Christianity-The First Two Thousand Years

Christianity-The First Two Thousand Years

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DVD Reviews of Christianity-The First Two Thousand Years

DVD Review: Extremely Biased
Summary: 3 Stars

There are several errors that I spotted here, and I would expect more out of A&E.

Such errors include:

1) James, not Peter, was the leader of the first Christian community.

This is clearly false. The vast consensus among scholars is that Peter was the leader of the early Christian community. Check out the Encyclopedia Britannica article "Peter", as well as anything published by Oxford University, as well as just about every book on Church history.

The "historical consultant" for the 1st 1000 years was Dominic Crossan of the laughable Jesus seminar. He wrote a book titled "James, the Brother of Jesus". It's pretty much his view, and the view of his small circle of scholarly rejects that James, not Peter, was the leader of the early Church.

James may have had immediate leadership over Jerusalem, but primary leadership was Peter's This is evidenced in the very name "Peter" itself. See Matthew 16:13-19, as well as the Church Fathers.

Also, the DVD is inconsistent. It begins by introducing the disciples, and it actually identifies Peter as their leader. 20 minutes into the documentary they say the leader was James. Inconsistent.

2) The role of women in the early Church.

There is not one documented record of a woman serving in a clerical role. You did have orders of deaconesses, but the liturgical manuals we have in our possession, like the "Apostolic Tradition" and the canons of the Council of Nicea, make it clear that these were not ordained positions.

The early Church did have prominent women figures. There were orders of virgins, widows, and deaconesses. But these were forerunners to the modern nun, not "women clergy", as the film implies.

3) The film says that the three-fold hierarchy of bishop, priest, and deacon was "proposed" by Ignatius of Antioch, in the 100s A.D..

It is true that Ignatius's letters, written around 107 A.D., are among the first references we have to this hierarchy, but they aren't THE first. Such appears in the Letter of Pope Saint Clement I to the Corinthians, and is certainly implicit in the Bible itself.

Not only that, but by the time Ignatius had begun writing his letters, on his way to martyrdom, he had already been bishop of some 40 years. So we know for a fact that there was a three-fold hierarchy at least by 67 A.D., when the Apostles were still alive. (Granted, this system was not universal in Apostolic times, but it certainly was by the 2nd century). It's also important to mention that Ignatius was a disciple of John the Apostle. The documentary fails to mention this. The show also says that Ignatius was among the first to bar women from the clergy. Again, there is no evidence of this. Saint Paul himself had barred women from preaching in the churches.

4) Not once in the first disc of the film is it mentioned that the orthodox branch of Christianity was known as "the Catholic Church". This is a serious fly-over. One hears the of this one Christian body, but it isn't called "catholic" until DVD disc 2, which starts off in the year 1000. Ignatius was the first one to employ the term, and it was used to distinguish orthodox Christians from heretical ones.

5) The DVD says that Pope Saint Leo I was the first Pope to assert authority over the East. Again, this is false. Pope Saint Clement I, Pope Saint Victor, Saint Ireneaus, the Ecumenical Councils prior to Chalcedon, etc. all affirmed the primacy of the Pope. The Popes of Rome frequently took it upon themselves to excommunicate heretical Eastern Patriarchs, and later on Eastern Christianity sided with them.

6) In Disc 2, Post-Reformation Catholicism is passed off as completely anti-intellectual and anti-technology. When the Church condemned "Modernism", it wasn't condemning change or technology, but rather what we call today "liberal Catholicism". And Vatican II didn't change any of that.

7) The series ends on a negative note with the document "Dominus Iesus". What isn't mentioned is that "Dominus Iesus" was little more than a re-statement, word for word, of the teaching of Vatican II. (It's presented as anti-ecumenical). It's obvious that the producers of the series did not bother to read the document.

8) The Church in Colonial America is presented as pro-slavery, with certain exceptions among friars. This is not true. All the popes, even prior to 492, condemned slavery as incompatible with the Catholic religion. They were largely ignored, but the penalty of excommunication "ipsi facto" (the same punishment given to women who commit abortions today) was threatened, and applied, to those who kept slaves.

9) The lie that Pope Pius XII did nothing to help Jews is told in this documentary. Pius XII helped save over 800,000 Jews, more than any other nation did. H did this through monasteries, convents, fake baptismal certificates, and sneaking Jews in the Vatican among the Swiss Guard. Catholics were the 2nd-largest group murdered in the Holocaust, after Jews. Of the 5 million non-Jews murdered in the Holocaust, 3 million were Catholics.

I'm not trying to be an apologist for Catholicism (yes, I am Catholic), but I think that all my comments and discrepancies are justified and objective.

Pretty good, but take it with a grain of salt.