I have had no proper Internet access for the last few days, and posting this and the following from my local Church building, thus the reason why this blog has been silent recently (hopefully there will be a long-term fix early next week!). Fortunately, I have a number of posts that will be posted on this blog in the next day or two based, in part, on my reading the past few days. The following is a rather nifty insight from Adolf Von Harnack:
The Church is younger and older than Jesus. It existed in a certain sense before Him. It was founded by the prophets, in the first place within Israel, but even at that time it pointed beyond itself. All subsequent developments are changes of form. It came into being at the moment when a society was formed within Israel, characterized by universalism, which strove to rise out of darkness into light, from the popular and legalistic religion to a religion of the Spirit, and saw itself led to a higher stage of humanity, at which God and His holy moral law reign supreme. (Adolf Von Harnack, The Constitution and Law of the Church in the First Two Centuries [trans. F.L. Pogson; London: Williams and Norgate, 1910], 4 n. 1)
