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Why are your posts almost always filled with hostility and arrogance?

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A trait I found to be all too common in the CoC congregations that I have experienced.

aggiedad20 said:

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Sorry if you're offended but I detest denominational false doctrines and practices.

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Yet you do not detest CoC doctrine.....

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As for wine, I'm not sure it's essential to have it or grape juice. BOTH were available at the Last Supper but to assume only wine could've been used is arrogant imho.

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Do you have any references at all for this? You made the statement about unfermented grape juice in antiquity, and I have never seen any reference, reputable or not, make that claim. I would love to look at any sources you have to the contrary. It is also not "just as difficult" to make wine and unfermented grape juice. To make wine you just smash some grapes and put the juice in a container. You can make it more complicated than that, but that's sufficient to make wine.

To your second point about the strength of the wine. Passover occurs around the spring equinox at the time of the first barley harvest. Jewish people were forbidden from harvesting anything from their fields until after Passover, it is literally the festival of the First Fruits. So everything used during the Passover meal is leftover from the last harvest of the year before. That means all the wine used at Passover was harvested and processed months prior. It has been sitting in its container and fermenting for months. It would definitely have significant alcohol content. A few months of fermentation is plenty of time to raise the alcohol content of wine to near 10%. Whether it was watered-down is open speculation. Romans are known to have watered down wine with 3 parts water to 1 part wine. Only alcoholic Romans drank wine straight. In regards to Jews, there aren't any such records that I'm aware of. So we're just guessing

Again, I'm not trying to make an argument that alcohol is a necessary part of Passover, the Eucharist, or Communion. Just pointing out that the wine used at the Last Supper was definitely alcoholic, barring some unrecorded miraculous intervention.

k2aggie07 said:

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Amazing how our modern assumptions creep in so easily unless we're careful.

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Yep, like we equate the spiritual leaders back then to spiritual leaders today.

But back then the spiritual leaders were the power brokers, politicians, President, Supreme Court, etc.

We live in a world where religion and spirituality are private and individualized. Where religious leaders have very limited political power. They were the political power back then.

Texaggie7nine said:

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I still want to know how god will judge me if I eat fake bread made from cauliflower at communion.

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God may not, but I sure will.

swimmerbabe11 said:

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On page one, did anyone expect this to become a 9 page thread?

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I certainly did not when I started it.

And while posting I just kept repeating this verse

Galatians 5 22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such things there is no law.

And also Proverbs 6:16-17
There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him. Haughty eyes is the first one mentioned

You know, I kind of think in some way my approach to discuss things with the CoC / only scripture types is maybe a mistake.

They present an arena for the discussion, a basic premise, that I think is historically incorrect and simply untrue. The arena is based on a couple of assumptions:

• A rational, intellectual approach to faith
• A reliance on scripture in such a way that by necessity subordinates scripture to tradition, or pits them against each other
• The combination of these things to develop a cognitive model of belief, behavior, and activity that becomes normative

Now, my experience is that not only is their basic premise incorrect, but it is ultimately unstable under the weight of its own claims. It doesn't self-support based on scripture, and it is a simple thought exercise to understand that at the onset of Christianity this could not be the approach of the faithful (i.e., because the New Testament scriptures weren't written yet). So on that basis I try to engage. But maybe it's bad, because it seems to tacitly accept their premises rather than challenging them.

The truth is, as I see it, actually the following:

• An experiential, transcendent approach to the faith
• A reliance on the Holy Spirit in a real, ongoing way to guard the faith through maintaining what was taught (which by necessity includes both scripture and tradition in a mutually supporting way)
• Which combines to a liturgical model of belief, behavior, and activity that is normative

The latter explains the way the canonical lists were framed much better than the former. The early canonical lists weren't put together with the explanation of "the information in these books can be constructed into a coherent framework of belief, and we are excluding books that do not fit into this framework." They weren't even overtly said "well, these have to be written by an Apostle" or whatever anachronistic criteria people use these days to justify it.

Instead we see in the very earliest lists statements like that of the Muratorian fragment (the oldest known listing of the NT books in ~170) which says in the negative form

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We receive only the apocalypses of John and Peter, though some of us are not willing that the latter be read in church. But Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after [their] time.

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Eusebius also says (~AD 325)

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But as the same apostle, in the salutations at the end of the Epistle to the Romans, has made mention among others of Hermas, to whom the book called The Shepherd is ascribed, it should be observed that this too has been disputed by some, and on their account cannot be placed among the acknowledged books; while by others it is considered quite indispensable, especially to those who need instruction in the elements of the faith. Hence, as we know, it has been publicly read in churches, and I have found that some of the most ancient writers used it.

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Cyril of Jerusalem writes (~AD 350)

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Study earnestly these only which we read openly in the Church. Far wiser and more pious than thyself were the Apostles, and the bishops of old time, the presidents of the Church who handed down these books. Being therefore a child of the Church, trench thou not upon its statutes....But let all the rest be put aside in a secondary rank. And whatever books are not read in Churches, these read not even by thyself, as thou hast heard me say.

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The Council of Laodicea (AD 363) declared:

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Let no private psalms nor any uncanonical books be read in church, but only the canonical ones of the New and Old Testament.

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St Athanasius the Great wrote (~360s)

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There are other books besides these, indeed not received as canonical but having been appointed by our fathers to be read to those just approaching and wishing to be instructed in the word of godliness: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being merely read.

