On 25 Feb, 17:02, Chuck Gould wrote:
If you read the book of Acts or the letters of Paul to the various
gatherings of Christians throughout the Mediterranean basin, there are
constant inferences to ideological and theological disagreements among
the early Christians. Even so, in some of his letters Paul speaks
favorably of James and his followers.

Surely. It does need to be said, tho, that there are people today
peddling the idea that "early Christianity was diverse" and meaning by
it apparently that Jesus did not preach anything very specific and
that anyone who called himself a Christian must actually be a follower
of Jesus. This sort of revisionism is not justified from the data,
tho. Just a caveat against a possible misunderstanding here.

Your remarks appear to imply an orderly transition to the orthodox
church hammered together by compromise at coucils like the one
held inNicea. Hundreds of years AD Christians were still debating the
Trinity.

Um, I'm not sure this is right. Even at Nicaea both sides were
Trinitarian. Possibly you have the various 5th century
Christological controversies in mind here?

There are large groups of people to this day who accept Jesus
as savior and follow his teachings but who do not believe in the
traditional concept of Trinity. (Exhibit A: The Unitarian Church)

Are these "large groups"? -- Aren't these are small, modern heresies
which arose from protestantism and decided to reject what everyone had
agreed for centuries?

Many of the earliest Christians were gnostics;

The apostle John did not consider these people Christians; nor did the
Roman authorities; nor did the fathers, tho.

Orthodox Christians then, and to this day, accuse gnostics of
"claiming secret knowledge" instead of following the four canonized
gospels. I'm sure a good many of the gnostics would reply that there
is nothing "secret" about it...

Um, gnosis *is* secret knowledge. The gnostics pretended that their
ever-changing teachings were apostolic. The fathers challenged this
by pointing out that the churches founded by these apostles knew
nothing of them teaching any such thing. The gnostic response was
that these teachings were transmitted privately -- which sort of gives
the game away.

My advice would be: always be wary of anybody who tells you, "You
don't have the authority or capacity to understand the message, so hire
me to understand it and interpret it for you." Woa, talk about a
slippery slope........

Surely. But this is a classic gnostic position.

All the best,

Roger Pearse