a FIRST CENTURY church?

Okay- in preparation for tomorrow's post on Tony Jones's new book on the Didache, an early Christian document, not found in the NT, let me ask this question...

At various times in my life, I've heard people express a desire to get back to a 1st Century kind of Christianity. To scrape away all the "additions" of the last centuries and recover a "pure" Christianity. 

So- here's my question- 

"If you could practice a faith identical to the earliest followers of Jesus, not yet 'crystalized', before the epistles of Paul, James, John, Jude and Peter, and even before at least 3 of the Gospels were written, would you? What would you gain? What would you lose?"

I'll take a stab at that tomorrow, along with some discussion of Tony's interesting new book. 

Comments

[theycallmepastorbryan]

My personal feeling is that the "pure" Christianity never existed. Had that embryonic stage been the ideal practice of Christianity, it should have stayed as a practice. Instead, it was the correct expression for the moment, but it was doomed to adapt and change over time.

I've never been a big fan of the whole "we need to get back to the very early church" mentality, because it seems too simplistic and anti-tradition, focusing on such a small window in the development of the church. It seems that it's usually tied in with a mindset that somehow God wasn't really at work, except for in small time periods of the church, rather than viewing how the church has adapted to different times and different places. I'm interested in emulating the early community in an ancient-future kind of sense though, where we can look at what worked, and why it worked and how it was a response to the issues and culture of the time, so that in turn, we can do the work and thinking of how we incarnate gospel community into our time.

[paul]

great point Bob. I once heard Eugene Peterson make a similar point. When wanting to return to the 1st Century church he asks, "Which one?" The one in Corinth, one of the churches in Galatia, Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem?

There is much to gain from learning and adopting much from the church of the earliest centuries but we must be careful that we don't romanticize those early churches or ignore the present work of the Spirit today.

[Doug]

I don't really want to go back to the first century, I like my computer. I also don't think going back that early is a good idea either. I think what some are trying to express when they say that is that they tire of a faith that is anything but genuine. A group of people who act because they believe the gospel with everything in them. Where the desire to serve and help and do stuff for God is out of gratitude only.
The problem is, that people are people, and as tough as we are on the OT Israelites for the whole golden calf affair, right after the exodus, we'd likely do the same thing.

[Sarah]

I'm with Doug on this one. I like my computer and I really like being able to choose my own spouse and wash clothes in a washing machine (and not in the river). I also think that the real issue is genuineness. (Although the cynical part of me says People that say that actually just want to be "right," but let's just ignore that.)

The other thing that bothers me about this is the assumption behind it that everything that has happened in the history of the church since the first century has been a bad thing. I don't believe that. Good and bad, we need to embrace our history as the Church. If we didn't have the history between the first century and now, we would have nothing to learn from and would probably just make the same mistakes.

We like to remember the past through rose colored glasses, but there has never been a time in history when life was easier than now. If we are authentically seeking to follow God with our lives, then we are living like the first century church.

The one thing that would be wicked awesome about going back to that time would be meeting the people who walked with Jesus. That would be cool.