History of Christianity*

• 7 C.E. Jesus preaches in the temple

• 27 John the Baptist and Jesus begin their ministries,

• 29 John the Baptist beheaded by Herod.

• 30 Jesus crucified and resurrected.

• 31 Gamaliel, head of the Sanhedrin, encourages tolerance of the Christians.

• 33 Steven stoned (first martyr)

• 34 Paul persecutes the Christians but undergoes conversion

• 49 Claudius expels the Jews from Rome as tension between orthodox and Christian Jews flares up in violence.

• 50-52 Books of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians written. The Virgin Mary dies in Ephesus at age 64 (?); Catholic tradition will assert that she undergoes an immediate resurrection and is assumed into Heaven. Possibly Matthew’s Gospel is written in Aramaic, to be followed by a Greek translation after mark’s Gospel makes use of it.

• 100 John, last of the Apostles, dies in Ephesus.

• 125 First recorded instance of a prayer to Mary.

• 260 First datable instance of Christians praying to the saints (Peter & Paul) for intercession.

• 300 By this point, only the clergy are permitted to speak from the pulpit (in earlier centuries both clergy and lay people were permitted to teach the Scriptures).

• 312 Constantine superficially converts to Christianity after a dream leads him to a military victory. He remains polytheistic until his death, even striking coins to honor Apollo.

• 321 Constantine declares Sunday the official Christian sabbath day.

• 337 Christianity becomes the official state religion of Rome. Constantine finally receives baptism as a Christian (from heretical Arian priests) and dies on Pentecost.

• 338 Jewish calendar converted to solar calendar.

• 431 Council of Ephesus formally acknowledges Mary is the mother of God and that Jesus was God in the flesh.

• 451 Council of Chalcedon gives the same authority to the Bishop of Constantinople as to the bishop of Rome; this is the beginning of the eventual schism between the Eastern and Western churches.

• 460 Pope Leo forbids priests to marry

• 476 Fall of the Roman Empire

• 625 Mohammad begins the Koran

• 1054 The Eastern and Roman church separate with both popes excommunicating each other.

• 1208 St. Francis of Assisi renounces wealth to follow Christ.

• 1215 Marriage declared to be a sacrament and now requires the consent of both parties

• 1232 Pope Gregory IX appoints the first inquisitors.

• 1348-1351 Bubonic plague kills 33% of Europeans; blamed on Avignon papacy, Jews, personal immorality

• 1382 John Wyclif publishes the first English Bible translated from the Vulgate.

• 1453 Constantinople falls to the Moslems.

• 1456 Gutenberg Bible printed.

• 1478 Spanish Inquisition begun by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands, including Jews.

• 1508 Martin Luther has the revelation that a man is saved by faith in Christ alone, apart from either works or the Sacraments.

• 1517 Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg.

• 1532 Church of England breaks away from Rome, presumably because the Church of Rome has strayed so far from the original faith

1545 Council of Trent forms to respond to the schism started by Luther, eventually ratifying a number of key doctrines which affect the Catholic church to this day. Included are: Faith alone is not sufficient for salvation; Scripture and tradition hold equal value; the seven Sacraments are necessary for salvation; Transubstantiation formally acknowledged; priests forbidden to marry; Catholic canon of Scripture formally ratified.

• 1562 Gregorian calendar introduced, changing the New Year from April 1 to January 1.

• 1609 The Baptist church founded in opposition to infant baptism.

• 1611 First appearance of the King James Bible.

• 1633 Galileo is forced to renounce his teachings.

• 1637 Scottish Prayer books adds words "For thine is the Kingdom" etc. to the Lord’s Prayer – no record of this ending prior to this date

1830’s – 1860’s Oxford Movement crosses the Atlantic to the U.S. Prior to this, the following were not permitted in the American Episcopal Church:

– candles on the altar

– church statuary

– elaborate vestments

– holy water

– incense

– sung services

– Latin and/or Greek in the services

– calling the clergyman "father"

– veneration of the reserved sacrament

– crossing one's self

• 1950’s – Blacks and women are permitted to serve as delegates to National Convention of the Episcopal Church

• 1976 – General Convention of the Episcopal Church approves the ordination of women

• 1988 - Barbara Harris first woman to be elected a bishop in the Anglican Communion -- suffragen for Diocese of Massachusetts

• 1993 - Mary Adelia McLeod first women elected to be a diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church -- ordinary for the Diocese of Vermont

•And so it goes …

-- Colin Chapman, The Case for Christianity

• God is Personal

• God is Infinite

• God is Creator

• God is Sustainer

• God is Loving

• God is Holy

• There is only One God

• There are three "Persons" in the One God

• Jesus spoke about himself as the Son

• Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit as distinct from himself and the Father

• Early Christians experienced God working in their lives in a radically new way and they understood this to be the work of the Holy Spirit.

