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History of Christian theology

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Impressions of current article

For the lede:

• There isn't a real lede. Article begins by abruptly talking about the Trinity.

The next section is "Biblical Canon":

• Not sure we should have have a section on the canon's development separate from the context of early theology
• I'm seeing primary sources (ancient Christian writers) used as sources
• Some good facts with good sources - can use this
• This section needs to be revised and preferably merged into a section on early theology in general so the reader gets the full context for how Christianity emerged

The "Patristic theology" section is entirely unsourced - I'm thinking more and more that the first 3 sections should really be combined and subsections created as needed

• 2 subsections that are not very helpful. "Ante-Nicene Fathers" is a list of writers.

The "Nicene Creed" section has one paragraph and 2 subsection.

• The paragraph is unsourced and confusing. What is the "argument" that was "closed" in the first sentence?
• The "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers" section is unsourced, uses pov language ("heretical Byzantine emperors), and is mainly just a list of the writers
• "Papacy and Primacy" - has some sources but not sure about the overall accuracy

Next there is a section called "Early heresies"

• Just think the discussion of "heresies" should be threaded throughout (as often the theological controversies were about the heresies so they should be discussed alongside the development of "orthodoxy")
• Use of Scripture verses as sources
• Some of these sources look like they are devotional rather than scholarly but not sure. Need a closer look

Not in article
James Dunn, Jesus Remembered, page 21 note 15, says the Antiochene Fathers emphasized the literal meaning of Scripture whereas the Alexandrines were open to Scripture's "polyvalency" as expressed through an allegorical interpretation.

Background

Second Temple Judaism

Israel

Originally, the high priesthood was hereditary within the Zadokite lineage.

Apocalypticism

Not in article:    
"Virtually all second-temple Jews, with the possible exception only of the aristocracy, believed that they were living in a ‘present age’ which was a time of sorrow and exile, and which would be succeeded by an ‘age to come’ in which wrongs would be righted and Israel’s god would set up his kingdom".

Most Jews believed that God would free the nation of Israel from its oppressors. The territories of Roman Judea and Galilee were frequently troubled by insurrection and messianic claimants.

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls identify three figures important to the restoration of Israel. The first was the Teacher of Righteousness, who had already come. He was to be followed by the Messiah of Israel, a war leader who would destroy evil. Last was the Messiah of Aaron, who would rule over the New Jerusalem.

Jewish sects

Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, page 32 discusses the scribes and their body of law

The Pharisees were drawn from the middle-class, and many were scribes.

The Pharisees emphasized purity laws and personal piety, and they tended to separate themselves from non-Pharisees.

Belief in resurrection was tied to apocalyptic expectation. According to Josephus, Pharisees believed in both divine providence and free will. When applied to the restoration of Israel, this meant that "Israel's god will act; but loyal Jews may well be required as the agents and instruments of that divine action."

Biblical scholar N. T. Wright notes that belief in a resurrection "functioned for a long time as a symbol and metaphor for the total reconstitution of Israel, the return from Babylon, and the final redemption". Belief in a resurrection, therefore, implied the end of Sadducee power.

Greek philosophy

• Under the influence of Platonic epistemology (theory of knowledge), Christians adopted a distrust of sensory perception as a means of attaining knowledge. What does this sentence mean? Nevertheless, Christians rejected the Platonic idea that learning is actually "recall" or "reminiscence" as this required belief in the pre-existence of souls, which Christians rejected.

Jesus

Sources

We can speak of a canon only from the time its core content existed as a collection (c. 180).

Christianity centers on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who lived c. 4 BC – c. AD 33. In the early years of Christianity, oral gospel traditions would have been important in transmitting memories and stories of Jesus. Biblical scholar Peter Stuhlmacher writes, "The men and women surrounding Jesus learned his sayings by heart in accordance with the early Jewish pattern, preserved them in their memory, and passed them on to others." Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman writes, "Stories about Jesus were thus being told throughout the Mediterranean for decades to convert people and to educate those who had converted, to win people to faith and to instruct those who had been brought in; stories were told in evangelism, in education, in exhortation, and probably in services of worship."

Message and ministry

The four canonical gospels focus on three themes:

1. What Jesus taught, particularly the parables of Jesus.
2. What Jesus did, particularly the miracles of Jesus.
3. What witnesses said about Jesus.

Jesus' message centered on the coming of the Kingdom of God (in Jewish eschatology a future when God actively rules over the world in justice, mercy, and peace). Jesus urged his followers to repent in preparation for the kingdom's coming. In Mark 1:15, Jesus proclaims, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." His ethical teachings included loving one's enemies, not serving both God and Mammon, and not judging others. These ethical teachings are encapsulated in the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer.

As the Christ or "Anointed One" (Greek: Christos), Jesus is identified as the fulfillment of messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. While the synoptic gospels agree with each other on the broad outlines of Jesus' life, each gospel has its own emphasis. The Gospel of Mark presents Jesus as "the suffering Messiah, the Son of man who is crucified and later vindicated by God". In Matthew, Jesus is Messiah, Son of David, and a new Moses. In Luke, he is a prophet and martyr. In John, Jesus is described as God himself. In an appropriation of Greek philosophical concepts, John's Gospel identifies Jesus as the divine logos by which the world was created: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory" (John 1:14).

