Joel Kalvesmaki's Journey to Orthodoxy

I. PRECEPTS

My Pilgrimage

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Mine is the short but turbulent life.

Since May 1993 I have been vigorously pursuing the faith of the Apostles as witnessed to by the early Church. This spiritual journey has led me, a strongly committed Protestant Evangelical, to seriously pursue conversion to either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church.

In the past years I have spent hundreds of hours reading, studying, praying and discussing theological, historical and philosophical issues with a wide range of people. I have taken the time to read over 3000 pages of the translated writings of Christians who flourished between 70-240 CE. Septuagintal studies have also played a major role in my thought as I have applied myself to understand more thoroughly the canon of Scripture, the process by which it came to hold authority for believers and the way it treats itself. Later in my journey I spent considerable time meditating on epistemological and philosophical issues which helped to clarify and confirm my spiritual direction. Many of the answers to my questions have spawned others, which I still pursue. Yet I realise I cannot return to the Evangelicalism I have grown to love and cherish.

In a brief story like this I cannot justify every move, every doctrine, every insight. This lad, no matter how skilled his pen, cannot explain the terrain he has explored in its full peculiarity, particularly if the skeptic is certain I've been to the desert and indulged in a mirage. Maybe so. But how will that skeptic know without personal investigation? Most critics are content with armchair analysis.

All I can do is explain a little, as well as possible, to speed fellow Christian pilgrims on their way to a more consistent and honest faith and to stimulate those who have never bothered to consider the issues to take them up. Pilgrims are often a misunderstood part of our churches, yet their numbers are thin enough to warrant recruiting.

Before some of the theological issues, however, something of my life is helpful.

My Background

I was born into a loving Evangelical home where my mother and father, a Presbyterian minister, faithfully raised our family. Compared to others, there was little outstanding or traumatic in my upbringing. I had my share of skinned knees, split heads and spankings. Like every good pastor's son, I slept through half the sermons and at other times egged my sister into laughter during the hymns. Only later as I began to grow up did I realise that such mischief is a luxury in a world of dysfunctional relationships. While friends in school spoke of the agony of broken homes, mine was wonderfully coherent.

When I was nine we moved from St. Louis to Salt Lake City, which was to be my home through high school. The most common association with Utah is, of course, Mormons (LDS), and these were many of my good friends. In elementary school my best friend was from a family of fourteen, the stereotypical burgeoning Mormon family. Only on the odd occasion do I remember religion becoming a conversation topic between us, but these later became important problems for me.

In addressing these questions to the world around me, my experience with the LDS was to serve as a constant touchstone. The Mormon Church is a daunting presence in the Intermountain West. With a membership of over seven million, their mission force exceeds 50,000, as a large number of their young men, before entering college, commit to tours of missionary service lasting 18 to 24 months, all expenses raised by themselves and their family.

The LDS boast of the clean living of most members of their Church. Official Mormon teaching places great emphasis on family unity and patriotism. While their claim to low divorce and alcoholism rates is arguably flawed, they are at least as righteous as any other given Christian church in America.

To the inquirer the picture is glossy and supremely Christian until they begin poke beyond the veneer into LDS theology. The differences are then difficult to ignore. Whatever godly image was set up by the Mormon Church quickly disappears as one explores the dark shadows of heresy. Of any group that claims to be Christian, Mormons are quite possibly the furthest removed from its historical doctrinal center. The Trinity is an aberration. God, once a man like us, is one of the many gods in the universe, now siring babies with his many wives to supply earth with human souls. We, by faithfully maintaining Mormon ceremonies and standards, can become gods ourselves. From this unusual cosmology their teaching proceeds to the bizarre.

In spite of this semi-fictional theology, the testimony of many Mormons is both personal and spiritual. The average active LDS will explain that at a certain age she read the Book of Mormon and sincerely prayed to know whether the Book of Mormon is true and Joseph Smith is a prophet. Many would attest to a powerful experience of a "burning in the bosom" which would be understood as the Spirit confirming that, yes, the Mormon Church is the True Church.

