Early Christianity Quotes

“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
― Thomas H. Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays

“No wild beasts are so deadly to humans as most Christians are to each other.”
― Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire

“The ecclesiastical governors of the Christians were taught to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove; but as the former was refined, so the latter was insensibly corrupted, by the habits of government. In the church as well as in the world, the persons who were placed in any public station rendered themselves considerable by their eloquence and firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their dexterity in business; and while they concealed from others, and perhaps from themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently relapsed into all the turbulent passions of active life, which were tinctured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the infusion of spiritual zeal.”
― Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I

“Modern Christians who find Matthew's preoccupation with [Judaism] tedious and even distasteful, should realise that they live in a very different world from that of early Christians, for whom the 'Jewishness' of Jesus and his church was not just a matter of historical interest but an existential concern crying out for answers, answers which Matthew's gospel offered to provide.”
― R.T. France

“Even if three centuries of outsider status and intermittent persecution had tested the endurance of individuals and communities, coping with the patronage of a newly Christian emperor posed a challenge. The challenge was all the more threatening for its moral complexity. Was it right for the churches to accept the Emperor's favour, knowing full well that if they did so, they also tacitly accepted his right, so evident in all other aspects of life in the Roman Empire, to call the shots?”
― Kate Cooper, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

“Nowhere among the early Christians do we find the cold
light of intellectual understanding that constantly analyzes and
differentiates. Instead, there was the Spirit that burned within
their hearts and made their souls alive. (Col. 2:8–10)”
― Eberhard Arnold

“There will be no need for do’s and don’ts, no need for tables
of commandments or tablets of law. In this kingdom everything
will be regulated by inner rebirth and inward inspiration,
under the rule of Christ’s spirit.”
― Eberhard Arnold, God's Revolution: Justice, Community, and the Coming Kingdom

“Christianity did not begin as a monolithic revelation. In other words, it did not begin as a single teaching directly coming from the mouth of Jesus. After Jesus' death, there were many different and opposing viewpoints concerning who he was and what he taught. There were many different groups competing for converts. Each of these diverse groups traced their teaching back to the individual apostles and each had books to support their points of view.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“During the first three hundred years after Jesus' death, there was neither an organized religion nor a central authority or book. There were many opinions and beliefs about who Jesus was. At first, even the apostles argued among themselves and had strong disagreements with the 'apostle' Paul (a man who had never met Jesus) over the basic concepts of Jesus' teachings. The Christian Bible as the public knows it, more or less today, did not appear until the middle of the 3rd century. Put differently, the first version of the Christian Bible as the public knows it did not appear until about one hundred and twenty years after Jesus died. And St. John's Book of Revelation was not accepted as part of the New Testament until 382 CE!”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“We look back already to the time of the persecution as though it were the heroic age, but have you ever thought how awfully few martyrs there were, compared with how many there ought to have been?”
― Evelyn Waugh, Helena

“Christians like Justin Martyr, one of the fathers of the church, shared such aspirations for self-mastery. Justin wholeheartedly admired Christians who practiced renunciation and celibacy; he even singled out for special praise a young convert in Alexandria who had petitioned Felix, the governor,asking that permission might be given to a surgeon to castrate him. For the surgeons had said they were forbidden to do this without the governor’s permission. And when Felix absolutely refused to sign such a permission, the young man remained celibate. (Justin, First Apology 29.) Origen, also revered as a father of the church, had been so determined to win his struggle against passion that as a young man he had castrated himself, apparently without asking anyone’s permission, least of all the governor’s.”
― Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics

“Christians wanted to affirm certain beliefs. But in some instances, if those affirmations were pressed to an extreme, they did not allow Christians to affirm other beliefs that they or other Christians also wanted to affirm. We have seen, for example, that some Christians wanted to affirm that Christ was human, but they did so to such an extent that they refused to acknowledge he was divine. Others wanted to affirm that he was divine and did so to such an extent that they refused to acknowledge he was human. Others tried to get around the problem by claiming that he was two different things: part of him was human and part of him was divine; but this solution brought division and disunity instead of harmony and oneness. Others wanted to affirm that since there can be only one God, Jesus could be divine only if he himself was that one God come to earth. But that solution ended up causing Christians to say that Jesus begot himself as the father to his own son, along with other equally confusing formulations. Some superscholars of the day such as Origen tried to resolve the problems in more sophisticated ways, but these views also led to ideas that were later deemed objectionable, [...] Throughout all these debates, we see Christian thinkers trying to figure it all out, wanting to make certain affirmations that they took to be gospel truth. [...] Eventually a Christology emerged that affirmed at one and the same time aspects of what opposing heresies affirmed, while refusing to deny what they denied. This led to a significantly refined but highly paradoxical understanding of how it is that Jesus could be God.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

“The end of the persecutions was, paradoxically, a source of disappointment for many Christians. In the new climate of imperial favour, bishops were increasingly at war with their congregations and with one another, arguing about matters ranging from the mundane to the mystical. Money was often at the root of the problem, and this was distressing.”
― Kate Cooper, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

