Historic Christianity

Historic Christianity means viewing the Church as a living organism (the Body of Christ/the Bride of Christ) over the course of about 2000 years, delivering a consistant full gospel message united by a core of doctrine, under the authority of the prophetic-apostolic Word of God, under the headship of Jesus Christ, offering each other the right hand of fellowship, with the freedom to form different churches and denominations with varying traditions. Sometimes this invisible Church has fared better than at other times, but God has always kept at least a faithful remant. It also refers to what I would call a full-orbed Christianity, as opposed to a shrunken, minimized, or debilitated Christianity. A full-orbed Christianity addresses the full scope of man and humanity, the full range of human culture and civilization, the full range of spirituality - including our ressurected, glorified bodies, as well as the full range of the Kingdom of God, starting from its iniation by Jesus on through to the new heaven and the new earth as well as the new Jerusalem, and the work of the Saints in it.

It is also a way to minimize denominational differeneces and focus on what C.S Lewis called Mere Christianity, the title to a book by that name based on a series of BBC radio addresses he delivered during World War II.

I look to Christian scholars and leaders throughout that time period starting from the early Church fathers, through St. Augustine, several Church leaders in the Middle Ages including St. Francis of Assisi (the Franciscan monks founded most all of the missions around Northern California where I live), Martin Luther, John Calvin, as well as other Reformers, Johnathan Edwards, George Whitfield, the Wesley brothers, and more recently Carl F.H. Henry, and Francis Schaeffer, as well as a much longer list. St. Augustine is particularly interesting because both Catholics and Protestants look to his writings (Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk and often looked to Augustine's writings as he struggled with the issue of justification), and his work, The City of God, which spanned human history, culture, and civilization up to the wanning days of the Roman Empire, and set the tone for intellectual thought for the next 1000 years, and still has ramifications to the present.

Historic Christianity also distinguishes from a Christianity set in the latter half of the 20th Century, that tends to not only demphasize orthodox doctrines and creeds, but also tends to act as though the Christian Church virtually didn't exist for almost 2000 years, especially those that emphasize what has been called a "super-spirituality". This type of Chirstianity tends to disrespect most all church traditions in favor of a contemporary church that emphasizes a contentless belief that Jesus will make everything all right, or worse, that Jesus will provide riches for the "King's kids." While such branches of Christianity play a vital role in the Church, and I would extend them the right hand of fellowship, I don't think they represent what I think of as Historic Christianity.

Finally, the term Historic Christianity is somewhat similar to the concept of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed (which I and others think of as the invisible church) - but these days that phrase tends to get confused with the Roman Catholic Church, so the phrase Historic Christianity works better.