The Beginning of a Never Ending Conflict :: essays research papers

Today, Christianity is filled with different denominations. Each denomination differs in idea in certain areas. The origin of the differences in Christianity dates back to the Roman imperium when Christianity was developed. The Roman Empire was primarily polytheistic and people in the pudding stone were expected to conform and bow down to all Roman gods. Judaism was the scratch line religion to claim that there was only one God, a purely monotheistic view. Despite Roman expectations of conformation, Judaism was not seen as a curse to the empire and Jews practiced their religion with minimal persecution. On the other hand, Christianity ( similarly monotheistic) was seen as a threat to the success and continuation of the empire mainly because of messiah Christ and His teachings. The first followers of Christ were Jews. Non-Jewish followers, called Gentiles (Wiesner pg. 67), created an argument of whether or not they should conform to Judaism. A direct result of that argument wa s the separation of Jews and Gentiles, and the maturation of Christianity. Christianity was based on the les countersigns of savior, but there was initial diversity in the ideas of the Gentile followers. The Apostles transformed initial diversity in Christianity into a definite split between orthodoxy (truth) and heresy (false) by institutionalizing the orthodoxy in the apostolic belief, the Church, and the Apostolic Tradition.The orthodoxy of the Creed, written by the Apostles, played a genuinely large-scale role in separating true ideas from heresies because it displayed definite answers to conflicting ideas. Among the conflicting ideas of the era, the Creed addressed four major concepts and declared them as orthodox. Gnostic thinkers such as Saturnius and Marcion declared that God did not create the world and that delivery boy was not the Son of God. Saturnius, affirmed that there was a Father who do seven angels, and the world, and all things therein, was made by those c ertain angels... (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, pg. 78). He also claimed that, Jesus was not born of a virgin but was the son of Joseph and Mary, like other men... (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, pg. 79). Marcion denied God the credit of creating the universe by removing the teachings of the manufacturing business wherein he is most manifestly described as acknowledged the master of this universe to be His Father in both Luke and the Epistles of Paul. The very first sentence of the Creed addresses those two viewpoints. It declared that God created the universe, and that Jesus is the Son of God.