Potpourri - Lenten explosion, "Scapegoat" followup, Hooray for Adventists
This post got long again. The first paragraph is very cheerful, & the end is fairly positive as well, but the middle gets kinda deep & lugubrious (maybe "ponderous" would be a more accurate word). You are welcome to skip it and read something more cheerful, like a book by Lemony Snicket.
We had the most amazing, inspiring time at the country church on Wednesday evening, when at least 70 people showed up for Lenten worship! About 40 from the town church and 30 from the country church - it's not atypical for those numbers of people to show up on Sunday! What an encouragement for all, especially the country church, who have experienced some lean times not so very long ago.
It was gratifying to receive a comment from a complete stranger on my "Three Great Scapegoats" post below. Thanks, Archangel, for stopping by. It's nice to know that my new little blog hasn't gone completely unnoticed. He zeroed in on Constantine, saying, "Constantine gets the blame for a lot because he is guilty of a lot. Since he was the architect of much of what remains in modern Christianity, it is no surprise to find those that are his defenders. They simply defend what they know, not what is right."
So it looks like some attention to Constantine is in order. Some, such as Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code, claim that Christianity as we know it today (the Divinity of Christ, etc.) was basically concocted as a plot to centralize power. Much could be said on this topic, but for today I'll just ask this question: why would the early Christians cede the power to change Christianity to a theological neophyte like Constantine just because he happened to be emperor? The blood of the martyrs proves that the early Christians would "rather fight than switch" when it comes to foundational beliefs. So where's the mass martyrdom of Christians who didn't believe in Constantine's new form of Christianity? And in places like Ethiopia or the Indus valley, where the Roman Empire never ruled, why are the ancient forms of Christianity there so strangely similar to Roman and Byzantine Christianity? (Monophysitism & Nestorianism may have some differences from Roman & Byzantine Christology, but compared to Dan Brown's faux-gnosticism they're not much different at all from "Mere Christianity" as we know it)
Others, such as many Protestants, affirm "fundamentals of the faith" such as the Divinity/Humanity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, etc., but blame Constantine for taking the ancient catacomb faith and turning it into a hierarchical institution (and I suspect Archangel may be coming from this direction). Seventh-Day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White makes a comment in The Great Controversy to the effect that Constantine's faith was a sham, and many would agree. Constantine was a flawed person who was responsible for much bloodshed, including members of his own family. Such was par for the course for emperors, though I think we ought to be able to expect better from a Christian.
To me this seems a trickier charge to explore than Dan Brown's charge. Ultimately the answer lies not so much in studying Constantine as in getting to know the Early Church so well that we can see what changed or didn't change when Constantine came along. I've been reading The Apostolic
Fathers, and one thing I've already learned was that Ignatius of Antioch in AD 107 had a much more hierarchical view of the Church than I expected, insisting on the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. That doesn't mean that he had in mind a Roman-style bishop, but it does show that at least some Christians less than a century after Christ had a very hierarchical view of clergy authority - certainly a challenge to much of my thinking.
Now, let me shift gears. I could voice my disagreements with the Seventh-Day Adventists about the sacraments, about eschatology, about the role of certain Old Testament laws, about their aforementioned part in questioning the sincerity of Constantine's faith, about many other things. But today I want to say, "Three cheers for the Adventists!!!" We've now been to two sessions of a "vegetarian natural life cooking" seminar at the SDA church in our area. I wish more Christians had a comprehensive vision of the meaning of Christianity in all areas of life, the way these dear people do (that's what I appreciate about Francis Schaeffer & L'Abri as well). We're impressed by the team of women, from their 20s to their 60s, who are sharing such a deep knowledge of home economics and healthy cooking (and the food is very tasty, too!). I'm embarrassed that it's an idiosynchratic sect where we have to go to learn these things, and that among more "mainstream" Christians like the Lutherans it can seem a bit kooky for a church to focus so much on treating the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit (as the Bible says it is).
Well, it's time that I spend more of my time & effort working on my class assignments for the distance ed course I'm taking on Jewish Theology, so my blog entries will focus mostly on those topics in the next couple months or so.
We had the most amazing, inspiring time at the country church on Wednesday evening, when at least 70 people showed up for Lenten worship! About 40 from the town church and 30 from the country church - it's not atypical for those numbers of people to show up on Sunday! What an encouragement for all, especially the country church, who have experienced some lean times not so very long ago.
It was gratifying to receive a comment from a complete stranger on my "Three Great Scapegoats" post below. Thanks, Archangel, for stopping by. It's nice to know that my new little blog hasn't gone completely unnoticed. He zeroed in on Constantine, saying, "Constantine gets the blame for a lot because he is guilty of a lot. Since he was the architect of much of what remains in modern Christianity, it is no surprise to find those that are his defenders. They simply defend what they know, not what is right."
