 |
| David Fournier |
|
EARLY CHRISTIANITIES (EC01)
RECOVERING OUR LOSSES (MOD01)
COMPONENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (LG0104)
DAVID FOURNIER-INSTRUCTOR
www.restoringgrace.com
Purpose of this LG: To see that regardless of how much diversity appeared in the early goings of the Christian community, there were several components that all sides of the conflict focused on.
The picture of the early Christians in the Book of Acts seems a bit inconsistent with the historical records of the conflicts that erupted soon after the death of Jesus. As a matter of fact, the “cell-group” or “home meeting” type of faith exchange ended relatively quickly and the church came on the scene as early as the writings of Paul.
During this Learning Guide, we will examine the most important overarching theme of the Christian faith, and then touch on a few of the hot buttons that the conflicts most addressed. Again, as a point of caution, our purposes here is to examine the differing beliefs and their writings to try and determine what points they were making and how their beliefs differed.
The most obvious and meaningful component of the Christian practice is faith. Faith can be divided into two separate yet equally purposeful categories. First, there is corporate faith, which is a faith in line with a particular set of doctrines or teachings. This is when we ascribe to a denominational system (Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostals, to name a few) and draw benefit from adhering to that denomination or a teacher’s beliefs. This type of faith is perhaps the most widely experienced faith in Christian circles.
The next type of faith is more personal or individual. This component of faith is measured by how devout or religious the person is with their faith. Some people are known as deeply devout, pious or spiritual. This faith component is not so much as measurement of what a person believes, but how deeply and how much they put their beliefs into practice.
For the rest of our class, we will use the term orthodoxy (right belief) to describe corporate faith and orthopraxy (right practice) to describe individual faith and practice. Most of the conflicts of the early Christian development concern orthodoxy rather than orthopraxy. That is an interesting historical observation since the vast majority of the teachings of Jesus dealt with right living.
One component of the Christian faith that is a large part of the faith today, but not so much of an influence in the early goings is the cultural component. Families tend to be consistent in their upbringing of their children into whatever their faith practice may be, and this can lead to a very difficult bias to overcome as the child grows and develops his/her own understandings.
Now we will turn our attention to a few of the components that sparked the debates, the ones that seemed to be on everyone’s mind and everyone’s teaching. Some will be very obvious and others might be surprising. But each will be worth mentioning in their own right. At this point, we cannot be exhaustive in our study, but we can begin to ascertain the importance of these issues and what may have brought them into focus.
The first component for our discussion that seemed to drive a lot of interest in the early Christian community was the issue of suffering. This is perhaps the most historically practical element, considering the times the community was growing in. Fierce Roman occupation was taking place and during the times of Jesus, Rome was under attack from many different fronts. This made the Roman reaction especially violent and judgmental.
For some Christians, they readily accepted the ongoing Old Testament theme of suffering. The righteous would suffer, sometimes unfairly at the hands of evil, but in the end God would deliver them from their oppressors and eventually their suffering. But as time progressed, it did not seem like God was very responsive, and even when the righteous were performing as God desired, the oppression continued.
This led some Christian thinkers to develop a different tack. They concluded we are involved in a spiritually apocalyptic battle with the forces of good and evil. The evil forces attack the righteous people to cause God pain. God counters by protecting the righteous and empowering them to fight in this battle. On top of it all, they concluded that some of the suffering was unexplainable, but that was all right because God does not have to explain anything to us. Even if He did, we probably would not get it.
Other groups of Christians did not get long with this idea of suffering. They felt that the battle between good an evil could explain some suffering, but what about tidal waves wiping out thousands, infant death, starvation and natural events that claimed the lives of thousands? These people were not involved in a battle of good and evil; they just lived to close to the water, or in the desert or a place with no food.
Enter the Gnostics. We will get into another session just about them. But for now, suffice it to say that they approached the idea of suffering from a very different stance. Borrowing a bit from Marcion (another guy we will get to), they embraced the idea that an inferior god created this world and all we see in it.
This foolish god, who is named several different names by the several different groups, did not have the mental horsepower to hold the show together. Worse still, he was a bit of a sex fiend, and started intermingling with the lesser gods. These copies of copies of copies eventually filter down to the first man, Adam. Once human beings are around, all the lesser gods enter into a cosmic battle to control Adam’s life.
Again, without ruining the whole story, lets look at what they are trying to accomplish. Basically, they were giving the good and just God a way out. He could not be blamed for this mess; He was bringing the secret knowledge through His son, Jesus, that would help us escape this world of suffering and get back to the original perfect state of creation. I could say a lot more here and I really, really want to, but I will exercise discipline and stay on task.
This approach held by the Gnostics upset the view employed by the proto-orthodoxy because it diminished if not completely removed the importance of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Salvation came through self-achieved knowledge and not through the sacrifice of Jesus. This difference of components led to a violent war of words brought on by the proto-orthodoxy leaders and we believe were fully contended by their opponents.
