How can early Christian history be liberating?
The phenomenal discoveries in the last few decades of all these hidden documents and scrolls show that the first 300 years of Christianity were enormously more diverse than we had been given to believe. There was no central creed; it was all centered on following Jesus. It wasn’t until Constantine in the fourth century, who decided he needed ideology to sew together a fragmenting empire, that a whole new thinking was created about what made a Christian, with an emphasis on belief instead of experience. You visited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in 1988. But he didn’t invite you to stay on for lunch. Do you ever wonder why? I tried to start with innocent questions and then work my way up to, “Why did you revoke the teaching license of Hans Kung? Why did you silence Leonardo Boff?” He remained cordial, but there was a barely detectable change in his response. Then an aide came in and that terminated the conversation. I don’t know whether he has a little button under hi
