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The Story behind what we do The Story Behind what we do............. This is a book by G Edwards. I find it facinating because much of what he has to say is exactly what God has put on my heart in regards to the actions and traditians of the organized Church. Jesus said the one thing that nukllifies the word of God in a persons life is tradition. Here is Chapter 1. We will start by finding out why it is that all of us Christians "go to church" on Sunday and at 11 am. Always having "church" at 11 am Sunday morning was started by Martin Luther. He drank an awful lot of beer on Saturday night at the local pub. The older he got, the longer he stayed at the pub, and consequetly the later he had to start the morning service. Today 500,000,000 Protestants routinely(and without question) follow this Sunday tradition because of the beer drinking habits of a german Theologian. The Pastor Think about it. Where in the New Testament do you find a man----the same man---who #1 preaches every sunday, #2 marries people, #3 brings a message over a corpse, then #4 buries it with a prayer, #5 visits old ladies, #6 says prayers over football games, #7 CEO's a church, #8 presides over elders and seacons, #9 is virtually always in a dress suit, #10 speaks strangely and prays funny, #11 baptizes all the new converts, and #12 whose office and all the above practices are supposed to be based solidly on the word of God and found in the scripture. Such a man is not there in your New Testament is he? Yet today the is the central figure in protestant Christianity. Just how did the Pastor idea get into Christianity? Here is the story. See for yourself if it sounds like it "sprang out of solidly based on the word of God". Pope Gregory the Great first popuralized the term 'Pastor" in about 550 AD. He did so by writing a book on the pastoral duties of the priest! The term pastor appears in no christian literature before that point other than once in a long list of people mentioned in the book of Ephesians. The practical meaning of the word is unknown. Pope Gregory told the Roman catholic priests to carry out pastoral duties:to visit the sick, teah doctrine, marry the young, sprinkle the babies, conduct the Mass, bury the dead, and bless local events such as festivals. These became forever the Roman Catholic priests pastoral duties. No such man and no such duties ever existed in Scripture. Luther came along 1000 years later and slightly altered his list of Pastoral duties for Lutheran Priests. Gradually the term Pastor emerged into Protestant vocabulary throughout the English speaking world. The word pastor replaced the Catholic term priest. The man does not exist in first century literature. Neither do these practices exist in the New Testament. We Anglos carried this pastor idea, which Luther invented, to the ends of the Earth. It is now Christianity. If we removed the present pastoral role from Christendom, there would bean almost total collapse of "church" worldwide. Yet the present pastoral practice has absolutely no scriptural grounds. Try to find this man in the first century. If we move away from the pastor being center, we move beyond radical. I will add more later: next.. Church Buildings Until a Roman emperor named Constantine came along (about 300 years after Pentecost), the Christian faith was the only religion in history that met in homes. It was the only "lay" led movement in the history of religion. Christianity alone had no institutions, no set rituals, no temples. That was unprecedented in human history. It is what made Christianity unique. And verile. And elastic, flexible and adaptable. It had low overheads! Costs were minimal. Constantine changed all of that. All other religions of mankind had these elements: Temples, Priests,Vestal Virgins,Ritual, a secret vocabulary understood only by the priest, a silent laity. Look at the list again. Christianity now has all of these. (Ok we protestants do not have vestal virgins!) In the year 327 AD (Mark that date as it is pivital in Christian history) Constantine ordered the construction of 19 Christian buildings. That had never happened before. Until then, we met in homes.(At first, buildings were seen as shrines) These 19 buildings were constructed in three places. One in Bethlehem, and two in Jeruselem.(for His birth,crucifixion and resurrection), nine in the city of Constantinople, and seven in the city of Rome. Constantine primarily lauched these buildings for his brand new city in the east. It was a custom made city, created from the dirt up. The city was uninhabited until it was completed...with empty streets, grand government buildings scattered around the city. The city also had an abundanceof pagan temples. These were named after a god or a goddess. Constantine, a pagan in mind if not soul, therefore ordered that each one to the nine Christian buildings he named after someone. Specifically they were to be named after first century saints! (Hence: St Lukes Church, St Johns' Church etc. Yep that is where it began. In Rome the same year, Constantine ordered the construction of Seven Christian Buildings. (One was a shrine placed on the side of a hill just outside of the city walls. The slope of the hill was called Vaticanus) This is how(the course of) the church building began. Very scriptural we Bible practicing Protestants,are we not? These buildings later came to be known as churches. So it came about that Christianity joined all the other religions of the world and came to have its very own Temples. The effect of these buildings was that we drifted further away from the Spirit that had permeated the primeval Christian community. Why this should be so becomes clear when we consider that our word "church" has no equivalent in the original New Testament. The word church goes back to the Greek kyriakon, belonging to the Lord, which was understood to mean house belonging to the Lord. Later the meaning was extended to refer to the people who gathered in a particular locale as well as to whole denominations(e.g. Church of England) The New Testament, however, knows only the Ekklesia, the community of the saints. She is the house of the Lord, built of living stones. With the word church our eyes were turned away from the living ekkleisa of the living God to a dead edifice made of dead stones. ( Even our creeds that define our denominations are nothing but dead letters) The damage that was done will never be redressed. Any hope of a true grasp of ecclesiology died not long afterConstantine died in 337 AD. Following the introduction of the temple intoour faith, there came the secret language, the remote priest, the silent followers, the rituals, and the vestal virgins. The loss for all of us has been staggering. These things we aquired have been a curse for the simple faith Jesus the carpenter launched. The Pew When the Italian Christians walked into these shiny new buildings which were built in Rome and when the Greeks walked into the buildings in Constantinople, they discovered there was no where to sit down. The Italians dragged in three-legged stools and sat down! On the other hand, when the Christians in Constantinople walked into these shiny new buildings, something else happened. Someone demanded that, out of respect for Christ, everyone should stand. No sitting, no stools. Stand! The result? Today the Eastern Orthadox churches still have no place to sit down in their churches....despite the fact their Sunday ritual is two hours long! Unto this day they have no pews, and scarecly any windows. Its no wonder that the devout Eastern Orthadox church did not grow like Roman Catholicism.