Eucharistic Practices

2018 ◽  
pp. 537-553
Author(s):  
Lizette Larson-Miller
Keyword(s):  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ordained Ministry ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
The Church

The rapidly changing circumstances of Christianity between the third and fifth centuries are mirrored in the ritual changes of the church’s celebration of the Eucharist. The juxtaposition of continuity of theological expression in an act of thanksgiving, remembrance, and sacrifice with the multiple ecclesial political and cultural shifts throughout the church is reflected in changing interpretations, texts, and patterns. This chapter reviews the extant texts both about and from the liturgy in the three centuries in question before turning to three ritual and theological issues that exemplify the pressures of expressing and creating new ways of believing what is accomplished in the liturgical event. First is the development in understanding eucharistic participation as a ritual of Christian identity, and second, the embodiment of early Christian eucharistic participation in eating and drinking as well as the non-participation of fasting, which both contribute to the importance of cultic leadership in the development of ordained ministry.

scholarly journals The Making of a Canon: Impact of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Christian Canon Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Kwaku Boamah
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Christian Formation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Church

The formation of the Christian canon was not a one day venture. Some scholars maintain it spanned from the first up to about the fourth centuries. This paper has three main parts: the first draws a linear process of canon generation, beginning from text to scripture and possibly becoming canonical. The second focuses on the creation of the Christian canon by exploring the stages and the implications of naming the canon as `Testaments`. At the heart of the study is a consideration of the use and inclusion or exclusion of the Jewish scripture by Christians as discussed by a heretic (Marcion) and three Anti-heretics (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian) in the 2nd and/or 3rd centuries of the Roman Empire. The third part takes an example of a modern church (Church of Christ) whose reception to the Old Testament is one of skepticism. Furthermore, the level of usage of the Old Testament by the Church of Christ is key for the thesis of this paper. It is, therefore, important to assess a possible relationship between Marcion and the Church of Christ. Historical, theological and an interview are employed to explore these developments. The paper concludes that by the naming of the Christian canon and inclusion of the Jewish scriptures, the Christian identity can be described as Judeo-Christian. This description has impacted Christian formation and development a great deal from antiquity to the modern era. Marcion and his followers did not take this lightly in the first four centuries of the Christian history. On the other hand, in the nineteenth century the Church of Christ seemingly follows this example in antiquity on including the Old Testament as part of the Christian canon.

‘Race’, ‘Nation’, ‘People’: Ethnic Identity-Construction in 1 Peter 2.9

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Horrell
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
1 Peter ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

1 Peter 2.4–10 is a significant passage within the letter, rich in material from the Jewish scriptures. Verse 9 is particularly significant for the construction of Christian group-identity in that it uniquely applies three words from the vocabulary of ethnic identity to the Church: γένος, ἔθνος, and λαός, widely translated as ‘race’, ‘nation’, and ‘people’. A survey of these words in pre-Christian Jewish literature (especially the LXX), in the NT, and in other early Christian literature, reveals how crucial this text in 1 Peter is to the process by which Christian identity came to be conceived in ethnoracial terms. Drawing on modern definitions of ethnic identity, and ancient evidence concerning the fluidity of ethnic identities, it becomes clear that ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ identities are constructed, believed, and sustained through discourse. 1 Peter, with both aggregative and oppositional modes of ethnic reasoning, makes a crucial contribution to the construction of an ethnic form of Christian identity.

scholarly journals Our Common Breath: ‘Conspiration’ from the Stoics to the Church Fathers

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Phillip Sidney Horky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay tracks a brief history of the concept of ‘co-breathing’ or ‘conspiration’ (συμπνοία), from its initial conception in Stoic cosmology in the third century BCE to its appropriation in Christian thought at the end of the second century CE. This study focuses on two related strands: first, how the term gets associated anachronistically with two paradigmatic philosopher-physicians, Hippocrates and Pythagoras, by intellectuals in the Early Roman Empire; and second, how the same term provides the early Church Fathers with a means to synthesize and explain discrete notions of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα) through a repurposing of the pagan concept. Sources discussed include figures associated with Stoic, Pythagorean, and early Christian cosmologies.

