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Early Christianity Quotes

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Early Christianity Quotes

“ONE OF THE MOST interesting features of the early Christian debates over orthodoxy and heresy is the fact that views that were originally [...] deemed orthodox came to be declared heretical. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of the first heretical view of Christ—the view that denies his divinity. [...] the very first Christians held to exaltation Christologies which maintained that the man Jesus (who was nothing more than a man) had been exalted to the status and authority of God. The earliest Christians thought that this happened at his resurrection; eventually, some Christians came to believe it happened at his baptism. Both views came to be regarded as heretical by the second century CE, [...] It is not that the second-century “heresy-hunters” among the Christian authors attacked the original Christians for these views. Instead, they attacked the people of their own day for holding them; and in their attacks they more or less “rewrote history,” by claiming that such views had never been held by the apostles at the beginning or by the majority of Christians ever.”

BibleApostlesHeresyOrthodoxyChristianity FaithEarly ChristianityBiblical Criticism
Book:How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
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“During the first three hundred years after Jesus' death, there was neither an organized religion nor a central authority or book. There were many opinions and beliefs about who Jesus was. At first, even the apostles argued among themselves and had strong disagreements with the 'apostle' Paul (a man who had never met Jesus) over the basic concepts of Jesus' teachings. The Christian Bible as the public knows it, more or less today, did not appear until the middle of the 3rd century. Put differently, the first version of the Christian Bible as the public knows it did not appear until about one hundred and twenty years after Jesus died. And St. John's Book of Revelation was not accepted as part of the New Testament until 382 CE!”

DisagreementsEarly ChristianityApostles ArgueNo Central AuthorityFalse Apostle PaulNo Book
Book:Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!
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“It is set in a vast desert, a day and a night's journey from the monasteries on Nitria, and the way to it is to be found or shown by no track and no landmarks of earth, but one journeys by the signs and courses of the stars. Water is hard to find, and when it is found it is of a dire odour and as it might be bituminous, yet inoffensive in taste. Here therefore are men made perfect in holiness (for so terrible a spot could be endured by none save those of austere resolve and supreme constancy), yet their chief concern is the love which they show to one another and towards such as by chance reach that spot. They tell that once a certain brother brought a bunch of grapes to the holy Macarius: but he who for love's sake thought not on his own things but on the things of others, carried it to another brother, who seemed more feeble. And the sick man gave thanks to God for the kindness of his brother, but he too thinking more of his neighbor than of himself, brought it to another, and he again to another, and so that same bunch of grapes was carried round all the cells, scattered as they were far over the desert, and no one knowing who first had sent it, it was brought at last to the first giver. But the holy Macarius gave thanks that he had seen in the brethren such abstinence and such loving-kindness and did himself reach after still sterner discipline of the life of the spirit.”

Early ChristianityDesert Fathers
Book:The Desert Fathers
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“Two brethren made their way to the city to sell their handiwork: and when in the city they went different ways, divided one from the other, one of them fell into fornication. After a while came his brother, saying, "Brother, let us go back to our cell." But he made answer, "I am not coming." And the other questioned him, saying, "wherefore, brother?" And he answered, "Because when thou didst go from me, I ran into temptation, and I sinned in the flesh." But the other, anxious to help him, began to tell him, saying, "But so it happened with me: when I was separated from thee, I too ran into fornication. But let us go, and do penance together with all our might: and God will forgive us that are sinful men." And they came back to the monastery and told the old men what had befallen them, and they enjoined on them the penance they must do. But the one began his penance, not for himself but for his brother, as if he himself had sinned. And God, seeing his love and his labour, after a few days revealed to one of the old men that for the great love of this brother who had not sinned, He had forgiven the brother who had. And verily this is to lay down one's soul for one's brother.”

Early ChristianityDesert Fathers
Book:The Desert Fathers
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“Do we have any independent evidence that there were early Christians who did not believe in the miraculous conception of Jesus? [...] Eusebius tells us that in the early-to-mid second century there were certain Jewish Christians who did not believe in the virgin birth. The Jewish Christian sect of the Ebionites ("the Poor"-see Gal. 2:10) [...] Here we must remember one of our fundamental axioms: if we possess two versions of a story, one more and one less spectacular, if either is closer to the truth, it must be the latter. [...] The existence of the belief in the natural conception of Jesus must be understood as the stubborn persistence of an earlier belief in the face of the popular growth of a subsequent belief, perhaps influenced by pagan myth: the virgin conception of Jesus. It is easy to imagine how a natural origin such as everyone else has should eventually be thought unimpressive, especially since rival savior deities could boast of supernatural origins. On the other hand, imagine a scenario in which Jesus was widely known to have had a miraculous birth and someone has it occur to him: "Hey, wouldn't it be great if Jesus was no different from anyone else? That's it! He had a ... a natural birth!" Not likely.”

JesusChristianityJudaismVirgin BirthEarly ChristianityBiblical CriticismChristology
Book:The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?
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“Although the Gospel of Judas does not encourage martyrdom, ironically—or better, paradoxically—it portrays Judas himself as the first martyr. This gospel reveals that when Judas hands Jesus over, he seals his own fate. But he knows, too, that when the other disciples stone him, they kill only his mortal self. His spirit-filled soul has already found its home in the light world above. Although Christians may suffer and die when they oppose the powers of evil, the hope Christ brings will sustain them.”

JesusGospelMartyrdomJudasGnosticismJudas IscariotEarly ChristianityGospel Of Judas
Book:Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
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“Christians wanted to affirm certain beliefs. But in some instances, if those affirmations were pressed to an extreme, they did not allow Christians to affirm other beliefs that they or other Christians also wanted to affirm. We have seen, for example, that some Christians wanted to affirm that Christ was human, but they did so to such an extent that they refused to acknowledge he was divine. Others wanted to affirm that he was divine and did so to such an extent that they refused to acknowledge he was human. Others tried to get around the problem by claiming that he was two different things: part of him was human and part of him was divine; but this solution brought division and disunity instead of harmony and oneness. Others wanted to affirm that since there can be only one God, Jesus could be divine only if he himself was that one God come to earth. But that solution ended up causing Christians to say that Jesus begot himself as the father to his own son, along with other equally confusing formulations. Some superscholars of the day such as Origen tried to resolve the problems in more sophisticated ways, but these views also led to ideas that were later deemed objectionable, [...] Throughout all these debates, we see Christian thinkers trying to figure it all out, wanting to make certain affirmations that they took to be gospel truth. [...] Eventually a Christology emerged that affirmed at one and the same time aspects of what opposing heresies affirmed, while refusing to deny what they denied. This led to a significantly refined but highly paradoxical understanding of how it is that Jesus could be God.”

ChristianityTheologyTheology QuotesEarly Christianity
Book:How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
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“The ecclesiastical governors of the Christians were taught to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove; but as the former was refined, so the latter was insensibly corrupted, by the habits of government. In the church as well as in the world, the persons who were placed in any public station rendered themselves considerable by their eloquence and firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their dexterity in business; and while they concealed from others, and perhaps from themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently relapsed into all the turbulent passions of active life, which were tinctured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the infusion of spiritual zeal.”

Power CorruptsEarly Christianity1776Church PoliticsImpietyDove And Serpent
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I
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“Even if three centuries of outsider status and intermittent persecution had tested the endurance of individuals and communities, coping with the patronage of a newly Christian emperor posed a challenge. The challenge was all the more threatening for its moral complexity. Was it right for the churches to accept the Emperor's favour, knowing full well that if they did so, they also tacitly accepted his right, so evident in all other aspects of life in the Roman Empire, to call the shots?”

Church And StateConstantineEarly Christianity
Book:Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women
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“Constantine wanted to establish a world or universal religion, with himself at the head. During this council, he declared his divinity by stating that the God of Christians was his personal sponsor. He then replaced certain Christian religious practices of the time with familiar Roman Empire practices of sun worship along with other Pagan teachings from Syria and Persia.”

Roman EmpireConstantineEarly ChristianitySun WorshipUniversal Religion
Book:Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!
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“The new ideal of virginity and widowhood opened up a new era of sympathetic collaboration between men and women, and for male-female friendship. By establishing a category of women who were understood to be off-limits with respect to romantic entanglements, writers like Gregory were able to support and even celebrate a feminine version of Christianity without being afraid to seem as if they had fallen under the influence of feminine charms.”

WomenEarly ChristianityGregory Of Nyssa
Book:Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women
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