weirdness of early christians 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
