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From: halsall@murray.fordham.edu (Paul Halsall)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Weirdness of Early Christians
Message-ID: <Apr.10.05.33.38.1993.14419@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 10 Apr 93 09:33:39 GMT
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Reply-To: halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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	I am a good Catholic boy. A convert no less, attracted by the
rational tradition [Aquinas et al] and the emotional authenticity
[in comp. with the faddishness of Anglicanism] to Roman Catholicism. I
never had much time for the pope - or any other heirarchs - but I did, and
do, believe in the sacremental system. I always felt quite happy to
look down my nose at those such as John Emery [a few posts back] who
had to engage in circuitous textual arguments to prove their faith, entirely
oblivious to the fact that a dozen other faiths can do the same [with
miracles too], and that since their arguments depend on the belief in the
Bible as God's sole revelation, it was not very good logic to argue
that the Bible proved God. No, I was happy to accept the CHURCH as God's
revelation. It was the Church after all that existed before the Bible, the
Church that choose [under grace of course] the canon of scripture. Protestant
ludicrosity, I thought, was shown by Protestants breathtaking acceptance
of Luther's right to reject a dozen or so books he disliked.
	But recently I read Peter Brown's _Body and Society_. It is very
well researched, and well written. But is raises some very upsetting
questions. The early Christians were weird - even more so than today's
carzy fundies. They had odd views on sex, odder views on the body, 
totally ludicrous views about demons, and distinctly uncharitable
views about other human beings. 
	now the question is this: were the first Christians just as
weird, but we've got used to them, or did the pristine "Fall of the
Church" happen within one generation. It certainly did'nt have to
wait until the Triumph of the Church under Constantine. If so,
wha does  this say about God's promise to always support the Church.
It's no use throwing the usual Protestant pieties about the Church
not being an organization at me. It's a community or it is nothing,
and it was the early communities that were weird. The institional
church was a model of sanity by comparison.
	I would be interested in serious Catholic and Orthodox responses to
this entirely serious issue. I'm not sure it is an issue for Protestants
with their "soul alone with Jesus" approach, but for we who see the
"ecclesia" as a "koinoia" over time and space, the weird early
Christians are a problem.

[This is an exaggeration of the Protestant view.  Many Protestants
have a strong appreciation for the role of the Church.  "The soul
alone with God" is certainly important for Protestants, but it's by no
means the whole story.

I have read the sort of history you talk about.  As you point out,
Protestants don't have quite the same problem you do, because we
believe that the church had a Fall at some point.  However Protestant
mythology typically places the Fall around the time of Constantine (or
more likely, regard it as happening in a sort of cumulative fashion,
starting from Constantine but getting worse as the Pope accumulated
power during the medieval period.)  The consequences of having it
earlier are somewhat worrisome even to us.  Most Protestants accept
the theological results of the early ecumenical councils, including
such items as the Trinity and Incarnation.  Indeed in the works of
Reformers such as Luther and Calvin, you'll find Church Fathers such
as Augustine quoted all the time.  I think you'll find many
Protestants resistant to the idea that the Early Church as a whole was
"wierd".  (There is an additional problem for Protestants that I don't
much want to talk about in this context, since it's been looked at
recently -- that's the question of whether one can really think of
Augustine and other Fathers as being proto-Protestants.  Their views
on Mary, the authority of the Pope, etc, are not entirely congenial to
Protestant thought.)

One thing that somewhat worries me is a question of methodology.
There are certainly plenty of wierd people in the early church.  What
concerns me is that they may be overrepresented in what we see.  We
see every Christian who courted martyrdom.  But I think there's good
reason to believe that most ordinary Christians were more prudent than
that.  We see the heroic virgins.  But I think there's good reason to
think that many Christians were happily married.  I can't help
suspecting that the early church had the same range of wierdos and
sane people that we do now.  I think there's also a certain level of
"revisionism" active in history at the moment.  I don't mean that
they're manufacturing things out of whole cloth.  But don't you think
there might be a tendency to emphasize the novel?

--clh]