scholarly journals Heretical baptism in debate

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Van de Beek
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
Salutary Effect ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

It is generally stated that acceptance of heretics in the Catholic Church without baptism has always been normal use in the church and has been confirmed by general councils. The only exceptions would be some groups in North Africa in the third through the fifth century. This opinion is mainly based on Au- gustine’s “De baptismo”. The author of this article argues that Augustine is historically incorrect and systematically weak in this respect. Baptism of converted heretics was normal, except from Rome, and even the council of Nicea confirms that normal use. The bishop of Rome in the fifties of the third century, Stephan, had his own reasons for refusing to rebaptise heretics. Augustine’s view that the baptismal rite and its salutary effect by faith can be received separately is a break with early Christian ecclesiology and its impact on the Western Church has been enormous.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Church History ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Sacred Scripture ◽  
The Church

The Bible was the lifeblood of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The essays in this Handbook explore a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. A first group of studies examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God’s word for the Church. A second group looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. A third group of essays addresses the remarkably diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while a fourth group canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. A fifth group assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. A sixth group returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. A seventh and final group of studies follows up by examining how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Along the way, readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

Christus Virgo

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Sissel Undheim
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The description of Christ as a virgin, 'Christus virgo', does occur at rare occasions in Early Christian and late antique texts. Considering that 'virgo' was a term that most commonly described the sexual and moral status of a member of the female sex, such representations of Christ as a virgin may exemplify some of the complex negotiations over gender, salvation, sanctity and Christology that we find in the writings of the Church fathers. The article provides some suggestions as to how we can understand the notion of the virgin Christ within the context of early Christian and late antique theological debates on the one hand, and in light of the growing interest in sacred virginity on the other.

The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Eastwood Pulido
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
The Third ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The World ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Mormon Church ◽  
Spiritual Conquest ◽  
The Church ◽  
The U.S

A spiritual biography, this book chronicles the journey of Margarito Bautista (1878–1961) from Mormonism to the Third Convention, a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) splinter group he fomented in 1935–1936, to Colonia Industrial/Nueva Jerusalén, a polygamist utopia Bautista founded in 1947. It argues that Bautista embraced Mormon belief in indigenous exceptionalism in 1901 and rapidly rose through the ranks of Mormon priesthood until convinced that the Mormon hierarchy was not invested in the development of native American peoples, as promoted in the Church’s canon. This realization resulted in tensions over indigenous self-governance within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) and Bautista’s 1937 excommunication. The book contextualizes Bautista’s thought with a chapter on the spiritual conquest of Mexico in 1513 and another on the arrival of Mormons in Mexico. In addition to accounts of Bautista’s congregation-building on both sides of the U.S. border, this volume includes an examination of Bautista’s magnum opus, a 564-page tome hybridizing Aztec history and Book of Mormon narratives, and his prophetic plan for the recovery of indigenous authority in the Americas. Bautista’s excommunication catapulted him into his final spiritual career, that of a utopian founder. In the establishment of his colony, Bautista found a religious home, free from Euro-American oversight, where he implemented his prophetic plan for Mexico’s redemption. His plan included obedience to early Mormonism’s most stringent practices, polygamy and communalism. Bautista nonetheless hoped his community would provide a model for Mexicans willing to prepare the world for Christ’s millennial reign.

All His Father’s Sins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Parting Ways ◽  
The Church ◽  
Critique Of Religion

This chapter explores the life and thought of John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill. It seeks to unravel his journey from pursuing the calling of an ordained Christian minister in the Church of Scotland to parting ways with the Christian faith altogether. It will also seek to understand James Mill’s mature critique of religion, as well as that of his friend the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the author of several works critical of traditional Christianity. The unhappy marriage of John Stuart Mill’s parents is presented as a vital background for understanding his future choices and convictions. The Christian identity of his mother and siblings are also presented.

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Dietary Laws ◽  
New Religion

This book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing dietary laws, death defilement, sexuality, and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. There are three central arguments. First, purity and defilement were central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those of contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.

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