  

Originally published in Psychic News

Copyright Graham Jennings

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