The protestant obsession with "the first Christians"

[mschrank]

I was raised protestant but it never really occured to me to ask why exactly there is this obsession with “going back to the early Church” and the “earliest Christians”?

I mean, if God and the Holy Spirit are real and guiding Christians in the here and now, then what is up with this idea of “going back”? Its just assumed that earlier = better and somehow things just got corrupted at some point.

Why?

 

[bankerdavid]

And the funny thing is that those ‘first Christians’, AKA the Early Church Fathers are the fathers of the Catholic Church. The reason we look to them for doctrine is because they were closest to the closest of Jesus. They lived in a time very much like the time of Jesus, and when they needed to understand something, they could ask those who Jesus taught personally.

 

[Della]

I was raised protestant but it never really occured to me to ask why exactly there is this obsession with “going back to the early Church” and the “earliest Christians”?

I mean, if God and the Holy Spirit are real and guiding Christians in the here and now, then what is up with this idea of “going back”? Its just assumed that earlier = better and somehow things just got corrupted at some point.

Why?

Because by making such a claim they can negate hundreds of years of valid history in which the Catholic Church was the Christian Church (especially in Europe where the reformation took place).

But, many of them have discovered, if they actually look into it, that the early Church was the Catholic Church. Most ignore such inconvenient facts in favor of a Bible only approach.

Even there, though, the basic form of the Catholic Church is evident for those who do not pass over or try to explain away references to bishops, and presbyters (priests) being sent by bishops and supported by their bishops.

 

[reneeville]

Simply and articulately spoken… thank you!

And the funny thing is that those ‘first Christians’, AKA the Early Church Fathers are the fathers of the Catholic Church. The reason we look to them for doctrine is because they were closest to the closest of Jesus. They lived in a time very much like the time of Jesus, and when they needed to understand something, they could ask those who Jesus taught personally.

 

[Eileen_T]

I was raised protestant but it never really occured to me to ask why exactly there is this obsession with “going back to the early Church” and the “earliest Christians”?

I mean, if God and the Holy Spirit are real and guiding Christians in the here and now, then what is up with this idea of “going back”? Its just assumed that earlier = better and somehow things just got corrupted at some point.

Why?

The recent trend towards having “house-churches” is probably due to this “going back to the early Church”. Of course, they can’t see that the reason the 4th century Christians build special buildings for their worship was not because the Catholic Church was founded by Constantine, but because he allowed them to worship without persecution for the first time.

 

[dmelosi]

I like to use the example of how since mass communications, the bar for what is considered acceptable behavior has lowered and lowered. Look at many things now that are considered normal. (abortion for one example) The foundation for what is acceptable is based on the law of the land, not the law of God.

If you have a foundation or a rock like the Catholic Church that has doctrine that never changes & the enforcers of that doctrine that do not change, I would say that those teachings are the right ones to follow.

Look at all of the different beliefs in all of the different protestant denominations, many of the beliefs contradict each other. There has to be a “rock” to keep on track, and to not allow erosion.

 

[elvisman]

The recent trend towards having “house-churches” is probably due to this “going back to the early Church”. Of course, they can’t see that the reason the 4th century Christians build special buildings for their worship was not because the Catholic Church was founded by Constantine, but because he allowed them to worship without persecution for the first time.

You hit the nail right on the head, Eileen.
Not to mention the fact that the Church, being the body of Christ, is a living, growing life. To go back to the way it was in Acts makes no sense.
The Church MUST grow and develop. To say that it shouldn’t is to negate life itself.

 

[po18guy]

**You hit **the nail right on the head, Eileen.
Not to mention the fact that the Church, being the body of Christ, is a living, growing life. To go back to the way it was in Acts makes no sense.
The Church MUST grow and develop. To say that it shouldn’t is to negate life itself.

However, public revelation ceased with the last of the twelve. That’s a good reason to go back to the fathers. Sure, society has changed, is changing, and will always change. This is precisely why public revelation stopped. TRUTH is the rock, the anchor that holds the church steady when the winds of earthly pressure blow.

