Early Church Doctrine

[Butch5]

Hello All,


I am looking for a response for early Church writings and why they taught so much on views today known as Arminianism and against what later became Calvinism; and why Augustine was the first to begin to teach as he did, in which nothing close to Calvinism is found anywhere other than in Gnostic teachings. I want to know what happened to the "truth" as Calvinists claim.
Now I know that Calvinists reject early Chruch writings, because they are not scripture. And I never asked that they be accepted as such But this still does not explain the dilemna for any Historical evidence for Calvinism. If it cannot be found, then it should be considered that the first Church never believed as Calvinist claim the Bible teaches.
I am not looking for a debate on this, but only for Calvinist explanations. I want to know if I may have missed something in the Calvinist view and understanding of history. Should we trust those who came out of Roman Catholicism 1500 years after the first Church; or would we be better to trust the view of the disciple of the Apostles amd all those who lived very close to the first Church, of which history shows absolutely no disagreement on the doctrines of salvation? I know that we must trust only the scriptures! Please do not avoid the questions here! Since Arminians and Calvinist use the same bibles but come to completely different views, this makes the idea of truthing the bible alone difficult and confusing for some. Church history is only a help in determinine what the Apostles were really saying in the Bible. So what about these writings? Must we assume they all fell from truth immediately after the death of the Apostles and wrote the oppostite as the Apostles taught them?

The earliest of the early writers are probably the most accurate. They were taught by the apostles and their doctrines were, for the most part, correct. I think as we get further away from the apostles we need to look more for uniformity among them. Regarding Calvinism, there is nothing of it in the original faith. It has it's roots in Gnosticism. Augustine, who, as you pointed out, was the first to dabble in these ideas in the church was a Gnostic before becoming a Christian. Gnosticism is basically the blending of Christian ideas with Greek philosophy. It's where we get the doctrines of the "Heavenly Destiny" and the "Immortal Soul" neither of these are Biblical doctrines.

What I do is look at the early Christian writings and compare their arguments with the Scriptures to see if they line up.

 

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The earliest church was entirely self deprecating

What happened from there was the exact opposite, where today what we think are the churches are all factually quite self absorbed

IF Paul were preached honestly in "church" today, hardly anyone would show up or listen

Paul admitted he had every manner of concupiscent thought, Romans 7:7-13

Paul did evil, Romans 7:19

Paul had evil present within himself, Romans 7:21

Paul had a devil, a messenger of Satan in his own flesh, 1 Cor 12:7

Paul had temptations, Gal 4:14

Paul was the chief of sinners, after salvation, 1 Tim 1:15

Paul guaranteed tribulation and anguish upon everyone, Romans 2:9

And Paul himself had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart, Romans 9:2

Now, go sit in a self affirming God only loves me and uplifts me church today, and you'll never hear a word of it, because these things are offensive to people today and they simply would not listen. I'd go so far as to say it would be entirely pointless

No, the Gospel has done its work, and that is to harden people against it, even those who claim to believe

And this is all in preparation for the final act of God in Christ, which is the destruction of the devil and his messengers

Here's the Good/Bad news: That destruction starts withIN us

We could at least be honest and see that we need that to happen

 

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I'm asking for examples of anti-Semitism in the early church fathers.

Cum Nimus Absurdum was developed from dire false beliefs held in the early, post first apostle sects

And yes, there were lying false apostles and ministers inhabited by Satan and devils before Paul or John died

2 Cor 11:14-15, Rev. 2:2, 1 John 3:8

There is an extreme false notion in nearly every church today that was promulgated in early churches, and this false notion is that the church has "all truth"

The difficulty in accepting these types of false claims is that we all see only in part, so that "I have all truth" claim is really just a patent lie bucket that can't really hold scriptural water in honesty

All truth does include the fact of partial sight, and therein we walk up to the cliff of relevance and some take the leap into the outright lies

It's a vicious circle chasing the all truth tales