“[T]he new interest in asceticism came at a time when many Christians were reassessing their relationship to the institutional Church. Whether by becoming an ascetic or by showing support for the ascetic movement, ordinary Christians could take a stand against the greed and corruption that threatened to erode the values of the Church in its new, privileged, circumstances.”
― Kate Cooper, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

“When Eugenia turns the experiences of Thecla over in her heart, we know she is thinking about how Thecla's experience measures against her own. And of course our writer is reaching out to his or her own reader here: just as Eugenia was changed by Thecla's story, so the reader's own life should be somehow changed by Eugenia's.”
― Kate Cooper, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

“No one person or group of people could have brought
about the first church community. No heights of oratory,
no burning enthusiasm, could have awakened for Christ the
thousands who were moved at the time, or produced the
united life of the early church. The friends of Jesus knew this
very well. Had not the risen one himself commanded them
to wait in Jerusalem for the fulfillment of the great promise?
(Luke 24:49) John had baptized in water all those who
listened to him. But the first church was to be submerged in
and filled with the holy wind of Christ’s spirit. (Acts 2:1–2)”
― Eberhard Arnold, God's Revolution: Justice, Community, and the Coming Kingdom

“Constantine wanted to establish a world or universal religion, with himself at the head. During this council, he declared his divinity by stating that the God of Christians was his personal sponsor. He then replaced certain Christian religious practices of the time with familiar Roman Empire practices of sun worship along with other Pagan teachings from Syria and Persia.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“Gnosticism, as we refer to it here, is not primarily a system of beliefs based on the set of writings found at Nag Hammadi or on the teachings of various groups during the early centuries of Christianity. They are the secret teachings of wisdom passed down through the ages.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“The world was ripe for this saving act, for men and powers alike are caught in situations from which they cannot emerge without divine help.”
― Virginia Corwin, St. Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch

“Do we have any independent evidence that there were early Christians who did not believe in the miraculous conception of Jesus? [...] Eusebius tells us that in the early-to-mid second century there were certain Jewish Christians who did not believe in the virgin birth. The Jewish Christian sect of the Ebionites ("the Poor"-see Gal. 2:10) [...] Here we must remember one of our fundamental axioms: if we possess two versions of a story, one more and one less spectacular, if either is closer to the truth, it must be the latter. [...] The existence of the belief in the natural conception of Jesus must be understood as the stubborn persistence of an earlier belief in the face of the popular growth of a subsequent belief, perhaps influenced by pagan myth: the virgin conception of Jesus. It is easy to imagine how a natural origin such as everyone else has should eventually be thought unimpressive, especially since rival savior deities could boast of supernatural origins. On the other hand, imagine a scenario in which Jesus was widely known to have had a miraculous birth and someone has it occur to him: "Hey, wouldn't it be great if Jesus was no different from anyone else? That's it! He had a ... a natural birth!" Not likely.”
― Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?

“Although the Gospel of Judas does not encourage martyrdom, ironically—or better, paradoxically—it portrays Judas himself as the first martyr. This gospel reveals that when Judas hands Jesus over, he seals his own fate. But he knows, too, that when the other disciples stone him, they kill only his mortal self. His spirit-filled soul has already found its home in the light world above. Although Christians may suffer and die when they oppose the powers of evil, the hope Christ brings will sustain them.”
― Elaine Pagels, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

“The Letter of Peter to Philip tells how the disciples gathered together on the Mount of Olives, where they prayed to Jesus, “Son of life, Son of immortality, who is in the light, Son, Christ of immortality, our Redeemer, give us power, for they seek to kill us” (Letter of Peter to Philip 134:2–9). Out of a great light shining across the mountain the voice of Jesus tells them that it is necessary for them to preach salvation to the world, but that when they do, they will suffer, because the powers that rule the world are against them. You “are fighting against the inner man,” he tells them, but the Father “will help you as he has helped you by sending me”— stressing that death is only that of the fleshly body, not of the spirit.”
― Elaine Pagels, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

“The author of the Gospel of Judas implies that everyone has the power to surpass the angelic powers, because, as Jesus teaches Judas, it is only people themselves who keep the spirit confined within the flesh (Judas 13:14–15). By seeking the spirit within themselves, they can overcome the rulers of chaos and oblivion, see God, and enter the heavenly house of God above. And they can do this even as they live in this world. Just as both Jesus and Judas enter the luminous cloud while living on earth, so those who follow them may lead the life of the spirit and know God here and now.”
― Elaine Pagels, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

“Contradicting believers who warn of God’s wrath and judgment, the Gospel of Truth declares that those who really know him “do not think of him as small, or harsh, or wrathful,” as others suggest, but as a loving and gracious Father (Gospel of Truth 42:4–9). Poetic, sometimes lyrical, this gospel declares that God sent his son not only to save us from sins committed in error but to restore all beings to the divine source whence they came, “so that they may return to the Father and to the Mother, Jesus of the utmost sweetness” (Gospel of Truth 24:6–9). Thus to all who wander this world in terror, anguish, and confusion, Jesus reveals a divine secret: that they are deeply connected with God the Father, and with the divine Mother, the Holy Spirit.”
― Elaine Pagels, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

“ONE OF THE MOST interesting features of the early Christian debates over orthodoxy and heresy is the fact that views that were originally [...] deemed orthodox came to be declared heretical. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of the first heretical view of Christ—the view that denies his divinity. [...] the very first Christians held to exaltation Christologies which maintained that the man Jesus (who was nothing more than a man) had been exalted to the status and authority of God. The earliest Christians thought that this happened at his resurrection; eventually, some Christians came to believe it happened at his baptism. Both views came to be regarded as heretical by the second century CE, [...] It is not that the second-century “heresy-hunters” among the Christian authors attacked the original Christians for these views. Instead, they attacked the people of their own day for holding them; and in their attacks they more or less “rewrote history,” by claiming that such views had never been held by the apostles at the beginning or by the majority of Christians ever.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

“Every time that Jesus taught a Gentile, every time that he criticized the religious leaders, every time that he over-turned a standard interpretation of the Torah, Jesus was making a powerful political statement.”
― Steve Seven

“It is set in a vast desert, a day and a night's journey from the monasteries on Nitria, and the way to it is to be found or shown by no track and no landmarks of earth, but one journeys by the signs and courses of the stars. Water is hard to find, and when it is found it is of a dire odour and as it might be bituminous, yet inoffensive in taste. Here therefore are men made perfect in holiness (for so terrible a spot could be endured by none save those of austere resolve and supreme constancy), yet their chief concern is the love which they show to one another and towards such as by chance reach that spot.

They tell that once a certain brother brought a bunch of grapes to the holy Macarius: but he who for love's sake thought not on his own things but on the things of others, carried it to another brother, who seemed more feeble. And the sick man gave thanks to God for the kindness of his brother, but he too thinking more of his neighbor than of himself, brought it to another, and he again to another, and so that same bunch of grapes was carried round all the cells, scattered as they were far over the desert, and no one knowing who first had sent it, it was brought at last to the first giver. But the holy Macarius gave thanks that he had seen in the brethren such abstinence and such loving-kindness and did himself reach after still sterner discipline of the life of the spirit.”
― Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers

“Two brethren made their way to the city to sell their handiwork: and when in the city they went different ways, divided one from the other, one of them fell into fornication. After a while came his brother, saying, "Brother, let us go back to our cell." But he made answer, "I am not coming." And the other questioned him, saying, "wherefore, brother?" And he answered, "Because when thou didst go from me, I ran into temptation, and I sinned in the flesh." But the other, anxious to help him, began to tell him, saying, "But so it happened with me: when I was separated from thee, I too ran into fornication. But let us go, and do penance together with all our might: and God will forgive us that are sinful men."
And they came back to the monastery and told the old men what had befallen them, and they enjoined on them the penance they must do. But the one began his penance, not for himself but for his brother, as if he himself had sinned. And God, seeing his love and his labour, after a few days revealed to one of the old men that for the great love of this brother who had not sinned, He had forgiven the brother who had. And verily this is to lay down one's soul for one's brother.”
― Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers

“Most of us would find Christians truly cast in the New Testament mold fairly obnoxious: civically reprobate, ideologically unsound, economically destructive, politically irresponsible, socially discreditable, and really just a bit indecent. Or, if not that, we would at least be bemused by the sheer, unembellished, unremitting otherworldliness of their understanding of the gospel. We are quite accustomed, after all, to thinking of Christianity as a fairly commonsensical creed as regards the practicalities of life.”
― David Bentley Hart, The New Testament

“Paul’s conception of Christianity may have been heretical before 70 C.E. But afterward, his notion of a wholly new religion free from the authority of a Temple that no longer existed, unburdened by a law that no longer mattered, and divorced from a Judaism that had become a pariah was enthusiastically embraced by converts throughout the Roman Empire. Hence, in 398 C.E., when, according to legend, another group of bishops gathered at a council in the city of Hippo Regius in modern-day Algeria to canonize what would become known as the New Testament, they chose to include in the Christian scriptures: 1 letter from James, the brother and successor of Jesus, 2 letters from Peter, the chief apostle and first among the Twelve, 3 letters from John, the beloved disciple and pillar of the church, and 14 letters from Paul, the deviant and outcast who was rejected and scorned by the leaders in Jerusalem. In fact, more than half of the 27 books that now make up the New Testament are either by or about Paul.
This should not be surprising. Christianity after the destruction of Jerusalem had become almost exclusively a gentile religion; it needed a gentile theology. And that is precisely what Paul provided. The choice between James’s vision of a Jewish religion anchored in the Law of Moses and derived from a Jewish nationalist who fought against Rome, and Paul’s vision of a Roman religion that divorced itself from Jewish provincialism and required nothing for salvation save belief in Christ, was not a difficult one for the second and third generations of Jesus’s followers to make.”
― Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth