The praxis of Adversus Praxeam: Tertullian’s views on the Trinity

Tertullian was an African, living in Carthage during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. He grew up a pagan, then became a Catholic Christian, after which he moved on to the sect of Montanus, referred to as the New Prophecy in this article, where he became the leader in Carthage. While he was still a pagan, he studied and became an advocate and when he was converted to Christianity, he became a prolific writer of Christian treatises, mostly apologies in Latin. There was a heretic movement in Carthage with Praxeas as the leader, and Tertullian opposed this heresy, especially on the level of the Trinity, as most of the Christians in Carthage – the so-called simplices – were impressed by that heresy. Being ante-Nicene, Tertullian’s arguments should be understood within his time and in light of the Catholic Rule of Faith, as he was very orthodox. The question may well be asked whether something new can still be said about Tertullian or about his Adversus Praxeam? This article is a critical appreciation of Adversus Praxeam with the aim to gain more insight into Trinitarian’s point of view, specifically with reference to the Trinity. Hopefully, in this way something ‘new’ can be said about a well-known Church Father and his well-known treatise.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Adversus Praxeam was a heretical treatise (modalist), mostly in line with the Catholic Rule of Law of the time, aimed at the Monarchianist heresy. Church History, Systematic Theology and a little Practical Theology are employed to discuss this early-3rd-century treatise within its time, specifically centred around the Trinity.

“Suddenly We’re in a Different Era”

Chapter 3 examines Moody Church in Chicago, the oldest extant megachurch in America, where many congregants believe that God relates to humanity in different ways during different historical eras. In this chapter, I show how dispensationalism—a theological development popularized by founding church father Dwight L. Moody—continues to influence the congregation’s theology of worship today. Dispensationalists believe that some of God’s commands carry through from one dispensation to the next, while others can be modified, added to, or discontinued. Relatedly, Moody adheres to a “bundled” philosophy of music: some songs stand the generational test of time, others from a previous era have been phased out, and new repertoire is regularly introduced.

Non-compliant Reading and Annotating in the Ruthenian Reformation: Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catechisms from Szymon Budny’s Library

While the works of the Antitrinitarian thinker and religious leader Szymon Budny (ca. 1530-93) have been the subject of extensive scholarly research, his library, marginalia, and reading practices have been significantly less examined. Following the discovery of a copy of Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catechisms (Vienna, 1560) belonging to Budny, I analyze Budny’s notes and comments regarding the Latin translation of Cyril’s text as a case study of Budny’s attempt to recover the Church Father from the Catholic post-Tridentine agenda and his own subsequent re-appropriation of Cyril for his radical non-adorantist program. By exploring Budny’s subversive reading and annotating strategies, I demonstrate Budny’s original contributions to the development of Antitrinitarian thought in Europe. I also illustrate how marginalia and paratexts reflect not only the history of the book in which they are found, but also how they throw light on religious and intellectual history.

Abraham von Franckenberg and the Ancient Wisdom of Rebirth

This chapter shows how the Silesian nobleman Abraham von Franckenberg linked Jacob Boehme’s spiritual alchemy to the idea of ancient wisdom, as exemplified by the gnostic church father Valentinus. Franckenberg himself experienced a crisis of faith in 1617 and discovered the heterodox devotional literature of his day upon his religious awakening. In the early 1620s, he read many of Boehme’s works in manuscript and met with their author in person repeatedly. Soon after Boehme’s death, Franckenberg composed an epistolary treatise that defended Valentinus against his detractors and presented him as a model Christian who had experienced rebirth. Much like Boehme, Franckenberg described this as spiritual alchemy. In later writings, he frequently alluded to concepts of his spiritual alchemy yet never again presented it as fully as in his early Theophrastia Valentiniana.

