Modern Christian theological, teaching, debate, and discourse is a reaction to those theological ideas which came immediately before. There is a constant debate, for example, about whether or not "the Rapture" is pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, or mid-tribulation, and divisions and sprung up over this. Yet it would surprise and even shock many Christians to learn that this debate only really dates to the early to mid-nineteenth century when a certain group of Pentecostals in Scotland prophesied a pre-tribulation rapture, and the idea was brought back to the United States by John Darby. Prior to the nineteenth century, this idea wasn't even a blip on the radar.
Most of the modern theology which the American churches rest on can trace its roots back to the Reformation as a reaction to church leadership within the Western Roman Catholic Church that was abusing its spiritual authority. Prior to the sixteenth century, "Sola Scriptura" was unheard of, and the idea that the Eucharistic bread and wine could be anything else but the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ had been anathematized for over a thousand years. Martin Luther's own nascent teachings on Penal Substitutionary Atonement were themselves a reaction against the spiritual abuse by the Catholic leadership. But in the writings of the Church prior to Luther, you don't actually find most of the teachings which the modern American churches consider important enough to argue and divide over. It could be a fair statement that the "Christianity" which much of the American church practices was invented as a chain of reactions to the abuse which was happening in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To be fair, Luther and the Reformers were, in their own way, trying to return to the primitive faith before what they saw as the Roman corruption. The problem was that they didn't know what that faith actually looked like (Luther initially wanted to replicate Eastern Orthodoxy but went a different direction when he realized how different they were theologically from himself, indoctrinated a Western Christian), and they eschewed anything which remotely resembled the Roman Catholic Church in any way, often fighting with each other verbally and physically over how much of traditional teaching to keep or throw out. The next hundred to two hundred years after Luther was both wild and brutal, and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.
When a modern American Christian (and in particular those from the Protestant branch of the family tree) reads the primitive writings of the Early Church Fathers, it can be a bit jarring, even disorienting at first. Many Christians who have been taught in Evangelical Protestant churches, or in the Baptist traditions in particular, will often reject their authenticity outright because of how much they appear to contradict their particular branch of theology, born as it was out of theologies devised 1500 years after they were written.
The writings which fall into this category were written between the late first century and the very early second, and were penned or dictated by Bishops and church leaders who were second and third generation from the Apostles themselves. Polycarp is a great example as he was a student of John the Apostle in his early years. Ignatius of Antioch was the Bishop of Antioch who was martyred (torn apart by lions in the coliseum in Rome) in 105 CE. In addition to other authors such as Clement of Rome, and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, there is also the Didache, a very early Christian catechetical text, which has been dated to around 70 CE or thereabouts.
The earliest writings of the church, when taken without our theological baggage of the last two thousand years, describe a faith and church gatherings that look nothing like Modern Christianity of really any stripe. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, as much as they claim descent from these early forerunners are really only mere shadows and echoes of them, themselves really born of reactions to theological debates which arose between the fourth and the eleventh centuries, not to mention the reactions to the Protestant Reformation and its daughter denominations.
One does not find the five solas in the earliest writings of the Church. Neither does one find the pomp, grandeur, or political machinations of the twin daughters of the Imperial Catholic Church within them. One does not find any reference to penal substitutionary atonement theory, the rapture, or nearly any other thing which we fight over, argue over, or consider to be the "core" of Christian doctrine.
What do we find in these ancient letters and teaching materials? In the words of the Didache, "There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways. The way of life is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, strength, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself, and whatever you don't want someone to do to you, don't do it to them." What we find is an emphasis on living how Jesus taught, and walking how He walked. We find them encouraging love, compassion, and unity among all the brethren, and clarifying what behavior followed the way of death, what we would call the "works of the flesh" as Paul described it. We find them seeking to fill their minds with whatever is true, noble, and of good report, and above all, to chase after the prize of the high calling of God with Christ Jesus. After that, we find these church leaders trying to manage and administrate different situations between different church gatherings and bishops/presbyters. As much as they did not look like the modern "Christian" churches at all, these were the church leaders and church gatherings that spread the Way across the Roman Empire and beyond the uttermost parts of their world.
There is frequently great confusion, and many theological explanations and excuses, as to why we don't see the same demonstrations of power in the modern churches that they did in the primitive, ancient churches. The answer doesn't require a convoluted, three hour sermon with references. It's because the modern "Christian" churches neither teach nor practice what the ancient church did, and the ancient church would not recognize the modern churches as Christian at all.
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