Is there a church that accepts Christ's teachings but does not accept the...

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JenniferB

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...epistles as canon? Something more like the earliest Christian churches?

I have always wondered this, but have never found any such church.
I have studied the bible and the history of the bible and apocrypha independently and in academic and religious settings. I have my own ideas about both. I believe the teachings assigned to Paul are not necessarily in line with those assigned to Jesus. Even non-Pauline epistles take a very different tone from Pauline epistles.

I'm not saying that Paul's work is totally antithetical to Christ's teachings or that they aren't useful if you are seeking to understand Christ's teachings. However, I am not interested in what the Church says about Paul's teachings or what Paul said about his own teachings or what Paul said about scripture, which the modern churches have extended to include the teachings of Paul.

I am interested in a more Christ-centered church.

Therefore, I am interested in researching churches that emphasize Jesus' teachings as opposed to Paul's.
 
The earliest Christian Church had no canon except the Hebrew Scriptures. The Canon of Christian Scripture wasn't defined by the Catholic Church until the end of the 4th Century. After that, it remained unchanged for 1,500 years, until Luther decided to remove 10 books, 7 from the Old Testament and 3 from the New Testament. Fortunately his followers were at the point of rebellion over trashing the writings of the Apostles, so the New Testament was spared. If Luther had his way, Protestants would be using an incomplete Bible of 63 books instead of the incomplete Bible of 66 books they do use.
 
Probably not.

The early Christian churches didn't have the literature available as we do today, but we accept that the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is accurate and is God-breathed just like the rest of the Holy Bible. The early churches were visited by Christ's disciples themselves or often their "next generation" Christian brothers. There were letters circulated back and forth between Christians and churches in certain locations, which makes up a large portion of the remainder of the New Testament. Now that we have it all written down it is distributed together. With the amount of biblical scholars and skeptics researching the validity of the Bible it is highly unlikely any glaring errors would have survived this long. Fortunately there are no errors, because God authored them through the hands of His followers.

Anyway, if a church rejects those books then they are claiming those particular books are not God inspired. If you do find such a church I would be very cautious in any involvement with them. Who wants to associate with an establishment claiming to represent God that then turns around and claims that some of God's people were liars or acting on their own accord? Sounds like dangerous ground to me.
 
You won't. 2 Peter 1:21 "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
 
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