Background and History of Christian Belief
Jesus was a Jew and Christianity grew out of a Jewish root. So what did the early Church inherit from the Jews?
Although Jesus was a Rabbi who based His teaching on traditional Judaism, there were important differences which sowed the seeds of the newly born Church.
From the earliest of days, the Church has written down statements of belief, or Creeds. The earliest are in the letters of St. Paul and the latest are being written by individual local churches and denominations to this day.
Jesus on Earth
At the time of Jesus’ birth, Israel was under Roman occupation and, as they remembered their history and the times they had been rescued from trouble by God through a human Messiah figure, they people were on the look out for someone to do to the Romans what Judas Maccabeus had done to the Greeks.
Jesus had indeed come as Israel’s Messiah to bring rescue and redemption but not in the way they were expecting. He did not seek a military victory to “restore the Kingdom to Israel” from the Romans which would have been a temporary solution like those preceding. What Jesus did was on a much bigger scale and would be permanent. He had come to redeem Humanity and the whole of Creation from the slavery they had got themselves into by rebellion against God and disobedience to Him.
And He did so in a very unexpected and counter-intuitive way. Instead of fighting evil with evil, He fought evil with good. The result was that evil threw everything it could at Jesus, Jesus willingly took it upon Himself and was crucified and died. Though it looked like failure, the whole thing was turned around when, after 3 days, Jesus rose from the dead.
Jesus was victorious over evil and death and reclaimed His Kingdom which evil had taken from Him and anyone who wanted to be a part of His Kingdom was invited to do so.
Growth of the Church and divergence of beliefs
As the Church grew and spread, various variations in beliefs emerged. Sometimes this caused splits in the Church, at other times these differences were lived with and people essentially agreed to disagree.
For example, in the early church there was disagreement over whether new converts were required to follow the Jewish Law. This disagreement was resolved at the Council of Jerusalem around 50AD and described in Acts 15.
In the 4th Century, there was a group who asserted that Jesus was not the eternal Son of God but was a created being. This belief, led by Arius, was largely resolved at the Council of Constantinople in 381AD although for a long time the belief persisted.
Other key divergences include the Schism of 1054AD between the Roman Church and the Eastern Church leading to the existence of the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Then the Reformation which was triggered in 1517 by Luther’s protest against corruption in the Catholic church. This eventually led to the many splitting from the Catholic church and forming various “Protestant” denominations, each with their own beliefs and emphases.
The overarching history of the Church indicates that, although there have been many ways and many times when beliefs gave wandered away from the Apostolic origins, there appears to be a built in “correcting force” which has the tenancy to bring them back.
As a pattern, every few centuries, Christianity undergoes major correction:
- 2nd century: rule of faith vs. Gnosticism
- 4th century: Christology defined
- 8th century: icon debate
- 11th century: monastic reforms
- 16th century: Reformation
- 20th century: Vatican II and global evangelicalism, Charismatic Renewal
- 21st century: The “quiet revival” – still ongoing.
The Church often drifts, but never drifts indefinitely. Internal and external pressures arise that push it back toward the biblical and apostolic foundation.
A brief summary of some of the variations which, to me, raise the most important questions are addressed here.