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"For the first 300 years the early church just ran around evangelizing until so many goofy views started springing up that someone decided that perhaps it would be good to write down what Christians believe."

Stunning isn't that all the inspired "God Breathed" writings that comprise the New Testament were written during the Apostolic Era. This was accomplished before we had a dominant religion of the State.

It's also interesting how Christians held services. In 111AD Pliny the younger wrote Emperor Trajan, "[The accused Christians] were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food-but food of an ordinary and innocent kind."

Pliny went on to explain he found no evidence of cannibalism. IOW, the earliest Christians passed the cup because they did not believe the wine had been transformed.

Pliny went on to explain he found no evidence of cannibalism. IOW, the earliest Christians passed the cup because they did not believe the wine had been transformed.

On the contrary, the only reason Pliny had to say that was because of the rumors that believers engaged in cannibalism, rumors that arose from the early Christian undertanding of the Eucharist. The Church fathers are unanimous in their understanding that the Eucharist truly becomes the body and blood of Christ.

-A8

Stunning isn't that all the inspired "God Breathed" writings that comprise the New Testament were written during the Apostolic Era.

If one were to do a search on "written" in scripture they would get approximately 253 hits with 125 of those being in the New Testament itself. It is rather laughable for our Catholic friends to say nothing was written down until the 3rd century when many of the church fathers prior to that time quote from the scriptures.

Pliny went on to explain he found no evidence of cannibalism. IOW, the earliest Christians passed the cup because they did not believe the wine had been transformed.

Yes, I find no direct evidence in the very early writings of fathers that they felt "changes" took place during communion.

There is a rather interest part in one of Augustine's writing where he states the early Christians at first believed you had to baptized to be saved. Once you were baptized you had to live a perfect life. To paraphrase Augustine, right after the first baptisms, Christians discovered they were falling short of living a perfect life. Next they decided to wait until their deathbed but some of them died before they could be baptized which they thought meant going to hell. Worst yet, others recovered. Finally they realized that baptism is only a sign.

I find this part of Augustine's writing to be rather interesting if not somewhat funny. The early Christians had to work a lot of these theologies out and not always did they get it right. Obviously, some of the theologies like baptism was a lot easier to figure out but they took this stuff very seriously.

Many of the early fathers were coming out of pagan cultures and, as godly as they tried to be given their situation, they were prone to errors just like everyone else. Some of them held very strange ideas and the Eucharist was one of them. But I really see the problems develop later (around 600AD and upwards) as humanism enveloped the church, the problems with the Crusades (1000-1400??) as people were leaving the Church, the Renaissance's man-centered influenece on theology, and finally the Reformation.