A new history of early Christianity (edit title/settings)

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• John Chrysostom: Bishop of Constantinople (398-404) who was famous for his oratory but also his impatience and irrascibility. He was popular with the common people for his condemnation of opulence both among the clergy and nobility, but this same attitude made him unpopular with the powerful in both the Church and State. His enemies plotted against him until they succeeded in deposing him. He died three years later.
• Mark: Traditionally presumed to be the name of the author of the oldest and simplest gospel. It forms the basis for the narrative of the other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke. (This theory has been disputed but most scholars accept it on the basis of analyses of parallels between the three texts; they conclude that, between Matthew and Luke, they both borrowed from Mark and another unknown source, but they did not borrow from each other.)
• Peter: One of the twelve apostles of Jesus, he is credited with being one of the main leaders of the early Church. Credited with two epistles in the New Testament although even many early Christians doubted that the second of these letters was authentic. Also credited with a gospel that was not included. Peter, known in Paul's epistles by the Aramaic name "Cephas" was in conflict with Paul over whether a Christian also had to follow Jewish Law.
• Constantine: Emperor of Rome in the early fourth century. He issued the Edict of Toleration of Christianity which essentially ended the persecution of Christians in Europe. Constantine also called the together the Council of Nicaea in 325 to enforce discipline and discourage dissent over Church doctrine. He and his mother not only tolerated but actively promoted Christianity throughout the empire, although Constantine was not baptized a Christian until he lay on his deathbed in 337.
• Matthew: Traditionally presumed to be the name of the author of what is believed to be the first gospel to combine a narrative of Jesus’ career with a larger collection of his sayings. (Luke attempted the same thing, but in Matthew’s earlier account, Jesus seems more human and more steeped in Judaism than Luke’s.)
• Augustine: Lived from 350 to 430. Bishop of Hippo (now in Algeria). He remains one of the most influential Christian writers. His dismal view of humankind's chances of escaping an eternity in hell -- even if one becomes a devout Christian -- has colored many Christians' pessimism about the possiblity of salvation. He justified coercion and execution as necessary in dealing with heresy. His dismissive attitude toward secular knowledge was also incorporated into medieval Christian thought and helped discourage scientific and social innovation.
• Irenaeus: Lived circa AD 130 to 200. Bishop of Lyon (in Gaul). Author of "Against Heresies." First churchman who explicitly advocated four and only four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. May also have been first to mention the doctrine of the Trinity but did not define it. Helped define orthodoxy and defended Church hierarchy by identifying and attacking heresies.
• Luke: Traditionally presumed to be the name of the author of what was probably the latest of the synoptic gospels. The only gospel that begins with a comment on the way it was written: Luke admits to having compiled his gospel from other sources. Whoever he was, he is also the author of the Book of Acts which follows John in the canonical New Testament.
• Jerome: Lived from 347 to 420. Sometime hermit (for only three years of his long life) and translator of the Old and New Testaments from their original languages (Hebrew and Greek, respectively) into Latin. In some cases he relied on earlier translations and his translations of some OT books were more summaries than translations.
• James: Sometimes known as James the Just and James the brother of Jesus. Just possibly the same as the apostle James, the son of Alphaeus, but usually understood as distinct from James, son of Zebedee, who was the brother of the apostle John. James the Just was an early leader of the Church in Jerusalem, equal to or possibly more influential than Peter. James was martyred in AD 62.
• Gregory of Nyssa: (330 -395) Bishop of Nyssa. Influential theologian. The first Christian known to advocate the abolition of slavery.
• Philo of Alexandria: Jewish philosopher who synthesized Greek and Jewish philosophical ideas
• Virgin Mary: A designation of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who became the center of several enormous controversies in Church history. She seems to be the mother of several children in the gospel accounts, but by the fourth century many Christians had elevated her to the status of near divinity and perpetual virginity. The question of whether she should be called "Theotokos," the bearer of God, and what that designation should mean if it were accepted, divided the Church and led to bloodshed.
• Ambrose: Bishop of Milan who lived c. 339-397. Not only strongly championed the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, but tried to raise the authority of the Church over that of the emperor.
• Adamas: Adam of Genesis, the first man
• Cyril: Fourth century bishop of Jerusalem who warned Christians to beware, if they traveled, that some foreign churches might belong to the heretical Marcionites. <See Marcion.>
• Justin Martyr: Christian writer. Author of "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew" (circa 135 AD). So named because he was martyred under Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
• Clement of Alexandria: Brilliant scholar who combined his interests in secular Greek learning with a devout Christian faith and an interest in mysticism.
• Stephen: One of the first martyrs of the Church in Jerusalem. Saul of Tarsus <see Paul> was involved in Stephen's murder according to the Book of Acts.
• Pontuis Pilate: Roman prefect of Judaea from AD 26 to 36, which coincides with the gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus under Pilate in the early first century.
• Alexander: Bishop of Alexandria at the time of the Council of Nicaea.
• Marcion: Dynamic, influential shipping magnate and Christian leader (died about AD 130). Regarded by other Christians as a heretic because he completely rejected Christianity's connection to the Jewish scriptures. Established churches in the Near East, some of which continued to operate in the fourth century. <See Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem.>
• Herod Antipas: Ruled Galilee 4 BC to 39 AD, which would have coincided with the time that Jesus lived according to the gospels.
• Julian: Add a description of this character.
• Tertullian: Carthaginian theologian who was among the first influential writers who was fluent in both Greek and Latin. He was strongly opposed to the influence of Greek philosophy which he blamed for the heresies within Christianity.
• Nestorius
• Didymus Judas Thomas, aka, Doubting Thomas: Didymus Judas Thomas (a redundant name because "Didymus" and "Thomas" both mean "twin"). One of the twelve apostles. Thought to be the author of the probably later expanded sayings gospel called the Gospel of Thomas.
• Theophilus: Bishop of Alexandria at the beginning of the fifth century who plotted to raise Alexandria above Constantinople. Allied himself with Empress of the eastern empire to depose John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople. Outspoken in his opposition to the writings of Origen. Accused Chrysostom of being an Origenist.
• Cyprian: Influential bishop of Carthage
• Polycarp: Bishop of Smyrna who was martyred about 155 AD.
• David: King of Israel about ten centuries BC.
• Timothy
• Marcian: Byzantine emperor (450-457 AD) who helped define the Chalcedonian formula of Christ's humanity. Not to be confused with Marcion (died about 160).
• Leo
• Pliny: Pliny the Younger, Governor of Pontus, who dealt with complaints about Christians whom he considered cultists and superstitious
• Honorius: Emperor of Rome
• Felix
• Damasus: Bishop of Rome
• Abraham: Father of the Hebrews
• Cornelius
• Galerius
• Arius
• Antoninus Pius
• Anthony: Third to fourth century hermit made famous by Athanasius whose Life of Anthony portrays him as unlettered but pious; whereas Anthony’s own writings show him to have been sophisticated in his thinking about asceticism.
• Paul: Born Saul of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, he was a devout Jew who moved to Jerusalem where he participated in the persecution of the first Christian community. On his way to persecute Christians in Damascus, he encountered a blinding light that asked, “Why do you persecute me?” From this moment, Saul became a Christian. He later took the name “Paul” from a Roman patron named Paulus. Paul was a Roman citizen and preached to those outside of Israel, travelling as far as Greece and Rome. His conflict with Peter over whether Christians should also live as Jews reflected a deep split that developed between Jewish and gentile Christians. His letters are the oldest Christian writings that made it into the New Testament. Even skeptics, who doubt many of the NT books were written by the person to whom they are attributed, acknowledge that Paul wrote several (most say six) of the thirteen letters attributed to him. His vivid if anguished theology was popular among early Christians and was promoted by many churchmen including Augustine, one of the most influential Christian writers.
• Montanus: Founder of the New Prophecy or Montanism. Preached that the New Jerusalem would soon (second century) descend upon Phrygia (Montanus' home province), there would be physical resurrection and the end of the world as we know it. If you did not believe in him and his two prophetesses, it proved that your faith was weak. Movement was popular in Rome and took in educated and uneducated Christians alike. Opposition by the inchoate Church hierarchy, however, was also fierce. (See also Prisca and Maximilla.)
• Prisca: Prophetess of the Montanist movement in the second century. (See Montanus.) She spoke in tongues and her enemies claimed she was immoral and had abandoned her husband.
• Maximilla: Prophetess of the Montanist movement in the second century. (See Montanus.) She spoke in tongues and her enemies claimed she was immoral and had abandoned her husband.
• John: Traditionally presumed to be the name of the author of one of the canonical gospels. Traditionally thought to be one of Jesus’ apostles. The gospel is more philosophical and mystical than the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. He is also presumed to be the author of three epistles.