Later in life, as my commitment to Christ solidified, I had arguments with Mormons. After I presented evidence challenging their worldview, some of them retreated, saying, "Why are you trying to destroy my faith? That's all you anti-Mormons do is wreck other people's faith." This irked me to no end. Had it never occur to them that possibly their faith, based on nonsense, needed to be destroyed? Is our aim a secure faith, no matter what that faith may be? Or should we seek to test whatever faith we have and if found false, changed? The Mormon way seemed a cowardly treatment of Truth.

My Walk with Christ

I have sought to be faithful to both Christ and my Christian leaders. At an early age I invited Jesus into my heart and was baptised by my father to the approval of many. The intensity of desire to serve Christ fluctuated, but was truly a part of the whole of my life.

Inevitably my faith mingled with my strong artistic temperament. In high school I waged a critique of life that was deeply coloured by depression, loneliness and the searing question, "Why?" which few seemed willing to answer, let alone confront. Even in church I only saw a nominal practice of what was taken to be true. "People who don't have Jesus in their hearts are going to hell. Forever. Want another cup of coffee?"

In this deep scepticism I spent a summer with a Youth With a Mission team who, by modelling the most radical of Christian virtues, helped to restore my trust in Christ, the Scriptures and the authentic reality of God in the life of the Church. Jesus' words spoke freshly to my heart as I realised that He was to be Lord of all or not at all. My pining for eternity was answered by my leaders' clarion call to full discipleship and devotion to God. While with the team I drank in apologetic books by men such as Josh McDowell and Walter Martin, which seemed to answer some of the rawest problems I had with life, faith and truth.

These early influences stirred into me an intense dynamic of Christian faith which counterbalanced a hunger for spiritual reality against a radical pessimism to truth claims. I wanted God without human error.

Hunger for Reality

If people who are not born again are going to hell, there is no excuse for our lethargy. Sparked by this idea, I sought to be involved in pioneer Christian mission work. After leaving university early I joined Operation Mobilisation[1] . I was centrally concerned about the Muslim world, which I saw as the greatest threat to Christianity. Doctrinally, I felt I had sufficiently learned about and dealt with Mormonism and a handful of other Christian sects. Islam, however, seemed "uncharted territory," possibly the most intricate and foreign of false religions. This led me to OM Turning Point, a base in London, England, which seeks to train Christians in evangelistic mission to Muslims in Europe and the Middle East. London has been my home from 1991 through 1995.

While I was searching for a good mission agency, my heart was caught by OM and its commitment to spiritual integrity, honesty and openness. The preaching of George Verwer spoke to me of a man and a mission that had a "hunger for reality" and sought a "revolution of love and balance." This too was my goal-to die a soft-hearted and wise man who had committed himself to Christ and had raced after godliness.

I knew what kind of person I did not want to be. This came out most clearly while I was in OM in the aftermath of an expose of the American Evangelical entertainer, Mike Warnke. One of the most loved Christian entertainers in Evangelical circles, Mike would hold free concerts across the country to preach the Gospel in the context of a comedy routine.

Mike's reputation rested upon his dynamic and dramatic testimony. He had been a satanic high priest who, through a complex string of macabre events, finally found Jesus and was now born again. Evangelicals wholeheartedly loved him. His autobiography, The Satan Seller, was one of the best selling Christian books of the 1970's. Through his books and an active concert circuit he assumed a prominent seat in the Christian entertainment industry as both a spiritual role model and an authority on occultism.

However, in 1993 in a 20,000 word article, Cornerstone, the flagship magazine of the Jesus People, exposed Mike for what he was. The Cornerstone article demonstrated that the carte blanche trust Evangelicals had given Mike and his ministry was thoroughly naive. Mike had never been a satanist. He had never done most of the things he claimed for himself. None of his friends knew anything of his midnight forays into wickedness during college. And rather than being the Christian model of virtue he sold himself as, Mike had been married and divorced four times. He was mishandling donations on a massive scale, using his position for his own gain. Little of what Mike had claimed stood up to reality.

