Christian History Quotes

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.

The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior.

Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.

Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th.

It is true Christians have done terrible things throughout history. But they've always been acting in opposition to their Christian faith. There are no New Testament verses that say, Kill unbelievers.

I would like to regard the Inquisition as an aberration as far as Christian history is concerned. And I think the Taliban would be an aberration as far as contemporary Muslim civilization is concerned

The historical orthodox Christian faith is extremely wide and diverse.

In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.

The first persecution of the Church took place in the year 67, under Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome.

Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects of Christianity, we shall find that few have not in their turn been persecutors, and complainers of persecution.

Holy Christendom has, in my judgment, no better teacher after the apostles than St. Augustine.

It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.

During the first 13 centuries after the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, no one thought of setting up a creche to celebrate Christmas. The pre-eminent Christian holiday was Easter, not Christmas.

It has been said by church historians that in those periods of Christian history where renewal, revival, and awakening took place and the church was at its strongest, that coincidental with those periods in church history, there was a strong focus on the psalms in the life of God's people-particularly in the worship of God's people.

Whether we're looking at the burial box of St. James, a fragment of the True Cross, the Shroud of Turin, or some bones supposedly belonging to John the Baptist, there is always excitement and distrust, faith and doubt.

Christians have ... identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan... Nor have things improved since. The blood-soaked history of persecution, torture, murder, and destruction perpetrated in the name of religion is difficult to grasp, let alohne summarize, from the slaughter of Christians to the Crusades to the Inquisitiion to the Reformation to the European witchcraze to colonialization to today's bitter coflict in the Middle East.

I think they probably got it on, Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since that time, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. But every one of these - the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure - emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century.

The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable.

The most popular argument in all these papers was the assertion ... that Christianity had grown and prospered in spite of the opposition of the State.

The Gnostics were rapidly driven out of business by the hierarchical orthodox Christians.

I was in a fascinating meeting where one man had been in China recently. A Chinese professor has found evidence that Christians reached Western China before 90 AD. Before 90 AD! The idea isn't all that astonishing when we think about it. That's what the disciples thought they were supposed to do! And, I'm sure, the disciples just said, "That's it. Let's go!" And they all wound up dead. But everyone else did too!