Quotes edit see section history

• “There are enough similarities between these three gospels <Mark, Matthew and Luke> to deserve the title 'synoptic' ('with one eye'). Mark had established (or had himself followed) a model that, with additions and developments, his two immediate successors were prepared to follow. Yet it is also extraordinarily difficult to draw any kind of coherent theology from these gospels. Jesus hovers somewhere in between heaven and earth, sometimes closer to one than to the other, but always in some form of special relationship with God. None of the titles conferred on him assume divinity – this would have been impossible within the Jewish context in which he is presented. It is not always clear whether the kingdom has already arrived or is yet to come. There remains a tension between his mission as a universal saviour and as leader of a small specific sect that had distinguished itself by an absolute commitment to him and the rejection of others. His relationship with the Jews remains ambiguous.”

• “Whatever the forces that brought the final canonical texts of the New Testament together in the fourth century, they did not achieve a coherent body of teachings that could be used easily by believers. They were not selected for their compatibility on major issues, such as the nature of Christ. They show rather the different ways in which Christ was being worshipped in an age when communities were still trying to find meaning for their beliefs.”

• “When the demand for theological certainty grew in the fourth century onwards, different factions in the debate were drawn to different texts, some to the synoptic gospels as against the gospel of John, some to Paul as against the gospels. This was understandable and inevitable. It would prove particularly difficult to define the relationship between Jesus and God and the degree to which Jesus was divine while on earth and, if so, how this related to his humanity. Did he swap over from divinity to humanity at will or was he some kind of composite spiritual/human being at all times? The New Testament certainly provides no unambiguous answers to any of these questions. What it does provide is evidence of vitality and diversity within the early Christian world, an important legacy for those trying to understand how the history of Christianity developed.”

