Christian Classics
One of the major premises of David Bercot's book "Common Sense" is that we need the early church writings to properly understand Scripture. He suggests that there wouldn't be such an issue with people having different ideas about Christian doctrine if we all used the early church writings to help us understand unclear Bible passages.
He "has a point" on a number of levels - clearly, the "second generation" Christians were much closer to the oral teaching of Paul and the other apostles. The context they existed in enabled them to better interpret the epistles - some things that are somewhat obscure to us may well have been crystal clear to them.
Like the apostles, they were "eastern thinkers" - their reasoning is therefore quite different from ours at times. Quoting Bercot, "Without a doubt, eastern thinking often stands in stark contrast to western rationalism. The eastern mind is much quicker than its western counterpart to grasp allegorical truths that are prefigured by actual historical events. The eastern mind will often believe incomprehensible spiritual truths that the western, rationalistic mind rejects." pp. 95, 96 This is something I would really like to research - it could provide some fine tuning in how to understand the New Testament. Maybe it would help some things jive. From the glimpse I've gotten of eastern reasoning, it's sort of '"free association," there's a poetic beauty to it that I wouldn't mind adding to my trains of thought. (An example of some of this: Matthew states in 2:15 of his book that Jesus's coming from Egypt fulfills the passage in Hosea which states "out of Egypt I called My son." For the time when Hosea was writing, it seems that he was referring to the nation of Israel - Matthew is applying the prophecy to Jesus. To a western thinker, it seems somewhat illogical to make that application - but I think I begin to grasp some of its beauty and poetry.
So, I think the early church writings are worth a read - maybe in much the same way that C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell are worth reading, with a little added benefit in one area and a little detraction of benefit in another.
Problems with looking to the early church writings:
Bercot brings up the fact that Paul instructed the Thessalonians to follow the traditions they received by "word" (he interprets that as "word of mouth"). And I ask, how would we know which oral traditions, which we may now have in the form of some early church writings, are the correct ones to follow? One of the major issues Jesus had with the Pharisees was that they were following a bunch of traditions God did not see fit to have recorded in His written word. We could run into a similar problem today. Besides, some of those oral traditions may have been the best way for God's main principles to be fleshed out back in the first and second centuries - such applications may not fit our present day situation).
He "has a point" on a number of levels - clearly, the "second generation" Christians were much closer to the oral teaching of Paul and the other apostles. The context they existed in enabled them to better interpret the epistles - some things that are somewhat obscure to us may well have been crystal clear to them.
Like the apostles, they were "eastern thinkers" - their reasoning is therefore quite different from ours at times. Quoting Bercot, "Without a doubt, eastern thinking often stands in stark contrast to western rationalism. The eastern mind is much quicker than its western counterpart to grasp allegorical truths that are prefigured by actual historical events. The eastern mind will often believe incomprehensible spiritual truths that the western, rationalistic mind rejects." pp. 95, 96 This is something I would really like to research - it could provide some fine tuning in how to understand the New Testament. Maybe it would help some things jive. From the glimpse I've gotten of eastern reasoning, it's sort of '"free association," there's a poetic beauty to it that I wouldn't mind adding to my trains of thought. (An example of some of this: Matthew states in 2:15 of his book that Jesus's coming from Egypt fulfills the passage in Hosea which states "out of Egypt I called My son." For the time when Hosea was writing, it seems that he was referring to the nation of Israel - Matthew is applying the prophecy to Jesus. To a western thinker, it seems somewhat illogical to make that application - but I think I begin to grasp some of its beauty and poetry.
So, I think the early church writings are worth a read - maybe in much the same way that C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell are worth reading, with a little added benefit in one area and a little detraction of benefit in another.
Problems with looking to the early church writings:
Bercot brings up the fact that Paul instructed the Thessalonians to follow the traditions they received by "word" (he interprets that as "word of mouth"). And I ask, how would we know which oral traditions, which we may now have in the form of some early church writings, are the correct ones to follow? One of the major issues Jesus had with the Pharisees was that they were following a bunch of traditions God did not see fit to have recorded in His written word. We could run into a similar problem today. Besides, some of those oral traditions may have been the best way for God's main principles to be fleshed out back in the first and second centuries - such applications may not fit our present day situation).
posted by Claire at 21:53
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