This is why the US Supreme Court goes back to the founding fathers of the constitution to determine their original intent when interpreting law. Otherwise, the law would have no foundation and would cease to be law-but the will of man. Truth doesn’t change and any church that does is not serving the truth.

Christ’s peace.

 

[Petergee]

I was raised protestant but it never really occured to me to ask why exactly there is this obsession with “going back to the early Church” and the “earliest Christians”?

I mean, if God and the Holy Spirit are real and guiding Christians in the here and now, then what is up with this idea of “going back”? Its just assumed that earlier = better and somehow things just got corrupted at some point.

Why?

I’m amazed. Why would a protestant want to go back to a Church that had no Bible?

 

[theAuthor]

However, public revelation ceased with the last of the twelve. .

I’m sorry, I hear Caths say this all the time. What do you mean? I take it you don’t believe in Madgegorie then (not that you are obliged to). What of the gift of prophesy that Paul speaks of? How can Tradition develop to cover new situations. eg non-abortive contraception. Not mentioned in Scripture or Early Frs (of course), but Magesterium rules on it. Surely this implies that the Magesterium gets new revelation.

bankerdavid, I think you said it all (totally agree), except for the Scripture verses that talk about there being many churches formed, not one united Church. I think this is why Prots believe as they do.

 

[Petergee]

I’m sorry, I hear Caths say this all the time. What do you mean? I take it you don’t believe in Madgegorie then (not that you are obliged to).

That’s nothing to do with it really. Unapproved visions such as Medjugorje and approved visions such as Fatima are both private revelations and no Catholic is ever obliged to believe any of them. And if a private revelation contains anything which is contrary to public revelation it obviously must be false, by definition.

What of the gift of prophesy that Paul speaks of? How can Tradition develop to cover new situations.

It develops always from existing revelation, using human reason.

eg non-abortive contraception. Not mentioned in Scripture or Early Frs (of course), but Magesterium rules on it. Surely this implies that the Magesterium gets new revelation.

Who told you it’s not in scripture. Way back in Genesis God imposed the death penalty on Onan for his non-abortive contraception.

bankerdavid, I think you said it all (totally agree), except for the Scripture verses that talk about there being many churches formed, not one united Church. I think this is why Prots believe as they do.

Which verses speak of Christ founding many churches?

 

[Teflon93]

I was raised protestant but it never really occured to me to ask why exactly there is this obsession with “going back to the early Church” and the “earliest Christians”?

I mean, if God and the Holy Spirit are real and guiding Christians in the here and now, then what is up with this idea of “going back”? Its just assumed that earlier = better and somehow things just got corrupted at some point.

Why?

Protestants feel compelled to explain away the 1,500 years between Pentecost and schism.

Otherwise, the continuing existence of the Catholic Church is a rebuke.

Since the apostolic age is not as well documented (Christianity being an underground and persecuted faith within the Roman Empire, the apostles had to meet secretly and didn’t leave a large paper trail), this allows Protestants (and Orthodox) to argue based on absence of evidence.

 

[Atemi]

I’m amazed. Why would a protestant want to go back to a Church that had no Bible?

There were no Scriptures in the early church?

Hmmm.

 

[Wolseley]

Many Evangelicals (and a majority of Fundamentalists) take the view that the Church went astray after the Apostle John finished writing Revelation around 100 AD, and it just got worse and worse until 1517, when Martin Luther rode in on a white horse to “save” the Church. Everything in between is considered “suspect” at best and “Papist idolatry” at worst.

Since Luther was the one who came up with the idea that Scripture alone should be the final authority, the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who adhere to this idea feel if they can just manage to do things the way they were done in “New Testament” days, then they’re getting a “purer, less undefiled” version of Christian practice. The amusing thing is that it took 400 years for the Church to decide what was even going to be in the New Testament to begin with—a fact that is conveniently overlooked.

Another phenomenon is that of “Messianic” Christians, who are also of the mind that the further back you go, the better, but they’ve taken it one step further and actually gone back to Judaism, albeit with a Christian slant. Their idea of perfection is frozen in time between Jesus calling the first disciple and Paul deciding to evangelize the Gentiles.