• “The early Christian communities present a major challenge for the historian: the sources are so limited. However, we may gain insights from modern examples of small independent churches. In James Ault’s account of Baptist fundamentalism in the United States, 'Spirit and Flesh,' for instance, he explores the setting up of a small Baptist community in Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1980s. ... The personality of the preacher proved important, as did the atmosphere of welcome that the community provided, especially as there were so many rival Christian groups in the town for believers and searchers to choose from.”

• “Ault’s study reminds us how many issues Christians can disagree on, especially when situations arise when a very small disagreement reflects deeper personal tensions within the group. So when one reads in the New Testament of 'false teachers' and those who deny Christ in the flesh, there is little to be surprised about. The so called 'Didache' … of AD 100 speaks of the problem of recognizing genuine prophets in a way that would have been instantly familiar to Ault’s fundamentalists.”

• “<The First Letter of Clement> is important evidence of an emerging church hierarchy. Even if the early Christian communities had been egalitarian, the traditional Jewish division between a priestly elite and the laity had reasserted itself. By 100 there are the first references to bishops as senior to presbyters and deacons. The Greek word 'episkopos' originally meant an overseer and so its early use by Paul does not necessarily imply a bishop in the sense of an authoritative leader of a church community. By the early 100s, on the other hand, in the letters of Ignatius, the episkopos is treated as an important figure in his own right: 'You are clearly obliged to look upon the bishop as the Lord himself,' he writes.”

• “Who were the early members of Christian communities? They appear to have been a diverse group. Many remained close to Judaism, certainly to its scriptures, even if they had by now rejected the need for circumcision, ritual diet and sacrifice. … Others may have been from that elusive group, the so-called God-fearers who lingered on the edge of the Jewish communities without giving them full commitment. Then there was the wider gentile community targeted by Paul. Some of these would have been used to cults involving initiation rites, collegiate activities including shared meals and belief in a spiritual world that somehow transcended the evils of the material one and so many features of Christianity might have been familiar to them. Greek was the language of the church – even in Rome. The earliest Christian text in Latin is dated to about 180. In the western empire, this meant that Christians were distinguished from their fellow pagans <sic?> by language as well as belief.”

• “The position of women is more complex. Jesus was clearly open to them, ready to associate even with those who were considered dissolute by his apostles. Paul claims to give women equality with men before Christ. Yet, …one senses a completely different response to the presence of women. Jesus was adamant in his condemnation of divorce but he does not seem to have been preoccupied with the temptations of physical contact in the way that Paul was. Jesus .... transcends sexuality. Paul is consumed with fears of his own unworthiness and refers often to the destructive power of lust. He regards celibacy as preferable to marriage for those who can control their desires (but marriage for those who cannot, ‘Better to marry than to burn’) and this approach became popular. … This was in conflict with traditional Jewish views on the importance of marriage and family life. However, Christianity did provide roles for women that may have been denied them elsewhere.”

• “Traditionally these early Christian communities have been portrayed as having a strong sense of mission and purpose. They were, it was said, already well on their way to defining what would later become 'the church,’ making an effective break with their Jewish roots in the process. Yet most of the texts speak of disputes and divisions and an ambivalent attitude to Judaism. The more that is known of the diversity of Judaism, the more it is understood that there could be distinct Christianities that evolved from different Jewish traditions. The empire itself was so fragmented and any new Christian community would have to adapt to local pagan conditions to survive. It seems difficult, then, to talk of any form of institutional church at this date <circa AD 100>. The picture is rather of many different conceptions of Jesus and ways of worshipping him. Some more rooted in Judaism than others.”

• “It used to be argued that Greek culture was stagnant in the second century AD, especially when compared to the achievements of the classical era of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. … This claim of a moribund Greek world has long since been exploded. Archaeological research and a renewed interest in Greek literature of the period have shown that Greek culture was buzzing, dynamic and expansionist. Certainly the Greeks had been shattered by the experience of defeat and humiliation at the hands of the Romans in the second century BC but their conquerors valued Greek civilization and by the second century AD confidence in their intellectual superiority had returned. In fact, it was under Roman rule that Greek culture penetrated more fully into the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean than it had ever done in the aftermath of the conquests of Alexander <the Great>.”

• “A series of apocryphal stories (meaning, in this context, texts, usually of a much later date, wrongly attributed to the apostles or other early Christians) of the apostles written in the second or early third centuries are often disregarded as of no historical value, yet they tell a great deal about how Christians saw themselves in this period. They share a common theme. An apostle arrives in a city, preaches and converts many. Usually a high-born woman is among the converts and she then calls on her husband to renounce sexual relations with her. The infuriated husband succeeds in return in having the apostle sentenced to death. The emphasis is not only on the distastefulness of sex, 'horrid intercourse' as the Acts of Thomas puts it, but on the apostle challenging the traditional social hierarchy and the subverting of the institution of marriage. Christians are presenting themselves as the representatives of a counter-culture.”

• “<Justin Martyr’s ‘Dialogue with Trypho the Jew’> raises a number of issues that have often resurfaced in the history of Christianity. For a start, which text does one use? The Christians use the Septuagint <Hebrew Bible in Greek> but surely, Trypho argues, the original Hebrew is preferable, especially when discussing issues such as the virgin birth where Matthew has used a faulty translation of the Hebrew. (Justin is forced into replying that he believes the translation to be more trustworthy than the original!)”

