The Impurity of the Early Church
I was just reading some old posts on patristics at Professor Atwood’s Three Hierarchies that sparked some thoughts. It is common for people to want to rely on the early Church as an example. This is done in two ways. The churches of Rome and Greece argue that the early Church was pure and passed down those pure traditions across the ages. Some Protestants argue that the early Church was pure and we should figure out what it did and return to those pure practices.
Both are wrong, because their premise is wrong. Why should we think the early Church was pure? Why should we think that it knew good doctrine or practice any better than we do now? Why should we think that its members behaved better than we do now?
It is not a good answer to say that the early Church had the Apostles and other people who had heard the words of Jesus directly from His mouth. That is true, but a point the Gospel makes time and again is how badly the Apostles misunderstood those words. Indeed, their blockheadedness reminds us of the sins of Israel that persisted despite prophets and miracles. Actually being there doesn’t seem to help at all.
Well, how about the personal holiness of the Apostles? Again: why should we think they are particularly holy? I can’t think of any evidence for the proposition, and plenty against it, including, especially, the fact that Judas was an Apostle. The Apostles did some admirable things, but they did some less admirable things too.
But weren’t the Apostles helped by the Holy Spirit after Pentecost? Yes, but so are we, even if we don’t have the miraculous tongues of fire. And we have very little evidence on whether the Apostles changed their behavior after Pentecost. Peter, to be sure, seems to have become braver, but that could just be part of the ups and downs of his faith that we see through the Gospels. We do see, too, that Paul severely criticized Peter in regard to the Antioch controversy.
Okay, well what about the early Church’s wonderful faith under persecution? That faith is admirable, but remember that we’re talking about a period of 400 years or so, most of which didn’t have much persecution, and while we know of some wonderful Christian martyrs, we don’t know so much about how many Christians, including bishops, chickened out. In any case, virtue under persecution is a different quality than doctrinal correctness, and it is even a different virtue than everyday holiness. Some people are better at loving their brethren, some at standing up under the hatred of persecutors, and I wouldn’t be surprised if excellence at those two virtues had an inverse correlation.
Despite all this, would God have allowed the Church to become corrupt right away? Well, I don’t see why not. We know the Church has become corrupt over the ages. Everyone has to admit that a large percentage of Christians are in grievous error, since Protestants and Roman Catholics can’t both be right. Indeed, the whole reason for looking back to the early Church is our realization that we currently are imperfect. If God has let the Church be imperfect for centuries, I don’t see why He wouldn’t have let it always be imperfect. Again think of Israel. Did God start Israel off with a couple of centuries of perfect obedience before He let her stray? No. Abraham sinned over and over again. Jacob is not a very admirable character. Moses and his generation of Israel were blocked from the Holy Land for their sins. David’s life was as up-and-down as Abraham’s. Since none of these possible starting points for Israel had as much as a 20 year period of perfection, we shouldn’t expect that of the Church either.
And in fact we have many advantages over the early Church. Human sinfulness is probably constant over time, but we have some practical advantages. We have the New Testament, for one thing— both by virtue of it having been written and by virtue of far more Church members having copies. We have centuries of theological thinking. We have centuries of devotional writing. We have centuries of experience with what works and what does not, and with the various kinds of corruption against which the Church must guard. Thus, I would think the modern Church is actually much better on doctrine. We may not behave better, but we know more.
Where does that leave us? With the conclusion that Patristics is interesting, but lacks not just intrinsic authority, but evidentiary value as to what Jesus taught. Just because people in the early Church were organized into bishoprics or believed in transubstantiation tells us nothing either way about whether those things are right or wrong.
June 17th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
An excellent analysis Eric.
Regarding your comment about “grievous error”: error yes, but is it really grievous? We all agree about the most important doctrines, and I suspect many people do not even understand others.
Does correct doctrine even matter very much? Certainly, it must be a good thing, but, surely, there many more important things in bringing us closer to God?
June 18th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
You have a point here, of course. In fact, I’d go one step further. We know for a fact that the early Church was not pure. Why? Because we have the historical evidence for impurity and dissension in the early Church just as we know it exists today. Very quickly after the death of Jesus, we know the early Church began to struggles with heresy, dissension and lack of committement. And that is in the Bible. I won’t even talk about what the Fathers say.
That said, I would be cautious about the assumption that we moderns know better than the Fathers. Most of the Fathers who have survived have done so because they are the best of the best and have stood the test of time. It doesn’t mean that they are infallable authorites or anything like that, but it does mean they’re good enough to have a look at when we’re working on a theological issue. We might decide they have the wrong end of the stick, but, then again, so might we.
Peace,
Phil
June 30th, 2007 at 9:14 am
An example of a grievous error would be transubstantiation, which I think some or even many believed in the early Church. (or gnosticism– common in the early Church, it seems, and not in the Fathers only because that side lost out)
Someone who believes in transubstantiation believes God is commanding cannibalism and also is worshipping bread instead of God. That surely is offensive to God– more offensive, perhaps, than murder would be. Is it a barrier to salvation if the person believes he is worshipping God instead of bread? That is a hard question. It is very much like the question of whether someone who worships a statue of Zeus, thinking it is God, can be saved. I don’t know.
June 30th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Eric,
Thanks for the plug, although I tend to think “purity” is probably not the right category here.
Let’s say it’s year 2500, and I want to know what was mainstream teaching in non-denominational evangelical circies in year 2000. I have a few bits and pieces, but mostly a vast library of tapes giving the preaching of Ted Haggard.
The question comes up — what did evangelicals in year 2000 generally think about the Lord’s Supper? Or about the end times? Or about the role of charismatic gifts? Would the preaching of Ted Haggard be a useful resource to go to? Of course it would. Would his moral failings mean the work couldn’t be used for the purpose of documenting what mainstream evangelicals believed? Of course not.
So if the question comes up — what did Christians in AD 150 believe about the Lord’s Supper, we have to turn to the available sources. And that is true, regardless of what we think about the purity of the particular persons. (But of course the works of the Ted Haggards of the ante-Nicene era — think Paul of Samosata — did not survive. The ones whose works survived are those who were impeccable morally.) And once we get a fix on how Christians in AD 150 believed, we have to related that to how Christians in AD 70 believed — which is presumably what the apostles taught them.
So whatever you think of the Fathers as authorities, you must acknowledge their importance as witnesses — which is what Charles Porterfield Krauth argued here:
http://threehierarchies.blogspot.com/2005/08/more-as-witnesses-than-thinkers.html
July 1st, 2007 at 12:20 pm
CPA, you’re right that I’m combining two categories here– moral behavior, and doctrinal correctness– and that a given person can be pure in one and not in the other. Your Krauth extract is very good on that (maybe I even have been influenced by reading it 2 years ago?).
That most of the fathers believe X, however, is neither sufficient evidence that most Christians believed X nor sufficient evidence that the Apostles believed it, though it is indeed evidence for both.
What if we knew that all the Apostles believed X in 70 A.D.? That is stronger evidence yet that X is true, especially if they said they heard X from Jesus rather than thinking it up themselves.