You Guys Need to Communicate! (thoughts from an ex evangelical Christian)

I didn't say that. I said they'd be closer to the Orthodox than the gnostics.RCC is pretty inaccurate for the second century church, anyway. Patriarchs weren't established until the 4th century, and Rome's patriarch didn't have papal authority till after that. You'll have to list at least a couple that weren't. Sabellians were in the church, not out of it. Tertullian himself calls those who hold to that view a majority, despite writing against it in Against Praxeas. Who might be the non-gnostic Christians besides the Ebionites in the 2nd century?Oh, the Montanists. I'll address them in this next section. It's been too long since I read Against Marcion. I don't think we have anything direct from Marcion saying what he was thinking. The fact is, though, that the gnostics taught that their teachings were passed to them in secret. They had to acknowledge that churches like Ephesus, Rome, Philippi, etc. were started by the apostles. They just said that those churches held to the lesser, public teachings, while the deeper teachings were passed on in secret.The Montanists, which would qualify as something separate made no claim to be holding to apostolic tradition. They were adding to the apostles based on revelation from "the paraclete," and they said so. Tertullian abandoned his apostolic tradition arguments when he became a Montanist. It's not that controversial to assert that he wrote Romans through Colossians, as far as I understand. Cutting his letters down below 10 is on the extreme side, I think.Besides, it wouldn't matter. We can go right back to Romans. Rom 2:7 says eternal life will be repaid to those who seek it by doing good. Shortly thereafter, it says that those who don't have the law are expected by God to live by their conscience. Rom 8:3,4 says that the purpose of Christ dying was so that the righteous requirement of the Law would be fulfilled in those who walk by the Spirit. A few verses later, he says that those who live by the flesh will die. Rom 6 says grace provides power over sin, and that those who have died to sin have no business living in it. A little later, he says that sin leads to death and holiness leads to eternal life (6:16 & 6:19, respectively).The passage I quoted in Eph 5 is repeated almost verbatim in Gal 5 and 1 Cor 6. Rom 2:6,7 is repeated pretty closely in Gal 6:8-10 and 2 Cor 5:10 is pretty similar to Rom 2:6 as well.The whole idea that any of Paul's letters don't teach the necessity of a good life is a very new concept. The fact that it took 1500 years for anyone to come up that idea should be proof enough that no normal person, uninfluenced by Martin Luther or the forces that produced Martin Luther, would come up with such an idea. I've heard this, but I don't know too much about it. I'm much more prone to reading writings from that period than writings about that period, because the writings about that period are often pretty irritating to me, because I think so much of it is dishonest (on every side). I do read some, though, because I would have no way of knowing things like this except the people who study such things tell us.I don't doubt that the Orthodox were a minority. All I doubt is Christology debates in the 2nd century, except between the gnostics and orthodox, which you can tell from the anti-gnostic writings (which ARE the orthodox' side of the debate) are nothing like the Christology debates of the 4th century.

Truthlover wrote:

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I didn't say that. I said they'd (ebionites would) be closer to the Orthodox than the gnostics.

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Oh! Sorry for misreading you. Hmm. I agree, at least in many cases. Gnostic Christianity covers many different and contradictory groups. The Ebionites would certainly be closer to the Orthodox than the farther groups - but perhaps not for the closer ones, especially those within the Orthodox churches. It’s kinda an unresolvable discussion, since some individual Christians were no doubt just about anywhere on the spectrum from Ebionite to Gnostic one would choose, and many of those individuals would be in orthodox and Gnostic churches at different times and such. We can’t even go to the church level and look at “official doctrine”, because the “official doctrine” on many issues was still being formed.

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RCC is pretty inaccurate for the second century church, anyway. Patriarchs weren't established until the 4th century, and Rome's patriarch didn't have papal authority till after that.

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I agree. We could use the term you used, “orthodox”? Though that is biased from the start, since each group considered itself “orthodox”, and considered the other groups to be “heretics”. Whatever group had won would be called “orthodox” today, so in a second century context, “Orthodox” doesn’t seem to work. Even more so, the doctrines that would win weren’t even fully worked out, so the doctrinal ancestors of the orthodox victors of the 5th century espoused some views that would be later labeled as heretical, so calling them “Orthodox” is openly calling people who hold some views that are heretical today the “Orthodox”. “Pre-Orthodox” maybe? Primitive Orthodox? I’ve read some scholars who use “Proto-Orthodox”. PO? Hmm. That makes me think of “Purchase Order”. Maybe I’m working too much . .And of course, all of the problems I mention above apply to the term RCC even more so than they do the term “Orthodox” - again in agreement with your statement.

