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August 11 - October 9, 2017
what was debated was in a way the authority of the church against the claims of the heretics.
had there been any such secret teaching, it should be found among the direct disciples of the apostles, and the successors of those disciples, the bishops.
the Gnostic claim that there is a secret tradition with which they have been entrusted is false.
the orthodox church of the second century could show its connection with the apostles in a way Marcion and the Gnostics could not.
When first developed, late in the second century, the principle of apostolic succession was inclusive rather than exclusive:
The word catholic means “universal,” but it also means “according to the whole.”
This title underscored both its universality and the inclusiveness of the witness on which it stood.
The various writers of that period whose work has been preserved are given the joint title of apostolic fathers, and each of their writings deals with very specific issues.
all the writings of the so-called apostolic fathers deal with a single issue, and none of them seeks to expound the totality of Christian doctrine.
The heretics had created their own systems of doctrine, and to this the church at large had to respond by having some of its teachers offer equally cogent expositions of orthodox belief.
Irenaeus was above all a pastor.
in his writings he did not seek to rise in great speculative flights, but simply to refute heresy and instruct believers.
his goal is to expound the faith that he has received from his teachers, without adorning it with his own speculations.
God’s purpose was that human beings would grow in communion with the divine, eventually surpassing even the angels.
God is so far above us that no matter how much we grow in our likeness to the divine we shall always have a long way to go.
the future incarnate Word was the model that God followed in making humans after the divine image.
At the very moment of the fall, God is working for human redemption.
In his resurrection, the final resurrection has dawned, and all who are part of his body will partake of it.
what we find in Irenaeus is a grand vision of history, so that the divine purposes unfold through it.
God’s purpose is to be joined to the human creature, and this has taken place in a unique way in Jesus Christ.
his goal was not so much to expound the traditional faith of the church—although he did hold that faith—as to help those in quest of deeper truth, and to convince pagan intellectuals that Christianity was not the absurd superstition that some claimed it was.
He is convinced that there is only one truth, and that therefore any truth to be found in Plato can be none other than the truth that has been revealed in Jesus Christ and in scripture.
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.
For the truly wise, faith is the first principle, the starting point, on which reason is to build.
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.
Tertullian was a lawyer, or at least had been trained in rhetoric, and his entire literary output bears the stamp of a legal mind.
His aim is to show, not simply that the heretics are wrong, but rather that they do not even have the right to dispute with the church.
Since scripture belongs to the churches which are the heirs to the apostles, the heretics have no right to base their arguments on it.
As Tertullian sees the matter, a Christian who is still searching for further truth lacks faith.
Tertullian condemns all speculation.
the strength of his arguments is not so much in his logic as in his rhetoric,
The rest of the church opposed the preaching of the Montanists not because they prophesied, but because they claimed that with them the last age of history had dawned.
in the second century the conviction of the church was very much alive, that the last days had already begun in Jesus Christ.
According to Praxeas, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were simply three modes in which God appeared, so that God was sometimes Father, sometimes Son, and sometimes Holy Spirit—
in both the trinitarian and the christological questions, Tertullian coined the formulas that would eventually become the hallmark of orthodoxy.
It is an attempt to relate Christian faith to the philosophical tradition that was then current in Alexandria, Platonism.
once these points have been affirmed, Origen feels free to rise in great speculative flights.
Although Origen claims that all this is based on the Bible, it is clear that it is derived from the Platonic tradition, where similar ideas had been taught for a long time.
However, since these spirits will still be free, there is nothing to guarantee that there will not be a new fall, a new material world, and a new history, and that the cycle of fall, restoration, and fall will not go on forever.
Origen proposes all of this, not as truths to be generally accepted, nor as something that will supersede the doctrines of the church, but as his own tentative speculations, which ought not to be compared with the authoritative teaching of the church.
on many points Origen is more Platonist than Christian.
As one studies the writings of these great teachers of the church, it is evident that different trends or theological tendencies are beginning to emerge.
whatever persecution existed was local and sporadic.
there were new policies that deeply affected the life of the church.
the emperor felt the need for religious harmony within his territories, and thus settled on a policy of promoting syncretism.
These five people—some of whom were in their teens—were charged, not with being Christians, but with recently converting, and thus disobeying the imperial edict.
Shortly thereafter, for reasons that are not altogether clear, persecution abated.
they did not attempt to force Jews and Christians to accept syncretism, or to stop seeking converts.
during almost half a century, persecution was rare, while the number of converts to Christianity was great.
Decius was simply a Roman of the old style, whose main goal was to restore Rome to her ancient glory.
