Updates at Christian History for Everyman

For those of you that don’t already know from my Early Church History Newsletter, I have been updating Christian History for Everyman.

What’s pertinent for this blog is the teaching and book pages.

I’ve made a page for my books, though only one book and one booklet have been completed. There are, however, five chapters of a book titled The Second Hundred Years that has a lot of information in it. There are also chapters from other books I’ve started and never finished.

I’ve also made a page for teachings (written ones) and podcasts.

If you subscribe to this blog, they’re the sort of pages you would want to know about.

I’m revamping the Christian History for Everyman in order to focus on the second and early third centuries (to give a picture of the beliefs and practices of the apostles’ churches) and on Nicea and the Reformation (to address the periods of major transformation in church history).

Those are the areas I know most about, and so I am going to focus on those rather than trying to cover all of church history, a task that is proving too large for a father of six, four of whom are still at home and home schooling, who was working full-time, but now is a part-time leukemia patient.

That’s not a complaint! The leukemia has let me meet and influence a lot of people. I got a letter from Namibia yesterday saying my leukemia blog "opened my eyes and heart." I don’t even know where Namibia is! (I’ll go look it up in a minute.) On top of that, the love and care of others for me has brought tears to my eyes more than once. I’ve also met some of the most incredible and inspiring people you can imagine. I get to help more with my children’s home schooling. I have no regrets.

On the other hand, there’s not much energy or desire to study new periods of church history when you’re going through chemotherapy. I’m going to stick to the periods I know and that I think are most important, anyway.

About Paul Pavao

I am married, the father of six, and currently the grandfather of five. I teach, and I am always trying to learn to disciple others better than I have before. I believe God has gifted me to restore proper theological foundations to the Christian faith. In order to ensure that I do not become a heretic, I read the early church fathers from the second and third centuries. They were around when all the churches founded by the apostles were in unity. My philosophy for Bible reading is to understand each verse for exactly what it says in its local context. Only after accepting the verse for what it says do I compare it with other verses to develop my theology. If other verses seem to contradict a verse I just read, I will wait to say anything about those verses until I have an explanation that allows me to accept all the verses for what they say. This takes time, sometimes years, but eventually I have always been able to find something that does not require explaining verses away. The early church fathers have helped a lot with this. I argue and discuss these foundational doctrines with others to make sure my teaching really lines up with Scripture. I am encouraged by the fact that the several missionaries and pastors that I know well and admire as holy men love the things I teach. I hope you will be encouraged too. I am indeed tearing up old foundations created by tradition in order to re-establish the foundations found in Scripture and lived on by the churches during their 300 years of unity.

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