What then is catholicism?
The early church expressed two general traditions, Jewish and Hellenistic Christianity. Early catholicism may be understood precisely as a compromise between the two. It absorbed the most enduring elements of both. This left second and third century Christians a choice between the large middle ground now occupied by early Catholicism or the by then radical alternatives of Ebionism (the general way of the first Jewish Christians who followed the Jewish Law, exalted James and denigrated Paul, held that Jesus was the natural child of Mary and Joseph and later became the Son of God and the Christ at his baptism in the Jordan and because he adhered to Jewish Law) and Christian Gnosticism (salvation comes through Sophia, Wisdom; matter is less than good). Catholic means universal. The term catholic linguistically implied the totality of the then known world: the universality of the Roman Empire. The Johnannine alternative to early Catholicism has survived after a fashion, but (in the West) o
