How do types of Christianity differ?

Answer 1

In the very early days of Christianity, there was considerable diversity among Christians. Even Paul talked of people worshipping a "different Christ" - not just a "different Christianity". Among others, there were Nazarenes, several denominations of Gnostics, Marcionites and the group that later became dominant and is now known as the Catholic Orthodox Church. However, there is very little now known about the beliefs of most of the early Christian sects. We do know that the Gnostics believed that the supreme God created the spiritual world and that an inferior God, sometimes called the Demiurge, created the material world. Arian Christianity evolved a little later, when a popular Libyan priest called Arius declared that Christ, while divine, was not divine in the same way as God the Father. Around 318, Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, declared these views heretical and then had the wording that Christ was "of one being with God" adopted at the Council of Nicaea. After the 'Catholic Orthodox Church' became the official religion of the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century, it was in a position to persecute the other Christian sects, destroying their books and forcibly converting their followers. As luck would have it, a large collection of Gnostic books was hidden in an amphora at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, waiting for us to find it in the twentieth century. This has provided us with some valuable information about differences in the early types of Christianity. Following the Great Schism of of 1054, the Catholic Orthodox Church split into the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox. From around 1500, Protestantism spread in much of northern Europe. Although the original intention of the Protestant leaders was to reform the Roman Catholic Church and eliminate what they saw as corruption, theoligical differences soon developed. One difference apparent even to the casual observer is that Protestant churches do not permit their members to pray before statues of the saints, regarding this as a form of idolatory. New types of Christianity have continued to evolve, right up to the present day. Mormonism is an example of a type of Christianity from the 19th century. This certainly differs in many ways from most other denominations. The Book of Mormon claims that a group of Jews emigrated to the Americas about 600 BCE and established a Christian community there long before the birth of Christ. Mormons also believe that there are many gods, although we only need to concern ourselves with God the Father and Jesus.