The Early Church and Me

For the majority of my Christian life (some 32 years now) I have been woefully ignorant of the Early Church. We were always taught the “gap theory” of Christianity wherein the Church of the Apostles quickly became the Church of the Apostates and then was rescued some 1500 years or so later when it was restored by Martin Luther and others.

What convinced me that this gap was a fallacy are the words of Jesus Himself. Of which words am I speaking? They are found in Matthew 16: 18--And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (KJV) In order for the theory to be accurate, I had to see Christ’s words as inaccurate (in other words, I would have to make the Word of God of none effect through my tradition). I saw that if the gates of hell (hades) shall not prevail, then it is ludicrous to presume that they actually did prevail for 1500 years.

Thus, I was led to discover the wonder of the Early post-Apostolic Church. I discovered my Christian heritage in the Early Church Fathers. But I also discovered why these men had been relegated to a dark corner of the ecclesiastical basement: they were not at all like us. These men had ideas that sound “too Catholic” to our Protestant ears. They had to be silenced by charges of apostasy and “catholic” in order to keep them from disturbing the religious apple cart.

Another shock, however, rocked my former ideas even more powerfully than the above: these men were closer to the apostles in time and thought than any of us could ever be. Some of them were contemporary with the Apostles and even were acquainted with some of them. Hmmmm? Does one really suppose that they apostatized this quickly after the Apostolic era? It just didn’t seem likely.

There were three particularly powerful writers or documents that I looked at. First was the writings of Clement of Rome (a Pope no less). The second was Ignatius of Antioch. The third was the anonymous writing known as The Didache (The Teaching). These all came from a period late in the first century to early in the second century. This is early Christianity by anyone’s estimation.

As I read these writings, I was struck by the fact that they seemed very foreign in some ways and very familiar in other ways. They were lovers of God and striving to follow the will of God. But they seemed to have some different ideas than the ones with which I had been indoctrinated. For instance, Ignatius speaks many times of the bishops, presbyters and deacons of the church and what the members owe these God-appointed men. I was almost certain that in my church we had none of the above (not by those names anyway). In Clement’s Epistle, he seems to speak of apostolic succession. The Didache presents a nascent liturgy (which is anathema to many modern saints).

This all got me to thinking. Had we missed something somewhere along the way? Have we thrown out the baby with the bath water? Could we be right and those so close the Apostolic era all be wrong? Again, I came to the jarring conclusion that such was highly unlikely. That left me with an even greater query: what am I to do about that fact?

Five questions come to my mind when I think of the aforementioned writings (and many others like them):

1. Exactly when did the church supposedly apostasize?
2. If it was after 100 AD, why don’t we make use of the Didache which is almost certainly from prior to that date?
3. Were there no truly Protestant-minded writers in the Early Church?
4. Even if the “catholic” majority destroyed most of their writings, why haven’t some fragments been located?
5. Why didn’t God preserve a few scraps of these writings so we could know that someone actually did believe that way before the 1500’s?

Just thinking or should I say “conjecturing”?

First Blog

Since this is my very first conjecture, I guess it should be a good one. Not much chance of that!

I have been thinking lately of the word "synecdoche." I was tormented for several days trying to remember the word. I knew I had read it somewhere but for the life of me I could not remember it. I even knew what it meant and how to use it properly. I can only conclude that I was having a "premature" senior moment. Finally, as I was riding down the road, it struck me like a boulder. SYNECDOCHE.

Then I looked it up. Much to my surprise, it has much more meaning than I had imagined. I knew that it is a figure of speech that uses a portion to represent the whole (for example, "I got a new set of wheels.") What I have subsequently learned (in addition to the proper pronunciation) is that it carries several meanings.

Synecdoche:
Part is used to represent the whole
The whole is used to represent a part
A specific kind is used to represent a more general kind
A material is used to represent something made of that material.

Now whether all this is significant to anyone but me, I do not know. The thing is I am an incurable logophile. I cannot resist the lure of words--I like to learn them, use them, and play with them. I do not claim any particular facility for these things but it is one source of enjoyment for me. Last Saturday as my wife and I went about our business, I challenged her to use this word at some point during the day in a sentence. Over in the evening, she did it. I was never so proud.