The gospels emphasize Jesus' unique role and closeness to God. A person's confession or denial of him determines their fate at the last judgment (Luke 12:8–9), he performed miracles, forgave sins like God (Mark 2:1–12), and put himself above Moses (Matthew 5:21–48). Through the accounts of his miraculous virgin birth, the gospels present Jesus as the Son of God.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus is called kyrios ("lord" in Greek), a word used in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible for the name of God.

After his cleansing of the Temple, Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified. According to John, Jesus dies on the day of preparation for Passover, when the Passover sacrifices were slaughtered in the temple. The followers of Jesus believed he appeared to them after his death. The oldest written account of Easter is provided by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5. Given his conversion occurred c. 32 – c. 33 CE, the tradition he cites must be older than 40 CE. The passage states:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

The resurrection of Jesus became the foundation of Christianity. Paul writes, "If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). The gospel accounts conclude with a description of the Ascension of Jesus.

Early Christology

Main article: Christology

"Jesus, I shall argue, redefined the hope of Israel in such a way as to call in question the normal interpretation of Jewish belief".

Already the pre-Easter Jesus made a distinctive claim that was changed and strengthened by the resurrection and post-Easter appearances. Because of the cross and resurrection, the transformation of meaning was inevitable, for such an event as the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead required an interpretation and new conclusions.

Already the pre-Easter Jesus made a distinctive claim that was changed and strengthened by the resurrection and post-Easter appearances. Because of the cross and resurrection, the transformation of meaning was inevitable, for such an event as the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead required an interpretation and new conclusions.

Schnelle, Udo . The First One Hundred Years of Christianity (p. 86). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The resurrection transformed the cross from a symbol of separation from God (Deutoronomy 21:22–23) into a symbol of God's love.

In Judaism, it was believed that the messiah would be endowed with the Holy Spirit (see Holy Spirit in Judaism). According to the New Testament, the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus' earthly ministry (Mark 1:9–11; Acts 10:38) and was at work in his resurrection (Romans 8:11).

Christians were recognizable for addressing God as "Father" or "Our Father", whereas Jewish prayers used phrases such as, "Lord, King of the universe".

Early Church (–500)

Patristic theologyAnte-Nicene Fathers

"in a few New Testament documents, books of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are still treated as though they belonged to the Holy Scriptures (cf. Mark 10:19; 1 Cor. 2:9; and the Letter of Jude with its quotations and traditions from the Assumption of Moses and the Enoch tradition)." - Stuhlmacher, Peter. Biblical Theology of the New Testament (p. 8). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

References

• Bond, Helen K. (2012). The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9780567125101.
• Dunn, James D. G. (2003). Jesus Remembered. Christianity in the Making. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8028-7799-4.
• Dunn, James D. G. (2009). New Testament Theology: An Introduction. Library of Biblical Theology. Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-0-687-34120-7.
• Ehrman, Bart D. (1999). Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780195124736.001.0001. ISBN 9780198028888.
• Fredriksen, Paula (1999). Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-76746-0.
• González, Justo L. (1987). A History of Christian Thought. Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon (revised ed.). Abingdon Press. ISBN 0-687-17182-2.
• González, Justo L. (2010). The Story of Christianity. Vol. 1 The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (revised and updated ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 9780061855887.
• Goodman, Martin (2017). A History of Judaism. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-846-14155-3.
• Johnson, Luke Timothy (2010). The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (3rd ed.). Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-6361-2.
• Lampe, G. W. H. (1978). "Christian Theology in the Patristic Period". In Cunliffe-Jones, Hubert (ed.). A History of Christian Doctrine. T & T Clark. pp. 23–180. ISBN 0567043932.
• Lynch, Joseph H. (2010). Early Christianity: A Brief History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195138559.
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2010). Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-101-18999-3.
• Marcus, Joel (2006). "Jewish Christianity". In Mitchell, Margaret M.; Young, Frances M. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine. Cambridge University Press. pp. 87–102. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399. ISBN 9781139054836.
• McGrath, Alister (2013). Christian History: An Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781118337806.
• Pelikan, Jaroslav (1971). The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226028163.
• Placher, William C.; Nelson, Derek R. (2013). A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Louisville, Kentucky, US: Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-23935-0.
• Schnelle, Udo (2009). Theology of the New Testament. Translated by Boring, M. Eugene. Baker Academic. ISBN 9780801036040.
• Schnelle, Udo (2020). The First One Hundred Years of Christianity: An Introduction to Its History, Literature, and Development. Translated by Thompson, James W. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. ISBN 978-1-4934-2242-5.
• Stuhlmacher, Peter (2018). Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Translated by Bailey, Daniel P. William B. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-4080-6.
• Wright, N. T. (1992). The New Testament and the People of God. Christian Origins And The Question Of God. Vol. 1. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-281-04593-8.

See also

• The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation