What did the post apostolic church believe?

[MoreCoffee]

What did the post apostolic church believe?

 

[faramir.pete]

I think that question needs narrowing down somewhat, after all we are all part of the 'post apostolic church'!


Pete from Peterborough UK

 

[psalms 91]

I would say the first 100 years after

 

[MoreCoffee]

I would say the first 100 years after

Make it up to and including the first 300 years.

 

[psalms 91]

I am more interested in what did they believe right after, how much have we deviated from that, etc. Not interested in another debate about denoms or whether or not the Catholic church was in existance, only in what did the saints believe and practice then.

 

[Imalive]

What did the post apostolic church believe?

in Jesus

 

[MoreCoffee]

I am more interested in what did they believe right after, how much have we deviated from that, etc. Not interested in another debate about denoms or whether or not the Catholic church was in existance, only in what did the saints believe and practice then.

I know what you mean and I agree. The threads where I asked what do xxx believe have all gone sour in a big way with people pushing their barrows filled with anti-this and anti-that until the threads are toxic. It isn't what I wanted. I was hoping that the Lutheran thread would tell us what Lutherans believe without launching into how bad somebody else is and retaliations about how bad Lutherans are. If we try to stick with 33 AD to 133 AD we will have only a few documents to look at outside of the new testament. And we all fight about the new testament way too much anyway. Can't say I've enjoyed chats for the past few months. I go to other places to have civil chats with people from different backgrounds and they are enjoyable. Here things have gone a little rancid lately.

 

[MoreCoffee]

in Jesus

Yes, they did. What else do you know about what they believed?

 

[user1234]

What did the post apostolic church believe?

If by 'the church' you mean 'believers in Jesus, the body of Christ, the born-again, the saved' ... Then I would say they believed the Good News.

If by church you mean the churchES, there were believers (The Church) and unsaved, doubters, seekers, all kinds of beliefS plural, and even those who were enemies of the cross.

If you read The Revelation, you'll see different things that Jesus says to the churces, some good things, but some things He flat out hated, and you can see warnings throughout the NT that there would even be false shepherds/teachers bringing in damnable heresies ... everything from works-righteousness to lying signs and wonders, to anything goes wickedness and sinning with impunity ... it runs the gamet, as it did during the Apostolic days and still today.

But the true Church believed what it always did, the Good News ... The gospel.
The death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and our salvation by Gods grace through faith in Him alone.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.

 

[Albion]

If we try to stick with 33 AD to 133 AD we will have only a few documents to look at outside of the new testament. And we all fight about the new testament way too much anyway. Can't say I've enjoyed chats for the past few months. I go to other places to have civil chats with people from different backgrounds and they are enjoyable. Here things have gone a little rancid lately.

Understood...but still, there is good evidence that the church was already innovating and moving away from Apostolic standards a century or so after Christ, so if this development is made to seem to be all part of God's plan by reference to some theory like "Sacred Tradition" or "Development of Doctrine," the discussion won't be worth having.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Understood...but still, there is good evidence that the church was already innovating and moving away from Apostolic standards a century or so after Christ, so if this development is made to seem to be all part of God's plan by reference to some theory like "Sacred Tradition" or "Development of Doctrine," the discussion won't be worth having.

Can any discussion be worth having when we can't even get close to agreement about what the scriptures say - never mind teach? I don't want to discuss the new testament in here any more. It all goes rabidly wrong in no time.

 

[Albion]

If by 'the church' you mean 'believers in Jesus, the body of Christ, the born-again, the saved' ... Then I would say they believed the Good News.

If by church you mean the churchES, there were believers (The Church) and unsaved, doubters, seekers, all kinds of beliefS plural, and even those who were enemies of the cross.

I got the the idea that the second of those two was closer to the intent of the thread. It's the faith of the institutional church that was in mind. Stray, unaffiliated believers were not a feature of the church in those days.

 

[Josiah]

Make it up to and including the first 300 years.

MOSTLY UNKNOWN: Christianity was a very loose, illegal, underground religion - not given to clear, universal, binding declarations. Historians speak of the Kerygma ("preaching") that predated the New Testament (and perhaps, maybe, extended beyond the NT). Problem is: we have NOTHING, nothing at all, that records anything from this Kerygma. Historians and biblical scholars can only GUESS (purely GUESS), usually because they assume there was SOME corpus of teachings that caused them to accept Paul's letters (probably the first NT canon) and by the end of the century also books which by tradition are credited to and called Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John. Something must have caused those Christians in the First Century to "see" those as orthodox and correct - and it is assumed because it jibed with this mysterious, entirely unknown "Kerygma."

It's not much better as we move into the Second Century. Diversity seems to increase... the Gnostic movement developed and it was unclear for some time if Gnosticism was Christian or not. But we begin to have known writing (other than NT books) from Christians. Some (such as the Dedache) are helpful in giving at least a tiny CLUE into what at least one or two Christians were thinking at the time.



