Admiration

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His principal work, and the only one which has come down to us, is his three books to Autolycus, an educated heathen friend.1366 His main object is to convince him of the falsehood of idolatry, and of the truth of Christianity. He evinces extensive knowledge of Grecian literature, considerable philosophical talent, and a power of graphic and elegant composition. His treatment of the philosophers and poets is very severe and contrasts unfavorably with the liberality of Justin Martyr. He admits elements of truth in Socrates and Plato, but charges them with having stolen the same from the prophets. He thinks that the Old Testament already contained all the truths which man requires to know. He was the first to use the term "triad" for the holy Trinity, and found this mystery already in the words: Let us make man "(Gen. 1:26); for, says he, "God spoke to no other but to his own Reason and his own Wisdom," that is, to the Logos and the Holy Spirit hypostatized.1367 He also first quoted the Gospel of John by name,1368 but it was undoubtedly known and used before by Tatian, Athenagoras, Justin, and by the Gnostics, and can be traced as far back as 125 within the lifetime of many personal disciples of the Apostle. Theophilus describes the Christians as having a sound mind, practising self-restraint, preserving marriage with one, keeping chastity, expelling injustice, rooting out sin, carrying out righteousness as a habit, regulating their conduct by law, being ruled by truth, preserving grace and peace, and obeying God as king. They are forbidden to visit gladiatorial shows and other public amusements, that their eyes and ears may not be defiled. They are commanded to obey authorities and to pray for them, but not to worship them. The other works of Theophilus, polemical and exegetical, are lost. Eusebius mentions a book against Hermogenes, in which he used proofs from the Apocalypse of John, another against Marcion and "certain catechetical books" ( Gr. ) Jerome mentions in addition commentaries on the Proverbs, and on the Gospel, but doubts their genuineness. There exists under his name though only in Latin, a sort of exegetical Gospel Harmony, which is a later compilation of uncertain date and authorship. Notes.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  87 5 Remapping Paul within Jewish Ideologies of Inclusion Matthew Thiessen In her wonderful book, The Invention of World Religions, Tomoko Masuzawa explores the way in which the academic discourse of religious studies developed in Western universities. 1 The Invention of World Religions belongs within a steady stream of books that helpfully interrogate the way in which the concept of religion has taken shape, and for this reason is a must-read for biblical scholars who often work with a concept of religion that is undertheorized. One of the most salient points her work makes is that, in the earliest efforts to undertake comparative religious studies in the 1800s, academics repeatedly succumbed to the temptation to use Christianity as the standard for what religion ought to look like. As part of this project, these scholars frequently described Christianity as the one truly universal religion, while describing all other religions as ethnic. 2 Christianity is a world religion, while all others are merely national or regional religions. 3 Masuzawa’s important work provides biblical scholars with a broader social and intellectual context for some of the most influential nineteenth-century work on the apostle Paul. Is it possible that F. C. Baur was influenced by this larger discourse, so that when he wrote about Paul he could not help but read Paul and early Judaism within this line of thinking? After all, the distinction between Christian universalism and Jewish particularism and nationalism is a leitmotif running through Baur’s writings. For instance, in his Church History of the First Three Centuries, Baur argues that Paul “was the first to lay down expressly and distinctly the principle of Christian universalism as a thing essentially opposed to Jewish particularism.” 4 Paul, he avers, “broke through I offer this essay out of profound respect and appreciation for Terry, who served as the supervisor for my SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship from 2011 to 2012. Concurrently, I was teaching for the College of Emmanuel and St. Chad in Saskatoon, where Terry began his career and where he and his wife Lois are still held dear by the Anglican community. 1 Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 2 Ibid., 78. 3 Ibid., 111. 4 F. C. Baur, The Church History of the First Three Centuries ( trans. Allan Menzies; 3rd ed., 2 vols; London: Williams and Norgate, 1878–9), 1:47.