Pliny the Younger

Plinius Secundus—that's his Latin name. In English, we can simply call him Pliny the Younger. We call him Pliny the Younger to distinguish him from Pliny the Elder, who was not his father, but his uncle. Both of them were near Mount Vesuvius when it erupted; Pliny the Elder was killed, but Pliny the Younger survived, providing the only surviving eyewitness accounts of the disaster. He went on to be a very significant figure in early Rome. He's counted as not only a brilliant administrator and orator, even as sort of an early lawyer, but also as a writer and historian.

Toward the end of his life, Pliny was appointed governor of Bithynia and Pontus. This is the area of modern-day Turkey. This was an area where Paul planted churches and where the early church and the gospel took root. Pliny was sent by Emperor Trajan to be the governor of that region. When he got there, he discovered a significant problem, and he wasn't sure what to do with it. The problem was Christians. He didn't know how to handle them, so he shot off a letter to Trajan asking for his counsel and advice.

The first question he had was whether bearing the name itself—that is, simply identifying as a Christian—is enough for someone to be considered guilty and therefore an enemy of the state, even if no offenses are committed. In his reply, Trajan said yes, the name is enough, the mere name Christian, the identification with the followers of Christus—that is enough for someone to be guilty.

Pliny goes on to ask how he should handle the situation. He had Christians being brought to him, so he knew there must be many more out there. Should he seek them out? Trajan responds by saying no, don't seek them out, but if they did come, Pliny was to put them on trial, and if they said they were Christians, they were to be punished.

There are two things in Pliny's letter that we should pay attention to. One is that in order to find out about these Christians, Pliny tells Trajan that he took two of them, two deaconesses who were slaves, and tortured them. He tortured them to find out what their practices were like. And he let Trajan know that he had learned a great deal from these two slaves.

Pliny also said that sometimes he would bring Christians in and they would recant; they would denounce their faith. He said that after denouncing their faith, they would worship the emperor's image and the statues of the gods, and they would curse Christ. So there were some in the early church, who, when they were brought before these Roman leaders, did denounce Christ. They turned their back on their faith, and they were sent back into their lives and given their freedom.

But there were many who did not recant, and Pliny himself not only persecuted them, but also martyred these early Christians. At one point, he says, as he was dealing with these Christians, he found nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition. This is how the Romans viewed early Christianity. They viewed it not even as a religion, but as a superstition, as a threat to the empire, as a threat to the Roman way of life. These Christians would not simply get in step with the times and with their culture. And so they were a threat. And so they were persecuted. They were punished. And some of them were martyred.