Elements of Christian Church History

By Garrison Clifford Gibson

The history of the Christian Church from the first generation unto the present day is a vast and fascinating subject. Without depth in understanding the history of the Christian Church it is nearly impossible to understand the course and meaning of western civilization and even that of world history meaningfully. Gary Clifford Gibson makes a commentary upon his readings in history of the Christian Church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312204584

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Elements of Christian Church History

Elements of Christian Church History

Copyright

Elements of Christian Church History ©2014 Garrison Clifford Gibson

I.S.B.N. 978-1-312-20458-4

Forward

This informal commentary on elements of the history of the Christian Church was compiled as a learning experience for me. With quite a bit of reading of philosophy one likes to assume one has a fair understanding of theology too having read perhaps Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Augustine and a few others in addition to the Bible. Yet of course there is quite a lot more to it than that-even if one has read Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Coppleston and others. Incidentally I never quite got to covering Kierkegaard, de Chardin and innumerable others worthy of being in anyone’s commentary on Christian Church history and theology.

Following is some of what I learned recently or refreshed. I used copious quotes from Schaff’s now public domain volumes on the history of the Christian Church and have cited or quoted material from many others in addition to writing a little too.

The Ancient Era

The Beginning of the Church

File:Bloch-SermonOnTheMount.jpg

Carl Bloch- The Sermon on the Mount, 1850

Historians generally classify early Christianity as existing from the life of the Lord to the council of Nicea in 325 A.D. From then until 476 and the fall of the Western Roman Empire is the era called Christianity of late antiquity. Some historians regard late classical antiquity (of civilization) ending about a century later with the death of the last Latin speaking Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, of whom Procopius wrote the famous Secret History. The history of the early Christian church is divided at the Apostolic and Post-Apostolic transition.

John the Apostle was likely the last disciple to pass away, probably about 105 A.D. With the new generation bereft of those that knew the Lord as disciples and without apostolic authorities such as Paul the early church fathers would have wanted to consolidate existing written records and pass on standard, truthful doctrine, words and ideas to succeeding generations from the Apostles. They would need to secure methods for assemblies of Christians to meet and keep rules/kanon that would reinforce the true gospel. The Holy Spirit, helping draw those that knew Apostles such as Polycarp to meaningful church positions to coordinate and support the development of faith with new believers first encountering the gospel, the truth would survive vicissitudes of wrong doctrinal competition and persecutions from government, heretics and rival religions.

The early Christian church was a community of believers that formed following the Lord and savior Jesus Christ. The original disciples of the Lord followed by waves more took the words and life message of Jesus first to Israel and then the world. The church had a natural root in the Jewish faith from which the disciples and the Lord arose. A natural transition waited for John the Baptist providing baptism of the Lord and the Christian era of the new covenant.

The old covenant and the old way of a relationship with God through justification through laws gave way to a new era of salvation through spiritual renewal with the laws of God written on the hearts and minds of believers. From Jerusalem to Antioch and across the Roman world the gospel of Jesus Christ was heard. The heathen gods were cast aside as Emperors and Kings following common perceptions learned the silliness of worshipping idols. Rulers like Constantine and four-hundred years later Charles the Great believed the Word of God. Reactionary politicians and sects were sometimes violent and commanded onerous purges, persecutions or pogroms of believers who eventually would return in greater number.

Jesus was himself the high priest administering to his early church for forty days following his resurrection and prior to his ascension. The church grew strong during that time. Instead of the public falling away after he was crucified alongside two thieves the faithful increased markedly. At the gathering at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit arrived and poured out into the faithful assembled together the future development of the church as an essential component of God’s teleology for the people of the world increased. Though the first church existed when the disciples were with the Lord, after the Lord was crucified and when the Apostolic age began following Pentecost over time the familiar problem of Gresham’s law would develop wherein bad money (counterfeit)  follows good, with false or erroneous doctrine following.