Most people, sometime in their life, have their heroes fall and then learn an important lesson common to all. Luminaries who fall from grace grant us a time of soul-searching to reassess our faith and re-establish it in a much stronger foundation. This became my own process and, realising this would not be my last hero to fall, I focussed my faith more on Christ.

The reaction from the Christian public, however, was more difficult to comprehend. The devotion to Mike was so strong amongst Evangelicals that letters responding to Cornerstone, rather than thanking them for the perspective to see beyond the sham, sharply criticised the authors. "How dare you judge Mike!" "When you can save as many people as him, then maybe you can point fingers." "You are being very unloving and tearing down the body of Christ." These were typical responses.

"These are the reactions of Christians?" I thought. I struggled with this. Which was worse-Mike's deception or the Christian public's self-deception?

This was certainly not the kind of man I wanted to be. I did not want to be attached to a symbol that contradicted its underlying reality or to defend the image at the expense of the substance. I wanted to deal with life as it is. Maybe I don't see things very clearly, but I don't want this to excuse me to concoct my own version of reality.

II. ENTER THE SEARCH

Doubt Unspoken

In the heights of my faith there have been strong streaks of doubt and questioning. Is the Bible really the Word of God? Did Jesus really do the things claimed for him in the Gospels? Are we completely wrong? After all, we don't hesitate to declare everyone else wrong. Some Christians, in an effort to sustain their reputation in Church, simply show unflinching doubt towards the world. When confronted by a pained Christian conscience, they simply say, "Don't worry about it. God has a wonderful plan for your life! The answers will come later." Comfort. But, as with Job's helpers, there are underlying messages. Pity that your faith is so weak. One day it may be as strong as my own.

Honest searchers, still committed to their churches, smile and carry on, finding what they can in the diet of books on offer. Some questioners, rebuffed by other believers, lose faith altogether. It is no secret, for example, that a sizeable number of secular humanists in America were once committed Southern Baptists.

This tension is also seen in our forms of church worship. Whether we realise it or not, our attitude and assumptions are lived out when we assemble. Sitting from a piano stool, leading worship, I have tried to understand what is going on. Although there is a great variety and style within Evangelical worship, whether it be Lutheran hymns or Charismatic choruses, common assumptions run throughout most of it.

In the worship of the hymn, our faith is found cerebral, celebrating the systematic theology of the Reformers in well measured stanzas, expressions that approach a reflection of the natural order of the world. The exposition of the Word of God as sung, regardless if comprehended, offers an assurance that we are squarely in the realm of Romans and thoroughly understand the mechanics of justification and sanctification.

In the worship of the chorus, the passion of our relationship with God is expressed in full rawness as we encounter the Divine. Through a liberation of the emotions we enter beyond the veil, us and God, face to face and soul to soul.

And, of course, there are mixes of these two styles which criss-cross our churches. Many examples go beyond these admitted stereotypes.

What undergirds both of these styles of worship is an assumption that we personally approach God and His Truth without veils. For the hymnodist, we sing the words of the Bible and its message, directly participating in Words of God. For the Charismatic, we directly touch and feel the presence of God through a worship of heightened emotion. Both of these forms of worship are incredibly beautiful and creative. Yet the way we do it commonly assumes, not always, but most times, an approach to God that has gone beyond the barrier experienced by other less fortunate souls. Instead of the ritual and tradition of Catholics, we know God personally. Our worship is different than anyone else because we have gone beyond the veil.

For those of us in an intense Evangelical community, to question whether our worship really is a direct connection to God or His Truth is to question the relation of the entire community to God. Rightfully so, for if an Israelite had dared challenge aspects of the liturgy surrounding the Temple, he too would have been seen as questioning the position of Israel as the people of God.

