Lately I have been reading through the book Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith (edited by Barbeau and Jones). As I have been reading through some of the analysis of the Patristic theologians, I began to ponder, "What if the early church is not necessarily the ideal church?"
Maybe the Holy Spirit has a unique way of working throughout history to help the community of believers grow in their faith in certain ways throughout the centuries. Certainly, there are ways that believers throughout different epochs of history, including our own, have drifted away from the true message of the Gospel and true practice of the faith. But, is the early church really our role model of what the church should be about? It seems to me they got a lot of things right, but they had a lot of struggles in their time, perhaps as many as we have today. Why do churches make such a strong appeal to say that they are the most like the first church, and therefore their expression of the faith is the most valid?
Just a thought.
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