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You'll have to list at least a couple that weren't.

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I can list some names, - like Adoptionism, Montanism, Docetism, Modalism, Monarchianism - however, all of those really miss the point, since for each one you can either say they were “inside the church”, or say they are a type of Gnostic, or Judaiser, or other. The point is that there were all kinds of views among Christians, and churches probably a local flavor or emphasis - and as such are more of a (insert name here) congregation. You can’t really consider every early Christian local congregation to be PO, since at the time the PO church in was only developing it’s hierarchy, doctrines, and practices. In that environment, you had local congregations that had any number of views, practices, and leaders. Other groups did develop hierarchies, but even our understanding of the PO hierarchy is sketchy and based entirely on PO writings - if Valentinian Gnosticism had become the Orthodoxy Christianity, we’d similarly be without much in the way of evidence that there was a PO church.Even more so, saying that they were either Gnostic or PO misses the fact that there were tons of different groups we all class under “Gnosticism” now. It’s kinda like lumping “protestant” all into one theology. Though protestants are much less diverse than 1st and 2nd century Christianity, they do range from Anglicans (who are similar in many ways to the RCC), to Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, Lutherans, Mormons, and so on. You can see this from reading the Naq Hammadi texts - some are from one group of Gnostics, other from other ones. So even if all the other Christianities were Gnostic, that would still be a lot of diversity. Similary, the huge differences between groups in the PO was much greater than it is even today - the differences between a Baptist and a Catholic are nothing compared to those between a Marcionite and, say, Tertullian.

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They had to acknowledge that churches like Ephesus, Rome, Philippi, etc. were started by the apostles.

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??? Why? It's not clear to us that any of those churches were started by apostles except in the cases of Paul. - in fact, it's not clear to us that there weren't significant non-PO churches in some of those places first. The only evidence we have of apostles starting churches is from Paul (who's sort of an apostle - he says he is, and he was so influential that everyone had to allow him that, but he wasn't involved with Jesus' life), and the book of acts, which is a much later legendary account that's know to have inaccuracies.

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Each Christian thinks that changing it to his way is really just "going back to apostolic tradition". Marcion, when cutting out parts of Luke, thought he was returning it to its original, uncorrupted form.

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It's been too long since I read Against Marcion. I don't think we have anything direct from Marcion saying what he was thinking. The fact is, though, that the gnostics taught that their teachings were passed to them in secret.

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What does the secrecy have to do with anything? They specifically taught that these views were passed on in apostolic succession, secretly. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene explicitly explains that.About Marcion, the idea that he thought he was returning to the uncorrupted Lukan gospel was mentioned in lectures on Early Christianity. I don’t know if there is explicit evidence based on, say, Irenaeus, or if it’s just obvious from the circumstance. For instance, why else would he cut up Luke, yet preserve the rest of it? If he didn’t think Luke was an inspired source, then keep most of luke as is? Since he clearly thought his view was correct, he would have thought that the original godly inspiration would have been correct.Apostolic succession was claimed by many early Christianities. For instance some Gnostic Christianities traced back through Mary Magdalene (which is recorded in GoMary), Valentinian Gnostics traced their apostolic tradition back through Paul, and some Adoptionist groups claimed succession through Peter and the Jerusalem church. It seems likely to me that many (probably not all) would do so - though we don’t have data one way or the other for most of them. Your noting that many of these groups were “inside the church” shows that those groups did claim apostolic succession - by the same chain claimed by the PO.

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It's not that controversial to assert that he wrote Romans through Colossians, as far as I understand. Cutting his letters down below 10 is on the extreme side, I think.

