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Apologetic literature emerges from minority groups seeking to come to terms with the larger cultures within which they live. Its authors are not entirely at home in either thei r own groups or the larger society, and therefore their position is one with which many Christians today can sympathize. Professor Grant's new book looks at the first Christian apologists of all and the background to their message.After opening chapters discussing early Christian apologetic and its historical setting in the Roman empire, he looks in detail at Justin, Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Melito of Sardis, Athenagoras of Athens, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch and other related figures including Celsus, Marcus Aurelius and the Gallican martyrs. He ends by tracing apologetic through the thi rd century and into the Middle Ages.Apologetic can be attractive to readers today, but the main theme of the book is that while there is a certain timeless character to the Christian apologists of the second century, they are deeply involved in the political and social struggles of their time and cannot be understood apart from the precise circumstances in which they are writing.
"They bring three charges against us: atheism, Thyestean banquets, and Oedipean unions." So a late second-century Christian Apologist wrote with reference to his critics. Against these and other charges the Apologists rallied. Not so, they maintained. It was not the Christians but their critics who were the atheists and the Christians were the true theists. They were atheists only insofar as they denied the fabricated gods of the cults and the immoral deities of theaters. That, they explained, was why Christians absented themselves, whatever the cost, from the imperial cult, theaters, and amphitheaters. They were not cannibals, as Thyestes was when he ate the flesh of his children. To suggest otherwise was to misunderstand Christians consuming Christ's flesh and blood at the Eucharist. Nor were they imitators of Oedipus, who entered into sexual relations with Jocasta, his Queen and, though he knew it not, also his mother. Christians did exchange the kiss of peace. They did love one another. They were not, however, incestuous. Any promiscuous love on their part extended only to a very practical love of every needy soul. This book explores these arguments, especially noting the Apologists' commitment to God's oneness, to Christians not worshipping anything made, and to humans properly caring for fellow creatures.
Publisher Description
This book contains the contributions to a workshop on apologetics in early Christianity which took place at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford in the summer of 2007. The workshop was arranged by scholars from Germany, Finland and Denmark who had for some time worked together in a project on early Christian apologetics. The aim of the workshop was thus to present and discuss some of the results and still unsolved problems which arose from this project. The book presents the contributions to the workshop. Hereby the editors hope to reach a larger audience and thus to be able to further the discussion of the topic of early Christian apologetics.
Christianity in the Second Century seeks to show how academic study on this critical period of Christian development has undergone change over the last thirty years. It focuses on contributions from early Christian and ancient Jewish studies, and ancient history, all of which have contributed to a changing scholarly landscape.
Laura Nasrallah argues that early Christian literature is best understood when read alongside the archaeological remains of Roman antiquity.
Christianity in the twenty-first century is a global phenomenon. But in the second century, its future was not at all certain. Michael Kruger's introductory survey examines how Christianity took root in the second century, how it battled to stay true to the vision of the apostles, and how it developed in ways that would shape both the church and Western culture over the next two thousand years.
This book seeks to answer the following question: how did the doctrine of justification fare one hundred years after Paul’s death (c. AD 165)? This book argues that Paul’s view of justification by faith is present in the second century, a thesis that particularly challenges T. F. Torrance’s long-held notion that the Apostolic Fathers abandoned this doctrine (The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, 1948). In the wake of Torrance’s work there has been a general consensus that the early fathers advocated works righteousness in opposition to Paul’s belief that an individual is justified before God by faith alone, but second-century writings do not support this claim. Each author examined—Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to Diognetus, Odes of Solomon, and Justin Martyr—contends that faith is the only necessary prerequisite for justification, even if they do indicate the importance of virtuous living. This is the first major study on the doctrine of justification in the second century, thus filling a large lacuna in scholarship. With the copious amounts of research being conducted on justification, it is alarming that no work has been done on how the first interpreters of Paul received one of his trademark doctrines. It is assumed, wrongly, that the fathers were either uninterested in the doctrine or that they misunderstood the Apostle. Neither of these is the case. This book is timely in that it enters the fray of the justification debate from a neglected vantage point.
This volume looks at the imprint and influence that the writings of the Apostle Paul had in the second century, examining the Pauline corpus in conjunction with key second century figures and texts such as Ignatius, Polycarp, and the Epistle of Diognetus. It investigates the impact of Paul's legacy and examines how this legacy shaped the Christianity that emerged in the second century as represented by the Apostolic Fathers, the early Christian Apologists, and among Gnostic and Judeo Christian groups.