• “Trypho accuses the Christians of interpreting the texts to suit their purpose, using allegory in an unjustifiably imaginary way to support their beliefs. One can understand why Jews felt angry with this. Why should their own scriptures be twisted to support the claims of an upstart religion that considered itself superior? Often, Trypho remarks, it is clear that a reference, to a king, for instance, is to a king in the text itself; in one case he cites Solomon. One could not pretend that here the term 'king' actually refers to Jesus. In short, in so far as it rested on Jewish prophecy the whole of Christian belief is built on weak foundations.”

• “In short, it is hard to talk of a gnostic movement, still less of a gnostic church, in the second century. A preferable approach is to see Christian theology in this era as interplay between Gentile newcomers, many of them well educated in Greek philosophy, and more traditional Christians. … The ‘gnostics’ were often doing no more than asking the questions that intelligent outsiders could be expected to ask of a movement which was still not clear in itself about what it believed. Some of their answers were extreme, straying into the realms of myth-ridden fantasies; others were not so different from those of their co-religionists.”

• “However, in order to make his theology 'fit' with history <Bishop> Irenaus often distorts the past. He believed that to be fully representative of humankind, Jesus had to live through every phase of human life including old age. This forces him to argue that Jesus lived to be an old man, even to the reign of Trajan (which began in AD 98). It is not clear whether he believed that this was a resurrected Christ who had lived on as such for many years or whether the crucifixion took place when Jesus was old. Irenaeus claims that it was the apostles who passed on the tradition that Jesus lived to be an old man, even though the gospels make it quite clear that he was crucified in his thirties and, according to Luke, was only present in a resurrected form for forty days. Irenaeus ignores this contradiction.”

• “Tatian, a <2nd century> Greek Christian from Syria ... set about creating a single version of the four gospels, known as the Diatessaron (‘through the four’). It may have been written in the author’s native Syriac (although it was probably soon translated into Greek). Tatian omitted the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke (these contradicted each other and could hardly be reconciled) but reproduced much of the rest of the gospels, though in a revised chronological order. With duplicate verses omitted, the harmonised gospel was just over 70 per cent of the length of the original four. The Diatessaron became very popular in Syria and the east. … <Then> Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, a city on the Euphrates, Collected up about two hundred copies of the original Diatessaron in the 450s, destroyed them and replaced them with versions of the canonical gospels. Even so, it is fascinating to note that the Koran refers to a single Christian gospel and this may well be the Diatessaron.”

• “<According to canons promulgated in the fourth century by a council of bishops that met at Elvira, Spain> <t>he normal penalties for infringing the rules of conduct are a period of penance, sometimes as much as ten years, or excommunication. … A male adulterer may be pardoned on his death bed if he renounces his partner: if he recovers and resumes the relationship he can never be readmitted to the church. Women who leave their husbands for another man can never be readmitted to the church, even on their deathbeds. Consecrated virgins who break their vows and do not repent are permanently excommunicated. If they do repent and refrain from further sex, they may be offered communion but again only on their deathbeds. In comparison to the harsh treatment of sexual misdemeanors, other offences attract less condemnation. Seven years excommunication from the church for a woman who intentionally beats her slave girl to death, five years if the death is not caused intentionally, seems lenient.”

• “As a more authoritarian Christianity developed in the <fourth> century, Origen's optimistic ethos came under scrutiny. The pre-existence of souls, the subordination of Jesus to God the Father, his belief in the limited nature of hell, all aroused suspicion. It was one of the paradoxes of Christian history that as Christians came to live in greater freedom, their own perception of the power of God became more pessimistic.”

• “There was now confusion as charge and counter charge followed each other until Constantine intervened. … ‘<U>rging all towards agreement, until he had brought them to be of one mind and one belief on all matters in dispute.’ His means of doing so was a bombshell. He suggested, possibly on his own initiative, perhaps at the instigation of <his trusted advisor> Ossius, that the correct way of describing the relationship between Father and Son was to declare them homoousios, ‘of one substance’. The motive was probably to isolate Arius through inserting a phrase that his supporters would never accept. … <One problem was that> Paul of Samosata had used <homoousios> to describe the relationship between Christ as logos and God, and he had been declared heretical in the 260s. While one might be able to make some distinction between Paul’s use of the word and its use at Nicaea, the odour of heresy lingered.”

• “Almost everyone signed up to it. Eusebius of Caesarea, who joined the majority, was deeply unsettled by the whole occasion and had to write to his congregation explaining why he had assented to the homoousios formula. He glosses over the problem as if it were of little import but his embarrassment is obvious.”

• “No one knows where the basic text of the Nicene creed originates …. It was probably provided at short notice, possibly by Eusebius of Caesarea who did indeed claim that it was his local creed. The final version, with its additions, was compromised by the overwhelming desire to isolate Arius. <One of its anti-Arian condemnations> left it unclear whether Jesus was distinct from the Father at all – in other words it smacked of Sabellianism <a heresy that said Jesus was a temporary manifestation of God>. More reflection would probably have avoided this. Nor was there any assertion of a Trinity. The only reference to the Holy Spirit was ‘And I believe in the Holy Spirit’. The assembled bishops had missed their chance to describe any relationship between the Spirit and Father and Son.”