The Eunuch and the Baldhead: Sexuality in Early Jewish-Christian Polemic

Defining appropriate attitudes towards sexuality has always been an issue in Jewish-Christian polemic. Contemporary Jewish writers tend to boast of Judaism’s liberal attitude toward sexuality, while medieval Jewish polemicists were defensive when confronting Christian attacks on this matter. In ancient times, when sexual puritanism was less popular, Jewish theologians did not refrain from showing their contempt for the Christian value ​​of celibacy. This article proposes a new reading of the Talmudic legend about an argument between Joshua b. Karhah and a Christian eunuch. In this reading, the Christian figure stands for Origen, a Church father described in Christian sources as having castrated himself owing to a literal interpretation of the New Testament. In this reading, the debate summarizes the Talmudic rabbis’ perspective on the difference between Jewish and Christian views of sexuality.

Love, the law and religion:

To the question “Are we as humans obliged to something because it is good, or because it is prescribed by God?”, the Christian Church father Tertullian answered: we obey because of God's will. Today, many are inclined to give the first answer, and even to distrust people who follow Tertullian. In this article, however, the author demonstrates the continuing relevance of Tertullian’s paradigm about reason/will in modern political philosophy: for example, in Thomas Hobbes’ “decisionist” maxim: not truth, but the will of formal authority establishes the law. Or in the democratic combination of rational discussion and decisive majority will. This gives modern democracy the character of a ritual instead of a rational machinery: a kind of secular divine judgement. Also another issue allows us to demonstrate the lasting actuality of Tertullian’s paired concepts: the issue that a political community not only needs democratic legitimacy, but also national unity. Here also the relationship with the question of violence becomes relevant. The author presents four “dangerous liaisons” between love and rational justice. The basic intuition here is that we “not only want to live in a world which we are able to consider just, but in a reality which we experience as valuable in and of itself” (Paul W. Kahn). Love can strengthen rational justice, and vice versa; love can get in conflict with justice; justice can try to expand itself at the expensive of love; and – the other way around – love can drive us to the universal and transcend legal boundaries. As a conclusion, we can distinguish clearly between nationalism and patriotism. And second, we must admit that, while love will always destabilize law, the opposite is also true: we have to make calculations, so that justice can also destabilize love.

Thematic Texts

Early imperial literature approaches arena events as ‘spectacula’, referencing both what is seen and the viewer who sees it, both bound by a complicated reciprocity. The tensions driving this relationship are articulated by writers as consumers of these shows, at once receptive and in opposition to spectacle and its imperial sponsors. This chapter examines how spectacle informs the works of three socially distinct authors, whose writings respond to the visuality and ideology of spectacle at its height. Ovid came of age with Augustus’ rise to power and spectacle and sport are the wallpaper of his imagination. Ovid bends spectacle to his literary purposes, embracing love as an event and spectators as participants and performers. Celebrating Titus’ inaugural games for the Flavian amphitheatre, Martial avoids grand tableaux and instead praises the emperor in epigrammatic form, encapsulating momentary images. Church Father Tertullian reacts against the attraction of spectacle as a ritual force in powerful competition with Christianity for the hearts and minds of the people.

Ekstraksi Pemahaman Cyprianus tentang Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus bagi Gereja Pentakosta di Era Postmodern