DIVERSE: We have a few clues from early believers who wrote things known to us. It was diverse (even if we eliminate the Gnostics who largely considered themselves as Christians). They reflect the diversity of the religion in those early days. They reflect an embrace of mystery and a hesitation to pin down things too definitively; individuals expressed opinion without a sense of what teachings clearly make one a Christian and which clearly make them a non-Christian pagan. The Apostle's Creed begins around 212 in this milieu, associated with Baptism, and may be the closest thing to some sense of what Christians embraced - this a century before Rome created the Roman Church (the first denomination) and began the process of officially defining things.



NOT ROMAN CATHOLIC What we can see is nothing Catholic (big "C"). I had this conversation (on a large scale) a couple of times at "the website-that-shall-not-be-named" and no Catholic could quote EVEN ONE THING - not one sentence - from anyone prior to 311 that affirmed ANYTHING distinctively Catholic. Sure, MUCH of what they said is today affirmed by Orthodox, Catholic, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodist and beyond.... but not one thing distinctively Catholic, not one thing. The distinctives that so often define various faith communities today simply didn't exist then. The Catholics at that other site really struggled to show SOMETHING, ANYTHING distinctively Catholic but could not (not either time) - although I seem to recall a Greek Orthodox poster came up with a couple of distinctively Orthodox ideas (not found in the RCC) to exist before 311.


Conclusions:

The question of this thread is good - but largely unaswerable. The NT was largely embraced by 311 - and equally important, Gnosticism was rejected by then, and a LOT of Christian books were rejected as canonical. That all suggests some things. And we have the Apostle's Creed dating from the pre-Roman Church era, which also gives us a clue. Beyond that.... it's difficult to say.



- Josiah




.

 

[MoreCoffee]

MOSTLY UNKNOWN: Christianity was a very loose, illegal, underground religion - not given to clear, universal, binding declarations. Historians speak of the

DIVERSE: We have a few clues from early believers who wrote things known to us. It was diverse (even if we eliminate the Gnostics who largely considered themselves as Christians). They reflect the diversity of the religion in those early days. They reflect an embrace of mystery and a hesitation to pin down things too definitively; individuals expressed opinion without a sense of what teachings clearly make one a Christian and which clearly make them a non-Christian pagan. The Apostle's Creed begins around 212 in this milieu, associated with Baptism, and may be the closest thing to some sense of what Christians embraced - this a century before Rome created the Roman Church (the first denomination) and began the process of officially defining things.


NOT ROMAN CATHOLIC What we can see is nothing Catholic (big "C"). I had this conversation (on a large scale) a couple of times at "the website-that-shall-not-be-named" and no Catholic could quote EVEN ONE THING - not one sentence - from anyone prior to 311 that affirmed ANYTHING distinctively Catholic. Sure, MUCH of what they said is today affirmed by Orthodox, Catholic, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodist and beyond.... but not one thing distinctively Catholic, not one thing. The distinctives that so often define various faith communities today simply didn't exist then. The Catholics at that other site really struggled to show SOMETHING, ANYTHING distinctively Catholic but could not (not either time) - although I seem to recall a Greek Orthodox poster came up with a couple of distinctively Orthodox ideas (not found in the RCC) to exist before 311.



- Josiah

This post is exactly what I mean about things going rancid very fast. Just stop it Josiah.

 

[Albion]

Conclusions:

The question of this thread is good - but largely unaswerable. The NT was largely embraced by 311 - and equally important, Gnosticism was rejected by then, and a LOT of Christian books were rejected as canonical. That all suggests some things. And we have the Apostle's Creed dating from the pre-Roman Church era, which also gives us a clue. Beyond that.... it's difficult to say..

With that, you have basically answered the question of the thread.

 

[Josiah]

MOSTLY UNKNOWN: Christianity was a very loose, illegal, underground religion - not given to clear, universal, binding declarations. Historians speak of the Kerygma ("preaching") that predated the New Testament (and perhaps, maybe, extended beyond the NT). Problem is: we have NOTHING, nothing at all, that records anything from this Kerygma. Historians and biblical scholars can only GUESS (purely GUESS), usually because they assume there was SOME corpus of teachings that caused them to accept Paul's letters (probably the first NT canon) and by the end of the century also books which by tradition are credited to and called Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John. Something must have caused those Christians in the First Century to "see" those as orthodox and correct - and it is assumed because it jibed with this mysterious, entirely unknown "Kerygma."

It's not much better as we move into the Second Century. Diversity seems to increase... the Gnostic movement developed and it was unclear for some time if Gnosticism was Christian or not. But we begin to have known writing (other than NT books) from Christians. Some (such as the Dedache) are helpful in giving at least a tiny CLUE into what at least one or two Christians were thinking at the time.



