Christian History

Master of Christian History

By Michael Barth

    This course of Christian History was a very fascinating course to take.  This class starts at the very beginning and goes up to the Great Schism of 1054.  The topic that caught my eye was the persecution that the early Christians had to face during the early years.  The persecution was not easy to overcome.  The early Christians faced many different types of punishment that included everything up to death.

            I also felt that during the class that the Christians also persecuted the Muslims when Islam started to spread in the East.  This was surprising to me since Jesus Christ taught lover, peace, and tolerance.  Early Christianity did suffer through dwindling numbers as Islam grew but I could sense through this course that there was tension between Islam and Christianity.

            The early Christians overcame the persecution of the early years when Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.  While the seriousness of this conversion is in question, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313 which allowed Christians and other religions the freedom to worship any religion the people chose to worship.  With this edict, Christians did not have to worry about state interference and were allowed to worship without worrying about facing punishment.

            With the Edict of Milan, Christians started to come together to come up with a standard of theology for Christianity.  What I consider the first major meeting was held in 325 A. D. under Constantine at Nicaea.  This helped Christianity spread because this informed people what Christianity believed and stood for.  There was still a division between the East and the West though which was based on how the Bible was to be interpreted.

            In 1054 A. D., the Great Schism happened between the Eastern and Western Churches.  Each church excommunicated the other over differences in how to practice Christianity.  What is interesting about the Great Schism is that the Roman Bishop, Leo IX, had been dead for 3 months so he could not have seen or signed the excommunication for the Eastern Church.  Both churches had been in talks about the differences which led to the Great Schism.

            This class was full of information about Christian History.  I would recommend it to any ULC minister.  This course helped me realize how the early church developed and the hardships that it faced in the very early years.  This course was well written and was presented in an organized and chronological fashion.  The author of this course was very knowledgeable about Christian History.

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity two courses in , Wicca, several in  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training.
 

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.
 

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Four Gospels Questions

Hello:

 ⁴³"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. ⁴⁴Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. ⁴⁵Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation."

I feel that this passage is telling us that if a person tries to give up their life of sin, but they do nothing to replace their old, evil ways, they are bound to fail and will go back to their old ways, plus add some other bad habits.  For example, if a person gives up watching porn but does not take up reading the bible, then eventually, they will just go back to watching porn and will, in fact, add other bad habits (i.e.: prostitution, abuse of drugs, etc.) to it.

The Bible tells us in James 2:14-17 that faith is not enough.  If it is not nourished, if the field the seed of faith is planted in is not worked and if it is left alone, then that faith will die and the field will soon be overgrown with weeds.  Faith is like a muscle.  It has to be exercised or it will become weak.

Glenn Kirkland,

"Most people give-up just when they're
about to achieve success." ~ Ross Perot

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Christian History

      Master of Christian History Lesson 8


1) What were the roots of these heresies at this time?
       External and internal. The external front came mainly from the persecution by the Roman state. The internal front came from those persons within the Christian church who were teaching false heretical doctrines and developing their own canons of writings to support those heresies. Converts to Christianity came from either a Jewish  legalistic background or an intellectualism rooted in Greek philosophy.



2) Why was Gnosticism in particular such a great danger to Christian doctrine?
       It was at its peek around A.D. 150, its origins can be tracked back into New Testament times. Gnosticism came about from a natural desire to develop what theologians call today theodicy, an explanation for the beginning of evil. Gnostics believe that matter is evil. As such they wanted to create a method to keep God, as spirit, separate from evil, and which humanity came from.



3) How did the existence of these heresies help the Christian church in the long run?
      In Gnosticism, salvation was only for the spiritual soul. It might start with faith, but the special knowledge that Christ gave to the elite would be far more helpful in the process of salvation. The body was evil and destined to be cast aside. To keep the body in check, asceticism or complete hand over to libertinism was predicted.


By Rev. Julia
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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have various classes in Christianity, one on Wicca, along with several Pagan courses, more than a few courses about Metaphysics with more being added regularly.

Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is free, legal and lasts for life, so please take advantage of our Free Online Ordination.

The  ULC, run by Rev. Long, has created a chaplaincy program to help train our ministers. We also have a huge catalog of minister supplies.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and am proud to have started the Seminary.

