The Earliest Christians

by Adonai438 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Earnest

  Hi Willy,

  My intention was certainly not to trigger any "it's too complicated don't think about it" programming, but the simplicity of the Gospel of John, and even the letter from Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, is in stark contrast to the Greek philosophy that shaped later Christian doctrine. Ask yourself, what do Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Arius, Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius have in common? They were all from Alexandria, a leading centre for the study of Platonism and home of the Jewish philosopher Philo.

  How did this happen? It started with the Apologists (Aristides, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch) who wished to present Christianity to the culture of their day in such a way as to defend it against the charge of atheism. To the educated classes, they insisted that the truth of Christianity is that to which the pagan philosophers pointed. To do this they employed the concept of the Logos which was already known to both Judaism and Stoicism. According to the Apologists, Christ is the Logos, preexistent before the incarnation as the Father's mind or thought. They used the Stoic distinction between the Logos endiathetos (the immanent Word) and the Logos prophorikos (the expressed Word) to describe Christ's unity with the Father and his manifestation. Thereafter philosophy (and pragmatism) ruled and scripture was employed to support it.

  One of the more contentious expressions used in the Nicene Creed was that the Son was homoousios (of one substance) with the Father. After Constantine's death a number of councils were held that tried to omit the phrase homoousios, many preferring homoiousios (of like substance) to describe the relationship, because homoousios could mean they were the same (which, you say, is not a Trinitarian teaching at all). How did they reach agreement? A coalition of moderates known as the Homoiousians taught that the Godhead exists simultaneously in three modes of being or hypostases. All three have one nature, God. To describe how the one substance can be present at the same time in three, the analogy of a universal and its particulars is used. The difference between ousia (substance) and hypostasis (being) is the difference between universal and particular. Each hypostasis of the Godhead is set by its appropriate characteristics, just a each man represents the universal man. This understanding allowed the Eastern church to interpret homoousios (of one substance) in the light of homoiousios (of like substance), and a more acceptable doctrine was agreed at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

  So, having given some thought to this complicated doctrine you may understand better why I contrasted such philosophy with the simplicity of scripture. The fact is that their use of homoousios allowed those who believed they were of the same substance (tautoousios) to interpret it that way, and those who believed they were of like substance (homoiousios) to interpret it that way. Everyone went home thinking they had won the day. The winner, alas, was obfuscation and pragmatism, not truth.

  Earnest

  "Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" - Rev. Charles Dodgson
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  wonderwoman77

  Willy think...you say "christians did not come from the bible, the bible came from christians"?????

  So do you not believe the old testament, that came from jews and actually so did the new testament. You statement is false....
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  Rev BII

  Adonai,

  No, Christendom do not believe the OT is as true as the NT. It has become trend to say so but that doesn't change the fact.

  That the Holy Spirit fills people, which the beings God and Jesus doesn't do, shows us that it's not a person, it's a spirit. Just logic. The Holy Spirit is never mentioned together with Jesus except for the baptism formula where it of cause is because, because God grants his spirit to the faithful.

  As for Satan in the OT, he's only mentioned in a few verses in Job and Zecheriah. Satan isn't mentioned in Genesis 3 or 6. But people read that in. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 refer to men. That's just a matter of reading the whole chapter.

  God Bless
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  willy_think

  Hi Earnest,

  it could be argued that the important role played by Alexandria in the history of Judaism and Christianity receives less attention than it deserves. First the Jewish community and later the Christian Church flourished there for a period that spanned nearly a millennium. These two communities had their own Bible in a version which has remained canonical in the Eastern Church to this very day.

  i find it odd that you would imply that "the concept of the Logos which was already known to both Judaism and Stoicism"(ubove post) is a foreign Greek philosophical "concept". to contrast the trinity you invoke "the simplicity of john". ( ibid.) are you saying that john was speaking of a concept that was with God and a concept that was God? the fact is the Biblical term Logos is found only in the Johannine writings: in the Apocalypse (19:13), in the Gospel of John (1:1-14), and in his First Epistle (1:1; cf. 1:7 - Vulgate). these are the only places we find the word Logos in the Epistles of Paul the theology of the Logos had made its influence felt. This is seen in the Epistles to the Corinthians, where Christ is called "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (I Cor., 1:24) and "the image of God" (II Cor., 4:4); it is more evident in the Epistle to the Colossians (1:15 sqq.); Most of all in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the theology of the Logos lacks only the term itself, that finally appears in John. In this epistle we also notice the influence of the Book of Wisdom, especially in the description which is given of the relations between the Son and the Father: "the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance" (cf. Wis., vii, 26). This resemblance suggests the way by which the doctrine of the Logos entered into Christian theology; [b]another clue is furnished by the Apocalypse, where the term Logos appears for the first time (19:13), and not concerning any theological teaching, but in an apocalyptic vision, the content of which has no suggestion of Philo but rather recalls Wisdom 18:15.[b]

