Featured The New Testament, and the Early Church

This will be a variation on some things I have posted before. It seeks to explore an important question. Before I start, I must say that I often wonder why I continue to stay and post here. I guess I do that because I keep hoping that I might help others and that others might help me.

I believe Protestantism was an inspired, helpful, admirable, and needed effort to get back to the New Testament and to correct the innovations of Roman Catholicism. But in doing so, it still read and interpreted the New Testament according to a Western, Latin paradigm. The problem with this is that the New Testament is an eastern book based on eastern religions, which Judaism and Christianity were originally. I maintain that a correct interpretation of the New Testament cannot be done unless the context in which it was written is taken into account. And that context is an Eastern, Greek context, not a Western, Latin one. Thus, it is improper and will lead to incorrect interpretation and doctrine not to consider what the first century/early second century Christians believed. To do that, one must study what they actually believed. The early Greek Fathers are a tremendous help in this. Those Fathers were not infallible; they were occasionally mistaken. But to correctly interpret the New Testament, one must study to learn how these early Christians interpreted the NT.

When I began to pull away from the EOC, and study in depth early Christianity, then Protestantism and the RCC, I was amazed and startled to discover that although these belief systems differed in some ways because of Protestantism's efforts to get back to the NT, in many basic ways they still shared the same views of God, salvation, original sin. These views were originated in Roman Catholicism and carried on and even expanded in Protestantism. What they had in common was that they originated in the Western, Latin church. I soon came to realize that although I could not be EOC any longer, I was going to have a very difficult time in becoming Protestant since the Protestant mindset shared so much with the RCC. For instance, PSA atonement, invented by Calvin and Luther, is an expanded and worse version of Rome's Satisfaction theory, both of which were unknown in the early church.

The first century, eastern-minded church had the same scriptures that we have today, and yet their views of such central doctrines as original sin, salvation, the character of God, and the atonement were very different than how these doctrines were developed and held in the Western, Latin-influenced church. The latter interpreted the NT and formulated doctrine with a legalist, rationalist mindset foreign to eastern Christians, or New Testament Christians. The Latin West saw God as a judge; the Greek East saw God as a physician. That was just one difference. So, instead of Protestants interpreting the NT in line with the early church/Eastern Christians, they interpreted it in accord with the church they were trying to reform -- the RCC. But in not reforming Christianity as a whole, they simply reformed some of the more egregious RCC errors while maintaining the erroneous Western, Latin soteriology they shared with Rome.

In trying to find a Protestant denomination to fit into, I have become quite discouraged. The Protestant views of God, man, original sin, salvation, the atonement, etc., cause me great spiritual discomfort and even pain. I was earnestly seeking a true New Testament church, one truly reformed and purged of Western, Latin errors. I think now this does not exist. Maybe some Anabaptists and Quakers come close, but I am not a pacifist, nor do I object to judicial oaths. And even if I desired to go that path, these churches do not exist near me. So, I have about lost hope of finding a church home.

And yet, I could not go back to the EOC. I have discovered that apostolic succession is not a NT doctrine or practice, and their doctrines of Mary, while not as extreme as the RCC, are still not scripturally based. There are more problematic areas, but I will not elaborate at this time.

Maybe I will just attend the country Baptist church I was going to regularly before the pandemic but not join. I was preparing to join and be baptized, but that never happened. I would hate not to get baptized, though.

To sum up, I don't see how you can have a New Testament church without believing and practicing what the earliest Christians believed and practiced. While Protestantism restored some early church doctrine and practice, it kept many Western, Latin errors. And those errors are things that are completely foreign to what Jesus and the apostles believed and taught. I think sola scriptura is a good principle, but it must be interpreted in the right context to arrive at right doctrine -- and that context in which New Testament/early church Christians moved was an Eastern, Greek context and mindset, not a Western, Latin context.

I ask for your prayers, and I will pray for all the members of this forum. And may God bring us all safely through this pandemic.

 

Thank you for your reply. I welcome it, and all replies, even those which disagree strongly with me.

I have and shall continue to search the scriptures and interpret them the way the earliest Christians did.

The early Fathers did not teach PSA or Satisfaction or any of the atonement views which were developed in the Western, Latin Church, whether RCC or Protestant. PSA was invented 1500 years after the early church; it was unknown to the early church. Not only that, it was inconceivable to the earliest Christians, considering their mindset. They had the same scriptures we do yet did not find the doctrine taught there.

 

The Eastern Orthodox Church has never held to PSA or any of the later views. There is a reason for that -- because they were not taught in the NT or early church.

 

That is not PSA. The early church did not see PSA in those verses. Besides, all atonement theories hold that Christ died for our sins.

PSA teaches that Jesus was punished by God in our place and paid the penalty for our sins. That cannot be found anywhere in the NT or the early church.