Christians today seem to be abysmally ignorant of
church history. A quick review of church history will assist
in answering the questions just asked:
Jesus did not come to bring new information about
God, about salvation, about love, about eternal life. Christ
came to be Life to all mankind. He came as God, as
salvation, as love. He came to restore mankind to what God
intended in creation, and that by functioning as God in
man, the spiritual dynamic of life.
The redemptive mission to make His life available took
place, historically, in a world that was dominated by Jewish
and Greek thinking. The Jews wanted to put everything into
the context of an organized religion with rules and
regulations. The Greeks were influenced by Plato and
Aristotle with their abstract philosophical mind-set of
metaphysics and logical patterns of thought.
So despite the clarity of Jesus' teaching, and the clear
and simple record of the gospel dynamic of the life of Jesus
Christ in the writings of Scripture by Paul, Peter, John, etc.,
these soon began to be interpreted in the contexts of
religion and logical compartmentalization of human
thought. The so-called "church fathers" of the first few
centuries of Christianity had already reduced Christianity
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