The Apostle Paul experienced the problem of false doctrine and error amidst the early church congregations that he was in touch with such as at Corinth. Development of a standard, uniform or catholic doctrine promulgated from something approaching recognized authority (besides that of Paul or other individual Apostles) was not to exist until the council of Nicea issued one on Christology in the year 325.

The third General Council at Ephesus issued a brilliant description of how God emerged with human flesh. The emergence of a state supported church also emerged at the time in the Eastern Roman Empire yet for Western Europe the church-state synthesis would form a little differently and later, preponderantly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Prior to that a heretical version of Christianity was often promulgated by Arian bishops among Goths, Vandals and so forth bringing harm and conflicting with orthodox/catholic Christians then and later. Synthetic doctrine such as that of the Uniate church combining Catholicism and Orthodoxy would exist until modern times. Monophysite, Nestorians and Monothelitists would contentiously assert opinion on Christ as having one or two natures in regard to manhood and Godhood. Churches would find some opinions mutually exclusive. Logic, faith and revelation would provide accurate opinion.

It is said that the church learned from the risen Lord in the 40 days before his ascension how to organize the church in his absence. Deacons would minister unto the poor and elders or presbyters would attend to the body of believers. The Apostles were considered to be of a bishop class of elders able to coordinate and harmonize among diverse flocks. Paul appointed Titus and others into that role. Yet the body of believers had one high priest in heaven-the Lord, and maturity of Christians into the strong meat of faith from the milk of conversion or youth was desired. All Christians could become elders or priests one infers. Today a priesthood of believers ecclesia would be a good formation for the church with beginner, intermediate and expert/elder roles in church functions and representative elders or Bishops with term limits elected to coordinate amid denominations and congregations.

Philip Schaff writes on page 26 of his History of the Christian Church Volume II; The Ante-Nicene Era 100-325 A.D. that, "the foundation was laid strong and deep by the apostles themselves. The seed scattered by them from Jerusalem to Rome, and fertilized by their blood, sprung up as a bountiful harvest. The word of our Lord was again fulfilled on a larger scale: One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor (John 4:38). Christianity once established was its own best missionary. It grew naturally from within. It attracted people by its very presence. It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the darkness. And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ to convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch, and by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, were scattered abroad and went about preaching the Word.5 Justin Martyr was converted by a venerable old man whom he met "walking on the shore of the sea."

The history of the Christian Church is a living doctrine of grace. Though human organization including an ecclesia may become corrupt the message of the gospel is brought forward through time, across geography and to those that have not or would not otherwise have encountered the word of God from the Lord.

The church from the start was beset with wrong doctrine from within and without seeking to assert itself over the gospel. In a sense anything besides the gospel can be said to be wrong doctrine. Some such as Arianism and Gnosticism, Montanism and Donatism were readily apparent, yet also included are the more radical errors of paganism and heathenism-I suppose the latter might include just worldliness for-itself while the former requires some sort of idol such as Romans before conversion populated their temples with. Christians were able to point out the error of the pagan pantheon to the people of the Roman Empire who accepted to a large extent the compassionate and true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Troubles with the Jewish ecclesiastical infrastructure of the old covenant infrastructure produced its own varieties of error and opposition to the gospel becoming a forerunner of so much tragedy in subsequent Jewish historical experience starting with the crucifixion of the Lord, the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 and the even more thorough destruction of Jerusalem under Hadrian in A.D. 135 to purges, pogroms and holocaust since. In the generally pre-literate world governments authoritarians might control state religion and  purge society of substantive political-religious rivals and potential rivals. The Muslims burned the great Library of Alexandria during the Umayyad Caliphate I suppose to eliminate the possibility of the people reading anything besides that of submission to Mohammedan ideas and Omar his theistic autocrat.

