BIBLE TOPICS

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path". Ps 119:105

Subjects

ONE BIBLE, MANY CHURCHES:

WHY?

CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE FIRST CENTURY

These changes in doctrine, of which the above are only examples, were accompanied by no less radical changes in the practice and organisation of the Christian Church. The earliest Christians were unique in their lack of worldliness, their withdrawal from social and political life, their democratic and egalitarian organisation in which wealth or social distinction counted as nothing, and their unusual concern for the poor and oppressed:

'The primitive Christians were dead to the business and pleasure of the world.' 'The defence of our person and property they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries ...' (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).

This state of things was short-lived. As the original simplicity of doctrine and practice was lost, so the Christian community's relationship to society changed dramatically:

'Should the church take the decisive step into the world...? Or ought she, on the other hand, to remain, as she had been at first, a society of religious devotees, separated and shut out from the world by a rigorous discipline and working on it only through a direct propaganda? ... It was natural that warning voices should be raised in the church against secular tendencies ... that demands should be made for a restoration of the old discipline and severity, and for a return to apostolic simplicity and purity. The church as a whole, however, under pressure of circumstances rather than by a spontaneous impulse, decided otherwise. She marched through the open door into the Roman state ...' (Harnack, article 'Montanism', Encyc.Brit).

In this process was born one of the earliest sects known to Christian history, the Montanists, a group which isolated itself from the main body of the church because of the latter's increasingly secular tendencies. The adoption of Christianity by the Roman State under the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, marked the culmination of this process of secularisation within the church. Henceforth the Christian Church was a political force to be reckoned with, bestowing or withholding its blessings on the laws and wars of the state, sharing its prosperity and material wealth:

'Passing rapidly from a condition of distress and persecution to the summit of prosperity, the church degenerated from her ancient purity, and forfeited the respect of future ages, in the same proportion as she acquired the blind veneration of her own' (Hallam, 'Europe during the middle ages')

Where now was the distinctive way of life of the first Christians? What now of the authoritative, unanimous voice of Jesus and his immediate followers:

• "Be not conformed to this world" (Romans 12 v 2).
• "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2 v 15).
• "... know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4 v 4).
• "... what communion hath light with darkness? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? ... Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will ... be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters .." (1 Corinthians 6 v 14 - 18).

Here is the crystal-clear message of original Christianity - here is the foundation of first Christians' withdrawal from the world. This withdrawal was symptomatic of their all-absorbing interest in the future rather than the present, their constant anticipation of Christ's second advent. As the doctrine of the Second Coming and the literal view of the kingdom were slowly spiritualised out of existence, it was inevitable that the ambitions of the Church became focused on the present rather that the future. Augustine completed the process by identifying the Church as the visible embodiment of the Kingdom of God:

'Augustine ... identified the Millennium with the history of the Church on earth, and declared that, for those who belonged to the true Church, the first resurrection was past already. With acceptance of this identification by the Roman Church, the power of Chiliasm was permanently broken' (Dr. A. Robinson, Regnum Dei Lectures on the Kingdom of God in the history of Christian Thought, 1901).

No greater change in the whole purpose and direction of Christianity could be imagined. From a small minority that had separated itself from society, totally renouncing all present ambition, status and wealth in favour of the hope of a better life under the future rulership of Christ, the Church had become an integral part of the state, framing its laws, sharing its wealth and favours, and regarding itself as the spiritual embodiment of the Kingdom of God, the medium through which Christ already ruled on earth.

Decline and 'Reformation'