The problem I have with both viewpoints is that they contradict Jesus’ promise that He would never abandon us; these viewpoints are similar to the Holy Spirit coming down and saying, “Here’s what you gotta know, make sure you stick to it. I’ll be back at the Second Coming…until then, you’re on your own. Good luck!”, and disappearing.

 

[Teflon93]

Many Evangelicals (and a majority of Fundamentalists) take the view that the Church went astray after the Apostle John finished writing Revelation around 100 AD, and it just got worse and worse until 1517, when Martin Luther rode in on a white horse to “save” the Church. Everything in between is considered “suspect” at beast and “Papist idolatry” at worst.

Since Luther was the one who came up with the idea that Scripture alone should be the final authority, the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who adhere to this idea feel if they can just manage to do things the way they were done in “New Testament” days, then they’re getting a “purer, less undefiled” version of Christian practice. The amusing thing is that it took 400 years for the Church to decide what was even going to be in the New Testament to begin with—a fact that is conveniently overlooked.

Another phenomenon is that of “Messianic” Christians, who are also of the mind that the further back you go, the better, but they’ve taken it one step further and actually gone back to Judaism, albeit with a Christian slant. Their idea of perfection is frozen in time between Jesus calling the first disciple and Paul deciding to evangelize the Gentiles.

The problem I have with both viewpoints is that they contradict Jesus’ promise that He would never abandon us; these viewpoints are similar to the Holy Spirit coming down and saying, “Here’s what you gotta know, make sure you stick to it. I’ll be back at the Second Coming…until then, you’re on your own. Good luck!”, and disappearing.

Hi Wolseley—

Excellent points. Do you have any references for the claim that Catholics went astray after 100 AD? It’s become a hobby of mine to try to pull examples of the specific date non-Catholics claim the Catholic Church was founded. Based on your post, it seems like the inference is that as soon as the last book of the New Testament was written, the Catholic Church was wrong because it didn’t become sola scriptura at that point. Of course, not knowing precisely when Revelation was written creates a problem—we know the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD as fulfillment of Christ’s judgment of the sanhedrin; why wouldn’t a similar (and datable) judgment have befallen the Catholic Church after Revelation was written if this argument were true?

 

[Wolseley]

There were no Scriptures in the early church?

Hmmm.

Up until about 50 AD, there were only the Old Testament Scriptures.

Christian Scriptures started being written about 50 AD, with probably either Galatians or 1 Thessalonians being first. The others were written during a fifty-year span, ending with Revelation, being written some time between 95 AD and 100 AD.

After that followed a 300-year span when various books were disputed; some of the books we now have in the Bible were rejected by some local churches, while others that are now not found in the Bible (the Didache, for example) were considered canonical Scripture by other churches. Most of the contention settled down by 393 AD, when the Council of Hippo issued a list of Scriptures which became more or less definitive. This list was the same list issued by Pope Damasus in 382.

The Canon was officially closed by Pope Innocent I in 405 AD.

So, yes, there were Scriptures in the Early Church, but not like we think of them. The entire, finished, 73-book Bible, with leather cover, gilt page edging, attached concordance, and thumb-indexing, didn’t come down from heaven on a golden platter in 33 AD…when we’re speaking of Christian Scriptures, the thing had to be written first, and nobody even started on it until seventeen years after Jesus returned to the Father.

 

[mschrank]

Good posts here.

I think the big problem with the protestant view is that it kind of implies that Christianity is a whopping failure of a religion. Think about it, Jesus comes, does His thing, then lets it all fall to pieces for 3/4ths of its known history, only to be rescued by someone who could only be rightly called a great Prophet (if true) Martin Luther? How could Jesus be God and let things go to seed like that, for so long!??

There must be more to the story than that. To be honest, I have never heard a good protestant defense of this. There are pleny of smart protestants, they must have some way of explaining this huge gap and the fact that early Christians most certainly did have a Mass (John 6, Last Supper, ‘breaking of the bread’, Paul writing not to ‘profane the body and blood’, Church fathers, the list goes on).