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” The undisputed Pauline epistles are Romans
” Philippians
” Galatians
” Philemon
” First Corinthians
” Second Corinthians and
” First ThessaloniansThe borderline cases vary in support, and are
” Ephesians
” Colossians and
” Second Thessalonians , with Col appear to be the most likely to be Pauline among them, and Eph being the least likely to be Pauline among them.Very few people beyond apologists consider the letters of Titus, 1 & 2 Tm, and Heb to be by Paul. Thus, the pastorals (the first 3) are forgeries, and Heb is just anonymous, since it doesn’t say it’s by Paul, but was included in the Bible because the early Christian church thought it was by Paul.
Oh, and the other Pauline writings (the non canonical ones like Laod, 3Cor, the Gospel of Paul and the Apocalypses of Paul) are also, like the pastorals, agreed upon as forgeries.

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Besides, it wouldn't matter.

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I was saying that RCC doctrine says that being good would not save you if you knew about the one holy church and weren’t in it. Thus, unless you can claim ignorance, being RC is a necessary, not sufficient requirement for salvation. Being good is required on top of that, as a subsequent requirement. It’s a matter of understanding the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition. Look back at all those verses you listed. They all support the idea that being good is a subsequent requirement, though they more often make the implication that only Christians are good and that non-Christians are bad.I’ve heard that same thing from various Christian friends, who say that because (their) God is the source of goodness, you can’t actually be good unless you are Christian. When I pointed out examples of kindness by non-Christians, they said that those were cases where the person was really just doing it to make themselves look good - not out of real goodness. I hope you and I can agree that such a view is neither correct nor the only view Christians have.

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The evidence we have, both in writings and in archeological evidence suggests that non-orthodox Christianities were very common from the start, and that the orthodox probably only became a majority as late as the late 3rd or 4th century.

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I've heard this, but I don't know too much about it. I'm much more prone to reading writings from that period than writings about that period, because the writings about that period are often pretty irritating to me, because I think so much of it is dishonest (on every side). I do read some, though, because I would have no way of knowing things like this except the people who study such things tell us.
I don't doubt that the Orthodox were a minority. All I doubt is Christology debates in the 2nd century, except between the gnostics and orthodox, which you can tell from the anti-gnostic writings (which ARE the orthodox' side of the debate) are nothing like the Christology debates of the 4th century.

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Writings are just a part of it, and it sounds like you haven’t read the many writings by the other Christians during the time, so you are just reading the PO writings from the time - there are dozens of other Christinan epistles, gospels, etc. Archeological evidence, inscriptions, and such are missing too. Plus, as you’ve probably noticed, even just the PO side of the debate shows the same thing - that different Christianities are there from the start. You can see this in Irenaeus, who goes on and on against all manner of other Christianities, and even from the new testament, where there are extensive writings against other Christians in books like Galations and the Jn epistles.Elaine Pagels wrote an interesting book (Beyond Belief), arguing just what you said elsewhere - that GoJ was written in opposition to Gnosticism (specifically, in opposition to the GoT). It’s interesting.Have a fun day-

I would like to take exception to the use of the word "Forgery". When you say: I believe it is misleading.While we might assign such works to forgery, it is only because we have changed what we consider "Standard & Best Practice".Historically, particularly at the time those books were written and actually inherent in practices such as the Talmudic Discourses, it was considered acceptable to write under attribution. When someone presented an argument in the style of and based on the writing of a scholar, it was customary to attribute it to that scholar. Granted, sometimes this was done to increase the "Authority" of the contribution, but usually it was considered acceptable and standard procedure.When we label something like Titus as a Forgery, the modern connotations immediately bring in suspicion and a taint of dishonesty, where in fact, at the time it was written those modern connotations would have been unknown.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jar wrote:

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would like to take exception to the use of the word "Forgery". .
I believe it is misleading.
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When we label something like Titus as a Forgery, the modern connotations immediately bring in suspicion and a taint of dishonesty, where in fact, at the time it was written those modern connotations would have been unknown.

