How It All Got Started

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I have mentioned in a previous blog that in the newsroom of the newspaper where I worked for 22 years was a sign that read, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

The idea, of course, is that reporters should be skeptical. But skepticism, I believe, should not be limited to reporters. It's healthy and should apply to matters of faith as well as other areas of life. That’s the reason this blog is entitled, “Skeptical Faith.”

Some may be skeptical of my skepticism. After all, I'm a practicing Christian, a believer who has chosen to accept some things – mostly beliefs where the evidence is weak – on faith. But I don’t see that as a disqualifier as a skeptic. After all, atheists and agnostics also accept many things in life on faith (though “religious faith” may be different in many ways).

What Accounts for the Doctrines?

I often think about how Christianity got started. What accounts for its doctrines? For that, I tend to rely as much on science – historians, anthropologists, linguists, biblical scholars – as on professional religious people.

The most obvious answers to questions about the origins of Christianity are in the Bible, and for me, that’s a matter of a mixture of “taking it on faith” – the belief that the Bible is “the Word of God in the words of humans” – and attention to what the scientists have to say about the Bible and interpreting its writings.

Basically, as most of you know, Christianity grew out of ancient Judaism, as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible that is at least 3,000 years old. Jesus was a devout, synagogue-attending Jew. He was intimately familiar with the law and the prophets and many of what he is quoted as saying in the Christian Bible, or New Testament, comes from the Old Testament.

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But the Christian Bible also contains much that is new from the perspective of an ancient Jew. Jesus opposed many of the teachings of the Jewish authorities of his time – the emphasis on body washing, the notion of how a person could be “unclean,” the unyielding insistence on following Hebrew law despite good reasons not to - an opposition that cost him his life.

He groomed his apostles and disciples to start something new. Some scholars don’t believe Jesus intended to start a “church,” but the word, "church" is mentioned more than 100 times in the New Testament, according to the site, Learn Religions. The word comes from the Greek - the language of the New Testament - formed from two words meaning "an assembly" and "to call out" or "the called-out ones."

So, I believe that when Jesus told the apostle Peter that he was a rock upon which he would build his church, he had a community of believers in mind, one he knew would grow exponentially and would need leaders and structure. The apostles and disciples spread across the then-known world, including the great urban centers of Rome and what came to be known as Constantinople.

Christians this year observe the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, an ancient Greek city located within the modern Turkish city of Iznik. That meeting of 300 bishops in 325 was arguably among the most important in the history of the church.

The Nicene Creed

Maybe, you might say, but how can something that happened 1,700 years ago have any possible relevance today? Catholics, and members of many Christian denominations, recite the Nicene Creed - a statement of faith which was composed at the council - at weekly masses and services.

The Nicene bishops rejected Arianism that denied the divinity of Jesus, thus confirming a long-held belief in the Trinity; established some early concepts of canon (church) law; agreed on a common date for the celebration of Easter (the most important Christian feast day); agreed on a method for handling repentant sinners (including those who had denied their faith during the three previous centuries of persecutions) and recalcitrant bishops; and decided how to handle such councils in the future.

The council was a watershed for the development of the church, which was already referred to as “Catholic.” What followed through the centuries were disagreements, schism, and rancor, but also penance, reconciliation, and continual return to the teachings of Jesus.         

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