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Before the great councils of Christendom and before there were centers of ecclesiastical authority that spoke on behalf of the widely scattered churches found throughout the Roman Empire, how was one to determine what teachings were true and which prophets and prophetesses were authentic? Montanism is named for its first proponent, a certain Montanus from Phrygia in Asia Minor in what is today Turkey who began his "spirit-filled movement" within the area sometime around 165 CE. He was shortly joined by two women, Priscilla and Maximilla. All proclaimed that they were filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied about the return of Jesus Christ as immanent and that the New Jerusalem would be established in the city of Pepouza in Phrygia. With his profound knowledge of the group known at that time as "The New Prophecy" William Tabbernee dramatically tells the story of the followers of Montanus, Maximilla, and Priscilla, as well as of those other Christians, some well known such as Tertullian, most not, who followed their teachings for centuries thereafter. Replete with vivid descriptions, photographs, and drawings illustrating the places and events surrounding these men and women, and with maps to orient the reader in the geography of its origins, this book provides an articulate, erudite, and thoroughly fascinating tour-de-force of what has been labeled a Christian heresy almost from its inception. Professor Tabbernee has prepared a series of study questions for each chapter of this engaging book. These questions are suitable for use in a variety of settings, including book clubs, discussion groups, and formal undergraduate and master's level courses. While they are copyrighted they have been made available without cost and can be downloaded to your computer as a PDF file from the book's web page on Baker Academic's site.
"Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments" is an insightful case-study of the opposition to Montanism, an early-Christian prophetic movement, by Church and State both before and after 'catholic' Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The Fourth Gospel has been known as the “spiritual gospel” since the second century, but only recently have biblical scholars attempted to express the unique spirituality found in that sacred text. Surprisingly, no consensus has emerged even after a century of research. Thus, while John’s Gospel is widely admired as a vibrant source of Christian piety, the distinct features of its spirituality remain unclear. Fr. Fiore addresses this problem from the fresh perspective of spiritual theology. Capitalizing on a century of Johannine biblical scholarship, he uses the interdisciplinary methods of spiritual theology to bring new data to the study of the Gospel and solutions to many lingering questions: How did ancient readers understand what scholars now refer to as the Gospel’s spirituality? How does that ecclesial reading compare to the analysis of modern critical exegesis? What makes Johannine spirituality special among other forms of Christian piety? How does the question of the Gospel’s authorship impact our understanding of its spirituality? Does the Gospel contain what we now call “mysticism”? In what ways is John’s spirituality still relevant for Christians today? Students of Christian spirituality and Johannine exegesis alike will find here stimulating historical and theological analysis of the Gospel’s spirituality.
The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers offers an informative introduction to the extant body of Christian texts that existed beside and after the New Testament known to us as the apostolic fathers. Featuring cutting-edge research by leading scholars, it explores how the early Church expanded and evolved over the course of the first and second centuries as evidenced by its textual history. The volume includes thematic essays on imperial context, the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, the growth and diversification of the early church, influences and intertextuality, and female leaders in the early church. The Companion contains ground-breaking essays on the individual texts with specific attention given to debates of authorship, authenticity, dating, and theological texture. The Companion will serve as an essential resource for instructors and students of the first two centuries of Christianity.
The late second through third centuries saw the remarkable confluence of the early church's developing identity, theological understanding and praxis, with a period of opposition and intermittent persecution from the world around it. Theology necessarily engaged with the persecution experience, as the church considered the goodness and providence of God, the Name to be confessed and the purposeful outcome of the antagonism they faced. Ruth Sutcliffe argues that the early fathers' theological understanding of the role of persecution in the Christian life informed their exhortations to individual and communal response, contributing to the church's remarkable survival and growth through this period. Four great thinkers of this era - Clement and Origen of Alexandria and Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage - each have much to contribute to a theological understanding of Christian persecution, and Sutcliffe explores their widely different perspectives, intellectual milieu and experiences. She explains these differences and similarities in terms of their use of the Scriptures, in conversation with their own contexts and agendas; concluding that their differences in approach to persecution can be explained theologically, and that these differences offer a unique window into their respective thought. Despite such differences, Sutcliffe stresses that the early church did have a fundamentally coherent “theology of persecution” which speaks to the worldwide church today.
This major work draws on current archaeological and textual research to trace the spread of Christianity in the first millennium. William Tabbernee, an internationally renowned scholar of the history of Christianity, has assembled a team of expert historians to survey the diverse forms of early Christianity as it spread across centuries, cultures, and continents. Organized according to geographical areas of the late antique world, this book examines what various regions looked like before and after the introduction of Christianity. How and when was Christianity (or a new form or expression of it) introduced into the region? How were Christian life and thought shaped by the particularities of the local setting? And how did Christianity in turn influence or reshape the local culture? The book's careful attention to local realities adds depth and concreteness to students' understanding of early Christianity, while its broad sweep introduces them to first-millennium precursors of today's variegated, globalized religion. Numerous photographs, sidebars, and maps are included.
What is the church? What does it mean to be a member of the church? This book examines how the earliest Christian theologians in the Latin West understood the nature, ends, and boundaries of the church. By analyzing the thought and practices of figures such as Tertullian of Carthage, Cyprian of Carthage, Augustine of Hippo, and Pope Leo the Great, James K. Lee shows how early Latin theologians forged distinctive views of the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Lee argues that according to the Latin fathers, the church was one complex reality with visible and invisible aspects that could be distinguished but not separated. God could work outside of the church’s visible bounds, yet all who were saved were joined to the church’s invisible bond of charity. The church’s unity was found in charity, and for the early Latin fathers, there was no salvation outside of the church. In addition, Lee demonstrates the trajectory from an exclusivist ecclesiology to a more inclusive understanding of church membership in the development of Latin ecclesiology over the course of the first five centuries of Christianity.
Exploring the key documents, authors and themes of Early Christian traditions, this volume traces the vital trajectories of emerging distinctive Christian identity in the Graeco-Roman world. Special attention is given to the coherent growth of Christian faith in connection with worship, alongside the crucial transformation of Christian life and doctrine under the Christian Emperors. As well as offering a chronological development of the Early Church, the book examines the interaction between Christian worship and faith. In addition, readers interested in systematic theology can refer to chapters on the roots of some significant theological notions in Christian Antiquity, also with reference to ancient philosophy. Issues addressed include: · Distinctiveness of the Christian identity during the first centuries · Diversity of communities and their theologies · Connection between faith and worship · Transition from the persecuted minority to triumphant Church with Creeds · History of early Christian thought and modern systematic theology
Explores the growth of Christianity in inland Roman Asia, as cities and rural communities moved away from polytheistic Greco-Roman religion.
Why did dreams matter to Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Muslims in the first millennium? Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400 - 1000 CE shows how the ability to interpret dreams universally attracted power and influence in the first millennium. In a time when prophetic dreams were viewed as God's intervention in human history, male and female prophets wielded was unparalleled power in imperial courts, military camps, and religious gatherings. The three faiths drew on the ancient Near Eastern tradition of dream key manuals, which offer an insight into the hopes and fears of ordinary people. They melded pagan dream divination with their own scriptural traditions to produce a novel and rich culture of dream interpretation. Prophetic dreams enabled communities to understand their past and present circumstances as divinely ordained and helped to bolster the spiritual authority of dreamers and those who had the gift of interpreting their dreams. Bronwen Neil takes a gendered approach to the analysis of the common culture of dream interpretation across late antique Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic sources to 1000 CE, in order to expose the ways in which dreams offered women a unique opportunity to exercise influence. The epilogue to the volume reveals why dreams still matter today to many men and women of the monotheist traditions.