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Christianity in the second and third centuries was in a remarkable state of flux. That is not surprising because at point in its history has the religion constituted or presented a unity of faith in spite of the fact that the New Testament speaks about it:
Eph 4:13 13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: (KJV)
Nowhere is this theological disunity in Christianity seen more clearly than in the realm of theology. I am speaking specifically of the host of different interpretations concerning "the Christ." In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in only one God; others, however, claimed that there were two Gods; yet others subscribed to 30, or 365, or more. Some Christians accepted the Hebrew Scriptures as a revelation of the one true God, the sacred possession of all believers; others claimed that the Scriptures had been inspired by an evil deity. Some Christians believed that God had created the world and was soon going to redeem it; others said that God neither had created the world nor had ever had any dealings with it. Some Christians believed that Christ was somehow both a man and God; others said that he was a man, but not God others claimed that he was God, but not a man; others insisted that he was a man who had been temporarily inhabited by God. Some believed that "the Christ" had entered Jesus at his baptism while others believed that Jesus had pre-existed. Some believed that Jesus was fully human while others believed that he was the earthly manifestation of "the Christ" among men. Some Christians believe that Christ's death had brought about the salvation of the world; others claimed that his death had no bearing on salvation; yet others alleged that he had never even died. And then there were Jews who were hoping in a human messiah to redeem Israel from the persecution of the Gentiles. There were even small sects of Jews that saw the messiah as a Cosmic-Godman like the Essenes. Notice that basically we have two concepts before us: human or God. We have before us only two choices: a human Jesus and a human possessing "the Christ" or God incarnated in the form of a man or God manifested as "the Christ" among mankind.
Answer for yourself: So who is right? What were the beliefs in these areas of the people and person representing them that gave us the First New Testament?
Well that is what we have to find out.
We need to know right from the start that few of these variant theologies went uncontested, and the theological controversies between them that ensued over the following centuries impacted the surviving literature on virtually every level. We are confronted with an evolving Christian Scripture; one that would eventually be called the New Testament. The New Testament manuscripts were not produced impersonally by machines capable of flawless reproduction. These New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand, by living, breathing human beings who were deeply rooted in the conditions and the theological controversies of their day.
Answer for yourself: It is possible or likely that the existing theological dissensions and the existing religious beliefs of the sect from which these scribes and copyists came have exerted an influence in the way they transcribed their sacred Scriptures?
This website is devoted to the premise that these theological disputes of the early centuries of Christianity, specifically disputes over Christology, prompted Christian scribes to alter the words of Scripture in the New Testament to reflect their beliefs; thereby creating a "Divine authority" for their group and their group's religious ideas and beliefs and making such a document "the" standard to be used in all debates and controversies.
Answer for yourself: Who could forcibly put forth their religious beliefs with any hope of success when they lacked such a Divine Book as this New Testament? The problem is as we shall soon see is that this New Testament of the later second through fifth century is not the same as the one from 140 C.E. in the early second century. It has been changed theologically; specifically in the areas of "Christology."
Scribes modified their manuscripts to make them more patently "orthodox" and less susceptible to "abuse" by the opponents of orthodoxy. Theological controversies of the second and third centuries prompted this altering of the First New Testament by proto-Roman Catholics. We find these theological controversies being carried out in the literary realm. The contest for religious authority and doctrinal supremacy is waged on the pages of the New Testament. Ironically we find that what was once "orthodoxy" is now "heresy" and what was once "heresy" is now "orthodoxy." Orthodoxy will be established over these earliest centuries of Christianity by the winners of these theolgoical debates and those who controlled the writing of this evolutionary New Testament.
During its first two and a half centuries, Christianity comprised a number of competing theologies, or better, a number of competing Christian groups advocating a variety of theologies. Unity of the faith did not exist. During these early centuries of Christianity there was as yet no established "orthodoxy," that is, no basic theological system acknowledged by the majority of church leaders and laity. Different geographical regions and different local churches supported different understandings of the religion, of "the Christ," while different understandings of the religion and "the Christ" were present even within the same local church. Evidence for this diversity of early Christianity has been steadily mounting only in this present century due to the discovery of such things like the Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic writings as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These recent discoveries have reshaped our view of early Christianity and brought into question the Roman tradition of the Christian faith as handed down by them through tradition and their writings. We now know that Christianity of the earliest centuries displayed widespread diversity.
Historians of early Christianity have been inclined to see such diversity within early Christianity. To the contrary, such a shift in perspective of early Christianity represents a distinctive shift in thinking, effected only in relatively recent times. Prior to the beginning of this century, virtually all investigators were influenced by the histories of early Christianity produced by Roman Catholicism during the early centuries. Particularly influential was the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea and so-called "father of church history," whose work set the tone for Christian historiography for ages to come.
The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius (300 C.E.) has exerted a tremendous influence down through history. In it Eusebius presents a picture of the church as being God driven and directed through the centuries and the theological controversies that she had to face. Eusebius leaves the strong impression that the Church has a mission and message from God as the "new Israel." According to Eusebius God was directing the church's mission and destiny. Eusebius paints a picture of a church that is controlled and sustained by God's spirit; one who faced persecution and grew despite opposition, and one that overcame "heresy" by a teaching that was labeled "apostolic" by Eusebius. It is this "apostolic teaching" of the church that was by definition "orthodox" (in that it was "right"). It is in Eusebius' defining of what is accepted church doctrine in his day (early 4th century) that he sets in stone for the church for all time their definition of what constitutes "orthodoxy" and "heresy."
