I'm reading some very interesting and wonderful Church history here. I'm interested in protestant history through the centuries as they opposed the Roman Catholic church as it arose and became a dominant institution rather than the living church of Jesus Christ. There is a mistaken idea propagated by the Catholic church that they were the only church for centuries and therefore must be the true church because 'God would not leave the world without any light,' as they like to say. Well, if you read this and many other protestant historians, you will see that there has always been a true church that by necessity had to protest against the Roman church in order to be obedient to Christ and hold up the light of the true gospel. Puritans, or 'cathari' as they were called in Latin, rose up even from the beginning of the Roman church and constantly were a problem to them all throught the centuries. The catholics don't like to admit this.
If you don't want to read the whole thing, I suggest you start with the section entitled "Reflections on the History of Christianity during the First Three Centuries" (starting on page 121) as I did, hoping to go back later and read the rest.
I think you will find it very encouraging if you are a believer.
4 comments:
You might want to find some more current sources that reflect the past 100 years of archeology and Biblical criticism. I would also avoid or at least be circumspect about sources that use the terms or are based on other resources that use the terms "papists" or "Romish". That would be like me expecting fair and balanced history about non-Catholic Christians from a book that referred to all of them as "heretics".
Thanks, Barbara. These older histories do use those kind of words alot, and I'm sorry that it is offensive, but I think they had reason to think of the Roman Catholic church with animosity in those days and earlier as the memories of the inquisition had not yet faded.
The point is that if they are using such terms than they may not be very objective in their research of history. Furthermore, William Jones was a British Protestant living in a Protestant country. Considering the Inquisition against Protestants was in Spain, Mr. Jones would not have been effected. If anything he would have seen the violent persecutions of Catholics by Protestants. The persecutions cut both ways in Britain. And the Inquistion is widely overblown. Kelly has written articles or you can just look at Wikipedia.
I'm currently reading a book I thought I would recommend to you. It's "From Jesus to Christianity" by L. Michael White. I can't find any information on what religion/denomination the author is if any. I suspect that he is not Catholic just from certain terminology that he uses, or he could just be trying to use odd terms in an attempt to avoid theological controversies. Anyway, I'm only half-way through but it might have a lot of information that you might find interesting and relevant. For instance he traces the composition of scripture, discusses the make up of the 1st century house-churches, and puts Christianity in its Judaic and historical context.
It's a thick book, the kind that can make your brain explode from too much information. But in your quest for "original Christianity" you might find it conducive.
Hi Barbara,
There have been other inquisitions and persecutions besides the Spanish one, and I was refering to all of them in general rather than any specific one.
See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition\
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