Yes, I do remember. :yup:
The *historical *evidence is that the Apostles started the Christian church–yes? We are agreed?
Do you mean the original 12 apostles? (Or should we really say 11?) Or do you mean 12 including Paul? Or did anyone who was successful in preaching and starting a genuine and flourishing Christian community eventually get the title “apostle” in order to be brought into the bigger fold and “owned” by the established “big guys”.
Jeez, we see this going on in various Catholic communities,cities or countries even today promoting their own past great holy persons and leaders for canonisation today. And Rome is very happy to oblige if a good case can be made. As they say, “failure is an orphan but success has many fathers.”
Thats how it happens today, and I see absolutely no reason, at a historical level, why it would not have happened back then just as Edwin states. The winners write the glossy, tidy history. But anyone with a bit of experience of human nature and appreciation of history knows life is never as easy, tidy or as uncomplicated as the conservators would have us believe.
But to come back to the above statement.
If we eventually call someone who starts a major, flourishing early Christian movement an “apostle” … then your statement is a self-evident truth that does not need any evidence from history to back it up and it cannot be disproved.
This is also what I understand Edwin Contarini to be saying re “tautology.” I come to the same conclusion.
However, if we are talking about the 11 followers of Jesus, that statement is not easy to support without qualification. There were 500 other “independent” disciples who witnessed the resurrection afterall. And Paul did not. And even if we couldn’t really say the 12 apostles alone started the early church it does not undermine my faith.
The next step is then to deconstruct the word “church” in the above statement. In early christian times it by no means had the same connotations as it has today. Its like trying to compare raw unprocessed cane sugar with 100% pure, refined white Chelsea “sugar” (our local brand). Same name, very different (but related) attributes. The early “Church” was in many ways a rather spread out, fragmented and isolated collection of christian “colonies.” Many were still linked in to local worshipping Jewish communities and may have looked almost indistinguishable from them for a good while. The only thing, it seems, holding many of these separately founded groups together as a “church” were wandering preachers (including the Apostles of course) and their rear-guard action to unify them after the event (which eventually proved successful).
If that is what you mean by the apostles (and their succeessors) “starting” the “church” then, yes, I can go along with that. Lets not kid ourselves it was a tidy clear cut process. It is unlikely that many small independent christian communities were actually started by the original 11 Apostles. They were all started by Jesus and those who witnessed his resurrection.
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