Feast of the Purification

In the first 50 years, which were largely centered in Jerusalem and the temple, we don't have to guess what worship was like. We know what it was like because we can read the Bible. It did not have images but there was incense and it was highly liturgical. Those fathers who are against incense are wrong and anti Biblical

 

Are you saying that the early Christians were worshiping in the Temple, and had their own Aaronic Priests to perform the propitiatory sacrifices for sins? .... the Epistle to the Hebrews comes to mind

 

No no one says that. What I am saying is that they continued to go to the Temple just like we see Peter and the Apostles doing in the Book of Acts. We know what went on at Temple services that they attended. They did not denounce the use of incense. They did not denounce liturgy, they did not denounce ritualism. They fixed the errors that the Jews had and they made it Christian in their own use. In fact they preached Christ and Christianity there but they went nonetheless. The Bible lets us know they continued to go to the temple according to the Book of Acts. The earliest records let us know that they continued to do that until the destruction of the Temple. You would think that at sometime, if incense was wrong, or liturgy was wrong they would have let us know. The fact that they never did and continued to go to a place that had all of this lets us know that perhaps we should be liturgical and perhaps incense is wrong.

 

There is some evidence that distinctly Jewish Christianity continued to exist in Syria all the way into the 4th century. It is likely against these groups that some of John Chrysostom’s polemics were directed.

 

It could also be against Judaizing Christians that a lot of the Book of Hebrews was written against. Did not know that about the Jewish Christians in Syria.

 

I think it unlikely that there were any Judaizing Christians that weren’t Jewish themselves. The social context of that era just makes the alternative very unlikely.