Comments on: New Testament Christianity, Pt. 3

By: Rodney Howard Browne

Rodney Howard Browne — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:20:06 +0000

I do believe that most individual Christians attempt to put into practice what they learn (with varying degrees of success, of course). >>> I agree with you. God Bless!

By: Bob Heffernan

Bob Heffernan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:01:52 +0000

I think I agree with Pete Rollins here except for one thing: I am not suggesting that there ever was a time “before it all went wrong”. I’m not suggesting that Christianity before Constantine was perfect, or even that Christianity in the lifetime of the apostles was perfect. It clearly wasn’t. I find that people often caricature the “new testament Christianity” idea as saying that the early church was perfect and everything would be fine if we could get back to it. That’s not what I’m saying, at least. What I *am* saying is that Paul and the other NT argue for a certain sort of ideal, made possible by the work of the spirit, that it characterised by mutual submission and non-heirarchical structure.

This is the sense in which we “return to the revolutionary event that gave birth to the early church”: by re-learning to rely on the Spirit rather than on our systems.

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:34:21 +0000

The point then is not to attempt some kind of return to the early church, the church before it got caught up in X (Platonic concepts, state power etc.) but rather to return to the revolutionary event that gave birth to the early church. Fully embracing the fact that we will fail but working diligently to fail in a better way. We thus avoid the dead end of either sitting back and saying, “everything we create will end up just as bad as what currently exists”, or naively claiming that we can return to the way things used to be, before it all went wrong.

Pete rollings web