• “One has to agree with Richard Hanson, the author of the fullest study of the affair, that ‘the Creed was a mine of potential confusion and consequently most unlikely to be a means of ending the Arian controversy’. All this is understandable in the context of a council that was concerned more with backing the authority of the bishops and the state than with theological precision. No one could have imagined that the creed, even when modified at the Council of Constantinople in 381, would become the core of the Christian faith.”

• “<Constantine encouraged Arius> to sign an acceptable statement of beliefs and urged the new bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, to readmit him to the church. Athanasius refused, to the fury of Constantine, who banished him from his see and exiled him to Gaul. Constantine had little time for those who spurned compromise. The bishop of Constantine’s new capital Constantinople had to be asked to carry out the ceremony. He was about to comply but on the way to the ceremony Arius collapsed and died in a public latrine. His opponents saw this as the vengeance of God on a heretic.”

• “Once, when he was asked about his relationship to the church, Constantine replied that he was a bishop for those outside the church, not for those already inside, and it is true that he usually kept his distance from the institution. The bishops attended him, not he their church. They often offended him by their intransigence. ‘You, the bishops, do nothing but that which encourages discord and hatred and, to speak frankly, which leads to the destruction of the human race,’ was one remarkable outburst.”

• “In traditional histories of the church, it was, and in some cases still is, taught that Nicaea had promulgated a creed which relected ‘the truth’, even the established tradition of the church, and this was subverted by ‘Arian’ heretics until Nicaea was reasserted by the assembled bishops at the Council of Constantinople, called by Theodosius in 381. This view, which originated in the accounts of the winners in the debate, such as Athanasius and Jerome, will no longer do. Nicaea was a muddled formula, adopted in the heat of the moment to achieve the political purpose of isolating Arius and this was recognized, not least by Constantine, as soon as the dust had settled. The church historian Socrates, writing a century after Nicaea with access to documents now lost, had letters of bishops before him in which they expressed their confusion over the term homoousios.”

• “It was hard enough to make a philosophically coherent case for the pre-existence of Christ but even more difficult to say with any authority when this pre-existence might have begun. While there was a wealth of relevant New Testament texts, in the gospels, where Jesus talked about his relationship with the Father, and in the letters of Paul, where the apostle expressed his own thoughts, these were far too varied to forge into any kind of coherent theology. The twenty-seven texts of the New Testament had not been selected for their compatibility on this question and everyone could find passages from scripture to support their views.”

• “One of the more impressive expressions of the mainstream subordinationist view is to be found in a creed drawn up by a small council of bishops at Sirmium (in the Balkans) in 357. The participating Greek-speaking bishops refused to endorse any formula relating to the creation of Jesus. ‘It is clear that only the Father knows how he begot his Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father’ was their sensible response. They were wise enough to recognize that this was an issue beyond human knowledge. The bishops went on to reject the word homoousios <of the same substance> on the grounds that it had never appeared in scripture. Instead, it seemed obvious to them that the Father was superior to Jesus. … One of the key points in the subordinationist position was that God could not suffer. If Jesus Christ was ‘one in substance with the Father’ then he would not be able to suffer either.”

• “Ulfilas now worked with Goths settled in the empire and he produced a Gothic translation of the Bible, remarkable in that he left out some of the most warlike texts of the Old Testament on the grounds that his congregations needed no further encouragement to be warriors!”

• “In Athanasius’ Life of Anthony, Anthony is presented as an unlettered man, a committed Nicene who rejects learning but who confounds philosophers by sheer force of personality whenever they come out to the desert to debate with him. The Life of Anthony circulated widely, inspiring many others, including Augustine. It is ironic that letters of the real Anthony have been discovered which show that, in contrast to the fabricated anti-intellectual of Athanasius, he was well educated and able to write profoundly on asceticism.”

• “We are handicapped by our lack of knowledge of western theology in this period. In the eyes of Greek contemporaries, it did not amount to much: ‘You will not find that any one of the western nations have any great inclination for philosophy or geometry or studies of that sort’, was the dismissive comment of the emperor Julian on the matter and many Greeks argued that Latin did not have sufficient subtlety as a language to deal with theological issues. One recent exhaustive study of the Nicene disputes has to admit that ‘our knowledge of Latin Christology and Trinitarian theology in the west between 250 and 360 is extremely limited and certainly not such that we can make certain judgements about its overall character’.”

• “Paradoxically Athanasius, who claimed to put scripture before philosophy, was acutely vulnerable if the debate was rooted in the scriptures. So he hit on the device of classifying all subordinationists as followers of Arius and then lambasting all as heretics. Tract after tract followed against the Arians. Here Athanasius was at his most unscrupulous. Anyone who opposed him on political or religious grounds was declared to be an Arian. The devil was said to have inspired the Arians’ use of scripture. The Arians were so wicked that they could only be compared to the Hydra … They were no better than Jews or corrupted by the philosophy of the pagans. The cumulative effect of this invective was so great that the dispute became known as the Arian controversy, even though Arius had been only one representative of the subordinationist tradition. It did nothing to raise Athanasius’ reputation as a theologian among his contemporaries. This was power politics not philosophical debate.”

