The Second Christian Century

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The Second Christian Century

• Persecution, Heresy, and Growth

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From c. 80 AD-180

• Great Period of Roman prosperity and power
• Succession of good emperors
• Trade, especially around the Mediterranean
  Flourished
• Marcus Aurelius The Philosopher King

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Treasure Hunt

• Find a list of Second Century Emperors
• Find materials on Marcus Aurelius.
• Find the an English Translation of Marcuss
  Meditations.
• Picture is from http//www.roman-emperors.org/mar
  caur.htm

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Early Christian Literature

• By 80 AD, the churches were facing the crisis of
  the death of the eyewitnesses to Jesus life.
• Part of this crisis was the increasing number of
  questions posed by believers about their Lord.

• Three types of literature came into being
• 1. Canonical Gospels and Acts of the Apostles
• 2. Non-Canonical Gospels and Acts. . .
• 3. Heretical Gospels and Acts. . ..

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An Early Christian Report on the New Literature
of the Second Century

• Jesus did many other things as well. If every one
  of them were written down, I suppose that even
  the whole world would not have room for the books
  that would be written.NIV. John 2225

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Treasure Hunt

• Using the Web, find translations of
• The Canonical Gospels and Acts. (5 items)
• Non-Canonical Gospels and Acts. (at least 5
  items)
• Heretical Gospels and Acts.(at least 5 items)
• Give yourself three points if you can discover
  how many times the authorities attempted to kill
  St. Thecla.

• Saint Thecla
• http//www.in2greece.com/english/saints/thecla.htm
  

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Increasing the Challenge

• Find a searchable translation of The Acts of Paul
  (and Thecla) and locate the passage in which the
  heroine is thrown to seals.
• Find the account of Theclas Self-Baptism.

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The Apostolic Fathers

• Orthodox Writers of the period between c. 95 and
  c.150 whose works did not become canonical
  (although some were considered part of the New
  Testament in some areas).
• First expressions of the great themes of orthodox
  Christian belief
• canon,
• creed,
• and constitution.

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Treasure Hunt

• Find a list of the most common recognized
  Apostolic Fathers and their writings.
• Find the Didaches teachings on Baptism and the
  Eucharist.
• When was the Didache found? By Whom?

• Picture is from http//www.earlychristianwritings
  .com/didache.html

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Apologists

• An apology is a defense.
• The literary form is an appeal to Caesar for his
  understanding.
• Philosophically these interpreted faith in terms
  of two themes
• Monotheism.
• Morality.

• Hence, the apologist claimed that the ancestors
  of the church were Moses and the Greek
  philosophers.
• Christianity was not new but already written on
  the hearts and minds of humanity.
• Which canonical writer makes a similar claim and
  where.?

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Monotheism

• I have sufficiently shown that we are not
  atheists since we acknowledge one God, who is
  uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible,
  incomprehensible, illimitable. He is grasped
  only by mind and intelligence, and surrounded by
  light, beauty, spirit, and indescribable power.
  By him the universe was created thorough his
  Word. . . .
• Athenagoras Plea Regarding the Christians, 10.

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Morality

• For we ought not to strive neither has He
  desired us to be imitators of wicked men, but He
  has exhorted us to lead all men, by patience and
  gentleness, from shame and the love of evil. And
  this indeed is proved in the case of many who
  once were of your way of thinking, but have
  changed their violent and tyrannical disposition,
  being overcome either by the constancy which they
  have witnessed in their neighbors' lives, or by
  the extraordinary forbearance they have observed
  in their fellow-travelers when defrauded, or by
  the honesty of those with whom they have
  transacted business. Justin, The First Apology.
  http//www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinm
  artyr-firstapology.html.

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Treasure Hunt

• Find an on-line edition of the Apologists and
  make a list of the leading authors who used this
  genre.
• Find a summary of the life of Justin the Martyr.
• How did Justin earn his living?
• What was his motive in debating Typho?

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Yet more Treasure

• Find a list of at least six books that describe
  the second-century Jewish-Christian debate.
• Locate reviews for at least three of those books
  on the web.
• Select one of these reviewed texts, and order it
  on interlibrary loan, omitting only the final
  send, unless you want to read the volume.

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Persecution

• Persecution in the Second Century was more often
  local and occasional than official.
• Early Christians developed an extensive
  literature around the lives and deaths of these
  saints.

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Tertullian on the Persecution of his Time

• If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if
  the Nile does not rise to the fields, of the
  weather will not change, if there is an
  earthquake, a famine, a plaguestraightaway the
  cry is heard Toss the Christians to the lion!
  So many of them for just one lion.
• The Apology, Forty, Trans. Arbesmann

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A Saintly TreasureHunt Perpetua and Felicitas

• Find this famous saints tale on the web.
• What evidence is there that this account, at
  least in part, was written by a Christian woman?
• How did Perpetua die?