Our worshipful insistence on our personal relationship with God makes it difficult to admit we really don't know God on the level we claim. Most of us grope in the dark yet are compelled to talk about a daily walk with God that is as familiar as that with our best friends. For all our effort to know God, we often have a closer and more personal relationship with each other. But we are part of a community who confess direct access to Truth. If a person would simply be objective and honest enough with the Bible, they would see things the same way is one of our implied attitudes.

Gone East

This was not so plain to me when I first discovered the worldview of the early Christian Church. Rather I was very much a central part of evangelicalism and along with it came the standard set of attitudes. So when I first met an a brother in OM who was studying to join the Eastern Orthodox Church, I didn't know how to react. He was a graduate of Wheaton, a very intelligent and passionate man who was seeking the heart of God just as sincerely as I was, yet looking into a body of Christians I thought were clearly heretical.

Incense? Good works for salvation? Icons? Prayers to Mary and the Saints? Kissing rings, fingers and old bones? Eating Jesus Christ? This is just Catholicism without the Pope! Come on! No one in their right mind would go into that, not if they were truly born again.

My friend Chris and I talked late, making forays into well-travelled theological waters. This was my introduction to the world of the Eastern Church. It never occurred to me to consider that the churches planted by the Apostles in Antioch, Turkey and Greece in the first century had never disappeared and were still around. This only served to show my whole attitude towards Church history, that somewhere in the middle ages genuine Christianity vanished into thin air, awaiting the prophets of the sixteenth century to be resuscitated.

As we talked I discovered that Chris was not the only one making this move. In the last ten years there has been a very large move of Evangelical Americans who have, in the thousands, been received into the Antiochian Orthodox Church. The decisions of former Evangelical leaders Peter Gillquist and Franky Schaeffer were unfathomable to me at the time. All I knew was that this was a gauntlet thrown at my feet. This mass conversion from my mother bed of Evangelicalism represented a truth claim I needed to confront.

Remarks made in some Orthodox books Chris had made some good points but I was still thoroughly confident that they were out of harmony with the Scriptures. I definitely wanted to refute them. I admit I also wanted to refute my friend's life, to find flaws in his character, false motives in which I could trash his entire search. Possibly he's been offended by an Evangelical or maybe he lost a girlfriend. Actually, I wonder if he's really bothered to read the Bible! Anyway, poor Chris has lost his sense of objectivity, most certainly.

I walked away from our time together concerned for my lost brother, yet with another coal of curiosity stoked and an openness to initiate my own studies into Church history and its relation to the teaching of Scripture.

Eureka — Eusebius!

As confessed before, justification of every aspect of my journey is not the role of this work. But the scholarship undergirding my journey is essential to completely understand where I've been and, through footnotes, I leave a trail to be followed.

The first long leg of my research began with the early Church, primarily before Nicaea, with a special focus on the period 70-240 CE. This is a period of Church history which is, at best, vaguely familiar to Evangelicals. Our heroes can be found in the New Testament, but the next spiritual giants to come along are Augustine (for the cerebral few), then Wycliffe, Tyndale, Zwingli and Luther. I have met a number of people who are thoroughly well-read in the Reformed tradition but who have not read a single work by a Christian from this period.

The first early Christian work I read was Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, the first comprehensive history of the Christian Church after the book of Acts[2] . Written shortly before the Council of Nicea, the History is a gold mine of early Christian stories and thought. Leafing through the worn pages I thought, "This book should be censored! No, it should be reprinted!" Nearly every chapter brought some new insight to the Scriptures, and yet much cut against what I had expected. The early Church was not exactly what I imagined. They weren't exactly Protestants.