(By the way, later the Roman Catholics replaced the three legged tool with the bench) Just before the Protestant reformation, someone figured out how to put abak on a bench. So was born the chair and the bench with a back. The Protestants jumped on the idea, and so was born the Protestant pew. Grumblingly, the Catholics of Western Europe were gradually taking out the benh and putting in the pew. (In Amaerica, almost from the beginning, the Catholics catipulted to the pew, to compete with the Protestants) It was not until the arrival of the enlightened mind of us twentieth century evangicals that we got really New testament and put ushions on our pews. (This way we can at least be comfortable while being bored to death) The Choir Yes the term was used in the Old testament. But by no means can we justify the choir because of that fact. Historically the choir you find in a Christian church has its roots straight out of pagan choirs that were present in pagan temples. The Christian choir first appeared in Christian buildings commisioned by Constantine. As the church building fad moved across Europe, the choir became universal. Future Choirs were patterened after the choir in Milan, Italy, circa 400 AD where the choir was perfected under the leadership of a bishop named Ambrose. next: The Pulpit The Pulpit predates Christianity and is of heathen origin. The heathen priest, standing in a heathen temple, moved out onto a walkway which had a banister around it and made his anouncements to the pagan onlookers. This arrangement by which the priest as seperated from the people, was called ambo. The word or a sdimilar one expressing that can be found in most European languages. The first Christian church buildings (built by Constantine), the basilicas, were also fournished with this heathen arrangement, except that now it was inside of the building. It was a platform witha banister around it and it had two elevated parts(the ambos). These ambos, one of which was higher than the other, were used to read from the Gospels and Epistles respectivey, but in some instances they were used to make a distinction between a mere reader and a speaker. In the eleventh century it became customary to build only one ambo, which as elevated on a pillar. This is the pulpit with which we are familiar. Centuries later when the Protestants took over Northern Europe (by the sword, not by evangelism), those Protestants inheirited thousands upon thousands of Catholic church buildings. In many places they tore out that unapproachable area up front where the priests had conducted their magical mass. But the change did not stop there. Especially in modern times, the ambo was taken down from its pillar and placed in front, either to the side or in the center. In churches that do not have an altar, the pulpit is always centered and has a large Bible on it to symbolize the centrality of preaching the Bible as over against the catholic central emphasis on the Mass. The Sermon Not to be confused with a Christian message. It is true there may be at first seem to only be a slight difference, but that difference is gigantic. Long before Christianity came into existance, a heathen philosopher, Aristotle by name, teaching on many subjects, taught on the subject of rhetoric- that is, how to bring an oration. ( Greek:rhetoric- the art of the orator) Speechmaking had been the love of the greeks before Aristotle. He raised it to an art form. In the days of the Greeks and Romans, the ability to bring a great oration was a guarantee of popularity. Great orators were actually the movie stars of that day. Aristotles' discourse on rhetoric covered many things about speech making. His main point was that a good speech must have: 1) a clear introduction 2) a few major points 3) a conclusion. No such ideas existed among early believers. First century believers, being almost universally illiterate, knew no such thing about the rules of speech making. First Century Christian Preaching was characterized by being extemperaneous, spontaneous, and urgent....and it belonged to the entire body of believers, not to a special class of men! The sermons you hear each week are based on Aristotles' concepts of oration.( often seminary professors who teach the art of sermon know nothing of these facts.) Now how did heathen speech making ever get into the Christian faith? In Antioch, Syria, circa 400AD, one of the great orators of all time, John Chrysondom became a believer. He brought his Aristotical rhetoric/sermon skills into Christianity. He quickly rocketed his way into being the leading Priest in Antioch and in all Syria. The whole city of Antioch turned out to hear his orations. Those mesages were very similar to great heathen speeches in style, delivery, structure and--------to some degree even content. (So also did the sermon you heard last Sunday) It is John Chrysondom(Sp) who not only gave us Aristotelian sermonics, but also gave us the custom of the Sunday morning sermon, that is, the tradition of a Sunday oration being delivered by the same man, at the same time, in the same plce every week. Hence you see the origin of the sermon and the Sunday Church services. John Chrysondom also gave the Catholic priests one of their "pastoral" duties. The custom of teahing evolved along the way, until teaching is the central duty of the Protestant Pastor. Protestant pastors have no idea they are carrying out a modified version of the seven major pastoral duties of a priest. There is nothing in the New testament about all of this. Thats enough for now Dennis |
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9/22/2008 10:04 am |
Great Post..Interesting!...GOD Bless You ‘HE will rule them with an iron scepter.’... He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.... On HIS robe and on HIS thigh HE has this name written:... KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS."
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Hey Alan How are u doing
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