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He addressed an Apology or Intercession in behalf of the Christians to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.1364 He reminds the rulers that all their subjects are allowed to follow their customs without hindrance except the Christians who are vexed, plundered and killed on no other pretence than that they bear the name of their Lord and Master. We do not object to punishment if we are found guilty, but we demand a fair trial. A name is neither good nor bad in itself, but becomes good or bad according to the character and deeds under it. We are accused of three crimes, atheism, Thyestean banquets (cannibalism), Oedipodean connections (incest). Then he goes on to refute these charges, especially that of atheism and incest. He does it calmly, clearly, eloquently, and conclusively. By a divine law, he says, wickedness is ever fighting against virtue. Thus Socrates was condemned to death, and thus are stories invented against us. We are so far from committing the excesses of which we are accused, that we are not permitted to lust after a woman in thought. We are so particular on this point that we either do not marry at all, or we marry for the sake of children, and only once in the course of our life. Here comes out his ascetic tendency which he shares with his age. He even condemns second marriage as "decent adultery." The Christians are more humane than the heathen, and condemn, as murder, the practices of abortion, infanticide, and gladiatorial shows. Another treatise under his name, "On the Resurrection of the Dead, is a masterly argument drawn from the wisdom, power, and justice of God, as well as from the destiny of man, for this doctrine which was especially offensive to the Greek mind. It was a discourse actually delivered before a philosophical audience. For this reason perhaps he does not appeal to the Scriptures. AlI historians put a high estimate on Athenagoras. "He writes," says Donaldson, "as a man who is determined that the real state of the case should be exactly known. He introduces similes, he occasionally has an antithesis, he quotes poetry but always he has his main object distinctly before his mind, and he neither makes a useless exhibition of his own powers, nor distracts the reader by digressions. His Apology is the best defence of the Christians produced in that age." Spencer Mansel declares him "decidedly superior to most of the Apologists, elegant, free from superfluity of language, forcible in style, and rising occasionally into great powers of description, and in his reasoning remarkable for clearness and cogency."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Platonic philosophy offered many points of resemblance to Christianity. It is spiritual and idealistic, maintaining the supremacy of the spirit over matter, of eternal ideas over all temporary phenomena, and the pre-existence and immortality of the soul; it is theistic, making the supreme God above all the secondary deities, the beginning, middle, and end of all things; it is ethical, looking towards present and future rewards and punishments; it is religious, basing ethics, politics, and physics upon the authority of the Lawgiver and Ruler of the universe; it leads thus to the very threshold of the revelation of God in Christ, though it knows not this blessed name nor his saying grace, and obscures its glimpses of truth by serious errors. Upon the whole the influence of Platonism, especially as represented in the moral essays of Plutarch, has been and is to this day elevating, stimulating, and healthy, calling the mind away from the vanities of earth to the contemplation of eternal truth, beauty, and goodness. To not a few of the noblest teachers of the church, from Justin the philosopher to Neander the historian, Plato has been a schoolmaster who led them to Christ. Notes. The theology and philosophy of Justin are learnedly discussed by Maran, and recently by Möhler and Freppel in the Roman Catholic interest, and in favor of his full orthodoxy. Among Protestants his orthodoxy was first doubted by the authors of the "Magdeburg Centuries," who judged him from the Lutheran standpoint. Modern Protestant historians viewed him chiefly with reference to the conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. Credner first endeavored to prove, by an exhaustive investigation (1832), that Justin was a Jewish Christian of the Ebionitic type, with the Platonic Logos-doctrine attached to his low creed as an appendix. He was followed by the Tübingen critics, Schwegler (1846), Zeller, Hilgenfeld, and Baur himself (1853). Baur, however, moderated Credner’s view, and put, Justin rather between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, calling him a Pauline in fact, but not in name ("er ist der Sache nach Pauliner, aber dem Namen nach will er es nicht sein"). This shaky judgment shows the unsatisfactory character of the Tübingen construction of Catholic Christianity as the result of a conflux and compromise between Ebionism and Paulinism.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Symphorosa and her seven sons, of the Roman bishops Alexander and Telesphorus, and others whose names are scarcely known, and whose chronology is more than doubtful. § 19 Antoninus Pius. A.D. 137–161. The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Comte de Champagny (R.C.): Les Antonins. (A.D. 69–180), Paris, 1863; 3d ed. 1874. 3 vols., 8 vo. Merivale’s History. Martyrium Polycarp (the oldest, simplest, and least objectionable of the martyr-acts), in a letter of the church of Smyrna to the Christians in Pontus or Phrygia, preserved by Eusebius, H. Eccl. IV. 15, and separately edited from various MSS. by Ussher (1647) and in nearly all the editions of the Apostolic Fathers, especially by O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, II. 132–168, and Prolog. L-LVI. The recension of the text is by Zahn, and departs from the text of the Bollandists in 98 places. Best edition by Lightfoot, S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, I. 417 sqq., and II. 1005–1047. Comp. the Greek Vita Polycarpi, in Funk, II. 315 sqq. Ignatius: Ad. Polycarpum. Best ed., by Lightfoot, l.c. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. III. 3. 4. His letter to Florinus in Euseb. v. 20. Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in Euseb. v. 24. On the date of Polycarp’s death: Waddington: Mémoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rhéteur Aelius Aristide (in "Mém. de l’ Acad: des inscript. et belles letters," Tom. XXVI. Part II. 1867, pp. 232 sqq.), and in Fastes des provinces Asiatiques, 1872, 219 sqq. Wieseler: Das Martyrium Polykarp’s und dessen Chronologie, in his Christenverfolgungen, etc. (1878), 3 87. Keim: Die Zwölf Märtyrer von Smyrna und der Tod des Bishops Polykarp, in his Aus dem Urchristenthum (1878), 92–133. E. Egli: Das Martyrium des Polyk., in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." for 1882, pp. 227 sqq. Antoninus Pius protected the Christians from the tumultuous violence which broke out against them on account of the frequent public calamities. But the edict ascribed to him, addressed to the deputies of the Asiatic cities, testifying to the innocence of the Christians, and holding them up to the heathen as models of fidelity and zeal in the worship of God, could hardly have come from an emperor, who bore the honorable title of Pius for his conscientious adherence to the religion of his fathers;32 and in any case he could not have controlled the conduct of the provincial governors and the fury of the people against an illegal religion. The persecution of the church at Smyrna and the martyrdom of its venerable bishop, which was formerly assigned to the year 167, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, took place, according to more recent research, under Antoninus in 155, when Statius Quadratus was proconsul in Asia Minor.33 Polycarp was a personal friend and pupil of the Apostle John, and chief presbyter of the church at Smyrna, where a plain stone monument still marks his grave. He was the teacher of Irenaeus of Lyons, and thus the connecting link between the apostolic and post-apostolic ages.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Gallican Confession of 1559, also called the Confession of Rochelle, was, in its first draft, his work, and his pupil Antoine de la Roche Chandieu (also called Sadeel) brought it into its present enlarged shape, in which it was presented by Beza to Charles IX. at the Colloquy at Poissy, 1561, and signed at the Synod of La Rochelle, 1571, by the Queen Jeanne d’Albret of Navarre; her son, Prince Henry of Navarre (Henry IV.); Prince Condé; Prince Louis, Count of Nassau; Admiral Coligny; Chatillon; several nobles, and all the preachers present.1229 The history of French Protestantism down to 1564 is largely identified with Calvin’s name. He induced the Swiss Cantons and the princes of the Smalkaldian League to intercede for the persecuted Huguenots. He sent messengers and letters of comfort to the prisoners. "The reverence," says one of his biographers, "with which his name was mentioned, the boundless confidence reposed in his person, the enthusiasm of the disciples who hastened to him, or came from him, surpasses all the usual experience of men. Congregations appealed to him for preachers; princes and noblemen for decisive counsel in political complications; those in doubt for instruction; the persecuted for protection; the martyrs for exhortation and encouragement in cheerful suffering and dying. And as the eye of a father watches over his children, Calvin watched with untiring care of love over all these relations in their manifold ramifications, and sought to be the same to the great community of his brethren in France what he was to the little Republic at home."1230 Roman Catholic writers have made Calvin responsible for the civil wars in France, as they have made Luther responsible for the Peasants’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. But the Reformers preached reformation by the word and the spirit, not revolution by the sword. The chief cause of the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the intolerance of the papacy. Bossuet charges Calvin with complicity in the conspiracy of Amboise, which was a political coup d’état to check the power of the Guises (1560). Calvin was indeed informed of the plot, but warned against it, first privately, then publicly, and predicted its disastrous failure. He constantly upheld the principle of obedience to the rightful magistrate, and opposed violent measures. "The first drop of blood," he said, "which we shed will cause streams of blood to flow. Let us rather a hundred times perish than bring such disgrace upon the name of Christianity and the cause of the gospel."1231 Afterwards when a war in self-defence was inevitable, he reluctantly gave his consent, but protested against all excesses.1232 Calvin did not live to weep over the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day, nor to rejoice over the Edict of Nantes; but his spirit accompanied "the Church of the Desert," whose motto was the burning bush (Ex.

