Early Church Errors Repeating?

The Berean Call ^ | Dave Hunt

[bethelgrad]

Ugh! Sorry for the quadruple post. I wish we had a delete button.

[fwdude]

Your sneering derision makes me feel like I’ve accidentally stumbled into DU.

[one Lord one faith one baptism]

i suggest you read the Church Fathers starting with Ignatius of Antioch who was a disciple of the Apostle John and was martyred in Rome.
you just might start looking at the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church differently.

[one Lord one faith one baptism]

i’m sorry, but i thought conservatives treasured the truth, and leftists like the DUmmies untruths.

what dave hunt wrote is laughable to anyone with a 6th grade knowledge of history and is worthy of all the derision i can muster!

choose truth my FRiend, it will set you free!

[fwdude]

I knew this article would bring out the rabid papist, just not so soon.

[one Lord one faith one baptism]

read my post #13 and prove me wrong on any of the blatant errors i pointed out.
not all of them, JUST ONE.

you see, rabid papists believe in truth, why doesn’t dave hunt?

[BipolarBob]

He lies, too.

Maybe, but not about indulgences. The church didn't get rich through giving stuff away.

[johngrace]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1870465/posts

[iowamark]

Amazingly ignorant of history. Constantine was Roman Emperor but never claimed to be a bishop or head of the Church.

[danielmryan]

I have to say that this fellow's treatment of history breezes over a huge swath of it. It's as if someone wrote: "Rome rebelled against its King and became a Republic. The Republic then turned into an Empire. The Empire collapsed, and Europe descended into chaos, darkness and ignorance. Therefore, one should never rebel against the King."

But I do have to credit the fellow for warning against postmillenialism. Postmillenialism, once secularized, became Progressivism - and we know what that's led to.

[circlecity]

"There is nothing in the Bible to suggest the Rapture is secret. On the contrary it will be a very public event."

Nor is there anything to suggest it will happen more than once or before the tribulation. There is one rapture that occurs with the second coming of Christ.

[Cronos]

Early heresies like Arianism are repeating in Jehovah's Witnesses, Nestorianism in Oneness Pentecostals and Seventh Day Adventists and Gnosticism in Mormonism

With the various neo-pentecostal movements this diversion from Christianity is hastening

[fwdude]

Please note that these are excerpts from his book. The author no doubt goes into greater detail from that source.

[don-o]

Is anyone aware of a more objective account of how the church developed?

I think that each person who desires to know about this must do his very own research from a wide variety of sources. It helped me to first look at the various denominations and sects as to when, where and why they began, and to examine their teachings in light of their origins.

All the history I have read has a bias - a point of view. If you can discern that, then you can filter it out and find agreements on the facts from various sources.

Which church traditions remember and commemorate their history? Which ones do not? Why is that?

Read the proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils. Catholics and Orthodox hold to the first seven as part of the bedrock. Find out how other traditions view the councils.

Read the oldest original theology you can find and find out who today clearly embrace the Church Fathers and who does not. Ask yourself why that is. Same thing with the Saints and the Martyrs.

Above all, at least for me this was vital, adopt a spirit of humility and try to have an open mind. Pray for understanding and safeguard from error.

[don-o]

Another example, I’m afraid, of my own variant of Santayana’s dictum about not remembering history. As I’ve often written before: Those who cannot remember Church history are condemned to make it up.

Or even worse, - to assert that history does not even matter.

[Cronos]

you can read the secular history -- it will show you that

• Constantine never was head of the church
• Constantine never was a bishop
• Constantine never had the title vicar of christ
• Constantine did not encourage the growth of any ecclesiastical system, Catholic Bishops were ordained fom the Apostles to the present, Constantine or no Constantine
• the rapture is unknown to the Bible, only being invented in the 19th century.
• Constantine never used the title "Vicar of Christ". Ignatius of Antioch applied an expression (in Greek) similar to it to every bishop -- but that was two hundred years before Constantine. The title "Vicarius Christi" was first applied to a single individual in the person of Pope Gelasius I, two hundred years after Constantine
• Old Connie also never "assumed leadership of the Christian church," and in fact, wasn't a Christian at all until he was on his deathbed.

The truth is that the beliefs that were held by the Early Christians before the 4th century remained and remain the beliefs of the Church as a whole.

