When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Makes sense right? In your neighbors house, follow your neighbors rules. This idea is credited to St. Augustine, about 390 AD. My question is why? How come St. Augustine gets credit for a concept that was clearly laid out by Paul in Romans 14?
No, this is not really a religious post, this is a question of why something in the Bible is ignored when it it comes to crediting an idea or concept? There are two schools of thought on this (at least in my mind).
One is that the New Testament wasn't written when most think it was written. Generally it is believed that the books of the New Testament were all completed by 100 AD or so, due to the ages of the writers at that time Jesus lived. If ideas from the Bible are credited to later writers, it makes it easier for those who ignore the Bible to ignore the Bible.
Others will say that this is a blatant slap at Christianity; that the Bible is ignored because scholars hate religion. There are many instances of this throughout history I guess, where those of a scholarly bent feel it is important to denounce anything that is faith based...silly if you ask me.
But I tend to fall into a third category, one that actually fits the meaning of the concept at hand. I think St. Augustine gets the credit so more people will follow the idea. This way one does not have to be a disciple of Christ to agree, one only has to be a student of history.
That God guy is pretty sneaky sometimes!
No comments:
Post a Comment