Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mcnc.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!bch From: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Wingate - Firing blanks again Message-ID: <2351@mcnc.UUCP> Date: Mon, 12-Nov-84 02:31:17 EST Article-I.D.: mcnc.2351 Posted: Mon Nov 12 02:31:17 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Nov-84 05:55:02 EST References: Reply-To: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes) Organization: North Carolina Educational Computing Service Lines: 37 Summary: C'mon guys, back off it! You are both reasonable people and can surely find a common ground. From what I have inferred from both positions, I'm not entirely sure you'd disagree if you'd get around the flaming and name calling. Yiri says that modern Christianity is descended from the Apostolic (later Roman) perversion of the teachings of a Jewish Sect. This isn't exactly a new thesis. It is doctrine in the LDS Church and was doctrine in the christian sect I was raised in. There is fairly sound evidence that the Apostolic Bishops turned the early writings to their own ends, to insure succession and centralization in a badly fragmented social movement. I doubt that this was a deliberate effort to mislead, but more an effort to consolidate a power base. Antinomian and antisemitic? I'm not qualified to judge, but I think it hardly matters today. The road from Apostolic Christianity to the collection of independent sects we call Christians today has more than a few twists, turns and downright reversals. There have been a couple of major "purifications of the faith," more than a few reinterpretations of early dogma, and a full-scale revolu- tion known as the Protestant Reformation. The intellectual seeds of Christianity are now well scattered and any philosophical resemblance between modern Christians and their progenitors is probably coincidental. Charley has allowed as much in his article "What Episcopalians Believe." The validity of his faith (and that of most other Christians) is only dimly contingent on the validity of the early Christian Church. Any attack on the validity of the modern Christianity grounded on questioning the validity of the Apostolic Church misses the mark as surely as an attack on the validity of Judaism as a perversion of the more ancient Sumerian cult of the Goddess. The origins of religions seem invariably embroiled in controversy and a certain rewriting of history. It is the religion as it evolves, however, that has to be dealt with. -- Byron C. Howes ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch