Early Christians in Disarray

Whenever you read a collection of essays, you are bound to enjoy some more than others. I found this to be the case as I read Early Christians in Disarray, edited by Noel B. Reynolds. This book is a collection of essays, published by FARMS, that deal with the Great Apostasy. The main argument of this book is that the Great Apostasy did not begin with the Council of Nicea, but was already well under way while the apostles were still alive.

James E. Faulconer's essay was very interesting to me. He talked about what the word "apostasy" actually means, and how it is used in the New Testament. For example, when Paul talks about a "falling away", the original Greek actually says there will be a rebellion. The author then talks about how such a rebellion is evident.

John Gee's essay on the corruption of scripture was also highly informative. Although no scriptural texts exists earlier than the second century, this author supplies writings of different church leaders, wherein they accuse other people of changing the writings of the apostles. These accusations states that various factions were changing the writings to correspond more closely with their teachings. There is also some evidence that Jewish leaders were changing the Old Testament to remove certain evidences of Christianity.

Daniel W. Graham and James L. Siebach both give a history of philosophy's introduction to the Church. Without revelation, the early Christians needed something to establish a somewhat firmer foundation, and they found that in the philosophical teachings of the Greeks. This was not an immediate marriage of beliefs, but actually took a few centuries to be settled.

Last of all, David L. Paulsen's essay on the early Christian understanding of God was extremely interesting. He gave firm proof that the early Christians and Jews believed in an embodied God. This belief was attacked by Greek philosophy until it eventually was established at the Council of Nicea that the official doctrine should be that God is not embodied. But even with this established creed, the dominating church struggled for many more years to stamp out the belief in an embodied God.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Its appendix was also a helpful resource in understanding more about the subject. Since the Church is always only one generation away from apostasy, it is important to see how it came about in the early days so that we can know how to prevent it in our personal lives today.