Church history and early church historians

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Markus
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Historians

From the beginning the Christian group took an interest in its own past. Ecclesiastical history is a specialised form of this corporate self-awareness. The fourth and fifth centuries were the period in the Christian church’s history when this form of self-awareness crystallised. The father of church history, Eusebius, was the fountainhead of a tradition of historiography which came to dominate the work of his successors. His Ecclesiastical History straddles the constantinian revolution. Eusebius began working on it before the end of the last persecution, that under Diocletian and his colleagues; by the time he came to add the last touches to his final edition, twenty or more years later, the social conditions of the church’s existence had come to differ profoundly from those which obtained at the time he began writing. The age of the martyrs and of a persecuted church in a hostile empire were becoming a heroic age recollected in tranquillity. The following century was to take the church very much further along the road away from the situation of the church that Eusebius had been writing about.

scholarly journals Migration history in South Africa as a lens for interpreting God’s mission: Towards a challenge for churches to embrace migrants

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Magezi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Migration History ◽  
God's Mission ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This article challenges the church to embrace migrants by presenting migration history in South Africa during the era of European explorers as a lens for interpreting God’s mission. In avowing the aforementioned, it argues for migration history of the European explorers to South Africa as the way God has used in establishing the church in South Africa. However, in view of the subsequent colonialism and slave trade in South Africa that emerged from the period of European explorers, this article recognises the conception of slave trade and colonialism during the era of European explorers as an evil act. Notably, in bringing Joseph’s forced migration to Egypt as a theological lens to interpret some sinful acts that were embedded in the migration of European explorers to South Africa that also resulted in the establishment of the early church in South Africa, it contends that God’s purpose and plans are not frustrated or thwarted by human sin. God, in his grace and love to reach his remnant people with the gospel, utilises various migrations of European explorers to South Africa (regardless of how sinful they are) to advance his kingdom to South Africa. The notion of migration history in South Africa as a lens for interpreting God’s mission is utilised to challenge the churches to embrace migrants because God uses migration or migrants to advance his kingdom to all the earth. The article concludes by calling the church to embrace all migrants because humankind are usually unacquainted with the particular migrants that God is utilising to advance his kingdom.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article outlines theological research agenda for migration history in South Africa as a lens to interpret God’s mission. It considers migration history in South Africa during the era of European explorers as a tool that God used to advance his kingdom. As such, it is a theological interdisciplinary article integrating church history and mission. The contribution of this article lies in establishing the emergence of the early church in South Africa as a result of migration, which it utilises as a challenge for churches to embrace migrants.

scholarly journals Partisipasi Sosial-Politik sebagai Praktik Hospitalitas Kaum Pentakostal

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 378-396
Author(s):  
Fransiskus Irwan Widjaja ◽  
Harls Evan R. Siahaan ◽  
Nathanael Octavianus
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
The Public ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

Abstract. The involvement of the church in social life outside the church is something that continues to struggle from time to time; the church, on the one hand, felt compelled to be involved in all aspects of life; on the other, it felt sufficient to focus on the spiritual dimension of life. Meanwhile, participation in the social domain is often articulated with religious mission activities that wish to win souls and increase the number of church members. This article aimed to present a theological reflection framework on hospitality in a Pentecostal perspective, as a spirituality that drives the participatory philosophy of Pentecostals in the public sphere, both socially and politically. The method used is descriptive analysis, with a literature study approach. The result is that the hospitality attitude of the early church in the Acts constructs a Pentecostal reflection of the participation of Pentecostals in the public sphere.Abstrak. Keterlibatan gereja dalam kehidupan sosial di luar gereja merupakan hal yang terus mengalami pergumulan dari waktu ke waktu; gereja di satu sisi merasa harus terlibat dalam seluruh aspek kehidupan, di sisi lain merasa cukup untuk memfokuskan pada dimensi kehidupan rohani. Sementara itu, partisipasi pada domain sosial tidak jarang diartikulasikan dengan kegiatan misi gerejawi yang ingin memenangkan jiwa dan menambahkan jumlah anggota gereja. Artikel ini bertujuan menyajikan sebuah kerangka refleksi teologis tentang hospitalitas dalam perspektif Pentakostal, sebagai spirtualitas yang menggerakkan sikap partisipatif kaum Pentakostal pada ruang publik, baik secara sosial dan politik. Metode yang digunakan adalah analisis deskriptif, dengan pendekatan studi literatur. Hasilnya, sikap hospitalitas jemaat mula-mula pada narasi Kisah Para Rasul mengonstruksi sebuah perenungan Pentakostal mengenai partisipasi kaum Pentakostal pada ruang publik.

GENDER IN YORUBA RELIGIOUS CHANGE

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Church Membership ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Congregational Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Indigenous Society ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis paper explores the relevance of gender to the reception of Christianity and to early church life in nineteenth-century Yorubaland. These were profoundly shaped by the gender conceptions prevalent in indigenous society and religion. Though the indigenous gods (orisa) lacked gender as a fixed or intrinsic attribute, gender conceptions were projected on to them. Witchcraft was mostly attributed to women both as its victims and as its perpetrators, and with men and ancestral cults chiefly responsible for its control. There was an overlap between the social placement of witches and Christian converts, both being relatively marginal. Religious practice was also strongly gendered, with women preponderant in the cult of most orisa, but men in the main oracular cult, Ifa. Women found something of an equivalent in the cult of Ori, or personal destiny. The missions initially met their readiest response among young men, who were less tied to the orisa cults than women were. By the second generation the balance shifted, as male prestige values were incompatible with full church membership and women came more to the fore in congregational life. As an aspect of this, the church took on many of the concerns that the orisa cults had offered women—a token of this being the honorific use of the term 'mother'. In the end it is less gender per se than the gender/age conjunction that is critical.

Slavery in the Early Church

2020 ◽  
pp. 38-63
Author(s):  
Mary E. Sommar
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Early Church ◽  
General Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Church Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Insight Into

This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others’ behavior toward such slaves. Chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods, along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided, and there is a short Latin lexicon. This chapter discusses slavery in the first three centuries of Christianity.

scholarly journals What did Women do for the Early Church? The Recent History of a Question

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 261-281
Author(s):  
Judith M. Lieu
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Church History ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The question posed in the title deliberately reverses one that has accompanied me through my academic career: what did the early church do for women? The reversal signals what will prove to be an underlying theme of what follows, namely the role of women in history as objects or as the subjects of action and of discourse. Yet already the question as conventionally phrased highlights different points of stress that reflect where it belongs within reflective historiography, the subject of this volume. Firstly, ‘What did the early church do?’ The coming of early Christianity, it is implied, brought blessings or perhaps curses, evoking a way of writing church history which goes back to Eusebius and which continues both through Edward Gibbon and through those who still portray the social and religious context of the time as one of the inarticulate search for alternative conceptions of the divine or for alternative social values that Christianity would answer. Secondly, ‘for women’: thus, a deliberate rejection of any universalizing interpretation of such effects; a recognition, or at least a suspicion, that any apparently universalizing claim is actually spoken from a ‘normal’ that is already gendered as male; an invitation to ask how women’s experience could be recovered, what the sources would look like, and, indeed, whether it can be recovered from the extant sources.

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