Romans + Christianity

[sicarii sam]

"Even when it was just made up of the twelve Apostles and a few hundred followers after the Crucifixion ? It's understandable that later some Christian communities diverted in differing directions since there was no standardized Bible available before Constantine. Many communities only had portions of the gospels and some of those may not have been accurately copied from originals. " Theo


I would say that as soon as the apostles began missionary journey's, different brands took effect. You see even in the writings of Paul that various sects of christianity were beginning to emerge. paul of course called for orthodoxy. So we can see even in the 40-'s 50's things were not uniform. By the second century, gnosticism was becoming a large movement. Ive had lengthy discussions with people over gnosticism, modalism and trinitarianism.

Gnosticism can be traced to earlier dates than christianity itself. It was a system of thought that superimposed itself on whatever religion it went to. The EC father's began to battle this almost immediately. Eusebius is a treasure trove of information on disagreements and 'heresies' of the first 300 years of the church. In fact it was the wide variety of sects that brought the council of Nicea and others into being. So wide was the Gulf of between some and in such large numbers that the need for a cohesive orthodoxy was demanded. Some people point out the fact that it was done by force. Which leads some people, especially of the modalism faction and those who were taking stances on the divinity of christ, to bring this up today, saying that , HEY, we were literally kicked out of christianity and orthodoxy was made by the people with the guns and ammo. So they still feel themselves as legitimate successors to apostolic christianity.

I now have great understanding how people can spend a lifetime on just a couple of subjects withing christianity. Amazing stuff.