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Four Gospels

Dear Amy:

The Blog did not allow me to register, so I am writing you with a question.

The Unvarnished Gospels is a very interesting translation, but it sometimes leaves me feeling uneasy.  For example, according to the Unvarnished Gospel, Matthew 11:6 reads as follows:

"And the person is in luck who doesn't let me down."

The ESV translates it as, "And blessed is the one who is not offended by me."

The Catholic Bible (1958) reads, "And blessed is he who is not scandalized in me."

The NIV says, "Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."

The King James translates it as, "And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me."

And finally, The Amplified version reads, "And blessed-happy, fortunate and to be envied- is he who takes no offense at me and finds no cause for stumbling in or through me and is not hindered from seeing the Truth."

I just can not help but seeing Jesus,dressed in a pin-stripe suit and white hat, and talking like  Sheldon Leonard while saying, "is in luck who doesn't let me down."  I attribute luck to a gamblers good fortune from a random series of events.  The use of "... let me down." seems to me to be more of a modern slang than a direct translation.

Well, this is my feelings on this and I invite thoughtful, and probing feedback from others.

May God bless you,

Rev. Glenn Kirkland, D.D.

"Most people give-up just when they're
about to achieve success." ~ Ross Perot

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have various classes in Christianity, one on Wicca, along with several Pagan courses, more than a few courses about Metaphysics with more being added regularly.

 

Christian History

Understanding the Foundations

Final Essay for the Master of Christian History Course

By Daniel L. Moore

            What happened in the first century, the execution of a charismatic preacher, still impacts people.   At the time the execution of Jesus Christ occurred, it was considered a relatively minor incident when viewed from the Roman Empire's perspective.    It was no different than the arrest and execution of a local terrorist.  The man was innocent of any crimes and did not have a physical army or kingdom to overthrow Rome with. 

            Why the fuss?  When one analyzes the sermons that Jesus Christ preached, they seem do not seem to advocate violence.  In fact the strongest language was directed to his own nation's leaders.  He advocated loving one's enemies.  He healed a Roman centurion's servant, cleansed a Samaritan of his leprosy, cast a demon out of a Gentile woman's daughter, and dared to heal on the Sabbath.  He emphasized the sharing of resources in order to help those less fortunate.  So what was His crime?  That he dared forgive people of their sins and that rocked the boat of the local religious leaders.

            He was prophetic.  He dared to say that he would be arrested, tried, beaten and then executed.  Then he said he would be raised from the dead on the third day.  The key doctrine of the Christian faith is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  There were over 500 eyewitnesses to this.  Early historians make mention of this – often as a minor footnote, after all it is Rome – and then there is the movement of followers. 

            Jesus did not "found" a new religion.  He was a Jew who claimed to be the Messiah.  His recorded miracles were such that they could not be tricks or illusions – like raising Lazarus from the dead after the body rotted for four days.  There was the fact that Jewish synagogues were often used by the evangelists like Paul and others that were "conveniently" located throughout the Roman Empire.  They were the repositories for the Jewish Bible which the evangelists would teach from and then show how Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies.  They would then offer the Gospel – the plan of salvation.  The initial church was Jewish. 

Complementing the movement was the universal language of the empire at that time – Greek.  Also, Rome had built roads and secured the waterways so that travel was relatively safe.  For a generation, the followers of Christ were able to spread their message of the Gospel with ease.  As the Gospel spread, the non-Jewish peoples began to hear and respond to the message.  The fact that Jesus often emphasized the poor and that the slave population of Rome was quite high led to many of the poorer economic levels becoming Christian. 

The call of  Saul of Tarsus, later known as the Apostle Paul, was a stroke of the divine.  He was a business man, a trained Jewish scholar, and a passionate follower of God who would use his talents to extend the church.  His missionary strategy was to start with a major city located on a major transportation hub – like a port or where several major highways met.  Once a church was established in a major city, the outlying towns would be targeted. 

