A brief summary of church history from AD 33 - AD 2024 (Appendix-1)

 




For my articles going forward an elementary understanding of the history of Christianity would be beneficial. By no means is this in any way exhaustive, it just gives a general time line of events. I am providing this because a good amount of Christians have a big gap in their knowledge of what happened between their new testament and 2024. Its almost as if we know Jesus died 2000 years ago but no clue as to how the church looked like for the past 2000 years

THE APOSTOLIC ERA(33- 325)

The year is 33 AD and our Lord Jesus is 33 years old and is crucified by the Roman empire, he rises from the dead and commissions his disciples to spread the Gospel to all nations. He's disciples do this and begin planting churches. Whenever a church had an issue they would write a letter to the apostle that established it and the apostle would write a letter back responding to the issue (These letters make up majority of our new testament). The apostles are killed and leave behind successors, to run their churches in their place as pastors (The apostolic church fathers). At this time the Church is being persecuted for their beliefs by the Roman empire, until  a man named Constantine who is a Roman emperor who gets converted to the faith stops the Persecution of Christians in Rome and allows Christianity to be practiced freely.

THE 7 ECUMENICAL COUNCILS (325-787)

At this point the emperor sees many disagreements among Christians and wants to know what Christianity is. He calls together an "Ecumenical council" which is basically a gathering where all the Bishops of the Christian churches come together and discuss an issue and reach a definitive conclusion and would then release a statement called a "canon" and sometimes a "creed" and all Churches around the world were obliged to obey the canons. This was possible because remember there was only one church just in different places. This church was called the "kata holos" church which was Greek for "the universal church" otherwise known as the "Catholic" church. Over 7 ecumenical councils in 2 of them an agreement was not reached leading to the bishops that disagreed with the majority to be excommunicated, (kicked out of the church) the Assyrians and the Orientals.

THE GREAT EAST-WEST SCHISM (1054)

The Bishop in Rome (the Pope) saw himself to have more authority than the other bishops because he's apostolic see (position as a bishop derived from a disciple/apostle of Jesus) was historically derived from Peter who was seen as the head of the other apostles. He decides to change the creed from the 1st Ecumenical council adding a clause called the "Filioque" which changed the creed which originally said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father to that he proceeds from the Father and the Son. The other Bishops did not agree because the council fathers said that no one could change the creed. So The Roman Bishop excommunicates the other bishops and the others do the same to him. 2 branches where born The Roman Catholic church who followed the Roman bishop and the Eastern Orthodox church who followed the other bishops.

~crusades~

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION(1517- PRESENT)

Over time the Roman Catholic church grew corrupt and a monk and priest in the church called Martin Luther Posted 95 theses (95 issues with the Roman Catholic church). Many followed after Luther's footsteps, such as Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and King Henry of England, who were all excommunicated by the Pope, those who followed Luther were called Lutherans, those who followed Calvin were called Reformed and England as a whole became Anglican (Magisterial Protestants). The Anglicans split further into the Methodists and then further into the Holiness/ Pentecostal movement in the 20th century. The anabaptist movement around the time of the reformation (1517) formed modern day Baptists except Baptists that originated from the reformed tradition. Non-denominationals have no connection to church history and sprout on their own when a Pastor decides to start his own church.

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