.
Bottom line is that during the first hundred years or so no one used the cross as a religous symbol, about the only ritual that the early church had was communion.
Well, they certainly baptized and they confessed their sins (James 5:16), and they anointed the sick (James again), and they laid hands on elders (Ordination) , and people got married. That takes care of six of the seven sacraments, and Confirmation – the seventh – is actually a part of baptism, so there you go. All the sacraments are in place in the New Testament.
A lot of persecution, lot of growth, unique concepts of forgiveness and love, hard to come by in Roman times. But again little structure, little form,
Even in the NT they had enough structure to hold the council of Jerusalem. By that time, Peter was already in Rome, so he must have come back for the event; Paul and Barnabas made the trip from Antioch. So there was “structure and form.”
. . . most of what they had were copies of letters and the gospels written in a very elaborate minuet of sharing info. But see? Where’s Mary? Where’s praying to Saints?
Devotion to the saints arises very early. Zooey, our resident Methodist has addressed this. The earliest prayer to Our Lady, the “Sub tuum praesidium” occurs in a mid-third century liturgy. It is evident that the Marian devotions arise following the firestorm of heresy in the third and fourth centuries when one group of heretics or another is constantly attacking either the humanity or the divinity of Jesus. All mainstream Protestants adhere to the first four ecumenical councils. The third council in 431 A.D. declared Mary “Mother of God” (See Presbyterian Dr. R. C. Sproul’s magnificent treatment of this subject) as a protection of the divinity and humanity of Christ.
In Rome. The Pope is just a bishop. The bishop of Rome. The Church sees itself as a family. Pope means “Papa” – he is the big daddy. No flim-flam about it.
Where was the use of ANY symbol including ALL crosses? Not to be found.
Fish, loaves, vines – all over the catecombs. Crosses emerge in the 4th Century. I see this as partly due to the fact that as one of his last acts as Emperor, Constantine abolished the use of crosses for executions in honor of Christ. The cross then becomes a “particular” symbol for Christians and well suited as a symbol of the faith.
This stuff seems to have either developed with time or to have been adopted for a variety of reasons,
Theology **does **develop over time. That isn’t to say that the developments are wrong; in fact, they are necessary. As new questions and heresies arise, theology and iconography develop to handle them. Whassa problelm?
heck, a love of ceremony is probably genetic.
Two thirds of the OT and much of the NT – especially the Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Revelation are almost entirely liturgical.
My problem is that I don’t think that the Apostle Paul could receive communion in a Catholic Church based on the regulations.
He was a baptized Catholic in good standing. No probleml.
I can’t begin to imagine what they’d make of the Trinity Broadcast Network. Nothing good I’m sure. Did you know that all of the earliest pictures of Christ Jesus show Him clean-shaven? Painted by Greeks. Jews were not allowed to make images of people.
Right about the Jews. As for the beard, the pictures of Jesus in the very early Church are derived from the art-forms of the cultures in which they arise. Romans were big on the Good Shepherd (88 Good Shepherds in the catacombs alone), and they portrayed this image in their own fashion: no beard, short hair . . . The pictures are not portraits; they are theological statements. Jesus gets a beard and long hair after the discovery of the mandylion (perhaps Veronica’s veil or the shroud of Turin) in the mid-sixth century in Odessa (Mesopotamia). That image was the forerunner of the “portraits” of Jesus we are familiar with today.
ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, hoss!! Turn me loose on Nestorius, and I have an
actual skeleton arising from his coffin at the mention of his name!!!
