Early Church Religious Standards

It seems that the Early Church had a standard of faith that was sympathetic with each other, sharing their own life and experience of faith, which had not yet been theorized or systematized. This norm of faith has become an important foundational material for judging the canonicality of religious documents and discriminating between orthodoxy and heresy. Apostles, universality, and authority are the norms of faith for judging the canonicalization of religious documents. The Apostles are those whom the apostles were called directly from Jesus Christ, and were the 12 disciples who lived with Jesus Christ while eating and drinking. These were the people who witnessed the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ and were sent to the world. The books they wrote or those written by people who had close relationships with them were recognized as having apostles. Universality, as the first church entered the first, second, and third generations, various religious documents were written and read according to the time and place. Among the various documents of faith, books have been created that are naturally universally recognized as holy books within each community. Also, regarding the authoritarian authority, the books universally recognized in the early community were selected because they are mostly documents with divine influence. Hence, the divine authority recorded by the inspiration of the Bible became a standard for determining canon.​

In addition, in the standard of faith for the distinction between heresy and orthodoxy, the early church had to deal with internal enemies, that is, heresy, despite severe external persecution. The gospel of the cross of Jesus was a new revelation of the Triune God based on the Old Testament and the fulfillment of the Old Testament law. Because of this, it was necessary to go beyond the law-centered Judaism, and at the same time, be wary of Greek philosophical thought or the mixing of foreign religions. To cope with this, the early church saw the norms of faith as the acceptance of canonical documents of faith, the distribution and memorization of short beliefs or creeds, the organization of the early church and the decision of the council, and taught them to the believers to cope with heresy. Religious documents based on the apostolicity, universality, and divine authority, which were the norms of canonicalization, were accepted in each local community and became a single norm of faith to fight heresy. In order to effectively deal with heresy, short beliefs or creeds were created, distributed, and memorized to deal with heresy. Elders, deacons, etc., responded to the heresy centered on office workers. Under the attack of heresy, a bishop with apostolic authority exercised the power to protect the church. Regarding the orthodox doctrinal issues that need to be made eccentrically, the council of representatives from each local church gathered to decide the direction.