What many of the fake "Dave-type" story writers don't tell you is that

• Constantine didn't make Christianity the state religion -- he just made it such that Christians would not be persecuted officially
• Constantine wasn't the first Roman emperor to do this -- his co-Emperor did it earlier
• Christianity was made the State religion nearly a century later under Theodosius
• Christians outside the Roman Empire -- the Assyrian Church of the East which was under the Roman enemies the Sassanid Persians -- they retained beliefs more akin to orthodoxy than to non-orthodoxy

[crosshairs]

The Catholic “religion” hijacked the true Church around the time of Constantine and became the work of Satan with many, many deceptions that are still working on people today. I gotta get this book.

[The_Reader_David]

Well, you might try reading Jaroslav Pelikan’s magesterial four (or is it five?) volume history of the Church.

I point to it because Pelikan is arguably the greatest Church historian of the twentieth century. Incidentally, he was raised Lutheran and ordained as a Lutheran pastor, but after years of studying the history of the Church converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1998, eight years before his death, reposing as an Orthodox layman.

You could also go to the original sources and read the Ante-Nicene Fathers (I commend the Didache, the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Apology of St. Justin the Philosopher — called Justin Martyr in the West). Read them at face-value, ignoring any modern commentary on them which will always have confessional biases.

You can then skip ahead a few years and read the Catechetical Homilies of St. Cyril of Jerusalem — delivered in 341 or 342 after Hunt would aver St. Constantine “corrupted” the Church (we Orthodox venerate him as a saint, the Latins Hunt’s bizarre claims that Constantine “founded the Catholic Church” notwithstanding, don’t).

The whole point of St. Cyril’s homilies — delivered to those to be received into the Church that Pascha — is to demonstrate that Nicene Christanity is Biblical Christianity: he proves every point of the Nicene Creed from Scripture (although his hermeneutic method, which involves heavy application of typology may seem foreign to Biblical literalists, whose hermeneutic method seems to be “the Bible is true when read as if addressed primarily to 17th to 21st century rationalists”.) (In the Antiochian Orthodox Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America St. Cyril’s homilies are our standard catechetical materials — I’m starting a class this evening at our little Orthodox chapel studying them on behalf of one catechumen and a few of the faithful who want a refresher course.)

[Lee N. Field]

I'm afraid Dave is on the last leg of his earthly journey, but he leaves a legacy of biblical truth to point the way.

In a nursing home, is what I heard. I know no more than that. I wish him no ill.

[danielmryan]

Please note that these are excerpts from his book. The author no doubt goes into greater detail from that source.

Maybe. Of course, in the book itself, the historical narrative may just be prefatory or peripheral to a discussion of faith. If that's the case, then I'm objecting to the window-dressing, not the window.

But still, it was jarring. To see why, just ask yourself what Christianity's development would have been had there been no Constantine figure. Without the prestige of the Roman Emperor becoming Christian [partially nominal in Constantine's case, but real after a brief repaganization], the Roman worthies would have remained pagan. There would have been no Roman Catholic Church, but there also would have been no connection to the top slots of a dying Western Roman Empire. Christianity would have gone on without the prestige of Rome behind it.

So, once the Western Roman Empire fell apart, the barbarian kings and leftover potentates would have no prestige-related reason to convert to Christianity. If anything, the prestige effect would have inclined them to stay pagan. The pagan historian Tacitus' characterization of Christianity as a "miserable superstition" would have been something 'everyone knew'.

So, over the course of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, the peasantry would have been overseen by pagans. Royalty, nobility, knighthood and gentlefolk would have been overwhelmingly pagan. And clerics would have been just one of the rabble to them.

Remember, the Dark and Middle Ages were a time when "power to the people" was a joke. A fully-armed and fully-equipped knight would likely prevail over a whole mob of peasants, and surely would with a faithful squad of longbowmen. Thus, commoners were treated with open disdain by the higher classes. Without the ameliorative effect of high-prestige [i.e., Church-of-Rome] Christianity, the gulf of disdain would have been worse.

That would have been the situation that Christianity would have had to get by on. Rather than shockingly modern, the labelling of Christianity as a "religion of slaves" would be both old-hat and taken for granted in refined company - refined company of pagans.

Again: I'm talking history, not faith, but Christianity's fate would have been profoundly different without Constantine or someone like him.