Adapting ancient practices and early Christianity

September 7, 2021

In some ways, Buddhist practice seems like a natural to me. I feel like I've been on the path my entire life. I'm not rejecting Christianity, I just have a very different perspective than either mainline Christianity or Fundamentalism on Jesus and the way of life he encouraged us to live. So many of today's fundamentalist pastors seem to have given up on Jesus and the Bible and gone totally political, making friends with the empire. I feel my Buddhist practice is closer to following Jesus than these crazy folks and the congregations they mislead. I joke to myself that the parts of Christianity I like the best are Buddhist. It seems to me that Christian writers that I am attracted to have adopted Buddhist practices. I don't want to be mean but it seems that modern Christianity is grasping at ways to stay relevant and actually help people in this modern life. It seems like Buddhism is able to reach back and adapt ancient practices to the modern day in a systematic way. I think that is how Charlotte Joko Beck has been described. 

Christian theology spends a lot of time trying to harmonize the conflicting views found in the various books of the Bible. Out of that mishmash it tries to come up with a way to be relevant in modern life. I think it's much simpler in that Jesus wanted us to follow "The Way." He wasn't much into theology or even a sacrificial death in the way it's presented today. What went wrong? Jesus was human at his death. The belief that God raised him up (exalted) eventually evolved into divinity. The first writings hint at this transformation from Jesus to Christ. The rich diversity of Christian beliefs was squelched when Christianity became part of the empire in the third century. Constantine wanted a unified belief system and the First Council of Nicaea came up with the Nicene Creed which doesn't mention the life that Jesus encouraged people to live. According to Wikipedia, "Its main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Nicene Creed, mandating uniform observance of the date of Easter, and promulgation of early canon law." Theologically, it became necessary to invent a triune God. The Nag Hammadi library is a group of books discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945. Scholars speculate that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius declaring a strict canon of Christian scripture as he ordered all the heretical documents destroyed even though a group found them valuable. These documents include gospels that were banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous.

It is clear before there were any writings, there were various groups who were followers of Jesus. By the time the narrative of Jesus was set down, it had become 12 male disciples, just like the 12 tribes. This ignored the extensive involvement of women which we only get glimpses of in the gospels.

So we have a collection of writings that we call the Bible. We have the writings of early Christian theologians that nobody but other theologians (and I guess some pastors) read. And then we have a large body of hymns which are of questionable theology and life direction. They picked up on martyrdom and the blood of Jesus washing us clean, two crazy ideas. Besides the anti-semetic and sexist problems that developed in Christianity, there is an emphasis on belief and mystery.

The Diversity of Early Christianity - Frontline PBS

The Christian movement probably began not from a single center but from many different centers where different groups of disciples of Jesus gathered and tried to make sense of what they had experienced with him and what had happened to him at the end of his public ministry. Each of those groups probably had a very different take on what the significance of Jesus was.

Elaine Pagels writes in The Gnostic Gospels about who had "seen the risen Lord." "Luke says that they heard that the Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon Peter. What had he said to Peter? Luke's account suggested to Christians in later generations that he named Peter as his successor, delegating the leadership to him." pages 7-8 ... 

The doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics.

Such political and religious authority developed in a most remarkable way. As we have noted, diverse forms of Christianity flourished in the earlier years of the Christian movement. Hundreds of rival teachers all claim to teach the "true doctrine of Christ" and denounced one another as frauds. Christians in churches scattered from Asia Minor to Greece, Jerusalem, and Rome split into factions, arguing over church leadership. All claim to represent "the authentic tradition." pages 6-7 

According to Wikipedia, "Bart D. Ehrman attributes the rapid spread of Christianity to five factors: (1) the promise of salvation and eternal life for everyone was an attractive alternative to Roman religions; (2) stories of miracles and healings purportedly showed that the one Christian God was more powerful than the many Roman gods; (3) Christianity began as a grassroots movement providing hope of a better future in the next life for the lower classes; (4) Christianity took worshipers away from other religions since converts were expected to give up the worship of other gods, unusual in antiquity where worship of many gods was common; (5) in the Roman world, converting one person often meant converting the whole household—if the head of the household was converted, he decided the religion of his wife, children and slaves."