To date, each protestant I have debated with simply misunderstands what Catholics believe (“Catholics worship Mary”), are completely ignorant (“They have crucifixes because they don’t know Jesus rose from the dead”) or have cultural animus against the Catholic Church (i.e., Dutch/English Protestants). It seems to be more a lack of information than genuine disagreement. I would honestly like, really, to meet an informed and non-culturally biased Protestant that could help me understand their worldview.

 

[Wolseley]

Hi Wolseley—

Excellent points. Do you have any references for the claim that Catholics went astray after 100 AD? It’s become a hobby of mine to try to pull examples of the specific date non-Catholics claim the Catholic Church was founded. Based on your post, it seems like the inference is that as soon as the last book of the New Testament was written, the Catholic Church was wrong because it didn’t become sola scriptura at that point. Of course, not knowing precisely when Revelation was written creates a problem—we know the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD as fulfillment of Christ’s judgment of the sanhedrin; why wouldn’t a similar (and datable) judgment have befallen the Catholic Church after Revelation was written if this argument were true?

If you’re taking the stance that the New Testament is supreme, then of course anything that came along after Revelation was written is suspect, so about 95 to 100 AD. Others like to point to Constantine and make him the scapegoat. It all depends on the school of thought in question.

mschrank:

Good posts here.

I think the big problem with the protestant view is that it kind of implies that Christianity is a whopping failure of a religion. Think about it, Jesus comes, does His thing, then lets it all fall to pieces for 3/4ths of its known history, only to be rescued by someone who could only be rightly called a great Prophet (if true) Martin Luther? How could Jesus be God and let things go to seed like that, for so long!??

There must be more to the story than that. To be honest, I have never heard a good protestant defense of this. There are pleny of smart protestants, they must have some way of explaining this huge gap and the fact that early Christians most certainly did have a Mass (John 6, Last Supper, ‘breaking of the bread’, Paul writing not to ‘profane the body and blood’, Church fathers, the list goes on).

One of the more common explanations you’ll run into is that the “real” Church (the “Bible-believing” Christians) went underground, and was persecuted by the bad ole mean Catholic Church until Luther saved the day, and everybody could come out of hiding with their King James Bibles that the family had been hiding for 1400 years, LOL.

Ludicrous books like James Carroll’s Trail of Blood try to show that the “real” Christians were always there, but underground, from 100 AD to 1500 AD, and every so often, some of them surfaced and were wiped out by the Catholics…Carroll appropriates various heretical groups like the Albigensians, for example, and tries to pass them off as “Bible Christians” being persecuted by the Catholics. The amusing thing is that anybody who ever studied anything about what the Albigensians actually believed know that their tenants of faith were about as far as you can get from modern “Bible” Christianity.

 

[mschrank]

Albigensians? Weren’t they the ones who were Manichean in nature and had this weird class system of credenti and perfecti, worshipped fire or something and weren’t even really Christians but something closer to Zoroastrians?

Bible believing?!

 

[Contarini]

I was raised protestant but it never really occured to me to ask why exactly there is this obsession with “going back to the early Church” and the “earliest Christians”?

I mean, if God and the Holy Spirit are real and guiding Christians in the here and now, then what is up with this idea of “going back”? Its just assumed that earlier = better and somehow things just got corrupted at some point.

Why?

Well, this is a pretty ancient (and, I think, correct) Christian belief. It’s true that it doesn’t fit our modern assumptions about progress. But traditionally Christians were suspicious of anything new. It was assumed that if something were true, it would have been obvious from the beginning.

Newman’s theory of Development of Doctrine I think does a good job of reconciling this traditional understanding with the modern belief in progress and development (these are not necessarily the same thing, by the way). I have problems with some of the specifics of Newman’s theory, but the general point is certainly valid–for real development to take place, there must be a fundamental continuity. We look to the earliest Christians not in order to imitate them in every detail, but in order to make sure that we have preserved that fundamental continuity.

Of course, how one determines continuity is a far more difficult issue!

Edwin