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  The Bible itself is a model of many forms of communication—story, poetry, law, wisdom, prophecy, letter, vision. A theologian who exemplifies well all those elements in an integrated way is Dietrich Bonhoeffer (see Chapter 4 ). His retrieval was primarily focused on the Bible, theological thinking of the Reformation (especially that of Martin Luther) and of modernity. As regards God, church, and world, he wrote theology out of deep, interwoven engagements in worship and prayer, in his own church and the ecumenical movement among Christian churches, and in contemporary political events—he was executed for taking part in a plot against Hitler. His thinking on such matters as the relation of sociology to the church, the concepts of ‘act’ and ‘being’, discipleship, community, ethics, the relationship of Christianity and the secular, and much else, is still generative in theology. And his theology is constantly exploring new forms of expression—having written much theology in the usual genres such as academic monographs, biblical commentaries, papers, lectures, and sermons, in the final period of his life his theology burst into poetry, drama, fiction, and a powerful series of letters. Bonhoeffer’s formation as a theologian was in one of the most influential institutions in the history of modern Christian theology, the Faculty of Theology in the University of Berlin. The next chapter will look more closely at theology in such academic settings. Chapter 2 Theology and religious studies: how is the field shaped?The last chapter broadly defined theology as thinking about questions raised by and about the religions. It then went on to describe the modern world in terms of multiple overwhelmings, with religions as both agents of overwhelming and shapers of life within them, and theology pursuing its questions in that context. I also described the importance of wisdom and creativity as part of the ‘DNA’ of the best theology. Now it is time to examine specifically academic theology more closely. How might the broad definition of theology given in the last chapter be developed to fit academic theology? My suggestion is: Theology deals with questions of meaning, truth, beauty, and practice raised in relation to religions and pursued through a range of academic disciplines. That is still very broad because it is intended to embrace theology in different types of institution. This matter of the different settings in which theology is studied is important and controversial, and it needs to be faced now. Beyond confessional theology and neutral religious studiesIf you go to study a course in theology it is likely to be in one of three types of institution. There are all sorts of institutional mixtures and gradations, but for simplicity I will describe three basic approaches to the subject. First, you can go to an institution identified with a particular church or other religious tradition. The theology done there is likely to be ‘confessional’ in the sense that it is committed to the sponsoring church or other body.

• From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

  A similar contrast discovers itself in the respective effects and fortunes of certain influential principles or usages, which have both been introduced into the Catholic system, and are seen in operation elsewhere. When a system really is corrupt, powerful agents, when applied to it, do but develope that corruption, and bring it the more speedily to an end. They stimulate it preternaturally; it puts forth its strength, and dies in some memorable act. Very different has been the history of Catholicism, when it has committed itself to such formidable influences. It has borne, and can bear, principles or doctrines, which in other systems of religion quickly degenerate into fanaticism or infidelity. This might be shown at great length in the history of the Aristotelic philosophy within and without the Church; or in the history of Monachism, or of Mysticism;--not that there has not been at first a conflict between these powerful and unruly elements and the Divine System into which they were entering, but that it ended in the victory of Catholicism. The theology of St. Thomas, nay of the Church of his period, is built on that very Aristotelism, which the early Fathers denounce as the source of all misbelief, and in particular of the Arian and Monophysite heresies. The exercises of asceticism, which are so graceful in St. Antony, so touching in St. Basil, and so awful in St. Germanus, do but become a melancholy and gloomy superstition even in the most pious persons who are cut off from Catholic communion. And while the highest devotion in the Church is the mystical, and contemplation has been the token of the most singularly favoured Saints, we need not look deeply into the history of modern sects, for evidence of the excesses in conduct, or the errors in doctrine, to which mystics have been commonly led, who have boasted of their possession of reformed truth, and have rejected what they called the corruptions of Catholicism. 9.

• From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