Eusebius begins with a theology of Christ, directly stating Him to be God and the Word of God. From there he demonstrates that Christ was not a recent phenomenon, but was known from the beginning of time. Throughout his argument he cites Old Testament prophecy, many passages with which I was already familiar, and others besides. With this prologue Eusebius begins the history of the Christian Church, weaving into his account, broadly structured on the Gospels, a number of other documents and traditions of the Apostles.

For instance, Acts 12:2 mentions the martyrdom of the Apostle James at the hand of Herod. Eusebius relates how, in his trial before Herod, James delivered a passionate defense of his faith in Christ. James' words were so moving that the Roman soldier guarding him instantly converted and publicly declared his faith in Christ. With one word Herod order both of them to be taken outside and executed.

"So they were both taken away together, and on the way he asked James to forgive him. James thought for a moment; then he said, 'I wish you peace', and kissed him. So both were beheaded at the same time."[3]

Another story related in the History deals with the apostle John and his activities amongst his congregations in Asia Minor at the end of his life — material not found in the New Testament.[4]

In another place Eusebius cites the letter of a bishop from the third century, Africanus, dealing with the discrepancies between the genealogies of Matthew and Luke in a way I had never heard before, treating them both as lines of Joseph.[5]

Questions, Questions

These were some of the many stories Eusebius chronicled. Each new discovery agitated other questions to the surface. I argued with myself.

What is this rubbish, stories of the Apostles not found in the Bible? Eusebius offended me. Did he really believe what he was writing? Who was he kidding? The Bible, I felt, was not only all we needed, but all we have in terms of authentic and reliable material. How could Eusebius write this kind of thing? Didn't he believe in Sola Scriptura?

Are you saying there were people back then who knew apects of history we don't know today? This question revealed my own quasi-evolutionist assumptions, hidden until now. They came out: Modern man is more advanced than ever. We know more than any other generation, especially in theology. We have the glorious benefit today of the most advanced Biblical scholarship, criticism and archaeology. We have sought to be objective in the understanding of our faith, unlike previous generations. Now here I was confronted with a serious Christian historian from the early Church who had access to libraries, books and witnesses that have long since disappeared. He was familiar with books, such as Papias' The Sayings of the Lord Explained, which are no longer with us.[6]

Upon what basis can you reject what Eusebius says? came a question in return. There was no way to avoid evaluating his book. It was in front of my face. I previously had the luxury of being ignorant. Now I needed to deal with a different world and a different paradigm. I wanted to reject what he said. I felt I could do so on one of two broad grounds. Either I ignore his accounts because they are superstitious and heretical. Or else I deny their historicity.

Is this superstition? Ah, but what is superstition? For a Christian this avenue is a dead end, for the "fables" found in Eusebius are of no different quality than those found in Scripture. Acts is full of odd stories which, if isolated from the diginity we automatically afford Scripture, we would reject on the same grounds we reject Eusebius. Peter's shadow healing people? His handkerchief? What about Philip's experiences of teleportation? If we have a problem with apocryphal stories of the Apostles on the basis of the supernatural then we had better beware. It is this reaction against superstition which fuels deism.[7]

Is this heretical? Again, none of the stories, again, on a closer look, could be accused of false teaching. In many ways I found the stories quite compatible with Scripture. They seemed to enhance the godliness of the Apostles.

Is this historical? After all, why should I accept a story written in the early fourth century? What about the Bible? The New Testament is, after all, much more reliable, dating from the first century. That was one way to look at it. Another way to look at this predicament, I realised, was that I was sitting in the 20th century arguing with an author from the fourth. We both have access to the New Testament and the scholarship of our day, but he has the added vantage point of time, culture, language and an ecclesiastical education. All I have are twentieth century Western commentaries. Who is right-him or me?

After a while I gave myself permission to vent my hungry heart and reach out to the saints of which Eusebius spoke. Instead of trying to fit them into my own mold, I asked them to tell me their story.

