Marginal Christianity

NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. Please upgrade your browser. LEARN MORE » By DAVID BENTLEY HART NOV. 4, 2017 It was in 1983 that I heard the distinguished Greek Orthodox historian Aristeides Papadakis casually remark in a lecture at the University of Maryland that the earliest Christians were “communists.” In those days, the Cold War was still casting its great glacial shadow across the cultural landscape, and so enough of a murmur of consternation rippled through the room that Professor Papadakis — who always spoke with severe precision — felt obliged to explain that he meant this in the barest technical sense: They lived a common life and voluntarily enjoyed a community of possessions. The murmur subsided, though not necessarily the disquiet. Not that anyone should have been surprised. If the communism of the apostolic church is a secret, it is a startlingly open one. Vaguer terms like “communalist” or “communitarian” might make the facts soun...

Reading the Old Testament as a Christian Book The Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible. At least taken by itself it is. But when the church added the New Testament to it, it became a Christian book. But what does that mean?  How does it effect the way we read it? Herman likes to make a point of how much of it there is - way more than the New Testament. It must have some vital role to play in shaping Christian understanding if the church chose to put it together with the NT. That means we cannot ignore or neglect it as Christians started doing in the second century and in too many circles continue to do to this day. One has only to remember that this is what the Nazis did in Germany as part of their program of rebuilding the German nation of pure Aryan blood. We forget or neglect the Old Testament to our hurt! So, how do we (Christians) read the Old Testament? 1. as part of the one story of God with his creation and creatures. It is chapter 1 of a 2 chapter story...

May 5, 2015May 4, 2015 J. R. Daniel Kirk As Christians try to figure out what it looks like to respond in continuity with our ancient tradition to same-sex attraction, relationships, and questions of what is appropriate physical intimacy, one looming question is this: Did Paul know of homosexual relationships such as those that some Christians are committing themselves to in our day and age? Over the past couple of weeks I have been taking soundings in what sorts of same-sex activity Paul might have known of and possibly had in mind as he issued his warnings about it. (See previous discussions on pederasty and temple prostitution .) Today we need to talk about what might well have been the most common form of same-sex erotic encounter: use of slaves for sex. Slave-Sex in Rome: Generally Accepted Slaves were property. And it was assumed that all slaves, male and female, were available to their masters for sexual fulfillment. We see this in the claims of good upstanding...