The Church in Ancient Society

The Church in Ancient Society PDF Author: Henry Chadwick
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191529958
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 746

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Book Description
The Church in Ancient Society provides a full and enjoyable narrative history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church. Ancient Greek and Roman society had many gods and an addiction to astrology and divination. This introduction to the period traces the process by which Christianity changed this and so provided a foundation for the modern world: the teaching of Jesus created a lasting community, which grew to command the allegiance of the Roman emperor. Christianity is discussed in relation to how it appeared to both Jews and pagans, and how its Christian doctrine and practice were shaped in relation to Graeco-Roman culture and the Jewish matrix. Among the major figures discussed are Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, Julian the Apostate, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine. Following a chronological approach, Henry Chadwick's clear exposition of important texts and theological debates in their historical context is unrivalled in detail. In particular, theological and ecclesial texts are examined in relation to the behaviour and beliefs of people who attended churches and synagogues. Christians did not find agreement and unity easy and the author displays a distinctive concern for the factors - theological, personal, and political - which caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation. The emperors, however, began to foster unity for political reasons and to choose monotheism. Finally, the Church captured the society.

The Church in Ancient Society

The Church in Ancient Society PDF Author: Henry Chadwick
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191529958
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 746

Get Book

Book Description
The Church in Ancient Society provides a full and enjoyable narrative history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church. Ancient Greek and Roman society had many gods and an addiction to astrology and divination. This introduction to the period traces the process by which Christianity changed this and so provided a foundation for the modern world: the teaching of Jesus created a lasting community, which grew to command the allegiance of the Roman emperor. Christianity is discussed in relation to how it appeared to both Jews and pagans, and how its Christian doctrine and practice were shaped in relation to Graeco-Roman culture and the Jewish matrix. Among the major figures discussed are Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, Julian the Apostate, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine. Following a chronological approach, Henry Chadwick's clear exposition of important texts and theological debates in their historical context is unrivalled in detail. In particular, theological and ecclesial texts are examined in relation to the behaviour and beliefs of people who attended churches and synagogues. Christians did not find agreement and unity easy and the author displays a distinctive concern for the factors - theological, personal, and political - which caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation. The emperors, however, began to foster unity for political reasons and to choose monotheism. Finally, the Church captured the society.

The Church in Ancient Society

The Church in Ancient Society PDF Author: Henry Chadwick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description


Christianity and Roman Society

Christianity and Roman Society PDF Author: Gillian Clark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521633864
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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The Early Church

The Early Church PDF Author: Henry Chadwick
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780140137538
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Chadwickʹs Early Church covers, as the book cover suggests, "the story of emergent Christianity from the apostolic age to the dividing of the ways between the Greek East and the Latin West." The story unfolds with the Jewish and Roman background within which the beginning church was nourished. It then goes on to show how important it is for the church to establish order and unity amidst threats of persecution and heresy. The emergence of apologists helps not only the expansion of the church but also the construction of Christian doctrine. At the same time, controversies abound as the church encountered many different cultural and sociological challenges while trying out in reaction a variety of ideas. With chapter seven, the relation between church and state changes, resulting in a stronger influence of the state upon the church while accelerating the split between the Latin West and the Greek East. The Arian controversy shows a period of instability between state and church, and also deepens the split of East and West. But within the turmoil, ascetic practice, papacy, liturgy, and art are established, helping to transmit a common European culture while the Roman Empire begins to degenerate.

Christianity in Ancient Rome

Christianity in Ancient Rome PDF Author: Bernard Green
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567032507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
of the Pope." --Book Jacket.

Constantine and the Bishops

Constantine and the Bishops PDF Author: H. A. Drake
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801871047
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
Historians who viewed imperial Rome in terms of a conflict between pagans and Christians have often regarded Constantine's conversion as the triumph of Christianity over paganism. Here Drake offers a fresh understanding of Constantine's rule.

The Role of the Christian Bishop in Ancient Society

The Role of the Christian Bishop in Ancient Society PDF Author: Henry Chadwick
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725230933
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Battling the Gods

Battling the Gods PDF Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.

Charts of Ancient and Medieval Church History

Charts of Ancient and Medieval Church History PDF Author: John D. Hannah
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310233169
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The first in a series of three books that survey the history of the church from its beginning to the present day.

Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society

Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society PDF Author: Susan R. Holman
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 080103549X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
An ecumenical roster of leading specialists approach wealth and poverty through the theology, social practices, and institutions of early Christianity.