The postmodern era is closely related to pluralism and relativism. All are subject to this principle, including human salvation. Jesus, the only way of salvation, is not accepted absolutely, let alone the Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus principle (outside the church there is no salvation) which was coined by the church father Cyprian. This principle is considered too exclusive because it does not provide room for people outside the church to get salvation. In addition, this teaching was also declared null and void by the times. Is this true? That is why it is important to extract this Cyprian understanding that can be used as guidance for the Pente-costal church. The method used is descriptive qualitative with data collection techniques through library research. The data is then extracted and linked to the actions that have been carried out by the Pentecostal church or synod so far. The results of the study indicate that there is a close relationship between ecclesiology and Christology and soteriology. This principle also supports the authority and duty of the church in conveying salvation to men and maintaining pure teaching.AbstrakEra postmodern erat kaitannya dengan pluralisme dan relativisme. Semua dike-nakan prinsip ini, termasuk keselamatan manusia. Yesus satu-satunya jalan keselamatan saja tidak diterima secara absolute apalagi prinsip Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (di luar gereja tidak ada keselamatan) yang dicetuskan oleh bapa gereja Cyprianus. Prinsip ini dianggap ter-lalu ekslusif karena tidak memberikan ruang bagi orang diluar gereja mendapatkan kese-lamatan. Selain itu ajaran ini juga dinyatakan batal oleh perkembangan zaman. Apakah benar demikian? Itu sebabnya, penting untuk mengekstraksi pemahaman Cyprianus ini yang dapat menjadi pegangan bagi gereja Pentakosta. Metode yang digunakan adalah kualitatif deskriptif dengan teknik pengumpulan data melalui studi keperpustakaan. Data selanjutnya diekstraksi dan dikaitkan dengan tindakan yang telah dilakukan oleh gereja atau sinode Pentakosta selama ini. Hasil penelitian menyatakan bahwa ada hubungan erat antara eklesiologi dengan kristologi dan soteriologi. Prinsip ini juga memberikan dukungan akan otoritas dan tugas gereja dalam menyampaikan keselamatan kepada manusia dan menjaga ajaran yang murni.

Eastern Church Fathers on Being Human—Dichotomy in Essence and Wholeness in Deification

The article traces the formation of Eastern Christian anthropology as a new religious and philosophical tradition within the Early Byzantine culture. The notion “Patristics” is reasoned as a corpus of ideas of the Church Fathers, both Eastern and Western. The term “Eastern Patristics” means the works by Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, who in the theological disputes with the Western Church Fathers elaborated the Christian creed. Based on an analysis of the texts of Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, the most important provisions of Eastern Patristics are deduced and discussed, which determined the specificity of Christian anthropology. In this context, different approaches of the Eastern Fathers to the explanation of the Old Testament thesis on the creation of man in God’s image and likeness and the justification of the duality of human essence are shown. Particular attention is paid to considering the idea of deification as overcoming the human dualism and the entire created universe, the doctrine of the Divine Logoi as God’s energies, and the potential elimination of the antinomianism of the earthly and Divine worlds. The article reflects the anthropological ideas of the pre-Nicene Church Father Irenaeus, the non-canonical early Christian work The Shepherd of Hermas, and the teachings on the man of the classical Eastern Patristics period by Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor.

A FASCINATING SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY: ST. GREGORY PALAMAS

As a prominent Church father, mystical theologian and incisive polemicist, St. Gregory Palamas has realized a «Summa Theologica» of his epoch, but one that has surpassed not only the thinking of contemporaries, but remained, to this day, a synthesis of philosophical and theological knowledge, at least for the Eastern Christianity. He pointed out with clarity the independence of theology from philosophy or from any other field of research. One of the most important instruments with a view to knowing God is prayer and Palamas began to write under the pressure of defending the hesychastic method of prayer. He proves that true communion with God was possible through sanctification and that God's vision through prayer was a sign of this spiritual communion. In Palamas' very coherent theological thinking, Christology corresponds to his anthropology, and both to his mysticism. St. Gregory strongly depreciated the value of intellectual effort, maintaining the primacy of direct illumination over scientific reasoning. Thus, prayer and asceticism engender love, which leads to illumination by God and participation in the divine life. He tries to make sense of mystical experience in the scientific and philosophical language of his day. Paradoxically, almost every attempt arrives at establishing that the spiritual cannot be grasped by man's natural intellectual capacity, nor expressed in philosophical language. But the spiritual man can be the partaker of this experience through the experience of grace, as divine uncreated energy, the true "face" of God accessible to human contemplation. The Archbishop of Thessaloniki, who realized a synthesis of Science, Theology, and Spirituality outlines the relation between them as follows: Science explores the world and leads to technological inventions; Theology interprets reality within the Christian framework, evidencing the glory of God as reflected throughout his creation; and Spirituality is the privileged path toward personal transformation. The debate about Palamism is likely to continue for some time. His version of theosis (deification) was enshrined in Orthodox teaching as a result of his canonization, but among the intellectuals for whom it was intended it remained controversial, despite its grandeur.