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OK, let’s look at that a bit. People did write in their teacher’s name to express honor, as Jar mentions. This happened in greek philosophic schools too. However, back then people did often write to deceived and gain authority too, and even back then this practice was considered dishonest and frowned upon. We have solid examples of this from the 2nd century, when the Pastorals were written too. For instance, the author of 3rd Corinthians was caught while writing it, and accused of dishonest-type forgery. Galen found a forged book in his name, and was offended enough by it write a whole book about how to detect and reject books forged in his name. People back then were like people today - they would try to fool people for their own reasons, and they didn't like being fooled for any reason.So both occurred. I don’t know which motivation was behind the pastorals and the other Pauline works that aren’t by Paul (3rd cor, Laod, GoPaul, etc). All of them may be good and pure, or all forgeries, but of course it’s most likely that some are each type, and some are somewhere in between, such as the case where a Christian is unhappy because many of the other Christians in his congregation are moving the congregation in a direction he doesn’t like, so he happens to “find” a letter from “paul” that happens to support his side. From his view his motives were pure - to help everyone find salvation by saving them from heresy. From someone else’s view, he forged that. The situation above could be the origin of the Gospel of Paul, or of Titus, or neither. Or they could have written Paul’s name and the book as a fictional piece, like “call me Ishmael”, as written by Melville - not intended to deceive, but not in praise of Paul either. After circulating for a while, the most recent owner might not know this, and take the letter at it’s word as a letter by Paul.Without a time machine, a magic person-finder, and a mind reader, it’s hard to know which of all of these is what happened. So OK, I’ll agree that calling it a forgery is a bit harsh. It could well be true but again it may not. However, anyone who calls the other Christian pseudepigrapha (such as the Gospel of Philip, Paul’s letter to the laodiceans, GoPeter, etc) forgeries, yet calls the pastorals, or 2nd Pet, etc, “pseudepigrapha” is using a double standard. Either way is fine with me, as long as we are consistent.Have a fun day-

I put orthodox in quotes, because I don't think it's a great term, either. The "Ante-Nicene Fathers" called themselves catholic, just not Roman Catholic. I'm fine with any term, but it seems like orthodox or catholic is the most used. We may be more on the same page historically than I realized, and your tone in your post was pretty conciliatory, for which I'm grateful. Thank you.I'll just leave this with the comment that I hope I wasn't missing that there were a lot of different groups classified as gnostic. I do realize that. I wrote a reply to this, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how it applied. I had to go back and find out why I even brought up apostolic succession. I don't want to pointlessly argue an irrelevant point.All I was saying when I mentioned churches like Ephesus and Rome being started by apostles is that the PO was not in the state of division that the modern church is in. For the most part, there was only one church in each city. If there was also a gnostic "church," it was completely separate. They knew they were competing religions. They weren't "half-brothers," the way that say, the Baptists and Presbyterians are.So where there were major differences, like those between the Valentinians and the PO, yes, they argued. But the kind of Christology arguments that happened in the 4th century didn't happen among PO churches in the 2nd century. Even if they did come up, the church debating such an issue could go see an "apostolic" church like Rome or Ephesus and the issue could be resolved, because forming the "Missionary PO" church separate from the "Southern PO" church was not an option to them.I admit this didn't stop 2nd century individuals from being mostly gnostic, yet in the PO church. Shoot, every individual apparently had the option of opening a school in their house or at their place of business (which was probably also their house) and inviting people in to be taught, possibly without the elders even knowing about it. Certainly, that's what was irritating Ignatius so much, though the split with gnosticism was not complete in his time. Ignatius wanted all such schools under control of the bishop, which makes it obvious that they weren't under his control yet.I'm not disagreeing in any way that there were lots of Christianities. I read a rather compelling argument about places where gnosticism was the first Christianity and the PO church showed up afterwards.All I'm disagreeing with is the comparison to today. The doctrinal disagreements and constant church splits and the partial brotherhood of denominations are much different, in my opinion, than the branching of religions that happened in the Pre-Nicene church.Part of the problem is the difference of our perspectives. I think the PO church won out in the end because it was of God and God backed it up. I'm a believer, and American Christianity is to me a blight on the name of Christ. It's an embarrassment.I think it's unavoidable that there will be other religions. Christ's religion was always meant to be that of the few ("and few there be that find it"). There will always be other Christs and other religions. But the "we're brothers, but I'll go to my church and you go to your church, and to hell with the unity that Jesus spoke of" attitude that modern Christians have was unknown to the early catholics.To you, this is all history, and the division of the gnostics and PO doesn't look much different than modern divisions. I'm not saying the gnostic/PO difference didn't exist. I'm saying that the nature of those divisions and the nature of their arguments is much different than the nature of the arguments and divisions between the Pentecostals, Methodists, the multitude of Baptist denominations, and the Presbyterians. We can agree that this is not only unrealistic but rather insulting. The huge majority of Christians have not earned the right to even comment on, much less condemn, people like Gandhi or the numerous unbelievers who have given their lives to serving or helping others. There are a lot of early writings from gnostic or other sources that I haven't read. I have only read the PO writings. I try to stay at least somewhat current with archeological evidence, though. Since I'm a believer, I don't like to hear second hand about what my predecessors believed, so I read them myself (repeatedly).I don't mind hearing second hand about things less important, though. I trust historians on the major issues, and thus I know that the gnostics were very numerous and that in some places they came first. I'm not a literalist. It's obvious Paul didn't write Hebrews. In fact, I'm a little confused how the councils could have thought he wrote it. I'm aware that most scholars reject Pauline authorship for the pastoral epistles, and I'm relatively sure they're correct. I didn't know about Ephesians and Colossians, but those two books are so much alike that one seems an expansion on the other, and the extra parts of Ephesians are certainly Pauline in doctrine. As I pointed out, my quote from Eph 5 is practically repeated verbatim in Gal 5 and 1 Cor 6.I hope all that is clearer as to what I'm saying. I think we disagree a lot less than I realized. There was just a slant in what you wrote that I didn't like, which I described above, and that may be unavoidable, due to where we're each coming from.

