Comment by unclad5968
21 days ago
Reading the early Christian church leaders was enlightening, as a member of an evangelical church. My church didn't really have any answers when I asked why our practices/beliefs diverged so intensely, which was somewhat disappointing. The writings of the early Christian leaders are filled with Greek philosophy, genuine debates about theology, and a ton of wisdom for both believers and unbelievers.
Try reading the bible with a Greek Orthodox Priest. Their insights from reading it as written and not from a vibe based translation, their knowledge of the background, have been some of the best theological discussions of my life. I used to go to a bible group with a Greek Orthodox Priest and he would just demolish the evangelicals and their strict interpretation of the english translation.
I'm sure he would pick up on some things, but he would also be heavily influenced by much later forms of Greek, where means would have changed. I have spoken to Greeks about ancient texts and their reactions vary — some indicated they could understand a lot and some very little. A bit like a modern English speaker approaching Chaucer — I can understand a fair bit and am helped by my knowledge of Broad Scots but other people complain it is barely intelligible to them. (There are people who complain the same about Shakespeare and even Dickens.)
What's the answer? Why have they diverged so much?
The Catholic answer is relatively straightforward in terms of decisions at various councils (or similar structures) about the trinity, iconoclasm, clerical celibacy etc.
With some mix of apostolic succession providing authority and the Holy Spirit guiding the big picture.
Can you recommend specific books?
Jaroslav Pelikan's history of Christian doctrine runs to five volumes. I haven't read the last, but the first four are very readable. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) runs to something under 400 pages. Given the word "Catholic", I will add that Pelikan started off Lutheran and ended in one of the Orthodox churches.
Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively? For example Greek and Roman beliefs in god are described as “pagan”, which is a negative term. And obviously evangelicals are very hostile to other faiths even today, whether it’s Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism or whatever.
> Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?
That's really just an American thing. Americans have this concept of "manifest destiny" in their culture is the final one and it is their duty to spread it to the rest of the world. The American settlers have colonized the entire continent, but the spirit of Manifest Destiny still persists, just embodied in different forms.
For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan. Some will go even so far as to consider Christmas pagan. Meanwhile in the rest of the world it's perfectly accepted that Christianity has taken some local practices and re-dedicated them to Christ. This is not a concession to pagans to make Christianity more palatable for them (pagans are not stupid, they know it's a different religion). I can recommend the YouTube Channel "Jonathan Pageau", he used to talk a lot about this sort of stuff in his older videos.
Not only that, but there are both non western Christian traditional (middle eastern, Ethiopian, Indian) and these are both accepted in the major churches (e.g. the Syro-Malabar rite within the Catholic church) and encouraged (its called inculturation).
> For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan.
Many Christians also see much of value in aspects of paganism. its pretty mainstream - for example CS Lewis argues that God can reveal himself to pagans too (there is quite a bit about this in The Pilgrims Regress).
It's not the only answer, but I would direct you to the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy.
Around a hundred, hundred and fifty years ago when our understanding of the universe had finally reached the point where it became obvious that (a) all of our creation stories were just stories and (b) we actually kind of knew the actual story now, everyone had a big crisis over how to deal with that.
The two options on the table where fundamentalism -- doubling down on Biblical literalism and faith -- and modernism, taking the Bible as more a spiritual message, adapting our understanding of it for the modern world.
Some churches went one way, others the other, but over the following century the fundamentalist churches have proven to be better at attracting, retaining and motivating their members.
There are still modernist churches, but the loudest Christians in America are almost all of the fundamentalist bent.
One important bit of background to it is that people had been arguing (and it had been the accepted view) that the creation stories were just stories pretty much from the beginning. Augustine and Origen, for example.
I think the division your are referring to may be true of American evangelical churches, but its not true of Christianity globally. "Modernist" is not a good term for a view that has been around (and generally accepted) for most of two millennia.
Those unable or unwilling to expend cognitive effort love black & white thinking & are also easily swayed by emotional manipulation.
It doesn't help that they attract power hungry sociopaths who seek to influence them for profit.
Of course, the only way I can think of to address this would be for the state to violate the first amendment & promote the concept that anyone who believes in Hell condemns themselves to Hell. (Matthew 7:1-2)
I’ve always seen American evangelism as a political movement first and a religious one second.
This impression has strengthened quite a bit in recent years as it’s become clear that political movements and politicians that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus are perfectly okay if they align on other more immediate secular political issues.
There’s always been a claim that the US is an outlier compared to other developed nations in terms of religiosity. I don’t really believe this anymore. I think we have a lot of politics with heavy religious veneer, but if you look only at sincere belief in the tenets of a faith I don’t think the US is much more religious than the UK for example.
It’s a legit religion. People go every Sunday for prayer, worship, etc.
Political movements tend to be ecumenical - across religious boundaries. The Civil Rights movement was a political movement, as was the labor movement, etc.
> I think the religiosity of the US is an illusion.
I grew up in the Bible Belt around Baptists and Evangelicals and even a few Pentecostals. I assure you it isn't an illusion.
While there may be some outliers and grifters, particularly where religion intersects with politics (I doubt Trump believes in God half as much as Evangelicals believe in him) the vast majority of these people absolutely do believe what they say, and that they're right with God.
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What about the Spanish Inquisition?
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>why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?
The vast majority of modern Christians doesn't, the influences of Greek culture are readily apparent in the conceptual language of the New Testament, John most obviously when he turns Christ into the Logos. Culturally many pre-Christian practices have been incorporated into for example, Latin American Catholicism. You can literally see it in the architecture of churches.
American Evangelical Christianity is a bit of a different beast and best viewed as a nationalist program that brings particular American tendencies to bear on the religion rather than the other way around.
Because all ideas and all thought and all knowledge stem from Jesus and eventually will be used to worship HIM only but other gods are just made up distractions. This is the profound underlying theology
It's even weirder than that, there's many ideas that might very easily be described as "pagan" except that they're entirely accepted as orthodox. For instance the entire notion of the Trinity is at its root a straightforward application of Neoplatonic philosophy, where the "One" Godhead exists as three lower "hypostases" (Greek) or "persons" (Latin). And much Stoic ethics was adopted directly within early Christianity.
To be entirely fair about it, the linkage may easily go back to the very time of Jesus in some important ways, seeing as many of Jesus's teachings were shared with the Essenes', and the Essenes in turn were quite knowledgeable about Greek/Hellenistic philosophy.
I have the same questions as you. I find many Hindu and Buddhist practices are compatible with Christianity. Eastern religion has different words than western religion for certain things, and concepts naturally get misunderstood, so I think Christians (in America at least) are somewhat afraid that by learning about eastern religion they will be worshiping a false God. The condemnation that comes with Christian groups unfortunately dissuades people from seeking the truth outside the church for fear of social exclusion.
I have also found similarities with things in the Bhagavad Gita. Paramahansa Yogananda also writes on this topic.
It's important to realize that Christianity has its own mystically inclined, ascetic and/or meditative practices. There may even be a shared lineage going back to the very time of Jesus, seeing as the Essenes drew significant inspiration from the Greek Cynics, and the Cynics in turn (like other Hellenistic philosophies) from early Eastern sources that are reflected today in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some Stoic ascetic practices were definitely taken up in early Christianity and are now valued in a Christian context as "spiritual exercises".
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