As the Christians began to organize, what major changes began to appear?
Between the 1st and 4th centuries:
Certain bishops (or overseers) became
responsible for all the churches in certain areas instead of one local church.
Buildings began to be built for the
purpose of Christian worship.
Baptism began to include not only
believers but also infants of believing families.
As the Christian Church was
suffering attack from the Roman world, what attack came from within the church
itself?
Ancient Christian Heresies caused much confusion and dispute.
•Heresies
•Adoptionism -
God granted Jesus powers and then adopted him as a Son.
•Albigenses -
Reincarnation and two gods: one good and other evil.
•Apollinarianism -
Jesus' divine will overshadowed and replaced the human.
•Arianism -
Jesus was a lesser, created being.
•Docetism -
Jesus was divine but only seemed to be human.
•Donatism -
Validity of sacraments depends on character of the minister.
•Eutychianism -
Jesus finite human nature is swallowed up in His infinite divine nature.
•Gnosticism -
Dualism of good and bad and special knowledge for salvation.
•Kenosis - Jesus
gave up some divine attributes while on earth.
Who were the gnostics?
•The Gnostics were a religious sect that
emerged in the Roman Empire about the same time as Christianity.
•The word “Gnostic” comes from the Greek gnosis (“knowledge”).
•The Gnostics were a religious sect that
emerged in the Roman Empire about the same time as Christianity.
•The word “Gnostic” comes from the Greek gnosis (“knowledge”).
•In
the late 1st
century, natural disasters and a plague afflicted the Roman Empire.
•In
this context, a negative view of the physical world may have made sense.
•In
AD 79, Mt. Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii.
The
Gnostics fraudulently attached the names of famous Christians to their
writings, such as :
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Philip
The Gospel of Mary
The Gospel of Truth
The Gospel to the Egyptians
The Secret Book of James
The Apocalypse of Paul
The Letter of Peter to Philip
The Apocalypse of Peter
The Testimony of Truth
The Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Judas
Who was Marcion and what was he teaching?
•Marcion
was the son of a pastor; he gained great success in the shipping business.
•In the mid-second century, Marcion
developed a theology that mingled a negative view of the physical world with a
heretical understanding of the Christian tradition.
•When he refused to repent, Marcion
was excluded from fellowship in his father’s church.
•He fled to Rome where he donated a
substantial sum to the church.
•In Rome, Marcion developed his theology into a
full-fledged system that borrowed from Gnostic ways of thinking.
•According to Marcion:
The God of the Old Testament and the
Father of Jesus Christ were two different deities
The physical world was evil; therefore,
Jesus only seemed to have a physical body, and the Father of Jesus would not
resurrect anyone’s physical body.
The Christian life should deny all
physical pleasures, even sexual relations between spouses.
The
teachings of several apostolic texts contradicted Marcion’s
teachings.
In
response, Marcion created a canon—or “authoritative
list”—of writings for his followers.
Marcion’s list included only 11 books: An edited
version of Luke’s Gospel and ten of Paul’s letters.
How Did the Churches Respond?
Christians responded by
1. Clarifying what sort of Christian writings should be authoritative or canonical
2. Summarizing their faith in a confession known as the Rule of Faith.
3. Giving bishops (overseers) in certain cities the responsibility for maintaining doctrinal integrity in their churches.
The churches met in a series of councils to discuss and affirm what biblical scripture actually teaches on doctrinal issues.
The Hypostatic Union
The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man.
Jesus' two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus' humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity.
The First Council of Ephesus in 431 AD recognized this doctrine and affirmed its importance.
How was the biblical canon established?
By approximately 500 BC, the 39 Books that make up the Old Testament were completed, and continued to be preserved in Hebrew on scrolls.
Christians responded by
1. Clarifying what sort of Christian writings should be authoritative or canonical
2. Summarizing their faith in a confession known as the Rule of Faith.
3. Giving bishops (overseers) in certain cities the responsibility for maintaining doctrinal integrity in their churches.
The churches met in a series of councils to discuss and affirm what biblical scripture actually teaches on doctrinal issues.
The Hypostatic Union
The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man.
Jesus' two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus' humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity.
The First Council of Ephesus in 431 AD recognized this doctrine and affirmed its importance.
How was the biblical canon established?
By approximately 500 BC, the 39 Books that make up the Old Testament were completed, and continued to be preserved in Hebrew on scrolls.
Josephus. Josephus (A. D. 37-100) said
that the Jews held as sacred only twenty-two books (which include exactly the
same as our present thirty-nine books of the Old Testament).
The early church fathers accepted the thirty-nine
books of the Old Testament.
THE TESTS OF CANONICITY
(1) Did the book indicate God was speaking
through the writer and that it was considered authoritative?
(2) Was the human author recognized
as a spokesman of God, that is, was he a prophet or did he have the prophetic
gift?
(3) Was the book historically accurate?
Did it reflect a record of actual facts?
•By the early 2nd century, many writings were circulating among Christians; many of them claimed to have come from Jesus or his first followers.
Many of these writings were written in Gnostic communities, based on Gnostic experiences rather than any historical testimony about Jesus
•Three standards emerged to
determine which writings ought to be considered authoritative:
1.Must be connected to eyewitnesses
of the risen Lord or to close associates of eyewitnesses.
2.Could not contradict other
authoritative writings.
3.Should be recognized by churches
throughout the world.
From the very beginning, the
churches recognized as authoritative:
The four Gospels
The Acts of the Apostles
The epistles of Paul
At least one of John’s epistles
•Some disagreements persisted for several
years over whether the other New Testament books could
be clearly connected to
eyewitnesses of Jesus.
•By the late 4th century, the “New Testament canon”
had
been settled.
What was this Confession of Faith?
Mark 12:29 (ESV)
Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord
our God, the Lord is one.
Romans 10:9 (ESV)
……because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The Greek word for fish (ichthus) represented a confession of faith among
early Christians:
Iesous (Jesus)
Christos (Christ)
Theou (Divine)
Uios (Son)
Soter (Savior)
•In the 2nd century, a more comprehensive confession
of faith emerged.
•This confession of faith was repeated
when a new believer was baptized to distinguish between faithful Christians and
Gnostics.
•It became known as the Rule of Faith, later as the Apostles’ Creed.
How did a Priesthood of Overseers develop?
In the 1st century, groups of equal elders
(overseers) seem to have guided each local church (Phil. 1:1).
During the Gnostic controversy, overseers
in certain cities where the apostles had ministered traced their teachings and
authority back to the apostles.
Overseers in certain cities, such as
Rome, gradually gained greater authority and began to oversee churches beyond
their own cities.
•Polycarp’s church celebrated Easter at a
different time than the Roman church.
•In AD 160, Polycarp and Anicetus,
overseer of Rome, agreed to disagree about the Easter issue
•Near the end of the 2nd century, Victor served as bishop of
Rome.
•Unlike Anicetus, Victor demanded that Christians in the
eastern Roman Empire celebrate Easter on the same dates as the Roman church
•When Eastern Christians refused, Victor
excluded them from fellowship with Roman Christians.
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