Where have you been all my life? As an Evangelical missionary and "apologist," I felt robbed. I had spent hours poring through Christian bookshops and had never read this kind of material. I didn't even know there were writings available from the period. Most versions of Church history I had read would briefly mention the second and third centuries, briefly focus on the trinitarian debates of the fourth, highlight Augustine, then jump into the sixteenth century for the Reformation. Never at a Christian bookstore or booktable had I seen patristic writings being reprinted and sold. We have been content selling the writings of any nutcase who pretends to be Evangelical, but have not bothered to consider selling the works of the sons and grandsons of the Apostles.

And I soon realised why. If Evangelicals ever bothered to reprint and study Ignatius, Polycarp, Tertullian or Irenaeus, their writings would step on our theological toes.

Doctrinal Essentials

One of the statements widely used in Evangelical circles is, "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things charity." This is an idea also expressed in the writings of Eusebius and his forebears. The only problem was that in his and other patristic writings, the consensus of what was essential and what was non-essential was dramatically different to Evangelical understanding.[8]

For instance, Eusebius discusses the canon of Scripture rather freely. Origen, he states, held the book of Revelation as Scripture, written by the Apostle John. Eusebius begs to differ, explaining upon the basis of the style of Greek used why he felt this was not the case and why Revelation was a dubious book. Yet he leaves the discussion with the greatest admiration for Origen.

It wasn't to be until well after the writing of the History that, for the first time we know of, Athanasius in his Easter festal letter of 367 listed the twenty-seven books we now use. Before then every canonical list of the New Testament differed with each other. While Evangelicals, without recourse to the authority of the Church, are willing to castigate anyone who questions the canon, the earliest Christians held a faith that did not depend on an ironclad list of books. It was not an essential. From the time of the Apostles onward the Church was content with an unfixed canon that included the Apocrypha.[9]

On the other hand, on a subject as non-essential to Evangelicals such as baptism, the early Church was united. There were controversies on the subject, but not over the nature of the sacrament. Rather the question was praxis—whether or not heretics should be re-baptised. The institution of Christ in the waters was not a symbolic appendage tacked onto a profession of faith or altar call, as is so practiced in Protestant circles, but was rather a central part of the salvation process by which a person was born again, illuminated and regenerated to new life. The Church was so united they agreed that in baptism, the washing should be administered three times.[10]

In "essentials," unity? Who decides what are the essentials? The Church of the first centuries which held to a fundamentally different understanding of Christian essentials than what we teach. By our present standards we would call the early Church "unbalanced" or "extreme." Undoubtedly they would return the favour.

Is there a Heretic in the House?

When I was a part of apologetic missions to the Mormon Church and other cults, one of our techniques to refute false belief systems was to create guilt by association. By pointing out the similarity between Gnostics and Christian Scientists we showed that there was nothing new under the sun, that heresies are constantly resurrected, dredged up from the past.

I was in for a surprise, then, as I further read the early writings. Quickly I realised that the apologetic techniques of the early Church were considerably different than mine. My concern was to show how contemporary heresies had a deep, long history and that they keep on resurrecting through time. Early apologists, however, believed that every heresy was an innovation and therefore had no genuine history. Only the True Faith extends back through all time. To the early Fathers, sects were something new under the sun.[11]

Only in reading the writings of men like Irenaeus and Hippolytus did I realise that Gnostic theology was nothing comparable to Christian Science. True, the two share a flawed view of creation, but Gnostic thought was far more intricate and developed than Mary Baker Eddy's system.[12] It dawned on me that Gnosticism, in all its ugly theological twists and turns, was dead. There were no more Gnostics today. Even those in this century who would seek to draw from their writings are simply creating a modern hybrid, not at all resurrecting the heretical community from centuries ago. Most Druids would probably not at all recognise the modern attempts to recreate their dead religion.