  Far different from such a theory is the picture which the ancient Church presents to us; true, it was governed by Bishops, and those Bishops came from the Apostles, but it was a kingdom besides; and as a kingdom admits of the possibility of rebels, so does such a Church involve sectaries and schismatics, but not independent portions. It was a vast organized association, co-extensive with the Roman Empire, or rather overflowing it. Its Bishops were not mere local officers, but possessed a quasi-ecumenical power, extending wherever a Christian was to be found. "No Christian," says Bingham, "would pretend to travel without taking letters of credence with him from his own bishop, if he meant to communicate with the Christian Church in a foreign country. Such was the admirable unity of the Church Catholic in those days, and the blessed harmony and consent of her bishops among one another."[266:1] St. Gregory Nazianzen calls St. Cyprian an universal Bishop, "presiding," as the same author presently quotes Gregory, "not only over the Church of Carthage and Africa, but over all the regions of the West, and over the East, and South, and Northern parts of the world also." This is evidence of a unity throughout Christendom, not of mere origin or of Apostolical succession, but of government. Bingham continues "[Gregory] says the same of Athanasius; that, in being made Bishop of Alexandria, he was made Bishop of the whole world. Chrysostom, in like manner, styles Timothy, Bishop of the universe. . . . . The great Athanasius, as he returned from his exile, made no scruple to ordain in several cities as he went along, though they were not in his own diocese. And the famous Eusebius of Samosata did the like, in the times of the Arian persecution under Valens. . . Epiphanius made use of the same power and privilege in a like case, ordaining Paulinianus, St. Jerome's brother, first deacon and then presbyter, in a monastery out of his own diocese in Palestine."[267:1] And so in respect of teaching, before Councils met on any large scale, St. Ignatius of Antioch had addressed letters to the Churches along the coast of Asia Minor, when on his way to martyrdom at Rome. St. Irenæus, when a subject of the Church of Smyrna, betakes himself to Gaul, and answers in Lyons the heresies of Syria. The see of St. Hippolytus, as if he belonged to all parts of the _orbis terrarum_, cannot be located, and is variously placed in the neighbourhood of Rome and in Arabia. Hosius, a Spanish Bishop, arbitrates in an Alexandrian controversy. St. Athanasius, driven from his Church, makes all Christendom his home, from Treves to Ethiopia, and introduces into the West the discipline of the Egyptian Antony. St. Jerome is born in Dalmatia, studies at Constantinople and Alexandria, is secretary to St. Damasus at Rome, and settles and dies in Palestine.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  publications. Origen would have had no trouble in our current climate of “publish or perish.” He did have unusual help, though. This patron was a man in Alexandria named Ambrose. Ambrose provided him with a whole array of secretaries. There were people who took down his worded dictation, and another crew who were calligraphers, who prepared his writings for publication. Then, they would copy and distribute them, so that all he had to do was dictate his brilliant thoughts, and somebody else would write them down and ready them for publication. There were other people with the same resources, though, who didn’t write 1,000 books. He was quite an amazing fellow. Origen was not somebody who thought lightly about things. In fact, he was an incredibly deep thinker, who was trying for the first time in a systematic way to work out the mysteries of the Christian faith based upon the revelation found in the Scriptures, and so, he was a scriptural theologian who used the Scriptures to try to understand the things the Scriptures might imply, but not spell out, including some understanding of how Christ could be God, and God could be God, yet, there only being one God. Origen developed a complex Christological view, a complex view of Christ that affirmed that Christ was fully divine, and yet, since God the Father was the creator of all, Christ was one of God’s creations. How could he be one of God’s creations, if he himself was fully divine? Origen worked out a way for that to have happened. Origen maintained that Christ began, as did all humans, and all beings, whether human beings, angels, or demons, every spiritual being, as a pre- existent disembodied mind that God had created. God, in the eternity past, created a whole array of minds, and everybody, all of these spirits, were created in order to contemplate God forever. Everybody, all of these pre- existent minds, these disembodied minds, were created in order to contemplate God. Some of them decided to rebel against God. They had free will, and could do that. They did so, including the devil and his demons, who fell from the divine realm. Others simply could not sustain contemplation of God for eternity, and they also fell and became human beings, souls in human bodies. They are here in the world in order to be trained so that they can once again return to their heavenly home to contemplate God. There was only one mind that stayed affixed to God permanently. This one mind was so wrapped up in its contemplation of God, so fixed on God himself, that this one became one with God, just as when you take a piece of iron, and put the piece of iron in 361 the fire. If you leave it there long enough, the piece of iron will become so hot it will assume all the characteristics of the fire that it is put into.