• “In his Contra Galilaeos (‘Against the Galileans’) Julian used his considerable knowledge of the scriptures to highlight their contradictions. Why is there no recognition in the synoptic gospels of Jesus’ divinity, for instance? The use of Old Testament prophecies as harbingers of Christ is arbitrary and unjustified. Why did God create Eve if he knew that she would thwart his plans for creation? Within this critique, Julian made a sophisticated plea fro religious toleration, on the grounds that each culture needed to define the supreme divinity in its own way.”

• “Themistius had two concerns, the fear that a restored Christianity would lead to a backlash against pagans and a deep anxiety that Christian infighting was undermining the stability of the empire. He pleaded for mutual tolerance. Themistius stressed the impossibility of anyone, an emperor included, controlling the human soul. Persecution of the body could never destroy the freedom that was intrinsic to its identity. Instead God had implanted ‘a favorable disposition to piety’ in human minds but had left each to follow its own path. God actually enjoyed being worshipped in a number of ways, a positive appreciation of the tolerance of God that later disappeared from western thought. In any case, Themistius went on, a society was only healthy if it allowed free competition between individuals and ideas.”

• “Basil <of Caesarea> was concerned in particular to bring the Holy Spirit into the Godhead and … some form of equality with Father and Son. His most enduring work is his On the Holy Spirit of 375 … its terminology reappears in the revised version of the Nicene creed which the bishops drew up at the Council of Constantinople in 381.”

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• An observant Jew would attend the Temple three times a year: at the Passover, which was linked to the Feast of the Unleavened Bread that immediately followed it, Pentecost, and the feast of the Tabernacles.

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• With so much confusion within the gospel accounts, whether women saw Jesus or not, and whether in Galilee or Jerusalem or both, whether he was a spiritual being (Paul) or a human one, able to eat and display his wounds but also with the ability to vanish at will (Luke's Emmaus appearance) and go through closed doors (John), it is impossible to provide a coherent narrative account of what was seen.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Jerusalem
• Alexandria
• Constantinople
• Antioch
• Egypt
• Galilee
• Italy
• Carthage
• Judaea
• Nicaea
• Israel
• Asia
• Caesarea
• Temple
• Ephesus
• North Africa
• Gaul
• Palestine
• Corinth
• Europe
• Chalcedon
• Athens
• Ravenna
• Spain
• Bethlehem
• Milan
• Edessa
• Smyrna
• Cappadocia
• Thessalonika
• Nazareth
• Qumran
• Galatia
• Persia
• Cyprus
• Holy Land
• Santa Sophia: Church in Constantinople
• Phrygia
• Nag Hammadi: Isolated location in southern Egypt where a cache of "gnostic" texts were found in 1945.
• Rome
• Syria
• Pontus