Before you start to think about lighting the fires so we can all burn the Gnostics at the stake, look deeper. Their whole ideology is not based on evil intent and diminishing the existence of God. They were trying to find a way, through myth and legend, what we might call today a “graphic novel”, to silence the God critic’s chatter about suffering. More to the point, they sought t explain why God seems to do nothing to stop it.
One of the early points I will be making is that from an historical approach, there is no sufficient evidence to prove that these differing groups of the faith were not currently attending the same meetings, talking the communion and fellowshipping in the same spiritual communities. The writings of Paul warn against heresy occurring in the church, not down the street. The point is these Gnostics, Marcions, Messianics, Doecists, all of them, may very well be your spiritual brothers and sisters all in tune with the emerging doctrines and teachings of the early faith. Just thought you should know the family is larger than you thought.
Without a doubt, the most hotly contested component of the faith is the chief principal himself, Jesus of Nazareth. Most historical scholars would agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a real figure from history. Very few educated people would try to explain away Jesus in an attempt to discredit or disprove his existence here on earth. Unless of course they have a reason they feel he should not exist. Which brings us to an interesting observation about Jesus; most people talking about Jesus are trying to influence people concerning Jesus, one way or another. He very seldom gets to speak for himself.
What seemed to trip up the early Christians more than what Jesus taught was who (or more to the point, how) he was and of course, how he functioned. There were many myths in ancient storytelling that parallel the life of Jesus in history. There were gods that had kids, people who died and lived again, miracle workers and great moral teachers.
But very few of the ancient myths and stories claimed that the person of their attention was a real flesh and blood individual that should be followed and worshiped. These stories were stories, meant to entertain and inform a massively illiterate society. When the early followers of Jesus began to tell the traditions of Jesus to others, it must have sounded like many of these ancient stories. The main difference was the faith of the Christians. They saw Jesus firsthand and understood him to be the biblical fulfillment of Messiah. Now, they had to develop a system of “reason” to explain it.
The Synoptic Gospels (meaning, “seen together”) are Matthew, Mark and Luke. They provide us with a backdrop to see the mission of Jesus moving forward to its climax, which for all brands of Christianity is the death burial and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospel of John however, calls us out loud and clear from its opening lines the proclamation that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
Even in the Gospel records we find different approaches to how this information about Jesus was delivered. We also have found out through historical research that not all the gospels were present in all the churches. They seemed to be regionally distributed, then collected and consolidated. This will be a subject for a later discussion.
So if the original documents recording these events have different viewpoints as to the life of Jesus, imagine records being written about him some 50-60 years after his life. The accuracy of these records would be highly suspect. Fact is that the gospels as we know them are records written some 50-60 years after the death of Jesus. They do not claim to be written by eyewitnesses. They did not come signed and we have no solid historical proof of the authorship. At least two of the authors were not disciples of Jesus. Worth noting: the writings of Paul actually appear earlier.
The early Christians were compiling these records, writing their own versions and trying to answer the questions coming in from the predominantly pagan culture. Questions like how did Jesus function as both God and man? He would become tired (human-like); yet have control of the elements (god-like), like when he calmed the sea waves after being rousted out if his sleep?
From their viewpoint, Jesus being tried as a common criminal, tortured then killed did not bode well with the idea of a Messiah sent from God. There must be another explanation for the end results. Here come the Doecists, who believed Jesus was a good human that divine favor shined upon, with God taking up residence in the body of Jesus at baptism. But the news of Jesus’ death could not possibly mean that God died, so the Doecist believed that God left Jesus alone to die when Jesus cries out the famous, “My God, my God, why have Your forsaken me?”
Focusing on the components, we see that Doecists believed that Jesus was part man and part God. They believed he was a Son of God. They believe he was divinely inhabited. Where they differ is the when and how of the divine possession and embodiment. As I mentioned earlier, it is the placement of the components that creates the separation between the different faith groups. They have the same pieces; they just assemble them in a way that provides them with the desired outcome.
Through the last learning guides, we have been setting the stage for an amazing discovery. We are about to embark on a detailed journey of the what, how and the why of the early Christian community, its battles, changes, doctrines and development. As we progress, I want to offer a few words of encouragement and a somber reminder.
As we move forward, it will become difficult to keep the historical component separate from the belief component. Some of my students get a little offended by the different beliefs of the early Christian groups and have a hard time not getting all wound up. We are attempting to view from a historical lens the differing viewpoints about Jesus, which were not all in harmony with the beliefs we ascribe to today. Attacking people for their beliefs is never a good idea. Often we can learn more from people we differ with than a room full of like-minded ones. Suffice it to say, take in all you can and learn from their struggles.
But always remember, no one-faith group has a market on the truth. Many of the “truths” have changed throughout the years. The Christian faith has changed emphasis several times during its history and even during our lifetimes. Our mission here is to evaluate the historical data and try to determine what were these various groups trying to express about Jesus.
|