1. Begins the new century without those who lived with Jesus: the apostles and many others.

2. In this century, two emperors governed Rome: Domitian, who began the persecution of the Christians, and Trajan. It was Domitian who took John, the only apostle of Jesus who was not martyred, to the exile on the island of Patmos, in Greece. Being there, John was inspired to write the book of the Apocalypse.

3. There arose, then, those who learned with the apostles, very important characters for the birth of Christianity, such as Ignatius of Antioch. A hypothesis raised by historians and researchers is that Ignatius may have been the child that Jesus carried on the lap and about whom he said: “Let come to me the little children”. He was direct disciple of John the Evangelist and bishop of Antioch.

4. In this century already existed deacons and bishops, but not as they are today; they were posts of reference instituted to highlight determined people. Ignatius of Antioch also wrote letters, just as Paul of Tarsus. He produced seven letters that became structural documents of Christianity.

5. Ignatius was one of the first martyrs, killed in the circus, devoured by the lions. When he enters in the arena, he says: “I am the wheat of God and I want to be eaten by the lions to transform myself in pure bread for those who will come after me”. This information is contained in the book Wheat of God, of Amélia Rodrigues.

6. He was an apologete (defender of the faith), like so many others that did not fear death nor the martyrdom, leaving the Romans without understanding what made them so fearless. There were about one million Christians sacrificed, according to is known. The belief of the apologetes was the faith in Jesus, that resurrected, and in the grace of God as path to the salvation.

7. There also appear Polycarp of Smyrna, the fearless, another apologete and equally disciple of John the Evangelist, besides Papias of Hierapolis. Polycarp was bishop of the city of Smyrna, situated in Turkey (Asia Minor).

8. Polycarp was captured by the Romans and forced to abjure the “heresy” that the Christians defended by following Jesus. He inverts the words, affirming that the heresy was theirs, and not of the Christians. Then, traditions tell that they tried to burn him, but the flames formed a kind of vacuum and Polycarp did not burn. At the end, mercilessly, a soldier thrust a spear into him and killed him. He died for giving testimony to Jesus. Polycarp was 86 years old.

9. Another important character to highlight was Irenaeus of Lyon, disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna. He considered necessary to combat the heresies that grew, so that Christianity could move forward. This was his work, having even written a book about it.

10. Irenaeus of Lyon also combated the gnosticism. At that time existed more than sixty gnostic sects. The belief of gnosticism was that the knowledge of the spiritual things and the self-knowledge would be the liberating elements. They believed that it was necessary to unlink oneself from the matter to reach the spirituality: the salvation of the man through himself. Gnosticism was a secret doctrine, supported on the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Gnosticism means: gnosis = knowledge; ism = that one who affiliates to something. At the time, it was a mystical belief, almost esoteric, later combated by the Church as heresy.

11. Irenaeus of Lyon, also apologete, defended the consubstantiation, according to which God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are three persons in one only, at the same time. For protestants and catholics, Jesus and God are one, since this century until the present days. This begins to change with the gnostics and, later, with the Spiritist Doctrine and other currents.

12. The Christian Community, when it began to be formed, was based on the apologetes, those who defended the faith. As there was much divergence of opinions, it became necessary to create a line of conduct, a set of rules to be practiced and defended by all. There was created, then, an orthodoxy with the following principles: Canon (rule to be followed), Creed (set of beliefs) and Apostolicity (to be in accordance with the apostles). The primitive Church worked in these three senses. Those who did not agree were considered heretics. With time, the heresies passed to be persecuted and not tolerated.

13. Other important apologetes were Papias of Hierapolis, Tertullian of Carthage and Justin Martyr. This last also was martyred and decapitated, for he presented Jesus as the Divine Logos, the Word that made itself flesh. He said that the true philosophy was Christianity.

14. Two great gnostic characters, that also were Christians, were Marcion of Sinope and Valentinus of Egypt. This last defended that the world would not have been created by God, but by demiurges, that is, extremely evolved Spirits that would have promoted the creation of the planet by order of God. As they would not be perfect, the Earth would be an imperfect place. And this is exactly what says the Jewish Kabbalah (set of Jewish knowledge).

15. Marcion of Sinope affirmed that the God of the Old Testament of the Jews was a God that created the Earth and the Heavens, however severe and bad. Already the God of Jesus would be good, and His coming would have inaugurated a new phase: the phase of the feeling and of the direct connection with an essentially loving God. However, by excluding the Old Testament, he ended up excluding also the Jewish Jesus. Thus, he lost himself in his own interpretation, for he considered valid only the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul, disregarding the other Gospels.

16. There are four the Gospels accepted by the Church and that make part of the Canon, narrating the life of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. However, there exist more than one hundred texts of that time that equally treat of the life of the Christ. They are the so-called apocryphal texts (that do not possess authenticity recognized by the Church). Thus, various movements were arising, in that time, with different interpretations.

17. All the structuring of the nascent Church — Roman Apostolic Catholic Church and, later, in the 16th century, the protestant Churches — converges in the understanding that the salvation is given by the person of Jesus Christ, that died for all on a cross, resurrected and, by means of the faith in Him, one reaches the grace of God. For them, this constitutes an article of faith, the same defended by the apologetes of this century. Everything that was distant from this needed to be combated.

18. Two other heresies of the time were the Docetism, that arose without defined leader and was gaining force and space. Its adepts did not form churches or own nuclei, but mixed themselves to the people inside the communities of the nascent Christianity, causing great difficulty to be removed from the Christian nucleus. According to this heresy, Jesus did not possess a body of flesh; He would be an apparition or a ghost, for there was not enough knowledge to speak in fluidic body or spirit. According to this belief, there were explained the virginity of Mary and the absence of the body of Jesus in the tomb.

19. Another heresy that arose in this century was the Adoptionism. This current preached that Jesus and God were not the same person. Jesus would have become the most perfect type because he was “adopted” by God in the baptism of John the Baptist, passing to be the Messiah. With this, there was created the necessity of the baptism, considered very important for the nascent Christianity. In the Catholic Church, the baptism is realized in the infancy, by aspersion; already in the protestant churches, it occurs by immersion, only in the adult age, when there is the conscious choice of the faith, just as Jesus was baptized.

20. Inside this heresy arose a branch, another current known as Mandaean, that affirmed that Jesus was not the Messiah, but John the Baptist, for having been he who baptized Jesus. For them, therefore, the true Messiah was John the Baptist. These groups still exist currently, in Iraq and in France. To become an adoptionist or mandaean, it would suffice to be baptized to become son of God.

21. Heresy, in Ancient Greece, meant a school, a line or current of thought. With time, the term changed of meaning. Today, heresy means to possess thought contrary to that which would be considered correct.

22. Christianity owes much to these brave apologetes and to the first Christians of its history, for having endured so many martyrdoms and horrendous deaths for love of the message of the Master and for having made that it cross the centuries, becoming the light placed on the candlestick to illuminate all those who wish to take knowledge of it.

23. The 2nd century was marked by martyrdoms and heresies.