Reading (The Story of Christianity) has opened my eyes to some of the issues that the early church faced with people creating religion that suited themselves. With that said I believe we face many challenges today that are similar to what the early church faced. People today also want to make Christianity to suit their own ideals. If something is offensive to them in the Bible they just throw it out, or even say that a loving God wouldn’t be that way. If we throw out any part of the bible how then can we stand firmly upon any of it?
Gnosticism affected both Christianity and Judaism. Gnosticism rejected many of the Old Testament writings; for instance they rejected the creation story and the goodness of the created world. (Gonzales 1984, 69)
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It was created by a lower god and was done with evil intent. Jesus was the son of the Father and so He was God’s son, but He didn’t have a body like ours. It was spiritual in nature but appeared to be like ours. It might have been a ghost or another form but not a real human body. The Gnostic belief was that the Father was Jesus’ father who is loving and forgiving to all. The true Father would not judge anyone because a true loving God wouldn’t. It would seem that both the Gnostics and Marcionites struggled with believing that God could be both loving and allowing mankind to destroy …show more content…
His father was a bishop and that raises many questions that the book doesn’t answer, mostly because the information isn’t available. He created a belief that was more of a concern to the true church because of the depth of his commitment to have a rival system. (Gonzales 1984) His system had specific scripture that was accepted for use during the services. This was a challenge to Christianity because the church didn’t have specific pieces of scripture that were only accepted for reading during the services. They did have books that they read, and they were widely accepted. However the church had not created such a library of accepted texts like Marcion