From the beginning, the church had a simple yet effective organization.  The apostles were the initial leaders of the church and would be replaced by bishops.  Priest – sometimes called elders or pastors – would lead the local congregations and would be assisted by faithful servants called deacons.  The early bishops served as missionaries to new areas by leading teams to start new works, ordaining elders and deacons, and helping them as they grow.  The bishops would also stay and eventually serve as a senior pastor to a group of churches in a city and in the outlying towns. 

Persecution of Christianity caused the leaders to defend its teachings to the outside world, to develop a unifying doctrine or creed for the church to combat any heresies from within, and to unify the various documents we know today as the Bible. 

From my study of these lessons, I determined that the church had an excellent start but along the way the culture tended to creep in.  The legalization of the church was both a positive and a negative.  Though the church had freedom to evangelize, it also was tempted to get into power politics to its detriment.  The fact that Rome was divided into east and west did not bode well for the church as the first major denomination split was east and west.

All in all, this was a very good review of the first one thousand years of the history of the church.  It helped me to see where many of the practices found today originated.  It also reveals that there has always been some political and cultural encroachments along the way.  There is always a struggle between keeping the faith pure and cultural influences.        

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Christian History

Universal Life Church

There are several miracles in the saga of the rise and survival of Christianity.  One is the resurrection of Jesus Christ and another the resurrection and survival of the church after persecution after persecution and meddling by the irrelevant, irresponsible, self centered, dishonest and of course the despotic – that is from both the outside and the inside.   I sometimes have to wonder which the greater miracle in the history of Christianity.  Psalms 37:11 and Matthew 5:5 comforted the meek, but blood of the bold Apostles and courageous martyrs flowed everywhere for centuries. 

The Acts of the Apostles in the Bible, and per lesson 3, showed the strength of the Holy Spirit in motivating ordinary men without any other significant birthright of wealth and political influence to preach the new covenant of Christ. This was done so well that the Pharisee element of the 'Jerusalem church' collaborating for all intent and purpose with the Romans had to resort to terror and annihilation as the basic strategy to preserve both of their ill constructed heritages.  The word spread in accordance with Acts 1:1-8 indeed worldwide.  Of course as in lesson 3 the 'Good News' was not always spread as an engineered event as it was a flight for survival with the quasi exiled in Samaria and Rome appealing there to the Gentiles and the approachable Jews for converts and strength in numbers.  The enemy became a safer haven and more fertile ground than the homeland of Christianity. That home was pillaged in 70 A.D. and the Promised Land was plowed under over the graves of a half million in 135 AD.  Eusebius and Josephus write extensively on the persecutions and the heroes of the church.

Somehow, as discussed in lesson 6, the church survived the first fifty through one hundred years to struggle through the bureaucratic process of development of government and liturgy as reported in subsequent lessons.  That took a thousand years to mature and yet it was throughout chaotic and resulted in the schism of 1054.  One wonders if the term 'Bible based' vs. 'man made' was ever used to resolve the disputes that took another thousand years to be somewhat repaired – a work still in progress. Time passes and ecumenical councils challenged politics, pagan heritage, and heresy doctrine and cult scripture in 1^st through 4^th centuries BCE to do the impossible and define (canon) scripture as we know it today. Yet archeologists today have unearthed the discarded heretic gospels and the same debates continue anew.  I find it truly inspiring that the tireless efforts of untold heroes and several scholars managed to stabilize the word so that 2 Timothy 3:16 survived as hallowed text and may well prevail another thousand years. Others shall I say 'less devoted to Christianity' must be so worried or their frenzied fanatics would not be so furiously implemented with flawed word and bombs.

Although not a point of the lessons in this history course, the libraries containing the sacred texts, as originals they may have been each in its own time and place, were burned and dismantled right along with the temples and the devoted readers and scribes.  Today the 'church' is questioned in part because it can not produce tangible proof of Moses' notes or Solomon's decrees or Aramaic clay tablets of the preaching of Jesus Christ. Today the lawyers seem to have instilled in modern society the necessity for "proof" while they toil to invent 'lawyer speak' and strategies that seems to challenge any statement as some how vague and vulnerable to question. Can anything be proven, or is faith and spirit indeed the rock that Peter used as a foundation for the church; capable of prevailing and withstanding any force brought against it for two thousand years?