Truthlover wrote:

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For the most part, there was only one church in each city. If there was also a gnostic "church," it was completely separate. They knew they were competing religions.

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Except that the various kinds of Gnostics were often within the church, as we discussed earlier. Especially early on, this even applied to the other Christianities - there appears to have been all kinds of Christians in the church in town, with the dominant strand being very different from town to town. They were all in the church, often, because they saw the differences between the Pagans and themselves as bigger than the doctrinal differences, even between Christianities that today would make the JWs seem just like the RCC.

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So where there were major differences, like those between the Valentinians and the PO, yes, they argued. But the kind of Christology arguments that happened in the 4th century didn't happen among PO churches in the 2nd century. Even if they did come up, the church debating such an issue could go see an "apostolic" church like Rome or Ephesus and the issue could be resolved,

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No, because all of them were “apostolic”. Why go to another church if you are apostolic already, being founded by, say, Valentinus or Marcion? Especially if you already knew rome or ephesis was controlled by what you saw as heretics?

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They weren't "half-brothers," the way that say, the Baptists and Presbyterians are. . ..

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because forming the "Missionary PO" church separate from the "Southern PO" church was not an option to them.

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I think we agree that over time there has been a growing trend, from 50 CE to 2007 CE, going from all Christians worshipping together, slowly growing to being more likely to form their own church and be separate (with of course long periods of stasis, such as the middle ages). I see some of this growth in the opposite way you do, perhaps - many different shoots springing up, then being cut in some cases, woven together in others, to make the RCC, then that re-fragmenting in the reformation to today.

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I admit this didn't stop 2nd century individuals from being mostly gnostic, yet in the PO church. Shoot, every individual apparently had the option of opening a school in their house or at their place of business (which was probably also their house) and inviting people in to be taught, possibly without the elders even knowing about it. Certainly, that's what was irritating Ignatius so much, though the split with gnosticism was not complete in his time. Ignatius wanted all such schools under control of the bishop, which makes it obvious that they weren't under his control yet.

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I'm not disagreeing in any way that there were lots of Christianities. I read a rather compelling argument about places where gnosticism was the first Christianity and the PO church showed up afterwards.

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All I'm disagreeing with is the comparison to today. The doctrinal disagreements and constant church splits and the partial brotherhood of denominations are much different, in my opinion, than the branching of religions that happened in the Pre-Nicene church.

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Yes, I agree - the conflicts are different in a number of ways. The topics are different, the degree of hairsplitting is different (I mean that as a way to describe it, not to be aggressive), the context and time is very different, and the presence of other religions has varied too, not to mention the huge impact of changing information technology, like gutenburg and then the internet. However, the pre-nicene disagreements and problems were quite large too. Pauls letters show this, from doctrinal disagreement all the way to other church problems, like in Corinth (glossalia confusion, gluttony, shacking up with one’s stepmother, etc . ).All for now. Gotta go! I’ll reply to the posts in the JW thread next week. Have a fun week all (Anastasia too).-EquinoxEdited by Equinox, : No reason given.

