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To: fwdude

Is anyone aware of a more objective account of how the church developed? Something obviously happened that caused the church to change or even grow in a different direction with Constantine’s conversion. I don’t trust Dave Hunt, but I don’t believe the Catholic Church either.


17 posted on 12/04/2012 8:33:30 PM PST by bethelgrad
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To: bethelgrad
you can read the secular history -- it will show you that

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


36 posted on 12/05/2012 4:31:44 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: bethelgrad

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.)


38 posted on 12/05/2012 8:11:55 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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