So also, the concept of the man as the head of the household carried over into the idea that the pastor was the head of the church, especially since
early churches often met in houses.
Persecution in
the early Church often meant that Christian writings had to be kept short and precise.
Not exact matches
When the
early church fathers spoke of God's apatheia (
often translated «impassability»), what they had in mind was God's constancy, reliability, and complete sovereignty over everything that exists outside of himself.
I
often struggle with what appear to be misogynistic elements of the Levitical purity codes, of ancient Israeli wartime conduct, of the letters of Paul and the doctrines of the
early church.
«
Often the
Church fights its own corner, we play our identity politics card too
early in the conversation, we speak up for ourselves
earlier than others who are oppressed,» says author and theologian Krish Kandiah.
The implications of this is that
churches (and companies, and cultures / countries) can breed, rear, train, install, and revere narcissists; or, alternately, we can intervene, ideally
early and
often.
We
often hear it argued in Christian circles and
churches that to be truly Biblical, we have do things as Jesus did them, or as the
early church did them.
Most generally, the term «conservative» means that I find myself more
often than not appreciating the
earliest Quakers» insights into the nature of faith,
church, and society.
Their books may not be known to most of the general public interested in questions related to Jesus, the Gospels, or the
early Christian
church, but they do occupy a noteworthy niche as a (very) small but (
often) loud minority voice.
Some of our
earlier studies have shown that the persons who most need their prejudices shaken are
often the ones most likely to be in
church on Sunday morning.
Early Church leaders wrote about persecution: «The
oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed» for the growth of God's people.
Their whole analysis of decline hangs on a prescriptive or normative understanding of
church - relatedness, and that normative understanding resembles suspiciously what the colleges were, or at least claimed to be, sometime
earlier in the century, in perhaps some «golden age» of
church - relatedness (and, unfortunately,
often concomitant ethnic insularity and academic mediocrity).
Whether one considers the cessation of the gladiatorial games in the days of the
early church, the ending of savage bestial games in Wilberforce's day, or the banning of dueling in the nineteenth century, Christians have
often led the culture in critical analysis of its pastimes.
Consider the first - person plurals of the Lord's Prayer («Our Father...»), Jesus's prayers before meals, his blessing of children, the audible prayers both in the Temple and in synagogues (
often called «prayer houses»), the stories of national prayer in the Old Testament, and the communal prayers of the
early Christian
churches recorded in the book of Acts and the letters of Paul.
Quotations from the
early Church Fathers
often are variations of the written form and represent what they heard.
One
often finds that the Fathers of the
early years of the
Church are more direct and better at this than modern writers.
In their
early days, when the Emergent
Church was vying with the new Calvinism for pole position in the American evangelical world, they launched regular, and
often very thorough, critiques of the Emergent leaders.
Jeremy, some of the posts have simply confirmed what I was reading half an hour
earlier in a book by a well - known Christian historian: «It is true, unfortunately, that the
church is
often the worst witness to Jesus and the
early Christian movement».
However, leaders in the
early church would
often combine practices of believers from various backgrounds (
early Christians were a mixture of former Jews and pagans).
Often this tension was felt to have been so painful that one or another heretic sought to suppress either the Hebrew or the Hellenic element, as with the efforts of the second «century Marcion to get the
Church to excise the Old Testament from the Christian Bible, or, from the opposite side, the sneering rhetorical question from the puritanical pen of the
early «third «century Tertullian, «What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?»
This over-glorification of a man that Jesus
often said missed his point is cause of countless wars and all kinds of suffering going all the way back to the
earliest Christian
churches.
The liturgical scholarship of the past hundred years has uncovered some fascinating insights into the rites used in the
early Church but these indications are
often incidental to the principal concern of the Fathers, which was to affirm that the Eucharist was the perfect sacrifice prophesied by Malachi, to emphasise the awesome mystery of the sacred action, and to exhort the faithful to approach it with a clear conscience.
So forgive me for my
earlier comment about «religion», it was not intended to be insensitive to anyone who has been hurt by
church experiences, but to express balance which I feel
often is lacking in society.
In interviews conducted while he held that
earlier post, he spoke
often about growing the
church by pruning - becoming smaller but more devout before expanding.
and all the accounts of his teaching in the Synoptic Gospels are so filled with the phrase that we can not question its importance for Jesus — the more so as the infrequency of its appearance in the Epistles would indicate that it was not used especially
often in the
early church.
While this may well reflect christological controversies in the
early church, it may also indicate Jesus» resistance to the title
often given him and to the interpretation of the Messiah as military leader that was implicit in it.
In trying to understand the contribution of women to the
early church, it must be recognised that the role they played in nourishing orthodoxy can not be underestimated, whether this nourishment came directly from within or, as
often was the case, from the fringes, or even from «without».
It's widely agreed upon that the
early church was led — most
often — by married men.
Although those now out of the
church frequently think of themselves as carrying along an inheritance from an
earlier period of
church attendance, it
often seems a piggy - bank kind of treasure.
This principle of discontinuity, as it is
often called, does not presuppose that Jesus was never in agreement with the Jews of his day or that his character and doctrine were generally out of phase with the teaching of the
early Church, but simply that it is more difficult to account for dissimilar statements as originating from sources other than Jesus himself.
The
early church was anti-hierarchical and adopted a «come as you are» approach to worship, welcoming outcasts and the disenfranchised who
often couldn't dress in fine clothes, says Carl Raschke, a religious studies professor at the University of Denver.
The
early church believed Jesus and followed his example, so much so that even the Roman authorities noted (
often with derision) in their letters and journals that the
church was made up primarily of women, slaves, and poor, uneducated laborers.
In interviews conducted while he held that
earlier post, Benedict spoke
often about growing the
church by pruning - becoming smaller but more devout before expanding.
so that among other long stories tells you that the Roman catholics know very well that the major truths of the relationship of the Jewish prophet Jesus were totally altered in the very
early years of the Roman
church and
often in total conflict with the French Jews for Jesus...
The non-Fascist, the anti-Fascist, was approaching a point at which he would have to ask himself whether the parish
church was still his
church; he was now having to go to mass
early in the morning if he wished to avoid the sermon, which too
often comprised a full - scale attack on all the democratic, masonic Governments which were opposing the providential plans of the Duce.
Because of a clergy shortage, Washington's local parish
church had services on average twice a month; he attended a little more than once a month ¯ much more
often in later years than in
earlier.
Often he used biblical language, also that of the
early Church and of the medieval schools.
There are also quotations from the New Testament provided by the writers of the
early Church, and though the manuscripts of the patristic writings are
often late the quotations they give were not
often altered by copyists.
Although Christianity has seldom been recognized as an ally to the ecological movement, with the
Church proving all too
often too slow to meet the environmental challenge — there are many Christian theologians that contributed to and significantly participated in the
early ecological thought.