First Sentence edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Canon: 1. a rule or article of faith decreed by a church council; 2. a list of the books accepted as New Testament scripture. adjective: canonical
• Adoptionism: Belief that Jesus became the Son of God at his baptism or resurrection, but not before.
• Anathema: An official statement that condemns heretical views and/or expels heretics.
• Apocrypha: Formally, a group of books that were rejected by the Jewish religion but accepted into the Old Testament that was used by some Christians. The adjective "apocryphal" also applies to early Chrisitian texts that were not included in the New Testament, such as the Gospel of Peter. A related word not used in this book: Pseudepigrapha, meaning texts attributed to a Jewish prophet or an early church father but actually written by someone else, usually at a much later time. Many books left out of the Bible on grounds that they were apocryphal were just as authentic (or inauthentic) as those included. For example, the epistles attributed to Peter are no more authentic than the Gospel of Peter, yet the former were included in the NT while the latter was not.
• Apophatism: The rejection of all attempts to describe God; belief that God can only be described by saying what God is not.
• Apostolic succession: The belief that all Christian doctrines were passed down from Christ to the apostles and thence to the bishops and continues to pass on to each generation of bishops. This doctrine justifies the hierarchy of the Church. Bishops must be obeyed because they represent Christ; therefore, whatever doctrine the Church teaches must be assumed to have been handed down from Him.
• Arianism: Technically, limited to the belief propounded by Arius that Christ did not exist eternally but was created by God. The term was later used abusively against all "Subordinationists" (qv) even though they did not necessarily subscribe to Arius' particular view. That is, Arius was a subordinationist, but not all subordinationists were Arians.
• Codex: Plural: Codices. The first book as we know it. A manuscript made up of pages bound between covers. It replaced the scroll just at the point where Christians were beginning to produce books. The earliest complete Christian texts are almost entirely found in codex form rather than on scrolls.
• Consubstantial: See "Homoousios"
• Demiurge: From the Greek "demiourgos" meaning "craftsman," it was used in Platonic philosophy to mean the force or god that actually created the world. Some early Christians and pagans believed that the ultimate or supreme God was not the same as the lesser god who created the world. This belief was held by certain "gnostic" (qv) Christians.
• Diatessaron: The first composite or harmonized gospel, made by editing the four gospels together. The editor was Tatian, a second century Syrian Christian. Where one gospel repeated something also found in another gospel, Tatian edited out the duplicate verse. The result was 70 percent of the length of the four gospels together. In the mid fifth century, Bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus, a city on the Euphrates River, destroyed as many copies of the Diatessaron as possible and replaced them with the four gospels. But some Christians seem to have continued to use it, and some scholars think that Mohamed was exposed to the Diatessaron because the Quran, the holy book of Islam, speaks of there being only one gospel.
• Docetism: The belief that Jesus only appeared to be human but actually did not have a physical body. The implication of this is that Jesus could not really have been crucified or did not feel pain. It is thought that the Gospel of Peter may have been rejected because its description of the crucifixion could be interpreted to support docetism, whether or not this was the author's intention.
• Donatism: A Christian denomination opposed to the Catholic Church which they saw as corrupted by wealth, power and compromise with paganism and heresy. While they accepted many of the same doctrines as the Catholic Church, they believed that any Catholic who became a Christian needed to be rebaptized. They were fanatical and violent in their destruction of pagan shrines. They controlled large parts of North Africa. Augustine, the Catholic bishop of Hippo, supported a law that criminalized Donatism in 412.
• Ebionites: Ebionites were one of the Jewish Christian sects that may have existed (or may not have existed since they are only known through their detractors who say sometimes contradictory things about their beliefs and practices) during the early Christian era. They are said to have followed the Torah or Jewish Law but regarded Jesus as the Messiah but not as the unique Son of God. They may have been persecuted out of existence by both Jews and Christians. Some writers said that they read only a Gospel written by Matthew that may not have been the same as the Gospel of Matthew found in the canonical New Testament.
• Filioque: Latin term added to the Nicene Creed (qv) by Augustine to indicate that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son (Latin: Filius) as well as from God the Father. The split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches was furthered because the eastern church never accepted this formulation.
• Gnosticism: This term actually was coined by eighteenth century scholars. Heresiologists (those who set themselves up as defenders of the faith against the beliefs held by other Christians which they called heresy(qv)) in the early Church only referred to "gnostics" or self-described Christians who exalted knowledge over faith or regarded both as equally important. Thus no one used the term "Gnosticism." Full Gnosticism implies a set of elaborate beliefs about the evil nature of the world created by a demiurge (qv) and teaches the means to rescue oneself from it. The means are embedded in the world --in one's very soul -- by the true, supreme God. Jesus is thought to have been a pure manifestation of God sent to teach humankind how to escape ensnarement in the created world. This teaching is the knowledge or "gnosis" that was taught by the gnostics. The recently discovered "Gospel of Judas" contains a fairly typical account of these teachings, complete with a demiurge and docetism (qv). One problem, however, is that heresiologists were indiscriminate in whom they called a "gnostic." Many of those, such as Valentinus in the second century, who were called "gnostics" by their enemies may not actually have subscribed to any of the typically elaborate doctrines of Gnosticism. They valued knowledge and set up schools to teach Greek philosophy along with Christian faith.
• Heresy: Any belief deemed to fall outside of acceptable belief. It originally meant the choice to follow a specific teaching or philsophy. As Christianity dictated beliefs more and more, demanding strict obedience, heresy became the accusation that one held wrong and wicked beliefs. In many instances, such as the Donatists versus the Catholics in fourth century North Africa, both sides hurled the accusation of heresy against each other.
• Hexapla: Scholarly project of Origen of Alexandria that places six Hebrew and Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible side by side with notations showing discrepancies. The book is now lost except for a few fragments; however, it was available to Jerome who used it to translate the Old Testament into Latin.
• Homoios: Greek word meaning "like" and used to describe the relationship of God the Father to the Son as advanced according to one school of thought in the early fourth century. Considered heretical. See also "Homoiousios" and "Homoousios."
• Homoiousios: Greek word meaning "like in substance." Similar to Homoios (qv). Both descriptions of the relationship between God the Father and the Son were rejected by the Church in the fourth century and again in the fifth.
• Homoousios: Greek word meaning "of the same substance." Description of the relationship between God the Father and the Son accepted by the Church in the fourth and again in the fifth centuries. Oddly, the Holy Spirit, which was eventually broughtinto the formula as also of the same substance, was at first left out except as an after thought, apparently because the participants in the debate over the relationship of the Father and Son were too preoocupied with these two persons that they forgot to include the Holy Spirit. Despite the ultimate formulation of equality with the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit seems to have been treated as a second-class person during the debates.
