What is the Actual Ancient Christian Faith?

"There are two Paths. One of Life, and one of Death, and there is a huge difference between the two Paths. The Path of Life is this: You will Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of you strength, and with all of you mind, and you will love your neighbor as yourself. Do to others what you would want them to do to you, and whatever you don't want others to do to you, don't do likewise to them."

      While not a direct quote, these are the first lines of the Didache, the oldest known Christian catechism, or teaching manual for new initiates. In the mind of the author, these were the understanding, practice, and commitment of what Christianity was all about. These were the first and most important things to teach those new to the faith. These things are what defined a Christian, and everything else was explanation and commentary.

      Today is Sunday, and as I was thinking about what to write, I wrote down a sentence and then deleted it. I wrote down another sentence, and then deleted it. And then this came to my mind again. What was understood in the first century church to be the most essential thing for new Christians to understand? That there were two paths a person could take, one of life and one of death. Paul also talked about these two Paths frequently. He wrote in Romans that one could either enslave themselves to their own malfunctioning flesh leading to death, or they could enslave themselves to the Spirit of Christ and the right state of being resulting from it which leads to life.

     The author then describes what the Path of Life is, and anyone who has read the Gospels will recognize this as the core of what Jesus taught: Love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and treat others the way you want to be treated.

      These lines described the core understanding of the ancient Christian faith hundreds of years before Nicea and the Ecumenical Councils were even a random thought in Constantine's mind, and over fourteen hundred years before Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Before the practice of the Path of Jesus Christ was turned into Orthodoxy and theological doctrine, before penal substitutionary atonement was even a glint in the Reformers' eyes, within the living memory of the Apostles and Jesus Himself it was about the two Paths one could take and what they looked like.

      And the Path of Death? He writes, "first of all it is derangement and full of curses, murders, adulteries, cravings, prostitutions, thefts, idolatries," and so on right down the same lists of the works of the flesh which Paul gives in many of his letters, especially Galatians 5, but also Colossians 3. The Path of Death is what happens when one disengages from the Spirit of Christ and through engagement with their fear, aggression, or bodily craving responses submit to the control of their malfunctioning flesh.

      This understanding is the ancient faith, the true ancient creed taught to initiates and catechumens and explained further in the writings of the Apostles and their successors, the Early Church Fathers. For those who truly want to get back to what was originally taught, this is where you start, by following the Path of Life and turning away from the Path of Death; by cooperating with and submitting to the Spirit of Christ so that He is the one who acts and speaks through you, and by disengaging from and thereby neutralizing one's own flesh's malfunctioning survival responses.