DIVERSE: We have a few clues from early believers who wrote things known to us. It was diverse (even if we eliminate the Gnostics who largely considered themselves as Christians). They reflect the diversity of the religion in those early days. They reflect an embrace of mystery and a hesitation to pin down things too definitively; individuals expressed opinion without a sense of what teachings clearly make one a Christian and which clearly make them a non-Christian pagan. The Apostle's Creed begins around 212 in this milieu, associated with Baptism, and may be the closest thing to some sense of what Christians embraced - this a century before Rome created the Roman Church (the first denomination) and began the process of officially defining things.



NOT ROMAN CATHOLIC What we can see is nothing Catholic (big "C"). I had this conversation (on a large scale) a couple of times at "the website-that-shall-not-be-named" and no Catholic could quote EVEN ONE THING - not one sentence - from anyone prior to 311 that affirmed ANYTHING distinctively Catholic. Sure, MUCH of what they said is today affirmed by Orthodox, Catholic, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodist and beyond.... but not one thing distinctively Catholic, not one thing. The distinctives that so often define various faith communities today simply didn't exist then. The Catholics at that other site really struggled to show SOMETHING, ANYTHING distinctively Catholic but could not (not either time) - although I seem to recall a Greek Orthodox poster came up with a couple of distinctively Orthodox ideas (not found in the RCC) to exist before 311.


Conclusions:

The question of this thread is good - but largely unaswerable. The NT was largely embraced by 311 - and equally important, Gnosticism was rejected by then, and a LOT of Christian books were rejected as canonical. That all suggests some things. And we have the Apostle's Creed dating from the pre-Roman Church era, which also gives us a clue. Beyond that.... it's difficult to say.



- Josiah




.

I think I did a pretty good job of answering the good question...... :smile:



- Josiah

 

[Imalive]

Yes, they did. What else do you know about what they believed?

No idea. I will look on wiki.
Ah. They were heretics. Nothing has changed in all these years LOL.

Early Christians demonstrated a wide range of beliefs and practices, many of which were later denounced as heretical.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity

 

[user1234]

I know what you mean and I agree. The threads where I asked what do xxx believe have all gone sour in a big way with people pushing their barrows filled with anti-this and anti-that until the threads are toxic. It isn't what I wanted. I was hoping that the Lutheran thread would tell us what Lutherans believe without launching into how bad somebody else is and retaliations about how bad Lutherans are. If we try to stick with 33 AD to 133 AD we will have only a few documents to look at outside of the new testament. And we all fight about the new testament way too much anyway. Can't say I've enjoyed chats for the past few months. I go to other places to have civil chats with people from different backgrounds and they are enjoyable. Here things have gone a little rancid lately.

Can any discussion be worth having when we can't even get close to agreement about what the scriptures say - never mind teach? I don't want to discuss the new testament in here any more. It all goes rabidly wrong in no time.

You ask vague questions all the time, and you pose them and your replies as if youre a schoolmarm giving a test or something, not someone genuinely seeking answers.

Ppl try to get you to be more specific so they can give their answers, and you either throw a hissy-fit or ignore them, as is so often the case with mine, thx, and instead of engaging the conversation, you present what your denomination or someone elses cut/paste says.

Then ppl are forced into trying to converse with a catechism or position paper rather than a person, which is fine if it's presented as your opinion, but not if it's dictated to us as facts that must be believed.

There are folks here ... genuine brothers and sisters in Christ, who reject the idea that the RCdenomination is the first and one true church on earth, so if we cant agree on who the Apostles and the True church is, how can we agree on the POST-apostolic beliefs?

And if we cant agree on the basic, main plain things of the New Testament, we're just gonna have to keep hashing things out and trying to reason together.

If it gets a little heated? So what!
It's not the end of the world, and might even do some of us some good.

And for ALL of us here...
Running away or else ignoring someone like little schoolkids putting their fingers in their ears is pretty immature and not at all how a CHRISTIAN MAN (or woman) should act, ESPECIALLY toward another believer. imho.

 

[user1234]

No idea. I will look on wiki.
Ah. They were heretics. Nothing has changed in all these years LOL.

Early Christians demonstrated a wide range of beliefs and practices, many of which were later denounced as heretical.

If you read The Revelation, you'll see different things that Jesus says to the churces, some good things, but some things He flat out hated, and you can see warnings throughout the NT that there would even be false shepherds/teachers bringing in damnable heresies ... everything from works-righteousness to lying signs and wonders, to anything goes wickedness and sinning with impunity ... it runs the gamut, as it did during the Apostolic days and still today.

Its AMAZING how much we think alike!
We're like ..... Twins or something.
:cheer2: :cheer:

 

[Albion]

No idea. I will look on wiki.
Ah. They were heretics. Nothing has changed in all these years LOL.

Early Christians demonstrated a wide range of beliefs and practices, many of which were later denounced as heretical.

I hope you mean that there were heretics, not that the early church was heretical.