The First Christian Centuries: 2nd Century: Fathers & Heretics

First appearing in 1946, Robert Grant's Second-Century Christianity provides source materials from second-century pagan witnesses, Christian churches, and movements that later became known as heretical - offering an inside look into the growth and spread of Christianity during the second century. Raising to the forefront the paramount issues and concerns during the period, Grant's expanded collection of primary documents brings the reader into the very arenas in which Christianity was being discussed and provides a firsthand encounter with what churches were facing as the movement spread.

Perhaps the most enigmatic period of the Christian era,the second century was nonetheless decisive for the survival and posture of the fledgling churches.Their scriptural canon, liturgical practices, church structure, doctrinal norms - all were forged in the tumult of this century. Through deft use o available data and texts, Wagner brings this period to life.Selecting five fateful challenges-issues of Creation, human nature, Jesus identities, roles of the church, and Christians in society-he shows what was at stake for emerging Christianity in the social and religious currents of its Jewish and Greco-Roman environs and how five key personalities (Ignatius, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Irenaeus) responded. Wagner's text successfully brings events, ideas, persons and movements into a single framework.

Foster offers a comprehensive introduction to the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Each chapter offers a treatment of the most controversial aspects of each text and discusses the theology of each of the writings in order to orient readers to the development of Christian thinking in the second century.

" ... the historical development of the ministry of leadership in the early Church, beginning with the New Testament and ending with Saint Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage during the middle years of the third century."--Page viii.

Presented at a conference held at the University of Notre Dame in 1988, these essays address such issues as the shape of the Synoptic gospel, the Western Text in the second century, the extra-canonical sayings of Jesus and the purpose of redactional changes.

This work concerns the early Christians' self-definitions and self-representations in the context of pagan-Christian conflict, reflected in the literatures from the mid-second to the early third centuries (ca. 150 - 225 CE).

This volume presents an extended juxtaposition of Paul's thought with a wide selection of writings from the second century.

Biblical Christology : the humanity of Christ -- Biblical Christology : the divinity of Christ -- Gnostic Christologies -- Christology in the apostolic fathers and Justin -- The Jewish Christian Christology of Theophilus -- Heresy and Christology -- Irenaeus' theology and Christology -- Appendix : Irenaeus and the process of thought.

Judith Lieu examines the rhetorical function of Jews in the early texts of the second century and seeks to acknowledge the complex nature of an issue which is too easily proclaimed 'Christian anti-Semitism'.

In The Resurrection of the Body Caroline Bynum forges a new path of historical inquiry by studying the notion of bodily resurrection in the ancient and medieval West against the background of persecution and conversion, social hierarchy, burial practices, and the cult of saints.

THE meaning of the term Gnosis or Knowledge, as applied to a system of philosophy, may be illustrated by the language of Plato towards the end of the fifth book of the Republic, in which he distinguishes between knowledge and opinion as being concerned respectively with the real and the apparent. When to this distinction is added the further explanation that the objects of sense; the visible things of the world, belong to the class of phenomena and are objects of opinion, while the invisible essence of things, the one as distinguished from the many, is the true reality, discerned not by sense but by intellect, we shall be justified in identifying “knowledge” with that a apprehension of things which penetrates beyond their sensible appearances to their essence and cause, and which differs in name only from that “wisdom” which Aristotle tells us is by common consent admitted to consist in a knowledge of first Causes or Principles. In this general sense however, the term gnosis has nothing to distinguish it from the ordinary Greek conception of “philosophy”, and so long as it remains solely within the region of philosophical inquiry and terminology, we do not find it generally employed to designate either philosophy as a whole or any special philosophical system. It is not till after the Christian era that the term comes into use as the distinct designation of a certain form of religious philosophy, emanating in some degree from Christian sources, and influenced by Christian ideas and Christian language. Even in the earlier association of Greek philosophy with a revealed religion, which is manifested in the GraecoJewish philosophy of Alexandria, though the teaching of Philo may be regarded as embodying the essential constituents of Gnosticism in an entire if an undeveloped form, we do not find the distinctive name of Gnosis or Gnostic applied to designate the system or its teachers.

The motivated alterations of the words of Jesus have been,it is hoped,objectively examined here in relation to the life situation of the early Christian community.One cannot overestimate the value of proper perspective in this area for the formulation of correct historical judgements on the sociological ,as well as theological, experiences of the primitive church.

I. An analysis of Evangelium Veritatis -- II. A comparison of the backgrounds of the writer of Evangelium Veritatis and of Justin Martyr in relation to the nature of truth -- III. A comparison of Evangelium Veritatis with the writings of Justin Martyr in relation to the nature of truth -- IV. The nature of truth in Evangelium Veritatis and in the writings of Justin Martyr viewed in the light of the Bible and early Christian literature