Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Reformation (The Story of Christianity)

by Justo L. González

But one of the angels, Satan, was jealous of the high destiny reserved for humankind, and for that rea...

From that point on, history has unfolded under ...

Although the actual course of history is the result of sin, the fact that there is history is not. God always had t...

The situation in paradise, as described in Genesis, was not the goal...

begin...

From this perspective, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is n...

Adam and Eve were so created that, after a process of growth and instruction, they could become like the incarnate Word. What has happened because of sin is that the incarnation has taken on the added purpose of offering a remedy for sin, and a means for defeating Satan.

This is why God curses the serpent and the earth, but only punishes the man and the woman. At the very moment of the Fall, God is working for human redemption.

Therefore, the Old Testament is not the revelation of a God alien to the Christian faith, but is rather the history of the unfolding redemptive purposes of the same God whom Christians know in Jesus Christ.

worship—particularly communion

His

parents were pagans; but young Clement was converted in unknown circumstances, and then undertook a vast search for a teacher who could give him deeper instruction in the Christian faith.

It was in that context that Clement studied and taught, and therefore his thought bears the mark of Alexandria. He was not a pastor, like Irenaeus, but rather a thinker and a searcher;

Exhortation to the Pagans.

Thus, pagans will be able to approach Christianity without taking for granted, as many supposed, that it is a religion for the ignorant and the superstitious.

Scripture is written allegorically or, as Clement says, “in parables.”

The sacred text has more than one meaning. The literal sense ought not to be set aside. But those who are content with it are like children who are content with milk, and never grow to adulthood. Beyond the literal sense of the text there are other meanings that the truly wise must discover.

There is a close relationship between faith and reason, for one cannot func...

For the truly wise, faith is the first principle, the starting point, on which reason is to build.

God is the Ineffable One about which one can only speak in metaphors and in negative terms. One can say what God is not. But as to what God is, human language can do no more than point to a reality that is beyond its grasp.

The main difference is that, while Justin used the doctrine of the Logos to show to pagans the truth of Christianity, Clement uses the same doctrine to call Christians to be open to the truth in philosophy.

He either was a lawyer or had been trained in rhetoric, and his entire literary output bears the stamp of a legal mind.

Even though not all of Scripture belonged originally to the church, by now it does.

All these apostolic churches agree in their use and interpretation of Scripture. Furthermore, by virtue of their very origin the writings of the apostles belong to the apostolic churches.

The church, as the rightful owner of Scripture, is the only one that has the right to interpret it.

This argument against the heretics has repeatedly been used against various dissidents throughout the history of Christianity. It was one of the main arguments of Catholics against Protestants in the sixteenth century.

In Tertullian’s case, however, one should note that his argument is based on showing a continuity, not only of formal succession, but also of doctrine, through the generations. Since this continuity of doctrine was precisely what was debated at the time of the ...

once one has found the truth of Christianity, one should abandon any further search for truth. As Tertullian sees the matter, a Christian who is still searching for further truth lacks faith.

Naturally, Tertullian would allow Christians to delve deeper into Christian doctrine. But anything that goes beyond it, as well as anything coming from other sources, must be rejected.

In short, Tertullian condemns all speculation.

What we are to ask is not what God could do, but rather what is it that God has in fact done.

But the strength of his arguments is not so much in his logic as in his rhetoric, which sometimes leads him to sarcasm.

Thus, through a unique combination of mordant irony and inflexible logic, Tertullian became the scourge of heretics and the champion of orthodoxy.

Yet, around the year 207, that staunch enemy of heresy, that untiring advocate of the authority of the church, joined the Montanist movement.

This in itself was not new, for at that time, at least in some churches, women were allowed to prophesy.

What was new, and gave rise to serious misgivings, was that Montanus and his followers claimed that their movement was the beginning of a new age.

The rest of the church opposed Montanist preaching not because they prophesied, but because they claimed that with them the last age of history had dawned.

These were the consequences of Montanism that the church could not accept.

The only way to explain the continuing sin of Christians was to see the church as an intermediate stage, to be superseded by the new age of the Spirit.

Against Praxeas,

Whoever Praxeas was, it is clear that he was influential in the church of Rome, and that there he had sought to explain the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in a manner that Tertullian found inadmissible.

According to Praxeas, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost were simply three modes in which God appeared, so that God was sometimes Father, sometimes Son, and sometimes Holy Ghost

It is in this context that he proposes the formula “one substance and three persons.”

it is significant that, in both the Trinitarian and the Christological questions, Tertullian coined the formulas that would eventually become the hallmark of orthodoxy.

Furthermore, he was the first Christian theologian to write in Latin, which was the language of the western half of the Empire, and thus he may be considered the founder of Western theology.

Christian teachers to be considered in this chapter, was Origen. In contrast with Clement, Origen was the son of Christian parents. His father suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Septimius Severus—the

Origen, who was still a young lad, wished to offer himself for martyrdom. But his mother hid his clothes and he was forced to remain at home, where he wrote a treatise on martyrdom addressed to his imprisoned father.

kinda funny

Hexapla.

For instance, since the tradition of the apostles and of the church gives no details as to how the world was created, Origen believes that this is a fair field of inquiry.

Origen simply declares that there are two