I am a good Catholic boy. A convert no less, attracted by the rational tradition [Aquinas et al] and the emotional authenticity [in comp. with the faddishness of Anglicanism] to Roman Catholicism. I never had much time for the pope - or any other heirarchs - but I did, and do, believe in the sacremental system. I always felt quite happy to look down my nose at those such as John Emery [a few posts back] who had to engage in circuitous textual arguments to prove their faith, entirely oblivious to the fact that a dozen other faiths can do the same [with miracles too], and that since their arguments depend on the belief in the Bible as God's sole revelation, it was not very good logic to argue that the Bible proved God. No, I was happy to accept the CHURCH as God's revelation. It was the Church after all that existed before the Bible, the Church that choose [under grace of course] the canon of scripture. Protestant ludicrosity, I thought, was shown by Protestants breathtaking acceptance of Luther's right to reject a dozen or so books he disliked. 	But recently I read Peter Brown's _Body and Society_. It is very well researched, and well written. But is raises some very upsetting questions. The early Christians were weird - even more so than today's carzy fundies. They had odd views on sex, odder views on the body,  totally ludicrous views about demons, and distinctly uncharitable views about other human beings.  	now the question is this: were the first Christians just as weird, but we've got used to them, or did the pristine "Fall of the Church" happen within one generation. It certainly did'nt have to wait until the Triumph of the Church under Constantine. If so, wha does  this say about God's promise to always support the Church. It's no use throwing the usual Protestant pieties about the Church not being an organization at me. It's a community or it is nothing, and it was the early communities that were weird. The institional church was a model of sanity by comparison. 	I would be interested in serious Catholic and Orthodox responses to this entirely serious issue. I'm not sure it is an issue for Protestants with their "soul alone with Jesus" approach, but for we who see the "ecclesia" as a "koinoia" over time and space, the weird early Christians are a problem.  [This is an exaggeration of the Protestant view.  Many Protestants have a strong appreciation for the role of the Church.  "The soul alone with God" is certainly important for Protestants, but it's by no means the whole story.  I have read the sort of history you talk about.  As you point out, Protestants don't have quite the same problem you do, because we believe that the church had a Fall at some point.  However Protestant mythology typically places the Fall around the time of Constantine (or more likely, regard it as happening in a sort of cumulative fashion, starting from Constantine but getting worse as the Pope accumulated power during the medieval period.)  The consequences of having it earlier are somewhat worrisome even to us.  Most Protestants accept the theological results of the early ecumenical councils, including such items as the Trinity and Incarnation.  Indeed in the works of Reformers such as Luther and Calvin, you'll find Church Fathers such as Augustine quoted all the time.  I think you'll find many Protestants resistant to the idea that the Early Church as a whole was "wierd".  (There is an additional problem for Protestants that I don't much want to talk about in this context, since it's been looked at recently -- that's the question of whether one can really think of Augustine and other Fathers as being proto-Protestants.  Their views on Mary, the authority of the Pope, etc, are not entirely congenial to Protestant thought.)  One thing that somewhat worries me is a question of methodology. There are certainly plenty of wierd people in the early church.  What concerns me is that they may be overrepresented in what we see.  We see every Christian who courted martyrdom.  But I think there's good reason to believe that most ordinary Christians were more prudent than that.  We see the heroic virgins.  But I think there's good reason to think that many Christians were happily married.  I can't help suspecting that the early church had the same range of wierdos and sane people that we do now.  I think there's also a certain level of "revisionism" active in history at the moment.  I don't mean that they're manufacturing things out of whole cloth.  But don't you think there might be a tendency to emphasize the novel?