Overview of Second Century Christianity - Essay Example

?The second Century was of critical importance in the history of the church. The last surviving apostle with direct contact to Jesus had passed away in Anatolia in AD100. The church was spreading, structures were changing. It was time for an acid test for this new faith, as it’s leadership was passing hands to a generation, which had not heard and seen Jesus first hand. Their philosophy and actions would affect the faith for centuries to come. There were essential questions about the nature of Christ, which had to be answered. Non-existent terminology had to be coined and theologies and names for theologies evolved with the passing of time. One of great import was the communicatio idiomatum. What were the scriptures and how were they to be interpreted and understood was such a vital question. Many solutions were being out forward and the church fathers of this period had had to propose and refute. The senses of scripture emerged and became part of interpretive strategy but not without their own specific problems. The influence of the Greek and platonic times were still evident in society and was making their impact felt even in the Christian faith. Gnosticism would emerge and be dealt with but never with complete success. The church continued to grow and with the passing of time the various councils began to play a critical role in the defense of authentic faith, and the role of liturgies would become invaluable. Christianity, which started as a first century Jewish cult spread rapidly over the Greco-Roman world. Its early period can be divided into two definite phases. First is the apostolic period. The Post Apostolic period stretched from the late first century until the Council of Nicaea in 325. The area of our focus namely the 2nd century fits into the Post Apostolic period. This was also known as the Ante Nicene period. The Apostolic fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Origen, Polycarp, and Tertullian were looked upon for guidance after the death of the Apostles. They were also teachers and Bishops. A loose episcopal structure developed at this time where individual congregations recognized the voice of the bishop of a particular area in matters of faith and doctrine. Of the three Christian movements that survived onto the post-apostolic period the Jewish Christian movement was eliminated with the Bar Kochba revolt. Pauline Christianity and Gnostic Christianity flourished. This century presented challenges to the church fathers in terms of persecution, doctrinal conflicts other than the very challenge of authoritatively and resolutely continuing the great commission in the absence of the apostles. What was the need for communicatio idiomatum? One of the functions of Bishops during this period was to refute heresies. These heresies were largely Christological. They had a problem understanding the mystery of Christ being divine as well as human. For instance Docetism believed that Jesus’s humanity was an illusion, which was refuted by Ignatius of Antioch in AD 110. “Many groups were dualistic, maintaining that reality was composed into two radically opposing parts: matter, usually seen as evil, and spirit, seen as good. Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, held that both the material and spiritual worlds were created by God and were therefore both good, and that this was represented in the unified divine and human natures of Christ.”1 These arose due to the mystery of Christ. Theologians assign the name mystery to revealed truths that are beyond the power of natural understanding. The earliest of Christians grappled with the mystery of the nature of Christ and the Gnostics of the 2nd century had a real issue with this. The fact that one person can have two natures is problematic. Terminology is a culprit. There is terminology for being divine and there is terminology for being human but no terminology for being both at the same time. Theological language of that day was insufficient for this purpose. The easiest of explanations is to say that he sometimes acted as a human and sometimes as divine. This of course is dualism. The term “Hypostatic union (from the Greek: ?????????, {"[h]upostasis"}, "hypostasis", sediment, foundation, substance, or subsistence) is a technical term in Christian Theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis. “2 “A doctrine that is related to the Hypostatic Union is the communicatio idiomatum (Latin for ‘communication of properties’). It is the teaching that the attributes of both the divine and human natures are ascribed to the one person of Jesus. This means that the man Jesus could lay claim to the glory He had with the Father before the world was made (John 17:5), claim that He descended from heaven, (John 3:13), and also claim omnipresence, (Matt. 28:20). All of these are divine qualities that are laid claim to by Jesus; therefore, the attributes of the divine properties were claimed by the person of Jesus.”3 Therefore the term communicatio idiomatum in Christian theology, which actually means communication of properties, became a Christological term explaining the interaction of deity and humanity in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Herein is the helpfulness of communication idiomatum. “The communicatio idiomatum of Christ’s two natures demands that whatever can be attributed to either the human or divine nature of Christ can be attributed to Christ’s one person. Whatever is true of either nature is true of the whole person.”4 What were ways of interpreting the scriptures? With the original apostles demise the whole gamut how to interpret scripture came to the fore? Therefore the post apostolic period