Celtic Connections

Could there be a Gentile link between the early Jewish church and the modern messianic movement?

On my coffee table sits a huge leather-bound volume which is left from the years when my father ran a basement second-hand bookshop. Despite its remarkable age and condition (1708) and Old English language and archaic style of lettering (‘s’ looks like ‘f’ etc.) then current in the reign of the Stuart Queen Anne (1702-1714), the subject matter makes it very valuable reading. It is entitled, “An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Chiefly of England: From the First Planting of Christianity to the End of the Reign of King Charles the Second, With a Brief Account of the Affairs of Religion in Ireland, Collected from the Best Ancient Historians, Councils and Records” by Jeremy Collier, M.A. Now they don’t make books with titles like that any more!

This volume covers a much neglected part of Church history, that of the early pre-Roman Celtic Church of Britain and Ireland, whose belief and practice was much closer to the early Jewish Church in the First Century and the Quartodeciman1 churches that were founded by the Apostle John in Asia Minor before his death, aged around 110, after being imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos where he wrote the Book of Revelation.

Saints & scholars

I grew up in Bangor, in the north of Ireland, a town with a rich ecclesiastical history of the early Celtic Church that featured the lives of pioneering and brave Celtic Christians, such as Patrick, Columbanus and Gall. From them Ireland got its name as being a land of “saints and scholars” after Patrick is recorded to have seen a vision of a choir of angels in a valley as he approached Bangor in the 6th Century. (Bangor derives its name from ‘Beanchor’ meaning ‘white choir’.) Patrick spread Celtic Christianity across Ireland, although he wasn’t Irish himself, but from mainland Britain, and became Ireland’s ‘patron saint.’ I doubt if he’d approve of the current focus on festivities worldwide on ‘St Patrick’s Day’ on the alleged date of his death on March 17th!

Columbanus, inspired by Patrick, furthered the spread of Celtic Christianity across Europe, founding centres in France, Italy, Switzerland and parts of Germany, along with his fellow missionary, Gall, where they are both still remembered today. The Roman Catholic Church has tried to fashion them as Catholic ‘saints’, yet they were frmly against Roman teachings and Columbanus even wrote to the Pope denouncing him as a heretic! These outspoken Irishmen were not ambiguous about their beliefs and practice, yet they were community minded in their mission and evangelism. Their lives were led largely by example and with dedication and holiness. The local populace who were welcomed among them soon embraced the faith that motivated these determined men of God to travel so far and wide in order to spread the Gospel. Columbanus set sail from Ulster in a primitive shell of a boat called a ‘coracle’ or ‘curragh’ with twelve ‘disciples’ as did Columba similarly in the late 6th Century.

Columba or Columcille, who was also taught the rudiments of Patrick’s Celtic practice, despite being of Irish Royal bloodline, also left the shores of Ulster for Dalriada, now known as Scotland, named after the nick-name the Romans dubbed the northern Irish Celts, of ‘Scots’ who migrated to what was to become ‘Scot’-land in sizeable numbers. It was in this land, rather than in Ireland, that Columba saw an opportunity for evangelism. He based himself on the remote Isle of Iona in western Scotland and eventually set forth to successfully bring the Good News to the ferce and warlike Picts, eventually being acclaimed as the Apostle of Scotland.

Irish or continental?

The Celtic Christians would continue to spread from Ireland with their unadulterated message of early Christianity and practice to most parts of the British Isles and much of Europe. The history is extensive and should whet one’s appetite to research more about these early Celtic Christians so important to our Christian heritage in the British Isles, yet largely swept aside by the later domination of continental Christianity and practice from Rome. The question to Christians today seeking to emulate the New Testament Church and exploring the Hebraic roots of our faith, suppressed by centuries of later man-made traditions is, do you want Irish or continental?

On a recent trip to Norfolk, where I used to live before going to Israel, I visited Burgh Castle just outside the maritime town of Great Yarmouth where I worked as a chef in a holiday park. I went to visit the extensive Roman ruins there, after which the village is named, and looked into the ancient parish church nearby. In the graveyard stood a large Celtic cross. What was its signifcance, I wondered? I found out from literature in the church that the whole area of Norfolk and Sufolk was evangelised by an Irish Celtic missionary named Fursey or Fursa, who established a centre in the shelter of the huge Roman fortress standing derelict there in the mid-600s and who is known as the Apostle of East Anglia. What is a common factor, is that these brave Irish missionaries made an impact wherever they went. The Celtic Church also thrived in Wales as well as on the Isle of Man.

What is often ignored is how the Celtic beliefs and practices difered from the later Roman version of the faith, from which modern Protestantism is descended. Is this relevant to us today? The Celtic Christians kept the Sabbath on the seventh day i.e. Saturday, in literal obedience to the Fourth Commandment, which difered from the Roman imposition of Sunday. They remembered the Lord’s death also literally each Passover on the 14th Nisan in the Hebrew or Biblical calendar, as opposed to the Roman observance of ‘Easter,’ which focussed more on the Resurrection, which the Celts claimed was not commanded to be venerated as a separate holy day, much less implicate it as a new day of rest to replace the Sabbath. The Irish would not move from the practices they believed were passed down to them from John, the last apostle to die, and which was regarded as a baton passed on from the Jewish Church in Jerusalem. As the new Roman traditions gathered pace with Roman emissaries being sent by the popes to promote the Roman practices over the Celtic, matters came to a head at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

Synod of division …

The king of Northumbria, Oswy, and his wife Eanfled, had a problem in the royal household. The king adhered to the accustomed date of Nisan 14 (Passover) that the Celtic Christians observed (such churches were later termed ‘Quarto-deciman’ referring to the number ’14’), whilst his wife kept the new Roman ‘Easter,’ oddly named after a pagan deity. Representatives from both positions were appointed to argue each side’s apologetics at a Synod in Whitby in the presence of the king, in order to ascertain which was to be observed. Iona missionary Colman presented the Celtic position, appealing to the practice of Columba, who was well respected and who himself followed the practice and teaching of the Apostle John. The Roman emissary, Wilfrid, bamboozled the king by appealing to Peter whom he claimed was the higher authority, being given the keys of the kingdom by Christ and the ‘rock’ on which the Church would be built. Noone, it was pointed out, had authority over Peter, and thus also his successors, the Bishops (or popes) of Rome. The king did not wish to challenge Peter’s ‘legitimate’ spiritual successor on earth.

Rome wins!

King Oswy capitulated and proclaimed the new Roman observance throughout his kingdom as the preferred and only way to practise Christianity in Britain with immediate efect. The Irish resisted, but it was futile. They could not overthrow a royal decree and the abbeys and Christian learning centres were taken over in a process of ‘Romanisation’. Either submit or be expelled! Some accepted the new changes, whereas many old stalwarts went into exile, retreating to safer remote places such as Lindisfarne and Iona. From that point the Celtic Church lost much of its infuence but held on tenaciously in various pockets, still allowing their missionaries to marry (unlike Roman celibate clergy) and upholding Biblical food laws in avoiding unclean animals such as pork and shellfsh, which Rome permitted and encouraged. The Celtic Church held out until the 12th Century in remote parts such as Tara, until it eventually fzzled out with Rome’s heavy domination. Celtic centres such as Iona and Bangor were taken over by Benedictine monks in the 1200s.

A Gentile link …

Today there are an increasing number within the churches that have been looking afresh at the Jewish roots of their faith and with many Jews now accepting Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah in the ‘Messianic’ movement. We can see a common thread of practice and belief emerging that stems from the early Jewish Church through the Celtic period which is now being reunited, revitalised and restored in modern Messianic outlook. The hardest question of all is whether we want to link into that restoration or maintain the Roman links that cut that thread all those centuries ago. We now have a Gentile precedent. The Celtic Church. Maybe it is not entirely dead after all.

1 ‘Quartodeciman’ is from ‘quart’ for ‘4’ and ‘dec’ for ’10’ = ’14’ – or the people who keep the date of 14 (of Nisan, the first Biblical month).