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Understanding Treasures

• Why are Sts. Perpetua and Felicity pictured as
  African in this contemporary icon?
• http//www.scborromeo.org/images/saints/perpfel.j
  pg

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Gnosticism and Heresy

• The most noted or notorious of heresies was
  Gnosticism.
• The name comes from the Greek word for knowledge,
  gnosis.
• http//www.thevesselofgod.com/towardtheundivided.h
  tml

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Visual Treasure Hunt

• Who is pictured on the previous slide and what
  does this picture tell us about Gnosticism?
• How might one research an image rather a text on
  the web?

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Doceticism

• Word means from the Greek to appear or to seem.
• The belief that Christ only appeared to have
  flesh or a body.
• Hence, both His birth and His death were not
  historical events.

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Gnostic Salvation

• One was saved by being awakened to ones true
  spiritual nature and rising through the various
  levels of the cosmos to the Source who was
  finally beyond all experiencing.
• The means to this salvation was a secret
  knowledge given to the adherent at their
  initiation.

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A Gnostic Mood

• The often-debated cosmogony of Valentinus might
  be most profitably understood as being based on a
  single existential recognition, which might be
  summarized thus Something is wrong. Somewhere,
  somehow, the fabric of being at the existential
  level of human functioning has lost its
  integrity. We live in a system which is lacking
  in essential integrity, and thus is defective.
• Stephan A. Hoeller
• http//www.gnosis.org/valentinus.htm

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Gnosticisms Search

• The Gnostic wanted to find, as did the Platonic
  philosopher, that which was really real in our
  experience. The real had to be eternal, beyond
  space and time, and the ultimate Source of all
  that appeared to be.

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The Old Testament

• The Gnostics did not want to continue the use of
  the Old Testament which they saw as the product
  of a defective and unloving creator who only
  believed himself or herself to be the Source of
  being.

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Sex

• Since most Gnostics believed that matter was
  evil, they saw sexual relations as imprisoning
  new souls in material bodies.
• In general, they were ascetics, and their
  practices of self-denial may have influenced the
  Catholic Church, especially, monasticism.

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Treasure Hunt

• Identify sites devoted to the Nag Hammadi
  documents?
• Learn the story of the discovery and the study of
  these key documents.
• What is the significance of this find?
• Find pictures of the documents on the web?

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Heresy Hunt for Famous Gnostics

• Find the following on the web
• Basilides
• Valentinus
• Marcion

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Irenaeus on Mary I

• That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His
  own things, and was sustaining them by means of
  that creation which is supported by Himself, and
  was making a recapitulation of that disobedience
  which had occurred in connection with a tree,
  through the obedience which was exhibited by
  Himself when He hung upon a tree, the effects
  also of that deception being done away with, by
  which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused
  to a man, was unhappily misled,-was happily
  announced, through means of the truth spoken by
  the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was also
  espoused to a man.168 For just as the former was
  led astray by the word of an angel, so that she
  fled from God when she had transgressed His word
  so did the latter, by an angelic communication,
  receive the glad tidings that she should sustain
  (portaret) God, being obedient to His word.

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Irenaeus on Mary II

• And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter
  was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order
  that the Virgin Mary might become the
  patroness169 (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And
  thus, as the human race fell into bondage to
  death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a
  virgin virginal disobedience having been
  balanced in the opposite scale by virginal
  obedience. For in the same way the sin of the
  first created man (protoplasti) receives
  amendment by the correction of the
  First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is
  conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those
  bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast
  bound to death.

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Anti-Gnostic Writers

• Many of the most noted writers of the second
  century were opposed to Gnosticism.
• Irenaeus Against Heresies in Five Books.
• The beginnings of the quest for a philosophical
  understanding of Christ
• Recapitulation Christ redeems our humanity by
  assuming it.

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Three Marks of Catholic Christianity

• Canon or normative Scripture
• Creed or normative summary of faith
• Constitution or bishops in apostolic succession.

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Irenaeus on the Church

• Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not
  necessary to seek the truth among others which it
  is easy to obtain from the Church since the
  apostles, like a rich man depositing his money
  in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all
  things pertaining to the truth so that every
  man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water
  of life.11 For she is the entrance to life all
  others are thieves and robbers. Against Heresies
  3, 4.

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More Treasures

• Find Irenaeus Against Heresies on the web and
  search the text for his views of the Bible, the
  bishops, and the creeds.
• Find Tertullians Prescription of the Heretics on
  the web and search the text for his description
  of the heretics way of life. (hint it is near the
  end of the treatise.

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Last Slide

• Be Sure to Download the Handout for the Class you
  missed.
• Good Luck on the Midterm.
• God Bless