also saw the development of the “senses of the scripture”. It means that one is not constricted to a single meaning of biblical text rather you allow it to speak in multiple ways. The ‘literal sense’ and the ‘spiritual sense’ were the two basic senses of scripture. The meaning of the word themselves is called the literal sense. “The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture.”5 It is also called as the grammatical or the verbal sense, the plain sense, the human author intended sense. It is to be configured by the use of interpretation rules such as archeological evidence, grammatical aids, sociological and anthropological studies and historical literary analyses. The spiritual sense went on to identify what was meant by the words. It was understood as “the meaning expressed by the biblical texts when read under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the paschal mystery of Christ and of the new life which flows from it.”6. This was of special significance to the church fathers as the OT had contained in it evidence of Christ. This spiritual sense was also referred to as the mystical sense. A further sense developed and needs special focus. It was felt there was a meaning hidden underneath the text, which was different to what was obvious and was known as the allegorical sense. It refers to the meaning hidden below the surface of the text. It was a methodology that was used in understanding Greek myths, which were somewhat raw in the surface. This crudeness was considered a veil used by the authors to hide the true intended meaning. A specialty of platonic philosophy, the written was treated as a symbol of in-depth reality, and once symbolically interpreted the mystery becomes revelation. A case in point is Galatians chapter 4 where Paul used the two sons of Abraham to refer to the two covenants. This sense dominated the post apostolic period beginning form the mid 2nd century. At later times there was a difference made between Allegory and Typology, which was not the case in the 2nd century. Allegorical sense made it possible to understand some of the difficult as well as obscure passages of the Bible, but as methodology went the spiritual sense was considered more significant. How pervasive was Gnosticism? The biblical Canon as known today was not confirmed during the century under review. There were diverse beliefs of what was to be considered as scripture. There was a group led by Irenaeus who restricted themselves to the synoptic gospels with Gospel of John as the standard. There were others however who claimed to receive secret or gnostic teachings from Jesus and through other apostles, and held on to a wider array as authoritative scripture. Gnosticism is the term used to describe a specific set of religious beliefs and associated with Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism, Hellenistic Judaism, and became associated with sections of Christianity as well in the second century. It consisted of dualism where a demarcation was made between the realms of the body and the spirit. The physical universe or matter was considered evil and was said to have been created by the evil “demiurge”. Humans were considered trapped into their evil bodies and could be released by special divine knowledge called gnosis. “Jesus was identified by some Gnostic sects as an embodiment of the Supreme Being who became incarnate to bring gnosis to the earth.”7 Some take an offence of this saying that “it is an impossibility for a supreme being to take human form and state, Jesus was considered a msiha kdaba or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist.”8. While the gnostics cannot be considered a single movement there were different groups, which formed around different leaders. Main Gnostic beliefs that differ from Biblical teachings include: “the creator as a lower being [‘Demiurge’] and not a Supreme Deity; scripture having a deep, hidden meaning whose true message could only be understood through ‘secret wisdom’.9 The role of liturgy in holding the understanding of Christus praesens? “The Eucharist is a particular act of corporate worship where the transcendence of God converges with the immanent, each in its totality, the act of worship where Christus absens is experienced as Christus praesens. It is a memorial to the redemptive particularity of the convergence of God’s transcendence and immanence in the person of Jesus Christ.”10. It is in the Eucharist therefore that the fault line between truth and compromise will show the most. Given the history of the church where the immanence of God has been the subject of much debate in general the Eucharist in particular has been the subject of violent disagreement. Liturgy is most in focus in the Eucharist and as such lends itself to a discussion of the place of liturgy in holding to Christus praesens amidst the flurry of other doctrinal positions. Liturgies set out how the public worship is to be undertaken. Where the Holy Eucharist is concerned the liturgy guides us as to the celebration of sacrifice of the cross through sacramental representation. The guide through liturgy is based on the scriptures, the apostolic traditions, the declarations of the councils of the church, and the history of prayer of the church. This link is established well by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23. According to an important bull by the second Vatican council “The visible signs used by the liturgy to signify invisible divine things have been chosen by Christ or the Church”. The liturgies have been constructed to doctrinally safeguard such a treasure. The liturgy therefore has proven to be invaluable in the holding of the doctrine of Christus praesens. Notes Read More