Let us not search for the Golden Age

I've mentioned in the past how it is often incredibly tempting to picture the early Church as a time of unparalleled peace, love, and harmony. As those who read my blog well know, I have spent much of the past two years studying worship, ministry, and sacraments in the very early Church - a bit of a disappiontment (syllabus was revised) for one who had been hoping to get all the more deeply into the patristic era, when the three concepts were far more developed. With exams past, as usual, the areas which I studied are becoming more vivid for me. The discipline of the course and the papers to write is superb, and I would not care to miss this - the more because, were it not mandatory, I would not have read the excellent works of those with whom I disagree. :) Yet with the stress of accountability removed for the moment, my recognition is heightened.

I was privileged to read the works of many great scholars, and, though even a cursory reading of Paul of Tarsus would make even a romantic like myself wary of the lovey-dovey image of the early Church, I began to see just how much the early days of the Church were on shaky ground. It is amazing how much things have changed even during my lifetime. The 20th century was a time of great discovery, and of huge strides in scripture scholarship. (The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered only a short time before I was born, and scripture scholarship was widely seen as a threat until well into the second part of the century.)

In my childhood (and by no means only for the young!), it was easy to have an image of Jesus' having appeared in the upper room and saying, "Happy Easter. I'm the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Now, for the next 50 days, the lot of you are going to have a capsule course in theology and rubrics." We had the impression that the gospel of Luke had all the details of Jesus' infancy because he'd been a friend of Mary's. I cannot recall in which film this appeared, but there was one 'scriptural epic' in which the apostle Matthew was shown already making notes for his gospel... dramatic licence, to be sure, but it did not enter any of our minds that Matthew not only would not have had post-resurrection understanding but would hardly have been writing the gospel for a church which did not exist. It was popularly believed that, on the night of the Last Supper, the apostles arose from the table knowing they'd been ordained priests for a new Church.

By the time I was a young adult (all of us well primed with the Holy Spirit, who had been so powerful during the Vatican Council that plenty of individual inspiration was leftover to be distributed to all of us humble creatures), the adulation for the early Church was at an all time high. Anyone who thinks there was no penance in the 1960s and 70s never sat through interminable choruses of "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love." (I comforted myself with the thought that things could be worse - on any night when it was not "Kumbaya.") Though I myself never participated, I knew some young Christians who had glowing ideas about living in Christian communes - and some indeed did so. There was an underlying idea that, if we could strip away everything that happened since and get back to that pure Christianity, we'd all live up to our calling to be the love generation.

(Don't shake your head at my bit of sarcasm! One can criticise groups broadly provided one was a member of same. There was a period during the late 1970s when I nearly thought I could raise the dead, and everyone else in my prayer group thought they could cure the blind at the least.)

Admittedly, I do wonder how the Christian movement became so popular. (I'm giving the Holy Spirit his due, but could ponder what drew the many Jews, Gentile God-fearers, and eventually pagans.)It certainly was not peace and harmony. James, Peter, and Paul had conflicts about the Gentile mission to work out at Antioch. The Corinthians were making all sorts of messes with their newfound Christianity, and the Letter of Clement of Rome shows that, a generation later, they were no better behaved than in Paul's time.

The Church was in its infancy, and indeed it was a time when revelation and response was at a peak which only divine inspiration can explain. But, apart from Christology, there was ecclesiology with which to contend. James questioned if the Gentile mission should have equal footing with the Jerusalem Church, or if the Gentile Christians would have a different status, as did the uncircumcised who worshipped at the temple. (Of course, we all know what soon happened to the temple.) Paul and the others worshipped in the synagogues, but Paul himself must have been totally maddening to get into all the scrapes he reports.

What was the definition of 'apostle,' prevalent in Paul, absent in John? How did God speak through his Church? I had a strong sense, reading the Johannine epistles, Paul's letters, and the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, that it was very possible that the 'false teachers' who were leading everyone astray may well have been, for example, the Johannine Christians who were side by side with the Pauline mission in Ephesus. And, though Paul never mentions the elders, Acts does give the impression that he spent a good deal of time instructing them.

The conflicts varied, sometimes because of human weakness (as in Corinth), but often because of legitimate theological matters, or sociological factors which were quite crucial. Indeed, God is Truth, and inspires His Church (I'm not about to define how, because one needs a few centuries of hindsight, at least, to see when that happens.) However much we may be dedicated to prayer, to knowledge, to worship, we shall always have to deal with the limitations of our own vision.

We cannot recapture a golden age - it never existed. Remembering that conflict is as old as the Church at least reminds us that we need the humility to admit that we never know how the Spirit is working.