It appears to me this is only true until the very early 2nd century. It was clear there were many gnostics in the church in Ignatius time. You can tell that from his letters. However, the later apologists' arguments were directed against those outside the church, not in it.Irenaeus claimed that you could go from church to church all the way from Gaul to Germany to the Middle East to North Africa and find people speaking the same things, believing the same doctrines. In fact, the "rule of faith" that each church add, one of which was adapted to create the Nicene Creed, was specifically formatted to ensure doctrinal unity on a couple important ideas.And it's not like the apologists were covering things up. The Sabellian/modalism problem is mentioned. The Montanists are covered. There appears to be no coverup. Irenaeus' writings show no signs that he's trying to hide controversy. He talks about his talks with the Roman bishop over Valentinian influence, and he talks about those that have left the church to go over to gnostic groups, and then dealing with them when they come back. He mentions the battle that happened over the date of passover. Yet, despite all this, his evaluation is that the church spoke with one heart, one soul, and one mouth the world over.I don't think the gnostics were in the church in any significant way by the mid-second century. The Valentinians and the Marcionites probably wouldn't. But the Pre-Orthodox would. I'm not making this up. This is exactly what Irenaeus said the PO churches did on matters of doctrinal question. No, we don't agree on this. I think the forming their own church practice didn't start until the Protestants came along. It was a much bigger deal to form your own church before that.The Montanists formed their own groups, but they really had no choice. Their prophet was expelled from his congregation. The Novationists split off, too, around AD 250. But that's 2 in 200 years. It happened more after Nicea, because suddenly a lot of the population was "Christian," and the bishop's position was a political one as well as a spiritual one. Different world at that point.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ADAM AND EVE QUESTION AT THE BEGINNING ?Edited by OMEGA7, : No reason given.

Well, like most people, particularly Christians, he realized that the fable makes God very stupid or is totally contradicted by the Genesis tale.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Truthlover wrote:

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It was clear there were many gnostics in the church in Ignatius time. You can tell that from his letters. However, the later apologists' arguments were directed against those outside the church, not in it.

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I think in general we agree here, since most groups start out mostly within the PO church and end up increasingly outside of it. From my view this is an artifact of the process of the gradual formation of PO views. In other words, the earliest Christianity is vague and nebulous, and as doctrines are sorted out and particular questions answered, more groups have different answers. So if we focus only on one set of answers (the PO set), then it'll look like groups are leaving over time.The Christian writings we have show that there were many other Christianities, both within and outside the church pretty much all the time from the start to the 5th century. You have read this as well as I have. In all cases, there is plenty (even just from the PO side) showing this. For instance, here are some authors from each century that feel the need to write page after page against the other Christians, both within and without the Roman hierarchy: 1st cent - Paul, pJn, 2nd- Ignat, pPaul, Justin, Iren, 3rd- Clement, Serap, Tertullian, 4th- Epiphanius, Athanasiu, Eusebius, 5th - Augustine, etc . In all of those cases, we have literally volumes written against other Christian beliefs, both inside and outside the PO church. There may well be trends where one is more common at some time, but they aren’t hard to find in any time period.

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Irenaeus claimed that you could go from church to church all the way from Gaul to Germany to the Middle East to North Africa and find people speaking the same things, believing the same doctrines. In fact, the "rule of faith" that each church add, one of which was adapted to create the Nicene Creed, was specifically formatted to ensure doctrinal unity on a couple important ideas.
. .He talks about his talks with the Roman bishop over Valentinian influence, and he talks about those that have left the church to go over to gnostic groups, and then dealing with them when they come back.
. .. Yet, despite all this, his evaluation is that the church spoke with one heart, one soul, and one mouth the world over.

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He may have said that, but using it to say that there weren’t many other Christianities would be pretty silly since Irenaeus himself wrote whole books about the other Christianities. Besides, what does he mean by “believing the same things”? All the Christians, from Gnostic to PO, believed that Jesus was spiritually important, for instance. If you make the statement very vague, then everyone will “believe the same doctrines”, but if you are specific, then even in a small cult there will be disagreements. By the end of the 2nd cent, when he’s writing, there were a lot of Christian churches, so even just the PO ones would be able to be found, as he said.

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I don't think the gnostics were in the church in any significant way by the mid-second century.

