Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
Sounds to me like in Clement's time, nearly 200 years AD, there were a lot of different views on what Christ and his teachings were all about and how they related to the masses. I take it he was trying to learn them all and put them all together, to figure where it was at.
This was before the Roman Catholics figured out that by being aggressive they could quell any competing philosophy to assure power and wealth.... make it a business, as it were.  |
There were two Clements whose writings have come down to us from the early Church: Clement of Rome, who lived c. 30 - 100, and Clement of Alexandria, who lived c. 150-200. Clement of Rome was Bishop at Rome immediately following Peter and Paul. He was almost certainly a disciple of these Apostles. Clement of Alexandria was the head of the first formal theological school, in Alexandria.
It is true that, by the time of Clement of Alexandria, various heresies were being widely propagated. (The word 'heresy' isn't synonymous with 'different but equally valid opinion'. It refers to a teaching contrary to
orthodox or accepted doctrine, propagated by
someone from within the Church (i.e., who ought to know better). It does not refer to any form of non-Christian teaching.) Given human nature and the distances and difficulties in communication and travel that existed at that time, it's inevitable that various people would come up with ideas that contradicted accepted doctrine, and at times blend these with non-Christian ideas to create a teaching that superficially resembled Christian doctrine but had never been taught before. (It's interesting that Irenaeus wrote against various heresies of this sort, and pointed out that, although they claimed to support their ideas from Scripture, they did not possess the authentic teaching directly from the Apostles that gave the correct interpretation of those Scriptures. They were both taking verses out of context and making up idiosyncratic interpretations of their own. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the Apostle John.) It is not the case that Christianity was just a mish-mash of competing and equally valid theories about the nature and message of Christ. There was always the Apostolic teaching, which was carefully preserved by the Bishops who traced their ordination directly back to the Apostles. A rich oral tradition was in place in addition to the writings that became accepted as the canon of the New Testament - not surprising given the culture at the time, which heavily relied on oral tradition and exact memorization for the transmission of teachings. (The writings included in the canon of the New Testament as Scripture were not the only writings circulated and respected within the early Church. There were many others that were highly respected, but not considered to be of sufficient authority, reliable provenance, or universal importance to be included. There were many others that were not accepted, as well.)
The periodic councils that formulated written definitions, guidelines, and creeds were called in response to major heresies of the time, in order to formally state the previously and continuously accepted beliefs and principles of Christian teaching. Nothing new was 'invented' or decided at these councils. The teaching had always been in place; it was only necessary to formally write out creeds and definitions when erroneous teachings threatened to confuse laypeople.
The Church was one for several hundred years, before the schism in which Roman Catholics and Orthodox went different ways. Christians were heavily persecuted into the 4th century, and the Edict of Milan merely rendered Christianity legal, rather than making it the official religion of the Roman Empire. It did not become 'official' until considerably later, and even then was subject to persecution from Emperors who weren't Christian (such as Julian the Apostate).
While it is true that the Roman Bishops became progressively more concerned about authority and jurisdiction once the capital moved to Constantinople, leading to one of the issues that was critical to the schism (the papacy), the idea that in AD 300 the Roman Catholics somehow instantaneously set up shop as Big Business isn't accurate. To view Christianity as simply the Vatican is to remain unaware of much of the history of the Church.