What beliefs and practices did the early Christians have in common?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:What the early orthodox Christian churches had in common was that they were all part of a single organization, a Church. The mainstream Church was already established and thriving. Probably the best document attesting to the Church and the practices of the early Christians is the "Didache" or "Teaching" that was probably written in the first century and which was so well respected some early Church Fathers thought it should belong in the Biblical canon. The Didache was first rediscovered in 1873 and can be purchased in the English translation from publishers as common as Penguin Books.

The Didache is basically a short treatise of Christian instruction. It covers moral precepts, rituals such as baptism, the agape, the Eucharist, as well as prayer, instructions for receiving itinerant preachers, restrictions and moral obligations, explains points about the hierarchy and the conduct and ministry of deacons and bishops. The Didache gives the impression that the early Christian churches are organized in a single institution of which this book is much like an instructional overview. The churches are therefore united in belief, ministry, hierarchy, ritual, worship, prayer, instruction and discipline.

Answer 2

Early Christians believed in Jesus and that he would return again to Earth. They also believed that God would be there when they died and they would get into the kingdom of heaven after life and have eternal life with God. This was good news to the Christians and that is why they were prepared to die for their beliefs

Answer 3

The early Christians were said in the scriptures, particularly in the book of acts, to have had all things in common because of their conversion to God by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ the Son of God, which resulted in their being born of Gods Spirit and love since God is love. They had a new life and heart or glorified spirit. They were born again by faith in the heart. Through the teaching and admonition of the apostles who were learned and taught of God. They came to realize that they all in truth, were of one truth and spirit. That we are all one created in Christ from the beginning and now redeemed by His life and sacrifice. God is no respecter of any ones person. Nor does He accept any man's person. We can only interact with God in truth, or through the person of the Holy Spirit. Only by Christ can we come to God and have the power and righteousness to know Him by faith.

God is a Spirit, and they that will know Him can only know Him in Spirit and in truth. The spirit is your heart the real unseen you. And the truth is Christ who declares " I am the way, the truth, and the life... No one can come to the Father but by me." These new converts were deeply affected by love and the truth God had shown them, that we are all equal to God.

They were encouraged to sell their possessions and have a treasury to give to all as very man had need. They were truly family and brothers and sisters in Christ. They believed this and acted accordingly.

The benefit also of this was that they were willing to lay their lives down for Christ and lose their previous identities and distractions of the world to focus on spiritual growth to allow Christ to be formed in them. They were completely putting their faith and trust in God. They wanted nothing more than to know and do Gods will and be led of Him. They were surrendered and committed to love and truth. Remember these were also witness to the power of God and seen miracles and signs and wonders done by the Holy Ghost at the hands of the disciples.

There were thousands at a time saved through street preaching and witnessing the healing of many and the driving out of evil spirits. We should see these days again soon. It is also noteworthy to remember that Jesus said if we are to enter into life and follow Him, we must surrender our will to Him and trust in Him as Lord of our life's, with a humble childlike spirit.

As God resist the proud but gives grace unto the humble. We must be humble to admit our sin and need of Christ. Otherwise we will not put our trust in Him. God is not willing that any should perish but put their trust in Christ and be saved. Otherwise we will be brought to trial in heavens court and face the dreadful judge of the universe of whom there is no escaping. Christ is our way out. The gift of God. Eternal life.

Answer 4

Early Christians believed and still do to this day in a heaven, a hell, they are monotheistic which means they believe in one god, they believe in Jesus Christ son of the Lord, and they believe in the disciples that spread the christian culture throughout Europe.

Answer 5

In the very early days of Christianity, there was considerable diversity among Christians. Even Paul talked of people worshipping a "different Christ" - not just a "different Christianity". Among others, there were Nazarenes, several denominations of Gnostics, Marcionites, and the group that later became dominant and is now known as the Catholic Orthodox Church.
By definition, all the earliest Christian Churches believed that Jesus was sent to earth for our salvation, was crucified and rose again. Some believed that he was divine and pre-existing, while others believed that God took Jesus as his son at the time of his baptism. Some, such as the proto-Catholic Orthodox Church, believed that Jesus came in the flesh, while others believed in docetism - that he was a spiritual apparition.

Christianity owed its origin to Judaism, and held many of the same beliefs as mainstream Jews. While all the earliest Christian Churches believed in God the Father, the Gnostic Christians believed that a Demiurge, an inferior god, was the creator of the world. To many Gnostic Christians, the jealous and often angry Old Testament God was the Demiurge. Many Gnostic Christians believed that God the Father sent his Son because the Demiurge ruled the world and prevented God from intervening.

Answer 6

Early Christianity was incredibly diverse. Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) estimates that there were at least fifty Christian sects by the second century.

With so much diversity, it is difficult to give a short statement of the beliefs of "an early Christian". Some seem to have believed that Jesus was a heavenly High Priest, but perhaps not a person who had recently lived on earth. Whether or not Paul believed that Jesus had lived on earth is unclear to some, but he does not seem to have believed that Jesus had lived and died in the recent past. Some even believed that the merciful and loving God of Christianity was not the harsh and unforgiving God of the Jews, whom they called the Demiurge.

It seems that the concept of the Trinity had not yet evolved by the end of the first century CE. Many Christian doctrines really only matured under the rule of the Roman Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century. Constantine himself is said to have delayed his baptism until his deathbed in the belief that baptism washed away all one's past sins, but that one could only be baptised once - he wanted the freedom to commit sins as long as possible.

Answer 7

All the early Christians certainly believed in the Jewish God and believed that Jesus was the son of God, although it is not entirely certain that they all knew who Jesus was. For some reason, there seem to have been a bewildering range of views about Jesus from the very earliest times. Judged by his epistles, Paul the apostle seems to have been unaware that Jesus was a man who had lived and died in Palestine in the recent past.

The early Christians believed that Jesus had died and risen from the dead. Again, Paul seems to have understood the resurrection to have been spiritual only, appearing to see no essential difference between the appearances to Cephas, the twelve, then more than 500, then James and all the apostles, than the clearly spiritual appearance to himself. Some early Christians might have thought of Jesus as always a 'high priest' in heaven, consistent with the Book of Hebrews.

The practice of baptism seems to have been universal. The sharing of a communion meal seems to have been another universal Christian practice. The community in which Luke's Gospel and Acts of the Apostles were written might have had a strict rule for ownership of all goods in common, but there is no evidence that other Christian communities supported this practice.

Answer 8

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