This is designed to be the first in a series of articles on the subject of the Church in History. That’s not at all the same thing as “church history”, as will become clear shortly, but if we’re to go anywhere at all with this, we have to come to an understanding concerning those terms. History, first.
“History” is the study of the written record of human events. It is not necessarily to be confused with “truth”, or for that matter, even with what actually happened in any given place, at any given time. History is the written record. So, if you’re looking for incontrovertible truth, you’re looking in the wrong place. This space is devoted to the written record.
Now, as to the Church: The “Church” is, for our purposes here, the whole body of Jesus Christ. Now, it is true that there are individuals and even whole denominations that refuse to accept that “the whole body” represents anything special, but those people are asked not to muddy the waters of this series of articles. You will not achieve salvation by reading this series. You needn’t try. That’s a function of religion. The Church doesn’t necessarily have very much to do with religion, especially in terms of History. We’re going to be looking at the History (that is, the written record) of as many of the different people we can find who left such records while calling themselves “Christians”.
So, if these are our parameters, are we ready to go? Not quite. Another word sneaked in there, while we were looking at “Church” and “History”. That word is “religion”. What on earth are we going to do with that?
Well, we all worship something.“Really?”, you might ask. “Not me. I’m an agnostic”. Well, okay. Perhaps you don’t, but most of us do. Now, don’t misunderstand: not all of us worship God, much less the same God, but we all (well, almost all!) worship something. Some of us worship mankind, or ourselves. We call people who do this “humanists”. A few worship sex; that is to say, the difference between men and women (look it up: it’s not what you think); we don’t really have a name for them. Others worship entertainment. These we often call “fans”. Still others, worship sports. These we may call “fans”, too, or “jocks”.
The fact that we can use the same name to describe followers of movies, TV, sports and certain musical groups should tell us something: they’re all just different forms of entertainment. The point is that, to some people, entertainment, or some form of it, is the most important thing in their lives. It’s what, all else being equal, they spend the bulk of their disposable time and money on. It’s what they measure everything else by. It’s what they worship. Usually, we think of “worship” as something we do in Church, but Webster’s defines it as “extreme devotion or intense love or admiration of any kind”. Some men worship women. Many women worship a particular man.
Some people like to call themselves “atheists”, meaning that they do not believe in any god. That’s fine, except that many of them make Atheism, itself, into a religion. Review the definition above: what we “worship” is that by which we measure everything else. It’s how we render homage to whatever it is in life that we place above all else. People who spend all their time looking for a god to complain about are worshipping their own disbelief. Some “atheists”, of course, don’t actually worship their disbelief. They worship humanity, or “life”, or “the environment” or something. They’re really humanists or environmentalists or pantheists. The difference is pretty much immaterial.