• Hypostasis: Greek word meaning "person" or "personality" used in the same way as the Latin word "persona" to describe each member of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
• Justification by faith: Term used by Paul and later Christians to designate the way one is made righteous in God's eyes.
• Kerygma: Announcement of the Gospel. From the Greek word for "preaching."
• Logos: From the Greek word for "word," it also meant "a reasoned account" or "reason" itself. In pagan religious philosophy, it came to mean an intermediary between God and humanity. Christianity, especially after the Gospel of John, turned "Logos" into a name for Christ.
• Manicheism: (Also, Manichaeism) Religion that competed with Christianity and may have recognized Jesus as a prophet. Founded by a third century Persian named Mani, it rejected the world as evil and posited the forces of darkness in opposition to the forces of light. Though Christianity rejected the notion of the physical world as evil, the light versus dark analogy was also expressed in the Gospel and Epistles of John and other Christian writings.
• Metropolitan Bishop: A bishop of the capital city of a province who takes responsibility for the doctrine and practice of the whole province. The consolidation of ecclesiastical power in the Metropolitan bishopric was an important step toward unifying Christianity into a widely influential institution.
• Middle Platonism: A form of Platonism (based on the philosophy of Plato) that arose in the second and third centuries. It stressed the religious aspects of Plato's original philosophy and developed the notion of a hierarchy of the immaterial world with a Supreme Good at its top. By identifying God with this Supreme Good, Christian scholars found an accomodation between Christianity and pagan philosophy.
• Mithraism: A religion that competed with Christianity. Mithra was a Zoroastrian or Persian deity and was protector of truth, redeemer of humankind, and judge of the world. This religion may be closely related to Manicheism (qv).
• Monophysitism: The belief that Christ's nature was singular and primarily divine. Within this divine nature, his human nature was a subordinate component. This formulation was rejected by successive councils of the Church, but it remained popular in some regions, especially Egypt.
• Montanism: A Christian charismatic movement founded by Montanus in the second century. He was assisted by two female prophetesses who spoke in tongues and prophesied. Tertullian, an otherwise "orthodox" churchman, was drawn into this movement.
• Muratorian fragment: A seventh century copy of what is believed to have been a second century original. It is noteworthy because its second century origin would make it the oldest list of many of the books of the New Testament. Because it is an incomplete fragment, it can only be presumed that the author was discussing Matthew and Mark before the fragment begins with reference to Luke and John. The fragment does not include the epistles of Peter, James or that to the Hebrews. Only two epistles of John are mentioned. Interestingly, The Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter are mentioned but of the three, only the Apocalypse of John is to be read in church, meaning that the first two were rejected nfor inclusion in the canon of the New Testament.
• Nag Hammadi texts: A fourth century cache of codices (see Codex, above) found in an Egyptian cave in 1945. These books cast a great deal of light on Gnosticism (qv) and gnostics (qv). They appear to have been hidden by Pachomian monks (followers of the monastic Pachomius) who knew or believed that the books they consigned to a hiding place had been banned. The texts included range from Plato's Republic to a version of the Gospel of Thomas, the former because it represented secular learning of a pagan origin and the latter because it represented a gnostic interpretation of Christianity.
• Neoplatonism: Influential pagan religious philosophy that may have provided the terminology used by Christian to describe the Trinity.
• Nicene Creed: Statement of the Catholic Church that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit exist as three personalities in one Godhead. Called the Trinity, this doctrine was at first so poorly explained by the Council of Nicaea that even bishops who voted for it went away confused about the correct explanation of the doctrine. It took another century and two more councils to improve on the doctrine, but many thought that it still did not make any sense and continued to contest it.
• Nestorianism: The belief that Christ had two entirely separate natures, divine and human. Named for Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople who was deposed in 431 by Emperor Theodoius II at the instigation of Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria who represented Monophytism (qv). However, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 upheld the notion of two natures but not entirely separate, thereby rejecting both Nestorianism and Monophytism.
• Novatianism: The belief that Christians who lapse as the result of persecution should not be allowed to return to the Church.
• Paideia: The lofty Greek ideal of excellence in culture and learning.
• Parrhesia: The freedom of speech recognized under Paideia (qv). Comparable to the modern notion of academic freedom. It was abolished about 530 by Emperor Justinian.
• Patristics: The study of early Christian theology, especially from AD 100 to 600.
• Pelagianism: The belief that free will plays a major role in salvation. The controversy over this view, advanced by Pelagius, was settled about 430 in favor of Augustine's view that we are at the mercy of God's grace and cannot do anything to obtain it.
• Q: A hypothetical gospel consisting entirely of sayings of Jesus. Some scholars believe that it is a lost gospel preserved only in the similar sayings found in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark. Almost no one considers the rather obvious possibility that Q is one and the same as the Matthean Sayings Gospel reported by the second century Christian, Papius. The hypothesis that Q existed was propounded in the nineteenth century before any sayings gospel had been attested; however, several fragments of a sayings gospel were discovered beginning in the 1890s, and a complete copy of one was found in 1945. That gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, bears only the slightest resemblance to the sayings in Matthew and Luke and therefore is not considered to be one and the same as Q.
• Qumran community: Reclusive Jewish group that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls and helped to show that Judaism was divided into various sects in the first century. Some scholars believe that the different sects of Judaism may have spawned different sects within Christianity almost from its beginning.
• Sabellianism: The belief that Christ was never distinct from God but was a temporary manifestation of Him.
• Sethianism: The belief that Seth, one of Adam and Eve's sons, received the divine spirit from the True God and thus was capable of escape from the world created by the demiurge (qv). This view is associated with Gnosticism (qv).
• Subordinationism: The belief that Jesus is subordinate to God the Father. A belief rejected by successive councils of the Church but well supported by the gospel texts and consequently continuously held by many Christians including the Ostrogoths who conquered Rome in the late fifth century.
• Theotokos: Greek meaning "bearer of God." A title given to the Virgin Mary in the fifth century.
• Tritheism: The belief that the Trinity represents three different gods rather than three aspects of one Godhead.

Errata edit see section history

The name of the Byzantine emperor Marcian is misspelled as "Marcion" on page 301. The index does not list page 301 for either "Marcian" or "Marcion." Marcion was a a second century leader of an eastern Christian sect that came to be regarded as heretical. Marcian was a fifth century emperor.

The index also fails to include all references to words, names and places. For example, the city of Lyons in Gaul (today, France) is only given a citation on page 209 even though it is also mentioned on 157.

These are not the only typos in the book, but they are the only ones specifically recalled. There is at least one other.

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 270.1

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity › Church History › Early Church
• Books › History › Ancient