Avatar wrote:Damelon wrote:I'm not an expert, but I believe it's evolved since near the beginning. Taking the most obvious one, Christians don't have to follow Moses' dietary laws as laid out in Leviticus because in Matthew Jesus said, "Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man, but that which comes out of the mouth".
But up until as late as the 1800's, they still relied on Exodus 22:18 despite Jesus saying "Let him who is without sin..."
I just wondered if it's an official teaching that the NT overrules the OT, and when it was first instituted. Officially.
--A
Taking a risk to answer a question that has a definite answer... (if I'm mistaken I'll just go back to my little hole)
Church history is a definite thing. It is distinct from belief. It is something we have definite historical record of. It was essentially one definite institution and there was essentially nothing outside of it for the first thousand years of Christianity (simplifying a little, leaving the Copts out of it for now...) That is a matter of historical record, and people who would dispute that do so without said record; in short, imagination and wishful thinking, vs hard
evidence that we actually have.
That evidence overwhelmingly confirms the existence of one institution, an official thing, if you will. That institution, for better or for worse, decided what the Christian canon was, what was the make-up of Scriptural canon and what the creed was. It held councils to determine what teachings were to be accepted and be considered orthodox (meaning right and true) and which were to be considered heresies (false teachings which ultimately undermine the entire faith).
So when you speak of Christians relying on a text, it must refer back to that and what the texts were always understood to mean. The situation you see today, of thousands of denominations driven by personal opinion of interpretation of Scripture, did not exist. There was official authority which did institute the ideas you are asking about. That authority, to the external observer, underwent the Great Schism a thousand years ago, yet the two separated parts - the eastern (Orthodox) Church and the western (Catholic) Church - continued to teach and worship in e established manner, although teaching - and not so much worship - diverged more and more as time went by until the so-called Reformation, which failed to reform much of anything,
so it's a level-one misnomer.
If you follow me so far, then I can say that that authority determined at the very beginning that the old covenant was finished and completed, and a new covenant was established. This covenant is expressed in text (which we call the OT and the NT), but not only in text, but also in the worship, iconography and commentary of the Church fathers and so on. So it is NOT a case of a legal text being superseded by a new text, but of a promise of a living God. The understanding of that covenant extends beyond the concept of merely a text that you can read for yourself and decide for yourself what
it is, and for most of Christian history was stated by a definite authority that was external to the individual, and consisted not only of living, but dead people as well. IOW, until the Roman idea (heresy in the Orthodox understanding) of a single man being able to make calls on his own, nowhere was the idea of the supremacy of one man accepted. All Councils, from the first one in the book of Acts, were collegiate affairs.
In the East, the collegial structure was maintained. In the West, it mutated to the papal structure you see today, beginning with the disintegration of Roman imperial authority, and the attendant abuses became possible which Martin Luther rebelled against, leading to the effective dis-integration of western Christianity, kind of like Arnor falling apart in Tolkien's tales, with the ascendence of the authority of the individual to reinvent deeply complex theology on one's own authority. Thus, in the west today, you cannot HAVE an "official" version, for there is no overarching authority to appeal to for it. But there was, and the ideas, historically, came out of that institution, of which only a few clear claimants to complete continuity - an essential
requisite if one is to take the Christian faith seriously - remain.
Again, the history is not merely my personal opinion, though the history is one of the things which ultimately confirmed my faith for me. Nothing, not the geopolitical entity known as America or the religious movement which is today called "Christianity" can be understood without reference to it's historical context. Yet it seems to me at the religious movement is very frequently treated without historical reference, something I now consider essential, not for salvation, but certainly for understanding. Just imagine a pompous Russian or whoever claiming to understand America and Americans without knowing anything of colonization, the revolution, westward expansion, the civil war, and so on. What sense could they possibly make of our religious, racial and other differences without that knowledge? So it is with Christianity.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one." Bill Hingest ("That Hideous Strength" by C.S. Lewis)
"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." G.K. Chesterton