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St Jerome writes around 390:

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This must be said to our people, that the epistle which is entitled "To the Hebrews" is accepted as the apostle Paul's not only by the churches of the east but by all church writers in the Greek language of earlier times, although many judge it to be by Barnabas or by Clement. It is of no great moment who the author is, since it is the work of a churchman and receives recognition day by day in the public reading of the churches. If the custom of the Latins does not receive it among the canonical scriptures, neither, by the same liberty, do the churches of the Greeks accept John's Apocalypse. Yet we accept them both, not following the custom of the present time but the precedent of early writers, who generally make free use of testimonies from both works.

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The council of Carthage in 397 states:

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Besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in church under the name of divine Scripture....for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church.

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Rufinus of Aquileia around 400 writes:

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...it seems proper in this place to specify by a distinct enumeration, from the records of the fathers, the books of the New and of the Old Testament, which, in accordance with the tradition of our ancestors, are believed to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, and handed down to the churches of Christ...

...These are the books which the fathers have included in the canon; on which they would have us establish the declarations of our faith.

With the New Testament there is the book which is called the Shepherd of Hermas, and that which is called The Two Ways and the Judgment of Peter. They were willing to have all these read in the churches but not brought forward for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they named "apocrypha," which they would not have read in the churches.

These are what the fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God they should draw for drinking.

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So the entirety of the transfer of scripture is in a liturgical frame of reference. Scripture was used liturgically, read publicly, just as St Paul talks about in the NT. Public ministry and public teaching, public use, so that anyone who comes can know what the Church teaches. As scriptures says "Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will inform you." And again, we come to the Church because "this knowledge is not in all" (1 Corinthians 8:7).

CoC fits in well with those who really like structure and rules with no ambiguity. All you have to do is ignore how the NT came into shape historically, and agree to only subscribe to 1 possible interpretation of every single scripture (that being the one you are told to believe) and there you go. You have a tightly formed theology with no room for interpretation and no reason to question anything. Clean and easy.


Thankfully, the pastor at one of the CoC churches I had attended for a few years in summers when I was visiting my dad, started questioning what he was told and eventually the entire church changed to non denominational and hardly anyone left.

Great post. The early Christians lived and breathed a in a liturgical world.

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Luke records that the calling of Paul and Barnabas was the work of the Holy Spirit, and that it took place during the "liturgy." The text reads, "as they were 'liturgizing' (leitourgounton) before the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul to the work to which I have called them'"(Acts 13:2). Luke was a physician and well educated. He must have understood what he meant to say about worship: namely, that the community was together in formal and ritual worship, accompanied by fasting, when the Holy Spirit spoke. So in A.D. 46, this early church was worshiping in a liturgical manner using a Christian form carried over from the synagogue. And this was within sixteen years of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The continuity of worship between the Old and New Covenants is very evident.

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But Christians soon had to establish their own liturgical worship forms after persecutions by the Jews:

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What was this resulting Christian order? The Synagogue worship structure, consisting of a litany of prayers, a confession, eulogies, readings from the Scriptures, an address or homily, and a benediction. This form constituted the core of what was to become specifically Christian worship.

Evidence for this can be found in archaeological evidence from the earliest Syrian churches, as well as in the Apostolic Constitutions and the Didache, and in the continuous practices of the Nestorian Churches. "The old Syrian church appears as a Christianized version of a Jewish Synagogue." [1] There is a bema in the center, an Ark with veil and candle to hold the Word of God, and a seat for the bishop (that is) representative of the seat of Moses. To these Synagogue elements was added an altar, and now the Church had an orientation. The architectural arrangement can be seen in the following illustration.

Christian churches were oriented facing the East for a very specific reason. Christians look to the heavenly Jerusalem from which the Messiah will come, and know themselves to be the "temple of the Holy Spirit." However, the East is the place of the rising sun, and for early Christians this was "the only fitting symbol of the last appearance of Christ in His parousia, as Sun of Justice in Zecharia." [2] Tertullian speaks of public and private prayer to the East as being an Apostolic tradition, and it expressed the eschatological expectation that Christ will appear as the Rising Sun that will never set.

To the core Synagogue structure (commonly referred to as the Synaxis or the Liturgy of the Word) was added the fulfilled Temple worship, the Eucharist, which was inserted prior to the benediction. This included the use of sung or chanted Psalms which were part of Jewish worship, and to which St. Paul refers in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 when he encourages the use of "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs." Again, St. Paul's Missionary approach demonstrates this connection, for his approach in any new city was to worship first in the Synagogue using that base for proclaiming the Gospel. The Jerusalem Church was the "Mother Church" for early Christianity, to which the Church at large looked for guidance in all things theological and liturgical. The missionary churches naturally followed the form of the Jerusalem Church. Thus, the Gentile churches which came into being as a result of St. Paul's preaching and teaching had this same Jewish rule of prayer, or order of worship. The similarity to the Synagogue ritual within the first century Church demonstrates an early universal acceptance of Jewish worship origins. [3]

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In his book, The History of The Church (18.1), Eusebius, a fourth century historian and bishop, quotes Philo, a Jewish historian writing in the first century. Philo describes the Christian "all-night vigils of the great festival, the spiritual discipline in which they are spent, the hymns that we always recite, and how while one man sings in regular rhythm the others listen silently and join in the refrains of the hymn." [4] This is antiphonal singing of litanies, and certainly reflects Jewish worship practice, which Philo recognizes. By the end of the first century, the Christian Church was present throughout much of the Empire. There were established churches in most of the major cities and many smaller ones. These churches continued following the order of Jewish worship, essentially the Synagogue form with the inclusion of the Eucharist. But, the typical worship of the first and second centuries was by necessity simple. The Church was generally under persecution, so it tended to hold its worship services in secret, and usually in the homes of members.

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http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/early_christian_liturgics.htm