Women and Spread of Christianity

Augustinianum ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-336
Author(s):  
Angelo Di Berardino ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Life

Two topics already studied to a sufficient extent are the spread of Christianity in the first centuries and the ministry of women in the early Church. This article focuses, however, on the contribution of women in making known the faith and Christian life in the context of everyday life. Some apostles were married and traveled together with their wives, who in turn spoke of their life with those with whom they came in contact. In this sense we may speak possibly of a ‘family’ apostolate. In the second and third centuries this mission took place especially inside their families among their husbands and children. Then, as now, grandmothers and mothers were the vehicles of transmission of the Christian faith, in as much as they taught to the children their first prayers and the foundational elements of the faith.

The Eucharist as a Source of Political Action: Dorothy Day as a living example of Johann Baptist Metz’s “Dangerous Memory”

2021 ◽  
pp. 001452462110570
Author(s):  
Riyako Cecilia Hikota
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Johann Baptist Metz ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement

Attending Mass and helping the suffering are not two separate things. In Christian life, the former should directly lead to the latter. In order to clarify this deep connection, first I will turn to Johann Baptist Metz, especially the centrality of the concept of anamnesis in his theology and hence how his political theology is deeply linked with or actually grounded in the Eucharist and liturgy, for which anamnesis is an essential concept. Metz points out the centrality of the “dangerous” memory of the crucified Lord for the Christian faith and suggests that when we remember the suffering of Christ we also remember all of the victims of history. Further, this memory of accumulated suffering should prepare us for socially emancipatory action. Thus, through the concept of anamnesis, we can see how participating in Mass should directly lead to political action on behalf of the suffering. As a concrete example of this connection realized, I will look at Dorothy Day in the second half of the paper. The Eucharist was central to her conversion, her spirituality, and her Catholic Worker Movement. In her, we can see a concrete example of the living memory of the suffering constantly nourished by the Eucharist and realized as a socially emancipatory action. Thus, by looking at Day through the lens provided by Metz with a focus on the living memory of suffering, I will stress that the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life,” is the key to bring theology into action.

scholarly journals God as One

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem H. Oliver ◽  
Erna Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Early Church ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

Two notions are discussed in this article, namely, the (unity of the) Trinity and God’s omnipresence. These two notions are deeply embedded in the Christian faith system and religion – they actually form both the basis and point of departure for the Christian religion. The aim of this article is to revisit the (Early Church and present) dogma of the Church about the Trinity and omnipresence of God as a result of the heresies and apologies linked to this dogma, and to rethink the notion of the concept ‘Trinity’ linked to God’s omnipresence. The historical method is used in the discussion of the (primary) sources and to reach the outcome.

The Idea of the Church in Christian History

1952 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Pauck
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Church History ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Christian History

It is customary to describe and interpret the history of Christianity as church history. To be sure, most church historians do not emphasize the special importance of the “church” in the Christian life they study and analyse; indeed, they deal with the idea of the church, with ecclesiological doctrines and with ecclesiastical practices as if they represented special phases of the Christian life. But, nevertheless, the fact that all aspects of Christian history are subsumed under the name and title of the “church” indicates that the character of Christianity is held to be inseparable from that of the “church”; the very custom of regarding Christian history as church history indicates that the Christian mind is marked by a special kind of self-consciousness induced by the awareness that the Christian faith is not fully actualized unless it is expressed in the special social context suggested by the term “church.”

scholarly journals Beauty lived towards shalom. The Christian Life as Aesthetic-Ethical Existence

2020 ◽  
Vol Supp (29) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
A.M. Coates ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Relational Commitment ◽  
Modes Of Existence ◽  
Embodied Imagination

