Revelation 2:6
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate.
Revelation 2:15
So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate.
What was the doctrine as it seems to be something God hated so it had to be very corrupt. Here is from the Revelation seminars ..."The Nicolaitans, mentioned in these verses, claimed to be Christians but believed obedience to God's law was unnecessary. Jesus used strong language about the Nicolaitans, saying He hated their "works" or lifestyle. Irenaeus, a second-century minister, said they called themselves Christians, but they considered it "a matter of indifference to practice adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols."
It seems that the Nicolaitans were an organized group that embraced an antinomian position, which is the belief that God does not expect Christians to obey moral laws, much as we see in the world today.
Well done.
There's a fairly lengthy amount of speculation regarding the identity of the Nicolaitans in Christian literature, but the essence does seem to be that which is reported in the op.
The speculation begins with a purported connection to
Nicolas, who was one of "
seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task" of daily service to the needs of the early Christians in Jerusalem. Nicolas was a Gentile convert to Judaism. He was from Antioch, the city where followers of The Way were first called Christians. Antioch was also one of the two primary seats of Hellenism
and one of the cities in which a temple of Jupiter (king of the gods) existed. It was also a city that had found a modicum of Rome's favor because of its support of the Rome
(particularly Julius, Octavian, and Tiberius, three Caesars who were immensely influential on the western Mediterranean cultures early first-century). Revelation 2 implies a correlation between the Nicolaitan teachings and Balaam. Etymologically, Nicolas means victory and the name in Hebrew is "Bil'am," or Balaam, the covetous and wayward Gentile prophet from the region of Manasseh who was sought out by Balak, king of Moab (see
Num. 22).
In Hellenism, some people were thought to have been especially endowed with divine attributes, especially "
logos" or wisdom and the ability to reason and they, thereby, acted as intermediary agents between the gods and humanity. During the intertestamental period, Alexander the Great was considered to have been the penultimate example. After Alexander's death and the rivals fought over who would be his successor, Antioch was one of Seleucus's "five cities" in the Seleucid Empire. A number of Jewish philosophers embraced Hellenism and it grew in influence during the intertestamental period. The preamble of John's gospel is a repudiation of Philo's assertion Alexander was the mediator between the gods/God and mankind. That repudiation confronted both Hellenism and first-century Hellenistic Judaism. Jesus was not just an ordinary man especially endowed with logos. Jesus
is the Logos of God. He
is God and he, not Alexander, is the one who overcame death
(something none of the Caesars could do) and stands as the only mediator between God (not gods) and all humanity.
In the Jupiter cult lavish celebrations were haled and confessions were made of Jupiter as king of the gods, and due to the infiltration of Rome, a correlation was drawn between Jupiter and the Caesars. Gluttony and sexual immorality were attributes of the pagan worship of both. We see this influence on the Church in regard to the Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysian cults in the letters to Ephesus and Corinthian congregations.
The connection between Nicolas and Revelation 2's Nicolaitans existed very early on in Church history and Irenaeus is recorded asserting the connection, but one of his contemporaries, Clement of Alexandria
(Alexandria was the other primary home of Hellenism, beside Antioch) expressed doubt the deacon Nicolas had anything to do with the Nicolaitans and that if there was any such connection it was that the Nicolaitans had perverted Nicolas' teachings, forming a sect of their own that had nothing to do with Nicolas, Christ or Christianity. The common thread between the mention of the Nicolaitans to the Ephesian congregants and that of Balaam to the Pergamum congregants is that of deceptive and misleading teachings within the Church needing to be overcome...... which presents a certain irony since the name Nicolas means victory of the people and Balaam means corrupter of the people.
The history, geography, and culture summarized above provides context but ultimately what the Nicolaitans taught is a matter of speculation. No one knows for sure, but the antinomian indifference described in the op is likely.