Writing before the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. in which the Arian controversy (Christology) found an initial resolution, and well in advance of the Council of Chalcedon (451 C.E.), best known likewise for its statement of Christology, Eusebius defines for the Roman Church what is meant by "orthodox" Christianity: he makes it appear that this "orthodoxy" IS the kind of belief that exists in his day which, according to Eusebius, was ALSO preached by the apostles and their followers from the beginning.
Answer for yourself: But was the Christianity of the early 4th century like the "Christianity" of the early first and second centuries and the earliest followers of "the Christ"?
Eusebius defines as "evil" all major deviations from accepted Catholic doctrine in his day. Those who held different opinion and beliefs concerning the deity of Christ, or the unity of the Godhead were stigmatized as "evil" and influenced by the devil and his demons in order to try to corrupt the faith proclaimed by the apostles of Jesus. Especially characteristic of Eusebius is the venom used in characterizing those opposing opposite beliefs from the "accepted" religious beliefs of Rome in that day. (e.g., Hist. Eccl. II, 14, 1-3; III, 26-27; IV, 7, 1-3).
Such treatment of other Christian believers with different views than those enforsed or promoted by Rome with such hatred and venom helps us understand the nature of Christian heresy, and it is this basic conceptualization that proved so influential "heretics" with different beliefs about "the Christ") for the traditional assessment of the development of Christian doctrine. The "classical" view of orthodoxy and heresy formalizes this basic understanding. Rome will set the stage for what all others were to believe from the early 4th century. For Rome "orthodoxy" (literally meaning "right opinion") represented, according to them, the teachings advocated by Jesus and his apostles which spread throughout the world by Christians of the first generation, and attested by the vast majority of believers in all periods.
Answer for yourself: But is this actually true? Are the beliefs of the early 4th century accurately reflective of the earliest beliefs of the earliest Christians and followers of "the Christ" in the first and early second century?
For Eusebius those who claim to be Christian but who deny any point of this teaching, or who modify it in any significant way, represent "heresy" (literally meaning "choice"), because they have willfully chosen to misrepresent or deny the truth. Heresy, then, is always secondary to the truth and derived from it by a kind of corruption or perversion. For Christian polemicists, such perversions are the minority opinion of depraved individuals. For Eusebius and Rome heresy represents a contamination of the original teachings of Christianity by ideas drawn from the outside, either from Jewish circles or from the teachings of pagan philosophers.
Although Eusebius was certainly responsible for popularizing these views, he by no means invented them. To the contrary, he self-consciously placed himself within a stream of tradition that runs back through a series of earlier writers that he and his orthodox associates embraced as their own theological forebears, writers such as Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Justin. Interestingly, the basic understanding of orthodoxy and heresy found among these forefathers of orthodoxy can be traced all the way back to the first century, to the oldest surviving account of Christianity's early years, the New Testament book of Acts.
To be sure, Acts is concerned less with the relationship of theological divergences within early Christianity than with the dissemination of the religion itself. The term "orthodoxy" does not occur here, and "heresy" lacks any pejorative sense, meaning simply "sect." But undergirding Acts' narrative are notions that proved particularly amenable to the classical understanding of orthodoxy and heresy. Here, again in passages that have come down through history through Rome, the true faith is to be believed to be based on the eyewitness accounts of the apostles, who execute their mission to spread this faith under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The apostolic churches are pictured in complete harmony with one another-even latecomers such as Paul seem to agree with Jesus' original followers on every important point of doctrine and practice. It is true that even here difficulties arise within the Christian communities. But these derive from the greed and avarice of their individual members (5:1- 11), or from the thirst for power of those who come to infiltrate their midst (8:4-25). We are given a picture in Acts that the vast majority of converts remain true to the apostolic message, and theological issues are readily resolved by an appeal to apostolic authority, which in every case-even after serious debate and reflection-reveals the most remarkable of all unities (15:1-29). Disunities can be attributed to "false teachings," that is, to deviations from the theological views of Jesus' own apostles. Such deviations are the perverse doings of degenerate individuals, wolves who infiltrate the flock of sheep to do great damage, but who cannot, ultimately, overcome a church unified behind the original apostolic teaching (10:28-31).
Answer for yourself: But again is this an accurate picture of early Christianity and an accurate understanding of the events that transpired? Was Christianity a "unity" in this time period as we are led to believe by the Book of Acts?
This is the picture of apostolic Christianity that has come down to us by Roman hands and the Roman Second New Testament. Given this picture in the book of Acts along with the Roman adulteration of the First New Testament of Marcion whereby the earliest beliefs of "the Christ" were altered then it becomes an almost impossible task for us to come to the real truth about the religious beliefs of the first century if we use "only" the New Testament for our sources. We have to study "outside the box" and let the discoveries of archeology in these last two centuries especially shed it light on this problem if we ever hope to come to the truth concerning "the Christ" let alone the Jewish Messiah. We can no longer let a refutation of the earliest beliefs of the earliest Christians, both Jew and Gentile, as we have today in the Second New Testament keep us from these truths. Eusebius was the turning point for "orthodoxy" when he painted for all time and mankind the picture of "orthodoxy" for the rest of history; the problem is if his interpretation of prior religious beliefs were correct and if it was a mirror image of what the earliest Christians and followers of Jesus believed about "the Christ." I will show you in this website that it is not and that today we are misled by our New Testaments in matters concerning not only "the Christ" but the Jewish Messiah as well. Without taking advantage of these recent discoveries in these last two hundred years and especially since Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls then we are prone to fall into the trap of believing men like Eusebius who made sure that the current Roman religious views were to become the normative way of understanding the development of Christian theology down to the modern age.