The Religion of Christianity - Case Study Example

CHRISTIANITY The main task of the current research investigation is to examine the differences between the religion of Christianity as it was practiced at its beginnings, focusing on the early spread of the religion by the apostle Paul, and the religion as it has changed through history to the present. There have been many changes in the religion since the time of Paul, and even during his time, as can be seen in the Bible’s Corinthians sections, there were various interpretations and changes that started to make Christianity something mutable rather than unified and permanent. Christianity also started as a minority religion of rebellion, and then was transformed when it became the official religion of the Roman empire. Other changes were also instigated with Catholicism in the Middle Ages, and the Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther. Generally, these historical events set the stage of change from the early beginnings of Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism, to the diversity it shows today. Early Christianity was spread by the apostle Paul throughout Asia Minor. Paul went into different geographical regions as he spread the word of Christianity, preaching in and outside of synagogues and essentially planting the seeds of the religion in many different cultures. He left a definitive and lasting impression on Christian history and the way Jesus was thought of by the mass numbers that he was able to convert in Greece and Asia Minor. Through his wide travels, purposeful indifference to persecution, and the expostulation and sometime exhortation of the idea, still generally applied, that Christians cannot impose an ethnicity upon those who come into the faith, Paul the Apostle spread the word of Christianity, setting a whole new precedent for participating in Jesus. It is also arguable that the prevailing conception of Jesus changed with the social and cultural territories which Paul covered, graded upon the inhabitants’ prior belief systems as adaptive mechanisms that accepted while changing the idea of Jesus in ways that were primarily Jewish (paternalistic, monotheistic), Greek (Dionysian), and Roman (universalist). Paul’s sermon to the Jews was recorded in Acts. The sermon, which told the listeners that John, though he was not Jesus, followed in Jesus’ footsteps because he was unworthy to do otherwise, ended with a polemical barb to his listeners: “Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you” (KJV, Acts 13:41, 1067). The evangelical nature of Christianity was basically started by Paul; the more it spread, the more the religion changed. The geographical diversity and extent of Paul’s evangelizing also was most likely a factor. As time went on, the idea of Jesus returning to earth became less popular and the religion shifted from being persecuted to being accepted, revitalized, and set in a system of official theology. The idea of Christian culture at this point changed as it was determined universally by council what was to be thought of Jesus; whether or not he was human or divine, submissive to the idea of the father, etc. (Historical, 2009). It is easy for any culture to take the parables of Jesus and do virtually anything with them, since many of the parables are so open-ended. Some of these confusions were cleared up by councilor definitions, and others were added. All of the gospel writers had a different agenda in presenting the life of Jesus; this is perhaps the main reason, apart from the natural flux of a changing society, that the understanding of Jesus was capable of changing from age to age: the definitive texts on his message are often contradictory and are fairly open to interpretation. Thus, from its beginnings, we see a much different sort of Christianity today. During the period of the middle ages in Europe, Catholicism was one of the main European religions. But this does not mean that all of these various countries practiced Catholicism in the same way. Since the very start of Christianity, many different people have interpreted Christian books and teachings in many different ways. This is why there has never been a sustained and unified church that is simply called Christian. People have always been seeing the religion in different ways, and this has made them make a lot of different churches and systems. These institutions have changed over time, even though a lot of them have always told people that they were timeless places of worship. The outside forces of society have had an impact on churches in general, though, throughout history and including the present. This has tended to be the case, especially when the means of government is united with the church, it is easy for the church to change under the pressure of current events. Catholicism in the middle ages was united with politics, like most religions are, and this made it no different: it was able to be changed and really it had to change to keep up with the times. It has been, up to the present, a mutable religion, which has stuck to a core text, but has adapted to many different societies. As mentioned, there hasn’t ever been a sustained and unified Christian church. It is always some interpretation of texts and people, and there are lots of different ones. So as the sale of indulgences continued when the Northern Renaissance started, some people started thinking once again about reform and a new kind of Christianity. People like Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas Moore from England started to voice their concerns about indulgences and how they might be counter-productive to what the new Renaissance spirit was saying was the true nature of Christianity (Bedwin, 2009). An Augustinian monk, Luther was not the typical sort of monk who led a quiet life and devoted himself to scholarship. Instead, Luther was a very outspoken representative of his own special kind of Christianity, and he developed his theories over time. Like Erasmus and Moore, he saw himself as seeing an old kind of Christianity that was pure before the excesses that he saw in indulgences. But instead of mildly putting his theories like those before him, Luther was showy about them. He nailed his 95 Theses to a church door for all to see. In these he said that “(repentance) cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e. confession and satisfaction which is administered by the priests” (Luther, 2009). This is the second thesis, and it shows that although Luther wrote his theses to protest indulgences, he saw a new world where he could make the Catholic church change to a world where Christianity would become a personal and inward religion rather than one that was outward. This means that it is up to the sinner to repent truly in their own soul, not by performing repentant actions. When the church protested his theories and he realized that he wasn’t going to change Catholicism, he called for rebellion. This made him even more unpopular with church authorities. He was called a heretic, brought to trial, and threatened with burning. But in his lifetime, Luther accomplished great change. Later, during and after the Schism and the Protestant Reformation, it became clear that Jesus was capable of being understood differently by different cultural subsets of the Christian religion; that even in one given age the life and meaning of Jesus could have many different understandings. Luther proposed that repentance was a more direct action that did not require the intercession of priests, and saw a new world where he could make the Catholic church change to a world where Christianity would become a personal and inward religion rather than one that was outward. Though Christianity was initially a religion of rebellion, many labeled heretics have been called to trial and threatened with burning for having their own understandings of Jesus, the concept of whom (and widely differing images of whom, along with whether or not these images were appropriately non-idolatrous) became more and more disputed, polarized, and politicized as time progressed. Lutheranism became a force that led to many wars and divisions, both from the Catholic church and between differing interpretations of Luther’s protest. Churches change with the times, even though many of their reformers even don’t want them to, instead wanting them to go back to a sort of glorified past. Since the beginning of Christianity, there hasn’t been just one Christian church, but instead there have been and continue to be many different representations. Catholicism, the main European religion in the late middle ages, changed with its times when money began to be used in trade instead of bartering. Then, after Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, Christianity changed again in a Northern Renaissance reaction to Catholicism’s sale of indulgences, leading to struggle and conflict. Today, we see the fruition of this split in the separation of Catholic and Protestant Christian churches, not to mention many other sects, including Greek and Eastern Orthodox. Today, Christianity is more diverse than ever, which also shows the diversity of its roots. REFERENCE Bedwin, Mark (2009). Christianity during the Middle Ages. http://mattbedwin.blogspot.com/2006/05/christianity-in-middle-ages.html Luther, Martin (2009). Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. Works of Martin Luther. Trans. Adolph Spayeth, et al. Philadelphia: AJ Holman. www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenburg/luther/ninetyfive.txt The Holy Bible (1945). King James Version. New York: World Publishing Company. Historical Christianity (2009). www.vexen.co.uk/religion/christianity_historical.html Read More