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Christian faith of Justin is faith in God the Creator, and in his Son Jesus Christ the Redeemer, and in the prophetic Spirit. All other doctrines which are revealed through the prophets and apostles, follow as a matter of course. Below the deity are good and bad angels; the former are messengers of God, the latter servants of Satan, who caricature Bible doctrines in heathen mythology, invent slanders, and stir up persecutions against Christians, but will be utterly overthrown at the second coming of Christ. The human soul is a creature, and hence perishable, but receives immortality from God, eternal happiness as a reward of piety, eternal fire as a punishment of wickedness. Man has reason and free will, and is hence responsible for all his actions; he sins by his own act, and hence deserves punishment. Christ came to break the power of sin, to secure forgiveness and regeneration to a new and holy life. Here comes in the practical or ethical side of this Christian philosophy. It is wisdom which emanates from God and leads to God. It is a new law and a new covenant, promised by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and introduced by Christ. The old law was only for the Jews, the new is for the whole world; the old was temporary and is abolished, the new is eternal; the old commands circumcision of the flesh, the new, circumcision of the heart; the old enjoins the observance of one day, the new sanctifies all days; the old refers to outward performances, the new to spiritual repentance and faith, and demands entire consecration to God. IV. From the time of Justin Martyr, the Platonic Philosophy continued to exercise a direct and indirect influence upon Christian theology, though not so unrestrainedly and naively as in his case.1358 We can trace it especially in Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and even in St. Augustin, who confessed that it kindled in him an incredible fire. In the scholastic period it gave way to the Aristotelian philosophy, which was better adapted to clear, logical statements. But Platonism maintained its influence over Maximus, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, and other schoolmen, through the pseudo-Dionysian writings which first appear at Constantinople in 532, and were composed probably in the fifth century. They sent a whole system of the universe under the aspect of a double hierarchy, a heavenly and an earthly, each consisting of three triads.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Page 885. Add to Lit. on Athanasius: G. R. Sievers: Athanasii Vita acephala (written before 412, first publ. by Maffei, 1738). Ein Beitrag zur Gesch. des Athan. In the "Zeitschr. für Hist. Theol." (ed. by Kahnis). Gotha, 1868, pp. 89–162. Böhringer: Athanasius und Arius, in his Kirchengesch. in Biogr. Bd. vi., new ed. Leipz., 1874. Hergenröther (R.C.): Der heil. Athanas. der Gr. Cologne, 1877 (an essay, pages 24). L. Atzberger: Die Logoslehre des heil. Athanas. München, 1880. W. Möller: Art. Athan. in Herzog,2 i. 740–747. Lüdtke: in Wetzer and Welte, 2 i. (1882), 1534–1543. Gwatkin: Studies in Arianism. Cambr. 1882. Page 890. Add to footnote at the bottom: Villemain considers Athanasius the greatest man between the Apostles and Gregory VII., and says of him: "Sa vie, ses combats, son génie servirent plus à l’agrandissement du christianisme que toute la puissance de Constantin .... Athanase cherche le triomphe, et non le martyre. Tel qu’un chef de parti, tel qu’un général experimenté qui se sent nécessaire aux siens, Athan. ne s’expose que pour le succès, ne combat que pour vaincre, se retire quelque fois pour reparaître avec l’éclat d’un triomphe populaire." (Tableau de l’éloquence chrétienne au IVe siècle, p. 92.) Page 894 line 11. Add to Lit. on St. Basil: Dörgens: Der heil. Basilius und die class. Studien. Leipz., 1857. Eug. Fialon. Étude historique et literaire sur S. Basile, suivie de l’hexaemeron. Paris, 1861. G. B. Sievers: Leben des Libanios. Berl., 1868 (p294 sqq.). Böhringer: Die drei Kappadozier oder die trinitarischen Epigonen (Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Naz.), in Kirchengesch. in Biograph., new ed. Bd. vii. and viii. 1875. Weiss: Die drei grossen Kappadozier als Exegeten. Braunsberg, 1872. R. Travers Smith: St. Basil the Great. London, 1879. (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), 232 pages. Scholl: Des heil. Basil Lehre von der Gnade. Freib., 1881. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 ii. 116–121. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 282–297. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," 1889. vol. ii. 1–55. Page 904 line 7. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nyssa: Böhringer: Kirchengesch. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. G Herrmann: Greg. Nyss. Sententiae de salute adipiscenda. Halle, 1875. . T. Bergades: De universo et de anima hominis doctrina Gregor. Nyss. Leipz., 1876. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 v. 396–404. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, ii. 761–768. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, 723–725. On his doctrine of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, see especially Baur and Dorner. On his doctrine of the apokatastasis and relation to Origen, see Möller, G. Herrmann, and Bergades. l.c. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," (1889), ii. 56–83. Page 909, line 4. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nazianzus: A. Grenier: La vie et les poésies de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1858. Böhringer: K. G. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. Abbé A. Benoît: Vie de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1877. J. R. Newman: Church of the Fathers, pp. 116–145, 551. Dabas: La femme au quatrième siècle dans les poésies de Grég. de Naz.