However it is true that in certain doctrines, where there was a difference between the Gnostics and the early Church, Christian Scientists side with the former. Therefore they are united to Gnosticism by virtue of some common beliefs. Orthodox Christianity in the early centuries had recurring conflicts with other groups over essential doctrines such as the Trinity and salvation. Those doctrines which characterised the opponents of the Church are often taught today by certain groups of Christians. Certain heresies still abound, although it most likely would not be recognized by most Christians as such.[13]

Protestants and Evangelicals lap into this category. We maintain doctrines today that fly in the face of the early Church and their understanding of Scripture. If the Church of the Ante-Nicene period were with us today they would consider most Evangelical denominations as heretical and schismatic.

Irenaeus, in his treatise Against Heresies, catalogues and deals with Gnostic heresies, primarily combatting their views on the godhead and creation, while also addressing their inclination towards sectarianism, anti-sacramentalism and departure from the Apostolic succession.[14] Tertullian, the first Christian to use the term Trinity, also looks at the nature of heresies in his day and observes how they have departed from the historic Apostolic faith in both teaching and practice, giving no regard to the sanctity of the Eucharist or the Apostolic succession.[15] The criticisms Irenaeus and Tertullian make against their opponents are still valid against many forms of Evangelicalism.

Allow me to qualify these bold strokes. Some of the early authors may have looked upon certain groups such as Anglicans or Lutherans with a sympathy that may have extended to mutual recognition and communion. However mainstream Evangelicalism, as represented by the Evangelical Alliance or most interdenominational agencies, would not be in favor with the consensus of the earliest Fathers.

Second Thoughts

As promised, this is not a detailed justification of belief. But I believe it important to summarise a few of the new perspectives I discovered in my search through ancient Christianity.

Salvation

Early Christianity maintained that we are saved by faith in Christ through baptism. We are being saved now and will be saved if we abide in Christ. Their writings are full of warnings against falling away from Christ, with the understanding that it could and does happen. Even though they had no understanding of eternal security, the Fathers had no "eternal insecurity." They understood that God initiates our salvation by sending His Spirit and power into our lives, a love which we reciprocate. The concept of salvation by faith alone or by irresistable grace was a concept foreign to the Church. Rather, the Calvinist system, which I had embraced for many years, finds unusually strong echoes in the teachings of Gnostic sects.[16]

Communion

Known as the Eucharist, this supper was believed to be of divine institution and power. It was much more than a symbol or representation-it was God with us and the elements were transformed by the Spirit into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, on which believers could feed to maintain the life of sacred devotion to God. It was also seen as sacrifice, the gifts of the earth which we offer in thanks back to God at the altar of the New Covenant. Ironically, once again, it was Gnostic sects which were habitually anti-sacramental.[17]

The Church

Again, the earliest Fathers believed that they, as a community, were the New Israel, and that a departure from the visible communion of the body of Christ was the same as a departure from the faith. Their Church structure was hierarchical and based upon the trifold ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons. They believed that maintaining the unbroken succession from the Apostles through the bishops was an essential element of the Catholic Church. Schism from this One Church was seen as being among the worst possible sins for it was an assault against the Body of Christ. Although not a monolithic organisation, the early Church was One, without division and spread throughout the world from India to Britain.[18]

Worship

Without exception, the worship of the early Christians revolved around liturgy. Rather than eclectic or creative services the primitive Church was content with that which they received, a liturgical worship handed to by the Apostles. The worship of the early Church was both an extension of the Old Testament and a dramatic exclamation of God's visit to man in the incarnation. Rather than centring around the sermon, the Sunday worship focussed around the Eucharist. Their understanding of worship operated on a different level than those of Evangelicals since it did not assume direct access to God, but rather an ongoing contemplation of the mysteries of Christ which we still struggle to take in.[19]

Life after Death

The early Fathers held that when we die, we go to an intermediate place of rest to await the resurrection of the flesh, when we will be judged for our sins and be rewarded with heaven or hell. They distinguished between Hades and Gehenna. The former referred to the place of the dead while the latter referred to the place of eternal torment.[20]