Welcome to Docs Doctrinal
Domain
What this place is, is an area
for several groups to look over Christian doctrine and line up their beliefs
against what is correct as found in the bible, with some additional emphasis
found in the early church fathers.
The groups are fairly well tied
together. The first are for Christians who like me are watchmen and watch for
dangers coming in and their role is to warn fellow Christians of false doctrine
entering into the local body of Christ. The second group are those that
disciple. In this case, those that disciple people who are already believers,
but the beliefs might need to be changed or enhanced to make sure the Christian
follows correct doctrine. The third group is for those who disciple ‘baby christians’ and to instill correct
doctrine into those new Christians. The fourth group is for those who deal with
recovery issues, and thru the recovery process, make sure the Christian being
healed believes correct doctrine. The last group is generally used by evangelists
for they use correct doctrine to bring people to the lord
A second side of doctrinal
emphasis is the date and general timeline of what early church fathers I use to
emphasize doctrine. I generally stay within the first 120 years after Christs resurrection. Why you
might ask? Easy, the first century of the church has a distinct ‘non-Greek’
feel as the church is centered on 3 main centers. The centers are
As far as doctrine and ‘heresies’
of that time period, I will go into, since that era is the fundamental bedrock
of the whole Christian belief system. The one heresy that people find most is
even written about in the bible, the groups are the Gnostics which are still
found today, and emphasize ‘gnosis’ (secret knowledge) and the other group are
the ‘judaizers’ which are much like the ebionites and are read thru much of Pauls
epistles. The Gnostics deals with greek
philosophies, while the judaizers deal with a strict
adherence to ‘the law’ which Paul deals with in his epistles. One sees some judaizers in various Messianic groups today. There are
other heretical groups which will be talked about, and their impact on the
early church.
The third side of doctrinal
studies is ‘what was the “thinking” of that time?’. So
to look at that, we must look at Josephus, the sayings and thinking of the
rabbis of the time period, and the general social culture of the time as well.
This side shows a deeper side to doctrine and how earlier groups such as the essenes have influenced Christian thinking.
So I am keeping the emphasis on
the timeframe short and so keep the feel of the original church, and the
writers of what is known as “The Apostolic age” (the writers who knew the
apostles, or were disciples of them). As far as dates of canon and non-canon
pieces, I will show the entire range, since pieces have often been added to and
edited, and so the original writings are confused by new additions from a later
date. Due to writings from the early church fathers, and decades of research
has made dating fairly accurate, but note that researchers aren’t perfect, and
they do make mistakes.
The last area to talk of is
‘canon’. At that time, a general squabble between east and west and who read
what, since some items were highly read in the east and unheard of in the west,
and vice-versa. So in this, what is ‘canon’ is sometimes shaky during this era.
One famous example is where the Apocalypse of Peter verses the Revelation of John, both being considered canon at the same time, yet on
differing sides of the
So come on in, and look around,
currently I am still compiling the information, references, to put onto the
site.