The apparent irrelevance of beauty to questions of justice reflects a problematic schism between aesthetic and ethical existence. While a theological aesthetics focused on the transcendent nature of beauty offers an important contribution, such an understanding of the place of beauty in human existence is incomplete without a complementary understanding of it as this-worldly: beauty as lived, as a relational category impelled by visceral desire and fuelled by the embodied imagination. By rightly ordering the appreciation and cultivation of beauty in everyday life, its relationship to works of justice is immediately apparent, as both modes of relating mutually serve as fitting shalom. In this light, fittingness becomes a measure of not only aesthetic but also ethical excellence, the two modes of existence being inextricably intertwined. Cultivating beauty-and-justice, as an expression of shalom, is a following after Christ’s being-for-the-other. It is a relational commitment, a life of discipleship that founds beauty in love.

scholarly journals Fulfillment in Continuity: The Orthodox Christian Theology of Biblical Israel

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-236
Author(s):  
Demetrios E. Tonias
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
The Church

Abstract Concentrating on the Orthodox theology of biblical Israel within the context of fulfillment theology, the argument is that the early Church envisioned itself as the continuation of Israel of the Jewish Bible rather than its replacement. In the author’s view, the current understanding of the distinction between replacement and fulfillment theology, the early Christian theological conception of the Church as Israel, and the ways in which both contemporaneous pagans and Jews viewed the nascent Christian faith support this assertion.

Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-235
Author(s):  
Bruce Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Early Church ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformed Churches

Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades, presented as a set of sermons on the major points of Christian doctrine, was one of the first comprehensive statements of Reformed theology. The 50 sermons provide a robust defence of the orthodoxy of the Zurich church by demonstrating its adherence to the historical teachings of the early church. Bullinger wrote the work both to instruct and edify, and the tone of the Decades is deeply pastoral, offering a guide to the Christian life. Translated into numerous languages, including Dutch and English, the Decades became a key text of the growing Reformed churches of the Reformation period, making Bullinger the first major international leader of the movement.

Christian Martyrdom and Christian Violence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Lundberg
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Majority Opinion ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Way ◽  
Christian History

What is the place—if any—for violence in the Christian life? This book explores this question by analyzing a paradox of mainstream Christian history, theology, and ethics: at the heart of the Christian story, the suffering of violence stands as the price of faithfulness. From Jesus himself to martyrs who have died while following him, at the core of Christian faith is an experience of being victimized by the world’s violence. At the same time, the majority opinion for most of Christian history has held that there are situations when the follower of Jesus may be justified in inflicting violence on others, especially in the context of war. Do these two facets of Christian ethics and experience—martyrdom and the just war—represent a contradiction, the self-defeating irony of those who follow a Lord who refused to defend himself taking up deadly weapons? In arguing that they do not, the book contends that any meaningful coherence between a theology of martyrdom and commitment to a just war ethic requires shifts away from a common heroic conception of Christian martyrdom and a common secularized realpolitik conception of necessary violence. Instead, it requires a view of martyrdom that acknowledges even the martyrs as subject to the ambiguities of the human condition, even as they present a compelling witness to Jesus and the way of the cross. And it requires an approach to justified violence that reflects the self-sacrificial ethos of Jesus displayed in the lives of true Christian martyrs.

The Persecutions: some Links between Judaism and the Early Church

1958 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. Frend
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The West ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Church

Each generation of historiographers has had its own interpretation of the persecutions. In their hour of triumph in the years following the Council of Nicaea, Christians in both halves of the Roman Empire looked back to these events as the heroic age of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the Church were linked to the sufferings of the children of Israel and this time, too, anti-Christ and his abettors, the pagan emperors, their officials and the mobs had been worsted. Like the Egyptians they had perished miserably. But, as so often happens, victory dissolved the common bonds which united the victors. In the next centuries the relations between Church and State in the East and West were to follow different paths. In the East the ‘martyrdom in intention’ of the monastic life tended to replace the martyrdom in deed in opposition to the emperor. In the West, the martyr tradition was to underline that same opposition. Tertullian, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory VII, Boniface VIII embody a single trend of ideas extending over a thousand years.

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