  What is the precise value of this concept in the writings of St. John? The Logos has not for him the Stoic meaning that it so often had for Philo: it is not the impersonal power that sustains the world, nor the law that regulates it; neither do we find in St. John the Platonistic concept of the Logos as the ideal model of the world; the Word is for him the Word of God, and thereby he holds with Jewish tradition, the theology of the Book of Wisdom, of the Psalms, of the Prophetical Books, and of Genesis; he perfects the idea and transforms it by showing that this creative Word which from all eternity was in God and was God, took flesh and dwelt among men. This difference is not the only one which distinguishes the Johannine theology of the Logos from the concept of Philo, to which not a few have sought to liken it. The Logos of Philo is impersonal, it is an idea, a power, a law; at most it may be likened to those half abstract, half-concrete entities, to which the Stoic mythology had lent a certain personal form. For Philo the incarnation of the Logos must have been absolutely without meaning, quite as much as its identification with the Messias. For St. John, on the contrary, the Logos appears in the full light of a concrete and living personality; it is the Son of God, the Messias, Jesus. Equally great is the difference when we consider the role of the Logos. The Logos of Philo is an intermediary: "The Father who engendered all has given to the Logos the signal privilege of being an intermediary (methorios) between the creature and the creator . . . it is neither without beginning (agenetos) as is God, nor begotten (genetos) as you are [mankind], but intermediate (mesos) between these two extremes "(Quis rer. divin. haeres sit, 205-06). The Word of St. John is not an intermediary, but a Mediator; He is not intermediate between the two natures, Divine and human, but He unites them in His Person; it could not be said of Him, as of the Logos of Philo, that He is neither agenetos nor genetos, for He is at the same time one and the other, not inasmuch as He is the Word, but as the Incarnate Word (St. Ignatius, "Ad Ephes.", vii, 2).

  sometimes, influenced by [b]Jewish tradition[b], Philo represents the Logos as the creative Word of God ("De Sacrific. Ab. et Cain"; cf. "De Somniis", I 182; "De Opif. Mundi", 13);
  at other times he describes it as the revealer of God, symbolized in Scripture by the angel of Jahveh ("De Somniis", I, 228-39, "De Cherub.", 3; "De Fuga", 5; "Quis rer. divin. haeres sit", 201-205).
  Oftener again he accepts the language of Hellenic speculation; the Logos is then, after a Platonistic concept, the sum total of ideas and the intelligible world ("De Opif. Mundi", 24, 25; "Leg. Alleg.", I, 19; III, 96),
  or, agreeably to the Stoic theory, the power that upholds the world, the bond that assures its cohesion, the law that determines its development ("De Fuga", 110; "De Plantat. Noe," 8-10; "Quis rer. divin. haeres sit", 188, 217; "Quod Deus sit immut.", 176; "De Opif. Mundi", 143).

  PS. I would like to apologies for my lengthy absence and thank you for giving me something substantial to research.
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  willy_think

  I didn't wont to reply to you guys on the same post as Earnest. I can respect his position. You guys are not thinking and being silly.

  wonderwoman77
  

  Willy think...you say "christians did not come from the bible, the bible came from christians"?????
  So do you not believe the old testament, that came from jews and actually so did the new testament. You statement is false....

  The Christian Church began at Pentecost, at which time there was no NT. It is true the old testament, did come from the Jews but I recognize the books of the OT as inspired, not because they came from the Jews, but because they along with the NT books were declared inspired by the church the Christ gave us.

  after the bible was given to us the Jews changed there inspired books. What is that to me? nothing i don't recognize there authority.

  Rev BII

  No, Christendom do not believe the OT is as true as the NT. It has become trend to say so but that doesn't change the fact.

  what a silly thing to say, i'll give you a list of things you believe and things you only say you believ tommorrow. is the OT "true"? what is truth? the OT IS inspired exactly as the NT is.

  That the Holy Spirit fills people, which the beings God and Jesus doesn't do, shows us that it's not a person, it's a spirit. Just logic

  
  God the farther exists in spirit form, or did I miss something?
  
  AH..logic, without it we would be left with the Bible alone.
  LOL "i kill me"

  The Great and Powerful Oz:
  

  pay no attention to the man behind the curtain