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

I have to object to a couple characterizations, though they may have little relevance to your current debate. I can't let these go uncontested. This didn't happen in the 2nd century, at least not on the topics you chose. If you want to make the various gnostics into "a dozen forms of Christianity" with "different everything," then you can, but it's not really a good characterization of what was going on the 2nd century. The gnostic faiths really would have no reason to debate the Jesus is God vs. Jesus is man issues that came up in the 4th century. It was inapplicable to their theology. The "orthodox" 2nd century church really had no "denominations" in the 2nd century that would have issues over this. Yes, there was the Ebionites that would be closer than the gnostics, but they didn't debate that either. Jesus was just a man to them. The "orthodox" churches didn't start dividing until the 3rd century, and they didn't have any widespread divisions until the Arian controversy in the late 3rd and early 4th century. The 3rd century really only had the Donatists and the Novationists that split over readmitting the lapsed when persecution ended.There was no "debate" between 2nd century Christians and the gnostics. They were completely split by the 2nd century, with the gnostics representing a completely different religion with, as you say, different gods.Your description of the evolution of some of those doctrines is really pretty insightful, but it didn't start till the 4th century. Prior to the 4th century, the emphasis was on not changing anything but holding to "apostolic tradition," so that Scriptural debates could be solved by asking major churches that were started by apostles, such as Rome or Ephesus. That started to change in the 3rd century with the kind of honor given to brilliant thinkers like Origen (whom I really like), but it really didn't open the door to the doctrinal debates you mention until the 4th century. This isn't true, either. Your quote doesn't say that about the RCC, to whom it most certainly does matter whether you are good. The RCC adamantly defends their stand that good works are necessary to be saved. Your quote says simply that you must be in the RCC to be saved, but that doesn't mean all in the RCC are saved. The RCC teaches its members that they must do good works to go to heaven (a position I would agree with them on, though I'm not RCC).Secondly, there's nothing reasonable about attributing this to Paul. He did indeed say that we are justified by faith apart from works, but he also said no immoral, unclean, or greedy person will have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God, and then he said to let no one deceive you about this (Eph 5:3-8). Just because Martin Luther took the utterly ludicrous position that goodness doesn't matter and he started a widespread movement that agrees with him does not mean that it's reasonable to attribute that position to Paul. No one agreed with Martin Luther for 15 centuries. Even Calvin, the next most famous reformer, didn't agree with him.

Just a note on Gandhi. He did investigate and concluded that "if it were not for Christians, I would be one." He believed in living by the Sermon on the Mount and thought it was very similar to his beloved Bhagavad Gita (sorry If I botched the spelling). I don't meant to answer for anastasia or the RCC, but on the Bible side, this is addressed directly by Paul in Rom 2. People have a law in their hearts that their conscience testifies, too, and their own conscience will either excuse or condemn them (vv. 14-16).

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.

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.

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.

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...

The OP church was doing just fine, growing and outpacing all its competitors, before any blood was shed by any Christians.A person who reads Eusebius' history, written in AD 325, and compares it with Sozomen's or Socrates', written in the 370's, is in for a shock. The difference between the two time periods is so vast that it is as though two completely different churches are being written about. The largest difference is that the pre-nicene church is non-violent and the post-nicene extremely violent. Very little else is the same, either, though.I don't believe that post-nicene organization with governmentally appointed bishops and government backing was of God. Our Bible has little to do with the Pre-nicene church. Their canon varied from church to church, and converts agreed to a rule of faith, not to serve a book, but a God.I heard it argued once that Justin Martyr didn't have the 4 Gospels that we have. I don't agree with that, but it does establish a point. When Justin defended Christianity, he spoke of Christ as a teacher who was not a sophist, but who gave concise and practical teaching on how to live. You'll find the other apologists speaking the same way. Their defense of the faith was a defense of the behavior and lifestyle of Christians, not a defense of a book. I don't think God intended to create a Bible. Yep. The formation of a set canon was done by political bishops in political conferences that had nothing whatsoever to do with the "faith once for all delivered to the saints." Perhaps. The people I consider part of my spiritual heritage were oppressed, too. They're as hard to find as the gnostic groups in the middle ages and were stamped out as fast as they rose up. When the Reformation happened, both RCC and Protestants put those who held to the tenets of the PO church to death. The RCC chose much more gruesome methods, though. I think there's a war going on. I think that was God's intention, that his people would always have to chose to flow against the world and have to war for his kingdom. I think the current fractionization of Christianity is the best attempt the enemy has made so far against the church. Probably better than that great judo move around AD 300, where there was a great attempt to shut the church down, followed by a full embrace of the church by the emperor. That was highly successful at corrupting it thoroughly. I'll help you with that. While Gandhi wasn't a Christian, he was familiar with and embraced Christ's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Even more so, Gandhi lived by a confidence that there is a power, indeed almost a personhood, to Truth, and Truth would lend its power to those who stand up for its precepts. I believe Truth most definitely is a person; I believe he lived on earth as the Christ, and I believe his followers have always had immense success at changing the world around them, especially when they get together.Violence provides an immediate end to those powers. The Truth doesn't need a sword or a gun.When you suppress the truth, it rises up again in another place, like a weed that can't be stopped. When you kill his followers, more arise. The blood of the martyrs really is seed.Gandhi found the power of Truth--the real power of Christ--and he passed it on to Martin Luther King, Jr. Their power was incredible. Both changed the greatest nations of their day. Not too many are willing to follow in their footsteps, though, because the price of that power is your own blood.

Plenty of those. Thought that through a lot. My wife spent quite a bit of time in tears when we were first married. Then she got her dad, a part-time pastor and the most zealous Christian she knew, to come over and straighten me out one night. He turned out to be eminently reasonable and told my wife that if he saw things the way I did, he'd do all the same things I was doing. After that, she was very supportive through repeated rejections in various churches.Eventually, though, we found people as committed as I believed Christ's disciples ought to be. Then there was a lot more fear about speaking up, because the rejection mattered a lot more. It wasn't just a club, but people who had become family.I'm pleased to report that what I found is what I had always hoped would be true. The church--the real one (sorry for how terrible that sounds)--cares what's true, not what's popular. They were a mixture of shocked, miffed, and open, but in the end willing to look at what's true and real.So I'm with about 250 people (and growing) who take pretty much the same approach to Christianity I do (and who have of course influenced me more than I've influenced them). The conflicts are inevitable, true, but they occur outside my family in Christ, not inside it.