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I agree that the Gnostics were more in the church early on, and more outside the church later on. This follows the basic trend over the whole time period, where the doctrines become more specific over time, and more separations happen. In early churches the handful of Christians may all worship together, later on they have all grown in numbers, and form separate churches for that and for many other reasons. However, the Naq hammadi library was found associated with a PO monastery from the 5th century, so they weren’t that separate, at least in that one case.

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truthlover writes:

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Even if they did come up, the church debating such an issue could go see an "apostolic" church like Rome or Ephesus and the issue could be resolved.
equinox writes:

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No, because all of them were “apostolic”. Why go to another church if you are apostolic already, being founded by, say, Valentinus or Marcion?

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The Valentinians and the Marcionites probably wouldn't. But the Pre-Orthodox would. I'm not making this up. This is exactly what Irenaeus said the PO churches did on matters of doctrinal question.

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Um, no - you missed my point. My point was that the Valentinians and the Marcionites both also had Paul in their apostolic succession. They loved Paul, a true apostle of their church. Of course they would say to put authority in the churches founded by Paul - those were, in their eyes, the churches that were Gnostic or Marcionite in Ephesis or wherever. Sure, there were those PO churches that claimed to have been founded by Paul - but they must be lying about their founder. That’s how they saw it. That’s why, for instance, Paul’s letters were part of the Marcionite Bible. So yes, the Gnostics would have told the PO to go to the Gnostic church that had been founded by Paul to learn the correct doctrine, that Gnosticism was correct. And of course the PO would have said the opposite. Same for many of the other Christianities.

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I think we agree that over time there has been a growing trend, from 50 CE to 2007 CE, going from all Christians worshipping together, slowly growing to being more likely to form their own church and be separate (with of course long periods of stasis, such as the middle ages).

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No, we don't agree on this. I think the forming their own church practice didn't start until the Protestants came along. It was a much bigger deal to form your own church before that.
The Montanists formed their own groups, but they really had no choice. Their prophet was expelled from his congregation. The Novationists split off, too, around AD 250. But that's 2 in 200 years. It happened more after Nicea, because suddenly a lot of the population was "Christian," and the bishop's position was a political one as well as a spiritual one. Different world at that point.

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OK, sorry, I was just trying to find common ground. We really have quite a few more than 2 splits in those 200 years. Most of them were from groups that mostly different from the beginning - hence all the writings against those groups over that time.Maybe we can agree on this - I think there has been a growing trend for Christians to be less tolerant of differences in doctrine. In the very early church, you had radically different Christianities worshipping together (for instance, Trinitarian and modalist, or such), then during the protestant reformation churches split over smaller points like how to see the Bible, and today the splits can be over even smaller things, like OSAS, or eschatology, or such. Or if we don’t agree there, then how do you see the changes in how Christians respond to different types of Christianity over time?

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There are a lot of early writings from gnostic or other sources that I haven't read. I have only read the PO writings.

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Might I suggest then looking into the huge amount of other early Christian writings? The Nag Hammadi library is one place to start, as is earlychristianwritings.com. Reading just one side can’t be expected to give one a full view.

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Part of the problem is the difference of our perspectives. I think the PO church won out in the end because it was of God and God backed it up.

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But doesn’t that view - the view that God guided the process of church and Bible formation- lead to all kinds of worse problems? For instance, first it seems to justify might makes right, since as the winner one can then claim to be the tool of God, and all that blood spilt was done under divine order. Then it seems to blame God for all kinds of ineptitude - since our Bible has been clearly changed and clearly miscopied in many places, not to mention things like your words here:

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I'm not a literalist. It's obvious Paul didn't write Hebrews. In fact, I'm a little confused how the councils could have thought he wrote it. I'm aware that most scholars reject Pauline authorship for the pastoral epistles, and I'm relatively sure they're correct.