Gnosticism

The epistle to the Galatians is perhaps the most remarkable of Paul’s existing letters that have made it down to us through time inasmuch as the Apostle seems at times wroth with the Galatians or Gauls of a Roman district that may or may not have been Celts. If these church goers were actual Gauls it mike be a good idea to change the word Galaxy to something else, such as Nuraghe in order that we do not seem to encourage a bad end along with the Universe in some sort of Apocalypse.3:1- O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? That may well have been the Gnostic mistake. It does happen that what is wisdom for man is foolishness to God.

Philo of Alexandria presented most of the Gnostic metaphysical paradigm before the crucifixion of the Lord in 30 A.D. The Apostle John may well have encountered those ideas in followers in Ephesus. It is possible that the Gnostic heretical field of scholarship wasn’t terribly well received in Jerusalem either. Exporting the pursuit of the Gnostic topic to Antioch, Ephesus and elsewhere that religion had a lively public interest and was received with a modicum of tolerance might have been a logical course. Gnosticism in the first century may have camouflaged itself within the garb of traditional Judaism better even than Christianity for a time found the Jewish community fertile ground.

Gnostics were people thought of as regarding themselves as having deeper metaphysical knowledge of reality than ordinary people. Some claimed that Jesus was actually a Gnostic traveler-a sort of astral projector perhaps to other planes of existence around this Universe. It is still a tempting yet silly doctrine popular on late-night radio shows and perhaps with dope smokers of the U.S.A. along with Bigfoot and extra-terrestrials manipulating the Obama administration’s homosexual policies.

Christian disputes with Gnostics occurred because Gnostics tended usurp Christian doctrine and insinuate their own. They might believe in dualism such that the material world is evil and was made by an evil demi-urge. While some might regard original sin in a fallen Universe of thermodynamics instead of eternal spiritual perfection as another way of saying that, the practical consequence of false belief are substantial.

Gnostics tended to deny Jehovah as the true God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to overcome sin for those of faith. The emanationist (simplified for Christian practical purposes to’ let their be light’) theories of Gnostics are though coincident with some aspects of logical insight into the nature of the material Universe such as the big bang, inflaton or even a cyclical Universe expanding and flowing through a thermodynamic process.

Paradoxically those that believe the Universe had no real beginning-just proximal ones such as time=0 located at a temporal hourglass very small singularity before an oppositely sequenced pre-Universe shrinking down in scale, share the idea with Christians that all things that exist are ultimately based in the eternal with temporality being expression of phases within eternity. At this point physical cosmology research hasn’t evolved terribly deeply into physical reality and temporality of a hypothetical multiverse within an eternal context replete with conservation of energy and ordination by God.

Paul as a student of Gamaliel might have been somewhat learned himself in Jewish mysticism. The contemporary of Jesus Christ, Philo of Alexandria, was marginally mainstream and perhaps not unknown to Jewish theology training centers. By the time of the third century Plotinus-a famous student of Ammonius Saccus developed a beautiful, logically satisfying, mystic, theologically simplified cosmology that is similar in many respect to contemporary cosmological paradigms including origin from a singularity or One (En Sof-the ineffable infinite) with universal and broken form theories acceptable to Plato and quantum mechanics.

It is a bit of a paradox that the mysterious, spiritual Kabbalah shares with Mohammedanism the term for spirit –Ka that the Egyptians used as well as ba or shelter. Hence one gets the spirit house or Ka-ba such as at Mecca and the Kabala going even further in honor of a transcending spirit. The spirit house of Mecca existed long before Mohammad’s syncretistic enterprise.

The danger of simply becoming intellectually lost as an individual self-standing within the created material world is a danger that Lucifer succumbed to. Since everything exists and one may reason within the given steady-state field or any existing alternate spiritual field, there is a temptation for the ego to alienate itself from the transcendent God and the opportunity to renormalize from sin in the contingent field of being and try to exist forever as a contingent being or even a nearly omnipotent contingent being without God imbued with a false consciousness denying His existence. That effort is