-- Colin Chapman, The Case for Christianity

• God must judge – but wants to forgive

– Forgiveness is available to all

• Death means more than physical death

• Forgiveness is always something costly

– If men bear the consequences of their sin and guilt, it means death

• Man cannot solve his problems by himself

• Grace is achieved by faith

– "It is a distinguishing characteristic of Christianity … not that it preaches a God of love, but that it preaches a God of conscience … " – B. B. Warfield, American Theologian

-- Colin Chapman, The Case for Christianity

• Fully human and fully divine

• His death achieved something – he was bearing our sins

• We can be reasonably certain that he rose from the dead

– "Even if we had the best film of a Jerusalem newsreel of the year 30 A.D., it would not help us much since it could not show us what really happened on that day … proof cannot be given of Jesus’ resurrection … God exposes himself to skepticism, doubt and disbelief, renouncing anything that would compel men to believe … assurance grows out of life with the word of the risen Lord and in obedience to Him." – Eduard Schweitzer

"Faith in the resurrection should be based … on the faith of the first disciples."

God and Science

– John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die

considered mysteries

– The universe operated according to fixed laws, which brooked no interference from any external source, divine or otherwise

– Growing fear that there may be no intervening power capable of or eager to respond to our deep yearnings

• Work of Charles Darwin took the rug out from under the notion that human beings were the crown of God’s creation

– The work of creation not yet finished

– Concept of life after death began to wobble

• In the face of today’s truths, believers must find new meaning for the reality of God or the reality of God will die

Paradigm Shift – Spong’s New Reformation

Symbols of our Changing Theology

• Altars have come out from facing the walls and celebrants now face the people

– Altar facing external deity now faces the people; God is perceived as being present in the people

• People are rising from their knees

– Kneeling was the approach of a serf or beggar

• Experimental liturgies are proliferating

– Finding new expression for the depth of the divine

• Revisions in prayer books

– No longer reflect concept as sin being a punishment, childbirth making a woman unclean, that weather can be changed by human petition, that God is on the side of only one nation

• Change in view of ordained ministers

– Paternal priestly power of antiquity eroding, ordained person not someone who stands between the theistic God above and the fragile human below

– Spong suggests that in the future, lay persons may preside at the Eucharist

The Future Church

• We will still worship – it’s the way we practice self-definition

– Will be marked by the awareness that we are all God-bearers

– Scriptures will be treasured as a record of the faith of ancestors, but worship will not be bound by cultural or cultic limitations of the scriptures

• Christ will not be seen as the exclusive path

– No denigrating or judging of other religious traditions; Christ will be an inviting presence

• Ceremony that transforms ordinary elements into body and blood will not survive

– But the communal meal will survive – feeding one another is the experience in which life, love and being are shared; the common meal is a holy act

• There is something real beyond the limits of this life

– <Steph>Are we on the brink of being able to communicate with whatever is beyond death?</Steph>

• Spong: "Making it possible for everyone else to live, to love, and to be is the only mission that Christian people possess."

– "When my being is enhanced by love, called to a new reality by love, introduced through love to limitless freedom, then I believe I have touched what is timeless, eternal and real. My confidence in eternal life, life beyond the finitude and death, is found in that experience, and my doorway into that experience is still the one who, for me, seems to have embodied it, Jesus whom I call Christ."

• Lennon: "All you need is love."

Paradigm Shift – The Cosmic Christ

-- Matthew Fox

Thoughts from Dinesh D’Souza

• Book: What’s So Great About America

• In 1995 Francis Fukuyama theorized that we’ve reached the "end of history" – the end result being liberal, capitalist democracy

• In 1997 Samuel Huntington warned that the West should not arrogantly assume that the rest of the world would embrace the principles of Judeo-Christian civilization; disputed thesis of "end of history".

• "Know your enemy." Islam is not the enemy, but to understand September 11, 2001 and the fundamentalist faction we are dealing with, we must understand Islam.

Some differences between West (Christian-based) and Islam

Digression: Rise of Individualism in Christianity

– Why did individualism take hold in the West but not the Middle East?

One theory: "Structures of church and feudalism … took a major blow in the form of the Black Death, the bubonic plague. It first swept through Europe around 1350 AD, killing about a third of the total population. People of the times were accustomed to interpreting such events as acts of God, but this seemed utterly senseless. The church and the nobility were both powerless to stop it, and the rapid decline in population destabilized many aspects of the social structure. Nor could it be seen as a great purification since social behavior seemed to turn worse as a result. Those who survived, emerged with a deep-rooted belief in individual self-reliance - in a world gone crazy, it was each person for him/herself." -- Robert Gilman

East vs. West, Islam vs. Christianity

• Islam paradigm is that all must be Islam and infidels must be obliterated (= jihad).

• American paradigm is separation of church and state; in Islam, the church and state are one, the American paradigm is subversive

• Islam covers administration of state, laws for divorce, inheritance – it’s a complete framework for life – impossible to practice in a secular framework.

• Christian framework could cover all aspects of life, but when the Gentiles were exempted from following the Jewish law, it ceased to be a complete framework for daily life

• Americans presuppose that free speech and equal rights are best way of organizing society and try to use such arguments when dialoging with Muslims; ineffective because for Islam, religious truth and virtue have higher claims.

Understanding History

• To understand the people of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. we must also understand the history of the Middle East, including the events of the Crusades, the impact of the creation of the state of Israel.

– Will not try to tackle this in this class!

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