Pagan Christianity? Quotes

“ORGANIC CHURCH
The term organic church does not refer to a particular model of church. (We believe that no perfect model exists.) Instead, we believe that the New Testament vision of church is organic. An organic church is a living, breathing, dynamic, mutually participatory, every-member-functioning, Christ-centered, communal expression of the body of Christ.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“What history teaches us is that men have never learned anything from it.” —G. W. F. Hegel, nineteenth-century German philosopher”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“How We Approach the New Testament We Christians have been taught to approach the Bible in one of eight ways: • You look for verses that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator door. • You look for verses that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want. • You look for verses that tell you what God commands you to do. • You look for verses that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour of temptation. • You look for verses that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice-and-dice your theological sparring partner into biblical ribbons. (Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verse of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject.) • You look for verses in the Bible to control and/or correct others. • You look for verses that “preach” well and make good sermon material. (This is an ongoing addiction for many who preach and teach.) • You sometimes close your eyes, flip open the Bible randomly, stick your finger on a page, read what the text says, and then take what you have read as a personal “word” from the Lord. Now look at this list again. Which of these approaches have you used? Look again: Notice how each is highly individualistic. All of them put you, the individual Christian, at the center. Each approach ignores the fact that most of the New Testament was written to corporate bodies of people (churches), not to individuals.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Church planters deliberately left so that the church could function under the headship of Christ. If a church planter stays in a church, the members naturally look to him to lead. Every-member functioning is hindered. This is still true today. The pattern throughout the entire New Testament is that church planters (apostolic workers) always left the church after they laid the foundation. For more details, see The Normal Christian Church Life by Watchman Nee”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Thus the pagan notion of a trained professional speaker who delivers orations for a fee moved straight into the Christian bloodstream. Note that the concept of the “paid teaching specialist” came from Greece, not Judaism. It was the custom of Jewish rabbis to take up a trade so as to not charge a fee for their teaching.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The pew is perhaps the greatest inhibitor of face-to-face fellowship. It is a symbol of lethargy and passivity in the contemporary church and has made corporate worship a spectator sport.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The Calf Path One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ’twas such a crooked path.15 But still they followed—do not laugh— The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked, Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again; This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way, And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move. But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah! Many things this tale might teach— But I am not ordained to preach. —Sam Walter Foss”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“believers are discovering the experience of the body of Christ and what it means to gather under the headship of Jesus.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Today, youth pastors are part of the professional clergy. Their position is built on the contemporary church’s misguided choice to honor a division that was born in secular culture less than a century ago—namely, the division between teenager and everyone else.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“In short, extensive Bible knowledge, a high-powered intellect, and razor-sharp reasoning skills do not automatically produce spiritual men and women who know Jesus Christ profoundly and who can impart a life-giving revelation of Him to others.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Hence, the Reformers dramatically failed to put their finger on the nerve of the original problem: a clergy-led worship service attended by a passive laity.[157] It is not surprising, then, that the Reformers viewed themselves as reformed Catholics.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The result: God’s people have never broken free from the liturgical constraints they inherited from Roman Catholicism.[”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Note that there is a monumental difference between well-motivated humans working for God in their own strength, wisdom, and power versus God working through humans.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“To put a finer point on it, the church building is based on the benighted idea that worship is removed from everyday life.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“When Christianity was born, it was the only religion on the planet that had no sacred objects, no sacred persons, and no sacred spaces.'8 Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship.19 The Christian faith was born in homes, out in courtyards, and along roadsides.20”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Custom without truth is error grown old.” —Tertullian, third-century theologian”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“This disjunction between secular and spiritual is highlighted by the fact that the typical church building requires you to “process” in by walking up stairs or moving through a narthex. This adds to the sense that you are moving from everyday life to another life. Thus a transition is required. All of this flunks the Monday test. No matter how good Sunday was, Monday morning still comes to test our worship.229”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“In other words, the Reformers only recovered the priesthood of the believer (singular). They reminded us that every Christian has individual and immediate access to God. As wonderful as that is, they did not recover the priesthood of all believers (collective plural). This is the blessed truth that every Christian is part of a clan that shares God’s Word one with another. (It was the Anabaptists who recovered this practice. Regrettably, this recovery was one of the reasons why Protestant and Catholic swords were red with Anabaptist blood.)”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The pulpit elevates the clergy to a position of prominence. True to its meaning, it puts the preacher at center “stage”—separating and placing him high above God’s people.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“In the minds of the early Christians, the people—not the architecture—constituted a sacred space.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The upshot of it all was that there was a loss of intimacy and open participation. The professional clergy performed the acts of worship while the laity looked on as spectators.[108]”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The Roman custom of beginning a service with processional music was adopted as well. For this purpose, choirs were developed and brought into the Christian church. (See chapter 7 for more on the origin of the choir.) Worship became more professional, dramatic, and ceremonial.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Many of the largest buildings were built over the tombs of the martyrs.[76] This practice was based on the idea that the martyrs had the same powers that they had once ascribed to the gods of paganism.[”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Following Helena’s trip to Jerusalem in AD 327, Constantine began erecting the first church buildings throughout the Roman Empire, some at public expense.[71] In so doing, he followed the path of the pagans in constructing temples to honor God.[72] Interestingly, he named his church buildings after saints—just as the pagans named their temples after gods.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“In AD 321, Constantine decreed that Sunday would be a day of rest—a legal holiday.[53] It appears that Constantine’s intention in doing this was to honor the god Mithras, the Unconquered Sun.[54] (He described Sunday as “the day of the sun.”) Further demonstrating Constantine’s affinity with sun worship, excavations of St. Peter’s in Rome uncovered a mosaic of Christ as the Unconquered Sun.[55]”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Not until the Constantinian age do we find specially constructed buildings, at first simple halls and then the Constantinian basilicas.” Before Constantine, all structures used for church gatherings were “houses or commercial buildings modified for church use” (Early Christians Speak, 74).”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“about the second century, Christians began to venerate the bones of the saints, regarding them as holy and sacred.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The practice of Christians praying for the dead seems to have begun around the second century. Tertullian tells us that it was common in his day. See Tertullian, de cor. 4.1, and F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Tertullian demonstrates the relentless efforts of the Christians to do away with the pagan custom of the funeral procession. Yet eventually the Christians succumbed to it. Christian funeral rites, which drew heavily from pagan forms, begin to appear in the third century. See David W. Bercot, ed., A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 2:292. “The use of catacombs lasted about three centuries, from the end of the second to the end of the fifth” (Snyder, Ante Pacem, 84). Contrary to popular belief, there is not a shred of historical evidence that Roman Christians hid in the catacombs to escape persecution. They met there to be close to the dead saints. See “Where Did Christians Worship?” 35; “Early Glimpses,” Christian History 12, no.1 (1993): 30.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices