So, here I was planning to describe what insights I gained about the early church from this Didache.
I'll skip over the 1st 6 chapters, which say really most of what I've read in the Bible
In Chapter 7 the Didache instructs its audience to recite the Our Father/Lord's Prayer 3 times a day.
There is no practise in Protestant sects I've run into, that takes this attitude towards prayer, worship and the like except the Catholic Church. This similarity disturbed me, and I wondered why, if the Church of Christ were supposed to be the revived early church, didn't its members follow the Didache's instructions.
I was further disturbed by Ch9, The Eucharist.
Apparently the early church worship was centered on the eucharist, and they were organized. They had perscibed prayers and a set order of worship. If scholars had read this Didache like I had, I wondered why the Church of Christ wasn't more centered on the Eucharist/Communion.
Also this spoke to early church theology as well. If their worship was centered on the Eucharist, it only follows that their theology was as well. You only do things if they have meaning.
Could it be that the early church held the belief of Transubstantiation?
(Transubstantiation- the belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are in fact the real and present body and blood of Jesus, not just a symbol of him)
While I had laughed at the idea of Transubstantiation before this document quieted me. What if the early church did believe in Transubstantiation, and the babtizing of babies? These things didn't make sense to me as is, but if the apostles did them, then maybe I was the one who was wrong, who misunderstood christianity. After all, christians are supposed to believe in miracles right? Why not these miracles?
Even if I was jumping the gun, the list of set prayers at least defeated the Protestant argument that stuff like that was listed amoug the burdensome rules of the old jewish law. I could see no basis for Prostestant critisism of the Mass anymore.
Ch11 bothered me for this verse:
"Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord."
Why the word apostle? Why not "one of the apostles"? The translator surely didnt' mean a generic prophet, because he uses the word elsewhere in the document. Here though, he uses the word "apostle." This made me nervous because it hinted at a possible doctrine of apostolic sucession, through which the Catholic church claim's the Pope's authority.
Ch13 : "Every first-fruit, therefore, of the products of wine-press and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, you shall take and give to the prophets, for they are your high priests. But if you have no prophet, give it to the poor."
A common criticism of Protestants towards the Catholic church is that the church has no need of priests, that a person does not have to go through another person to get to God. This is a very individualistic, american pattern of thinking. I can think of no other culture that has a problem with the idea of priests, including it seems, the early christian church. This is not to say that a person with no access to a priest cannot reach God. Communion with God is reached through Christ's Blood, and through Christ's Body on earth-- the Church-- i.e.- through other christians who can help you through their guidence and wisdom. Protestant's can't criticize Priests without gettting rid of thier own pastors, deacons, and elders. Other than sanctify the eucharist, which as a sacrefice usually calls for the roll of a priest, I have not seen Priests do anything that Pastors don't. Pastors even take confession after a fashion, just simply in a less organized way.
All these thoughts rattled me. I went to the WhiteStation/Grace Crossing summer camp shortly after reading this, and tried to ask the leaders there but I could get no answer. When I set up a meeting with a Harding Grad School Proffessor he could only say that he didn't want to discredit some of the things Ignatius said, because other stuff he said was vital to Protestant theology. In other words, Protestants only followed 1/2, and yet they still listed these sources as realiable accounts. It didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't.
I am just about to finish up Clement's letter the Corinthians, so I'll do him next time.
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4 comments:
Maybe this Didache thing is a load of crap. Documents of that age and origin are inherently hard to trust.
The way I understand it, these are the Christian denominations claiming a connection to the original church:
*Catholics (over 100 billion served): claim that Peter was the first Pope and handed down his authority through the ages, along with various traditions.
*Orthodox (in Orthodox Church, you don't read Bible, Bible read YOU!): claim similar lineage to Catholicism. However, they don't have a Pope and tend to speak Russian. Or Greek. And have enormous beards.
*Church of Christ (and various mutations thereof): claim to have done enough research to figure out how the Church worked in its earliest era and rebuilt it in modern times.
*Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (you know, them dang Mormons. I just like using the long name cos I'm a jerk): claim that Jesus himself came in the early 1800s and told a farmboy how to build the original church, complete with Peter, James, and John's showing up in person to give said farmboy the authority of an apostle and prophet.
Look, like I said, it's hard (for me) to trust an institution whose roots are mangled in the jaws of time. That's why I'm sticking with the organization that has the most fanciful story: it avoids the perils of lost history and oral tradition.
check my last blog
this Didache is pretty much accepted as trustworthey by most scholars, but my last Didache blog went into further detail about its realiability.
this argument that history is untrustworthy doesn't stand.
in a trial or court of law history is a viable necessary source of authority.
And if you've ever read anything of Lee Strobel or heard our bible teachers at Harding quote Josephus then you've seen a bit of how much of christianity's authority is rooted in historical accounts.
There's even accounts of the solar eclipse and earthquake that happened on the day of Jesus's death.
also you can't bash oral tradition and study the Old Testament
I can't remember if its Dr. Fowler or Mr. Cummings who told me taught me about how in Jewish school they'd basically memorize the Torah
also oral tradition was vital to things like the step by step process for makeing a sacrefice. If you just followed the instructions from Leviticus you'd have a hard time reconstructing 1/2 of the sacrefices.
and that culture of oral tradition didn't just evaporate with Jesus, I mean he lived and interacted within the jewish community
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