Once the legislators of this country were educated as historians and now the majority is lawyers.  Which seem to have accomplished and which seem to have demolished?

Indeed if anything at all is proven by the history of the Christian Church, it is that 'the word' is indeed stronger than the sword and 'the truth' is an impregnable defense against all false prophets.  'The way' was cluttered with potholes but the philosophy and the essence of Christianity prevailed.  One would hope the young would appreciate the lessons of history forwarded by historians rather than listen to the flawed arguments of a self indulging lawyer. Let the pendulum swing to return reverence to the historian and respect those he reports on so that history will indeed avoid repetition, but instead be the rock upon which wisdom, progress and meaningful accomplishment worthy of our inherited image of His creation mirroring His Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:26); for historians and ministers are today's apostles of Acts 1:7-8.

Great course – well done and appreciated.

Rev. Nick Federspiel

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Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is free,  and lasts for life, so use the Free Online Ordination, button.

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge catalog of Universal Life Church materials.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and it's Seminary since the beginning and have loved watching the continual growth of the seminary.

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Christian History

Final Essay for Masters, Christian History One of the first striking elements of the course, which may or may not have been intended by the author, was the initial framing of the purpose of the course as one that ultimately explores history from a theological–revelatory perspective. Dr. Loy opens his lesson with an exploration of Paul's historical assessment that the Greeks, Romans, and the Jewish people had participated in the historical preparation for the emergence of Christ. While I would argue that this bears no resemblance to the field of history per se, it does illuminate one perspective of how history is interpreted theologically. This is a striking continuance of how the gospels themselves reexamine and reinterpret the Hebrew Scriptures outside their Jewish theological and social contexts and within the Christian frameworks.  In this fashion, what I am ultimately arriving at, is one of the most striking elements I gained from the course was an awareness of and appreciation for the continued tradition of interpreting historical events as the unfolding revelation of God's direct involvement in human lives.  While I am not a Christian, I can appreciate the vitality that such, what might be best termed, a "theohistorical" examination provides in assuring the continued potency of the faith and reinforcing the centrality of the theological belief that Christianity is the final covenant and revelation of God to humankind.  In short, history is preparation for Christians—it is a place of continued discover of God's will. This sense of unfolding revelation and continued vitality was also illustrated in the course through its examination of the theological, how Christians came to think about and understand their faith, development over time.  Dr. Loy does a superb job in exploring the diverse fruiting of thought that emerged after the death of Christ and the rise of monastic orders and the structured Catholic Church.  One thing that I would suggest would be a continued discussion of this unfolding through contemporary times that examines the true diversity of theological strands that have framed the diverse Christian views; in this fashion, truly examining the past and current breadth of the unfolding revelation of God within the Christian faith. I was also struck with the relationship between the unfolding of the Christian faith and Christendom—that is a Christianized political environment.  Dr. Loy discusses at length the growing complexity that such merging led to liturgically; additionally following this it appears the Christian church also underwent significantly greater refining of complex theological issues such as freewill. On the one hand, Pope Gregory asserted that while we inherit sin, we do not inherit "badness"—thus human beings not only engage in redemptive behavior through the baptismal and continued participation in the Eucharist, affirming their relationship to Christ, but are charged with engaging in rigorous self-assessment to ensure they are engaging in right-acting behavior.  What questions I was left with in this lesson (16) was the precise definition of sin from a theological level as Gregory saw it—are the seven deadly sins defined at this point, is sin reflective of something less tangible, how is it defined against its Hebraic origins? I also found this theosophical element a fascinating one in that, to some degree, it logically undermines the notion that one can interpret the unfolding of historical events from a revelatory and theologically preparatory way.  Pope Gregory appears to address this aspect by holding there are exceptions to the predestined versus freewill argument by suggesting there was an "elect" exempt from free will.  I would have liked greater clarification as to who reflected this. All in all, I enjoyed the course and I appreciated Dr. Loy also attending to issues pertaining to women within the church, violence that emerged as the Church became a political authority, as well as defining the unique differences between East and West Christian structures and the source of this schism.  Katherine MacDowell ******************************* The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity two courses in , Wicca, several in  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception. The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training.   As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.   Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar