NOTES for Rev 2:12-13

The situation in the church community of Pergamum was, as can be seen, rather complex. It is no accident that Jesus says it dwells "where Satan's throne is." The point is that in Pergamum there was one of the oldest and most highly revered pagan sanctuaries, the famous Pergamon Altar, and the local cult was rather dark. Of course, human sacrifices were no longer offered there as in ancient times, but among Christians the place had a grim reputation. Yet, judging by the Savior's words, the issue was not only the place as such.

The problem was inside the church, in the teaching of the Nicolaitans, which is mentioned more than once in the letters to the churches. Here Jesus compares it with the sin of Balaam, who wanted to make the Jews the same pagans as all their neighbors. To subject them to his god. We know almost nothing about the Nicolaitans; we can only guess who and what is being discussed.

Judging by the crumbs of information that can be gathered from sparse mentions and hints in different sources, one can suppose that the teaching of the Nicolaitans amounted to this: a Christian cannot sin by definition, and therefore all spiritual and ascetic efforts directed toward keeping the Torah, external or internal, are meaningless. Do whatever you want - the grace received at baptism will not leave you anyway, and therefore in the end, one way or another, you will be saved. Morality was not denied completely, but it was not considered the foundation of spiritual life.

Besides, the Nicolaitans, without being spiritualists in the traditional sense, were nevertheless evidently sure that the spiritual and natural components of the human personality are not connected so closely that a person's natural states seriously affect his spiritual life, and therefore they considered any so-called "sins of the flesh" either unimportant or of little importance. In practice, of course, such an approach to the person destroyed spiritual life and led away from the path of salvation, which is what Jesus tells John.

And there certainly could be no talk here of spiritual renewal and transfiguration, with which the "new name" mentioned by the Savior is clearly connected. A change of name always presupposed one or another initiation, a change in the quality of a person's life. And Christianity as life in the Kingdom implies such a change. Meanwhile the path proposed by the Nicolaitans presupposed nothing of the kind and could not lead into the Kingdom. That is why this movement receives such a harsh assessment from Jesus: it was a spiritual dead end, a path to nowhere, and this had to be said clearly and unambiguously.