Antisemitism in the Ancient Church

A brief look into the earlier Church, its treatment of outsiders of the faith, and Jews.

If anyone begins to read ecclesiastical writings with keen interest, it will be inevitable that one has to struggle with the antisemitic remarks in ancient Christian literature. As the researcher looks further into the issue, one finds a problematic and complex genre that requires untangling.

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Antisemitism was a small part of a much larger problem. This fervor was not directly a problem with Jews but anyone or anything outside the Christian realm. The Church viewed anyone outside of the Christian community as less-than-human. One of the more obvious discriminatory references in ancient Christian literature and regular Greek ones was against the Scythians (ancient Russian people). Christianity’s political and military aspirations in some epochs sought to annihilate any person or population that did not embrace its message. They sometimes spared Jews due to their theological history. Although they often were exempted from the sword, they were second-class citizens.

At least they could tell their story of oppression. The many other pagans and whole unclassified communities who refused to convert have stories that will permanently remain unknown.

The narrative explained above is the dark side of our Christian heritage that forces any Christian theologian or leader to grapple with at some juncture.

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Thoughts on Ecstasy, Private Revelation, and Prophecy

The use of private revelations, ecstasy and prophecy in the late Medieval European religious vernacular. What these words stood for, the growing opposition, and parallels to modern Christian mystics.

The societal and personal impact of these states has had a tremendous impact on European history. The mystical life was so widespread that contemporary Renewalists (Charismatics, Pentecostals, and Third Wavers) can use this era as a historical framework–a guide for improving the experience but more importantly guard against excess. The extravagance of the mystical experiences was one of the essential sources for the Reformation and forced a significant shift in European thought and life—an impact still felt today.

All of Europe, whether Protestant or Catholic, was immersed in a mystic lifestyle until the Renaissance slowly unraveled this social framework into a more rational sphere.

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The Journey out of Christian Zionism

Picture of soldiers, Bedouin girls, military truck, and Judaen desert

Why I am no longer pro-Israel, nor pro-Arab, but pro-human.

The story about a Canadian Evangelical and apocalyptic Christian studying in Israel. How reality confronted imagination and stereotypes and won.

As my wife and I unbuckled our seatbelts on El-Al airliner and looked out the window, our imaginations ran wild. Little did we know the emotional and intellectual challenges that lay ahead.

We were on a one-year scholarship to attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1984. The stay in Israel was after three years of Bible College training. It was exciting to live and study in the actual place where most of the Biblical writings took place.

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St. Paul on the Discerning of Spirits

Finding a solution to the mystery phrase coined by St. Paul, the discerning of spirits.

These three words written by Paul have often caught the attention of theologians, church leaders, and Bible readers for almost two millennia.

What did Paul mean by it? How did later writers and leaders interpret it, and how does it apply to us today? Three questions that beg answers.

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A New Kind of Tongues

How the pentecostal definition of tongues changed in the early 1900s

Why the Evangelical Church is Declining

Candy bar with Jesus name

Outlining how the superficiality and the anti-intellectualism of the Evangelical movement are causing a significant decline in membership and the remedy for it.

Churches from numerous types of backgrounds see that their numbers are dropping and are quickly upgrading their style of worship. Other solutions are renovating the church foyer into coffee shops, pressing people into the small weekly groups, producing appealing dramas, or spending on new personnel and equipment to better communicate through the web, apps, video and other burgeoning technologies. These approaches help, but there is something far more profound going on.

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Book Review: The Swerve

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, is an excellently well written book that combines both history and storytelling.

It is a scintillating work of historical fiction that is equal to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Greenblatt’s book revolves around the life and times of a fifteenth century Florentine/Roman scholar and one time secretary to the Pope, Poggio Bracciolini, and his discovery of a lost poem entitled De Rerum Natura by the first century BC poet Titus Lucretius Carus.

The Swerve strings together the complex weave of religion, society, corruption, greed, immorality, Greek philosophy, war, the lives of monasteries, monks, and libraries to tell the story. This narrative is structured by following Poggio Bracciolini in his pursuits. The Book revolves around Poggio finding this poem which was unknown to civilization for a number of centuries.

He believes that the discovery of this poem written by Lucretius was a cornerstone in the development of humanism and the reshaping of what is now become the modern world.

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The Apostolic Faith Newspaper on the Azusa Street Revival

apostolic faith newspaper 1906

The following is a digital copy of the first page from The Apostolic Faith newspaper, Volume 1, No. 1, 1906, which covered the events of the Azusa Street revival.

The Azusa Street revival began in Los Angeles, California in 1906. It was one of the most significant Pentecostal expressions in the 20th century and a cornerstone that generated the expansionism of Pentecostal ideology throughout the world. The Apostolic Faith was their official newspaper.

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