Comments on: A teachable moment

By: david (aka kwakersaur)

david (aka kwakersaur) — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:35:18 +0000

You might start here:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death– even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

(a little older than three to four centuries, anyway)

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:03:02 +0000

Thanks John. I had discovered [BibleTexts.com](http://www.bibletexts.com/) earlier, and found it interesting enough to include it in the list of “Relevant Sites” on the main page. It doesn’t do a very good job for the reader who wants a general introduction to the concept.

Wikipedia has some good articles: one on the [Constantinian Shift](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinian_shift) and another about the [Apostasy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Apostasy) of the Roman Catholic Church itself.

I lumped Quakers and Anabaptists together in my off-the-cuff comment at the GetReligion blog, and one part of a general introduction would be to point out some of the differences. I *suppose* the early Friends picked the idea of apostasy up from the more general discourse, which had been going for awhile on the continent, and they appropriated it for their own critique of established churches in Britain — Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian — but that’s one of the areas where I’m relying on inference more than my own reading and research.

By: John Stephens

John Stephens — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 06:06:35 +0000

BibleTexts.com is an excellent resource for information about what you call the “Constantinian shift;” the main feature of this site is its prodigious archive of Christian texts from before that shift. This article is a good place to start looking at “The beginning of Constantine’s cooption of Christianity: when Christian teachings and practices began to change drastically.”

Hope this helps.

Chuck and I are posting updates on this situation every day (and often several times per day). Tom Fox is a personal friend and mentor of mine, and Chuck has known him for over twenty years. Although we hope that this will all be over soon, we are bracing ourselves for the long term. Keep our efforts in your prayers.

FreeTheCaptivesNow.org