# Modern church vs early church



## Andres (May 18, 2015)

I know that church history is not the determinant factor when arriving at theological/doctrinal conclusions. However, I also think there's something to be said when we see a particular doctrine practiced by the early church and continuing on in history. Some examples that come to mind are paedobaptism and Psalm singing. While I certainly hold to these beliefs due to their scriptural soundness, I also think there is something to be said about their historical church practice. 
With that said, I've been trying to think of a doctrinal or theological tenet that the current church holds to that the early church or majority of church history did not ascribe to. For example, are there any areas that most of church history got wrong and we've only recently (last 150 years of so) come to the correct view?


----------



## Hamalas (May 18, 2015)




----------



## timmopussycat (May 19, 2015)

Andres said:


> I know that church history is not the determinant factor when arriving at theological/doctrinal conclusions. However, I also think there's something to be said when we see a particular doctrine practiced by the early church and continuing on in history. Some examples that come to mind are paedobaptism and Psalm singing. While I certainly hold to these beliefs due to their scriptural soundness, I also think there is something to be said about their historical church practice.
> With that said, I've been trying to think of a doctrinal or theological tenet that the current church holds to that the early church or majority of church history did not ascribe to. For example, are there any areas that most of church history got wrong and we've only recently (last 150 years of so) come to the correct view?



Not so much in the last 150 years but go back about 500 years and the list includes:
Justification by faith
Sanctification
Ecclesiology
and of course paedobaptism (PB)
More recently, about 320 years ago exclusive psalm singing was largely rejected.


----------



## R Harris (May 19, 2015)

Tim, you certainly did open up the can of worms, didn't you?


----------



## Andres (May 20, 2015)

timmopussycat said:


> Andres said:
> 
> 
> > I know that church history is not the determinant factor when arriving at theological/doctrinal conclusions. However, I also think there's something to be said when we see a particular doctrine practiced by the early church and continuing on in history. Some examples that come to mind are paedobaptism and Psalm singing. While I certainly hold to these beliefs due to their scriptural soundness, I also think there is something to be said about their historical church practice.
> ...



Oh okay now I see how this is definitely a can of worms since I'd likely disagree with you on several points...haha.


----------



## Romans922 (May 20, 2015)

Yeah, I'd disagree on every point Tim made.


----------



## earl40 (May 20, 2015)

I believe if we look at this issue from the eyes of God we might see where He allowed practices within the church that were not essential to true faith being present. Take for instance churches who who sing songs other than Psalms, do we believe they are a true church who have the 3 marks of a church but sing uninspired songs? Of course we do, though in the case of the RC "church" they stopped being a true church when they officially condemned faith alone. Up till then Our Lord put up with them and the 3 marks are a good rule to judge what churches are true, which include my local church (PCA) which never sings Psalms.


----------



## Fogetaboutit (May 20, 2015)

Andres said:


> With that said, I've been trying to think of a doctrinal or theological tenet that the current church holds to that the early church or majority of church history did not ascribe to. For example, are there any areas that most of church history got wrong and we've only recently (last 150 years of so) come to the correct view?



From my personal research, and I'm not an expert on the history of the church, I don't think there are any "new" doctrine that the current church holds to that nobody ever ascribe to. Holding to such view would basically undermine the authority of the apostles. I believe what we see is for certain periods of times some doctrines were less widespread than others and errors definitely prevailed in certain area of theology for a time, but were then brought back to light at the time of the Reformation. I also think is hard to be dogmatic on these issues, especially in the western world, because we do not know which historical record were destroyed by the Roman Church before the time of the printing press where they had a harder time to control the spread of written material. 

One of the area that the church of the last 150 years developed in greater details I believe is eschatology, although I wouldn't say we have it right and all church fathers or Reformers had it wrong, but from my experience I think it's one of the area where modern theologians developed this area of theology in greater details and are usually more useful than Reformers and Puritans.


----------



## Romans922 (May 20, 2015)

-What about Non-headcovering wearing? Headcoverings were the norm up until at least the 1800's.
-Wine for Lord's Supper (I don't know how much of the Church uses wine now - all of anglicanism/episcopals/methodists/lutherans. Maybe this is still in the majority).


----------



## Fogetaboutit (May 20, 2015)

Andres said:


> Some examples that come to mind are paedobaptism and Psalm singing.



I believe paedobaptism is easier to defend than exclusive psalm singing since I believe it is easier to deduced from scriptures. Although I'm sympathetic to EP and in our home we are practically EP. 

I believe in the Regulative Principle of Worship but I'm not sure that singing uninspired psalms or hymns is forbidden since I'm not sure scripture commands us to solely sing inspired psalms. I know it does commands us to sing psalms/hymns, but I'm not sure if it refers solely to the inspired psalms. I also agree that logic would tell us that the Psalms were included in the cannon for a reason, so why would we use uninspired hymns when you have and inspired psalter, it is much safer to use the inspired psalms only. Now that being said, can we say without a shadow of doubt that it's a sin to sing an uninspired hymn during worship if it's theologically sound? If so what about creeds, can we recite uninspired creeds during a worship service.

Sorry I didn't want to detract the tread, my only point was to ask if EP is a doctrine of scriptures, or an interpretation of a doctrine of scriptures. Although I know many orthodox believers held to this view, I don't know if we can include it in the dogma of the church. To me this kind of fall into the same category as head covering and acceptable length of hair, I know what I prefer, but I'm sure I can be dogmatic about it yet.


----------



## NaphtaliPress (May 20, 2015)

This gets moved to the EP subforum if this continues. Just saying.


----------



## timmopussycat (May 23, 2015)

Romans922 said:


> Yeah, I'd disagree on every point Tim made.



Would you really deny the reformed views of justification by faith, sanctification and ecclesiology in favour of the RCC's views on these topics?


----------



## Romans922 (May 24, 2015)

timmopussycat said:


> Would you really deny the reformed views of justification by faith, sanctification and ecclesiology in favour of the RCC's views on these topics?



The question asks is there anything in the Church today in doctrines that the early church did not hold. 

There's clear evidence of proper (though perhaps not fully flushed out) doctrines on justification, sanctification, and ecclesiology in the early church. RCC might have messed this up along the way, but RCC in the time of the reformation isn't the early church. Nor is it part of the Church today.


----------