• From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

  The integrity of the Catholic developments is still more evident when they are viewed in contrast with the history of other doctrinal systems. Philosophies and religions of the world have each its day, and are parts of a succession. They supplant and are in turn supplanted. But the Catholic religion alone has had no limits; it alone has ever been greater than the emergence, and can do what others cannot do. If it were a falsehood, or a corruption, like the systems of men, it would be weak as they are; whereas it is able even to impart to them a strength which they have not, and it uses them for its own purposes, and locates them in its own territory. The Church can extract good from evil, or at least gets no harm from it. She inherits the promise made to the disciples, that they should take up serpents, and, if they drank any deadly thing, it should not hurt them. When evil has clung to her, and the barbarian people have looked on with curiosity or in malice, till she should have swollen or fallen down suddenly, she has shaken the venomous beast into the fire, and felt no harm. 6. Eusebius has set before us this attribute of Catholicism in a passage in his history. "These attempts," he says, speaking of the acts of the enemy, "did not long avail him, Truth ever consolidating itself, and, as time goes on, shining into broader day. For, while the devices of adversaries were extinguished at once, undone by their very impetuosity,--one heresy after another presenting its own novelty, the former specimens ever dissolving and wasting variously in manifold and multiform shapes,--the brightness of the Catholic and only true Church went forward increasing and enlarging, yet ever in the same things, and in the same way, beaming on the whole race of Greeks and barbarians with the awfulness, and simplicity, and nobleness, and sobriety, and purity of its divine polity and philosophy. Thus the calumny against our whole creed died with its day, and there continued alone our Discipline, sovereign among all, and acknowledged to be pre-eminent in awfulness, sobriety, and divine and philosophical doctrines; so that no one of this day dares to cast any base reproach upon our faith, nor any calumny, such as it was once usual for our enemies to use."[442:1] 7.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  Catherine was one of two full-time employees, along with a man named Jay. Catherine and Jay bantered like teen siblings. Jay was clever, dry, and quick, but Catherine was truly funny. She was sarcastic and kind. She had smokers’ teeth, sinewy arms, and wavy blackish-brown hair cut into a haphazard shag. Her voice sounded like she had a cold. She worked hard and made cooking look easy. She heaved a case of green beans onto the counter and showed me how to snap off their stems and tails. I took it very seriously, as though I could be scolded at any moment, and she laughed at me. It was a pain in her ass to have me in the kitchen, a newbie and a kid, but Catherine was patient. She knew I was clueless, and she seemed to like me anyway. Catherine and Jay held, among other things, a firm belief that the ice cream in a Klondike bar was better than the ice cream in any other frozen confection, and I still find myself repeating that assertion, though I’ve never formally tested it. They made sure there was always a stash in the walk-in freezer, a treat at the end of the day. I got paid seven dollars an hour and I got a Klondike bar. The fact that Catherine was gay didn’t come up much, but she didn’t hide it. She never mentioned a partner, and I knew she had no children. I didn’t think a lot about it, except to note that her being gay was one more part of her—like her imperfect teeth and her raunchy puns—that made her different from other adult women I knew. Catherine wasn’t like my mother or my mother’s friends, and she didn’t seem to care. I cared, a lot. It wasn’t that I thought my mother lived only for beauty, or for men, or for any prescribed checklist of womanly attributes. But I did think my mother was everything. To me she was an ideal woman: an independent person with her own wants and drives plus a devoted mother and wife, and she was beautiful. I could see that other women envied her self-possession, her sophistication, that braid-bun hairstyle she made look so easy. It was right that they should envy her. She contained the best possibilities, all possibilities, of womanhood. My mother was what life as a woman would, and should, look like.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] My parents liked to joke that I was their reward for surviving the adolescence of my half brother. He was the youngest child of my father’s first marriage and older than me by fifteen years. By the time I learned to walk, he’d driven a car into a drainage ditch and had been kicked out of high school for an unrelated offense. I came out of the womb eager to please. I got good grades, liked to read and write book reports for fun. I learned to believe that boys are mean when they like you, learned to watch what I ate. I was not discouraged from rocking the boat, but I also was not inclined to rock it more than gently. When I did act up, my mother’s stock warning was mild and even-keeled, and it terrified me: There will be consequences, she said. That was enough, and I would right the ship. I don’t remember a time when I got far enough to test her warning; the articulation of it was plenty. Once, at the age of twelve, while playing mini-golf on a vacation somewhere in Colorado, I impishly kicked a family friend’s ball off its tee. The adults whooped and applauded because I’d acted my age. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The women of my childhood came in two varieties: doctors’ wives and fitness instructors. The doctors’ wives wore silk designer blouses and a quantity of makeup that never exceeded “tasteful.” The fitness instructors were not their opposite, but close. They were early adopters of Spandex and tanning beds, glowing under halos of body-waved hair. My mother was both. She code-switched like it was her job, and it was. In aerobics class, she wore a thick brown ponytail that bounced from shoulder to shoulder and an elastic belt that matched her leg warmers. Back home, fresh from a shower, she draped loops of chunky gold Chanel chains around her neck. She’d French-braid her hair while it was still wet, weaving a sleek braid down the back of her head that she’d tuck under itself and secure with bobby pins at her nape. She got her nails done every week, rounded talons coated in red polish, and her lipstick gleamed like fire engines do. She commanded her womanness, shaped it like an arrowhead, sharpened it to a point. She was not just a woman, but woman-plus. On a good day, she could have been in a Robert Palmer video. On an average day, she was beautiful, my radiantly eighties upper-middle-class mom.