So it looks like some attention to Constantine is in order. Some, such as Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code, claim that Christianity as we know it today (the Divinity of Christ, etc.) was basically concocted as a plot to centralize power. Much could be said on this topic, but for today I'll just ask this question: why would the early Christians cede the power to change Christianity to a theological neophyte like Constantine just because he happened to be emperor? The blood of the martyrs proves that the early Christians would "rather fight than switch" when it comes to foundational beliefs. So where's the mass martyrdom of Christians who didn't believe in Constantine's new form of Christianity? And in places like Ethiopia or the Indus valley, where the Roman Empire never ruled, why are the ancient forms of Christianity there so strangely similar to Roman and Byzantine Christianity? (Monophysitism & Nestorianism may have some differences from Roman & Byzantine Christology, but compared to Dan Brown's faux-gnosticism they're not much different at all from "Mere Christianity" as we know it)
Others, such as many Protestants, affirm "fundamentals of the faith" such as the Divinity/Humanity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, etc., but blame Constantine for taking the ancient catacomb faith and turning it into a hierarchical institution (and I suspect Archangel may be coming from this direction). Seventh-Day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White makes a comment in The Great Controversy to the effect that Constantine's faith was a sham, and many would agree. Constantine was a flawed person who was responsible for much bloodshed, including members of his own family. Such was par for the course for emperors, though I think we ought to be able to expect better from a Christian.
To me this seems a trickier charge to explore than Dan Brown's charge. Ultimately the answer lies not so much in studying Constantine as in getting to know the Early Church so well that we can see what changed or didn't change when Constantine came along. I've been reading The Apostolic
Fathers, and one thing I've already learned was that Ignatius of Antioch in AD 107 had a much more hierarchical view of the Church than I expected, insisting on the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. That doesn't mean that he had in mind a Roman-style bishop, but it does show that at least some Christians less than a century after Christ had a very hierarchical view of clergy authority - certainly a challenge to much of my thinking.
Now, let me shift gears. I could voice my disagreements with the Seventh-Day Adventists about the sacraments, about eschatology, about the role of certain Old Testament laws, about their aforementioned part in questioning the sincerity of Constantine's faith, about many other things. But today I want to say, "Three cheers for the Adventists!!!" We've now been to two sessions of a "vegetarian natural life cooking" seminar at the SDA church in our area. I wish more Christians had a comprehensive vision of the meaning of Christianity in all areas of life, the way these dear people do (that's what I appreciate about Francis Schaeffer & L'Abri as well). We're impressed by the team of women, from their 20s to their 60s, who are sharing such a deep knowledge of home economics and healthy cooking (and the food is very tasty, too!). I'm embarrassed that it's an idiosynchratic sect where we have to go to learn these things, and that among more "mainstream" Christians like the Lutherans it can seem a bit kooky for a church to focus so much on treating the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit (as the Bible says it is).
Well, it's time that I spend more of my time & effort working on my class assignments for the distance ed course I'm taking on Jewish Theology, so my blog entries will focus mostly on those topics in the next couple months or so.
1 Comments:
Re: Jewish Studies, I'm in a degree program called "Master of Science in Jewish Studies" from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, www.spertus.edu. Currently I'm puttering away at one of the six core courses, but I hope to do a "concentration area" on Post-exilic Judaism, as it holds a number of crucial topics to my interests, such as apocalyptic literature, the apocrypha, the Septuagint, and definitely not least, the appearance of Christianity.
I think my true ultimate goal with it is to be strengthened as a Christian apologist. Today we see so many people claiming so many things about the origins of Christianity, and people are suckers because they are so ignorant of early Christianity and its predecessors, so they believe things like "The DaVinci Code." Others are Christians but "create the early Church in their own image" by making the Early Church into proto-Lutherans or Proto-Catholic or proto-Baptist or proto-Adventist or proto-Reformed or whatever else, even though I'm not sure that it was quite like any group we have today.
Rev. Gillquist & his group entered the Orthodox Church after a process of beginning with a study of the Apostolic Church Fathers and marching forward from there through Church History. I'm also on a search, and wherever I end up (and I could end up even more firmly entrenched in Lutheranism), I'm starting even further back than they did. They began with the Fathers. I'm beginning with the Fathers of the Fathers.
Thanks for the "New Perspective on Paul" link you sent. It's fascinating to me that they're interested in an accurate assessment of "Second Temple Judaism", which is in fact the exact same thing as "Post-exilic Judaism", my growing interest.
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