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So then did God plan to have Heb included in the Bible without any apostolic link? Did God plan to have words in the Bible say a letter is by Paul, when it isn’t? Or the PO church had God behind it, but the process of formation or the PO’s Bible didn’t have God behind it? Did God plan to have the RCC suppress, often bloodily, other churches for 1000 years? The most common response to this line of thought is to look back at history, and say that nice things are directed by God, while the immoral things are human mistakes - but that always looks like handwaving.It reminds me of when a Christian I was talking to told me that God directed the reformation so as to purify the church and correct the canon of the Bible (from 73 to 66 books). At first I thought he was joking, then I was horrified! That process included wars where Christians killed Christians for being the wrong kind of Christian for over 200 years, killing 10 million people - more than the modern holocaust, back when the world population was so much smaller. This was a “divine plan”!? I had a hard time even imagining a way what would be a worse way to do it. Yet this person was saying that casting all of Europe into lengthy wars, and leaving the Bible problem unresolved even to today was “God’s perfect plan”. It may just be me, but it seems to me that such an explanation is saying terrible things about God. It reminds me of Mt 12:31.To take that to today, if God planned and guided the early PO church, and history unfolded according to his plan, then is the current fractionization of Christianity also his plan? If not, then did he guide for a while and then stop? Or does the success of a church mean that God is behind it? If so, then the Mormons and the Pentecostals must be what God wants - since their memberships are growing quickly, especially compared to Catholic and mainline protestant churches.Now I’m not saying that you are saying that - I’m just checking what you mean.Take care-Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.

ANY CHURCH STARTED BY THE CATHOLICS OR PROTESTANTSIS NOT A CHRISTIAN CHURCH BUT A ROMAN CHURCH.Because the CATHOLIC CHURCH is a FALSE PAGAN CHURCH .It is the White horse with the Bow that went out to Conquer.The Real Christians were the Sabbath Keeping Waldensians and other small groups.

Welcome OMEGA7,Glad you decided to add to our diversity. We have a wide variety of forums for your debating pleasure.Please try to address the topic of the thread and since the use of all caps is considered yelling, please do not type in all caps.As members, we are guests on this board and as guests we are asked to put forth our best behavior. Please read the Forum Guidelines carefully and understand the wishes of our host. Abide by the Forum Guidelines and you will be a welcome addition.In the purple signature box below, you'll find some links that will help make your journey here pleasant.Please direct any questions or comments you may have to the Moderation Thread.Again, welcome and fruitful debating.

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Usually, in a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach.-- Encylopedia Brittanica, on debate

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I NO LONGER WANT TO WASTE TIME POSTING ON THESE
PSEUDO RELIGIOUS FORUMS.I WILL SEE YOU GUYS IN THE KINGDOM.BYE.

I don't think you need to take this concept so literally, Equinox.It is similar to the idea of the Jewish people being God's Chosen people. They were human, subject to evolving life-styles, persecutions, wars, etc. There is no claim to any super-human perfection or divine hand governing every minute detail and every action of a Jewish person.But, God would guide the entire society toward what He had planned, and use them to preserve what had been revealed.When the church claims divine guidance, it is outlandish to think that every action of individual christians or of christian leaders is so perfect just because they are in the OP church, or the Catholic church, or wherever. The idea is simply that God continued His process of revelation in the church that was most 'true' perhaps to what He intended. Not every Biblical book must be perfectly set in its authorship, nor every book that is not in the Bible be discounted. There will be evil actions and good actions as at any other time, but over-all, the message is what is being preserved, expanded, clarified, and 'perfected' in a core body of doctrines which will outlast the various conflicts.

This is in reference to Irenaeus. That's one easy, because he defined it. He defined what the churches agreed on, and he gave a long list of things they were free to speculate on.The agreed on parts were basically a long version of the "rule of faith." A lot of the 2nd century expansion of the rule of faith was to combat gnosticism. Caesarea's rule of faith is what became the Nicene Creed, with a couple words (homoousion in particular) and anathemas added.The rule of faith was agreed to by each convert at baptism. In the second century they were dunked or poured on three times in succession. Once after agreeing that the Father was creator of heaven and earth. Once after agreeing that Y'shua is the Son of God and that he became actual flesh (a common anti-gnostic part of the rule, as was the creator of material things part), and one after agreeing that they believe in the Holy Spirit. There were no additions to the part about the Holy Spirit until after the 4th century, and to this day they're very short. Interesting. Hmm. Yes, we agree on this. I didn't know you thought this.The difficulty of communication on subjects like this, especially in writing but even face to face, never ceases to amaze me. This, because of what you said after it, was an extremely interesting question to me. I'll answer it in the next post, because it has nothing to do with anything above.I checked the thread title, though, and it's still on subject, probably more on subject than what we've been discussing. On to next post...