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He was not an original philosopher, but a philosophizing eclectic, with a prevailing love for Plato, whom be quotes more frequently than any other classical author. He may be called, in a loose sense, a Christian Platonist. He was also influenced by Stoicism. He thought that the philosophers of Greece had borrowed their light from Moses and the prophets. But his relation to Plato after all is merely external, and based upon fancied resemblances. He illuminated and transformed his Platonic reminiscences by the prophetic Scriptures, and especially by the Johannean doctrine of the Logos and the incarnation. This is the central idea of his philosophical theology. Christianity is the highest reason. The Logos is the preexistent, absolute, personal Reason, and Christ is the embodiment of it, the Logos incarnate. Whatever is rational is Christian, and whatever is Christian is rational.1356 The Logos endowed all men with reason and freedom, which are not lost by the fall. He scattered seeds ( ) of truth before his incarnation, not only among the Jews but also among the Greeks and barbarians, especially among philosophers and poets, who are the prophets of the heathen. Those who lived reasonably ( ) and virtuously in obedience to this preparatory light were Christians in fact, though not in name; while those who lived unreasonably ( ) were Christless and enemies of Christ.1357 Socrates was a Christian as well as Abraham, though he did not know it. None of the fathers or schoolmen has so widely thrown open the gates of salvation. He was the broadest of broad churchmen. This extremely liberal view of heathenism, however, did not blind him to the prevailing corruption. The mass of the Gentiles are idolaters, and idolatry is under the control of the devil and the demons. The Jews are even worse than the heathen, because they sin against better knowledge. And worst of all are the heretics, because they corrupt the Christian truths. Nor did he overlook the difference between Socrates and Christ, and between the best of heathen and the humblest Christian. "No one trusted Socrates," he says, "so as to die for his doctrine but Christ, who was partially known by Socrates, was trusted not only by philosophers and scholars, but also by artizans and people altogether unlearned."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It is due to his influence chiefly that the Scriptures and service-books at this period were illustrated by so many vernacular glosses. He stood in close connection with the Roman see, as the centre of ecclesiastical unity and civilization. He devoted half of his income to church and school. He founded a school in Oxford similar to the Schola Palatina; but the University of Oxford, like those of Cambridge and Paris, is of much later date (twelfth or thirteenth century). He seems to have conceived even the plan of a general education of the people.837 Amid great physical infirmity (he had the epilepsy), he developed an extraordinary activity during a reign of twenty-nine years, and left an enduring fame for purity, and piety of character and unselfish devotion to the best interests of his people.838 His example of promoting learning in the vernacular language was followed by Aelfric, a grammarian, homilist and hagiographer. He has been identified with the archbishop Aelfric of Canterbury (996–1009), and with the archbishop Aelfric of York (1023–1051), but there are insuperable difficulties in either view. He calls himself simply "monk and priest." He left behind him a series of eighty Anglo-Saxon Homilies for Sundays and great festivals, and another series for Anglo-Saxon Saints’ days, which were used as an authority in the Anglo-Saxon Church.839

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It was an asylum for persecuted confessors of the evangelical faith without distinction of nationality, an impregnable moral fortress built upon the rock of the Bible.1225 Zürich, Basel, and Strassburg were the only places in that age which can be compared with Geneva in generous hospitality to strangers. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the city of Geneva numbered 12,000 souls, in 1543 not more than 13,000; but in the seven years from 1543 to 1550 it increased to 20,000, or at the rate of 1000 a year. This increase was chiefly due to the continuous influx of persecuted Protestants from France, Italy, and England. Some came also from Spain and Holland.1226 Most of them were educated men and not a few of them distinguished for learning and social position, as Cordier, Colladon, Etienne (Stephens), Marot, Ochino, Carraccioli, Knox, Whittingham. They had made sacrifices for the sake of religion, and thereby acquired the honor of confessors with the spirit of martyrs. There were special congregations for Italians and Englishmen, who were provided by the city with suitable places of worship. Calvin treated the refugees with great hospitality. He secured to them as far as possible the rights of citizenship. Some of them were even elected to the Large Council. An insult to a refugee from religious persecution was as punishable as an insult to a minister of the gospel. The favor and privileges accorded to these foreigners excited the envy and jealousy of the native Genevese, who opposed their admission to citizenship and their right to carry arms. This exclusive nativism gave Calvin a great deal of trouble. The little Republic of Geneva was continually exposed to the danger of absorption by Savoy, France, and Spain, which hated her as the stronghold of heresy. It was in a large measure due to the wisdom and firmness of Calvin that in those critical times she preserved her liberty and independence. He also resisted the repeated attempts of Bern to interfere with the doctrine and discipline of the Church. Geneva offers a wonderful aspect in modern history. Embracing the élite of three nations, melted into one whole by the spirit of one man, it continues in the midst of mighty and bitter foes, without any external support, simply through its moral force. It has no territory, no army, no treasures, no temporal, no material resources. There it stands, a city of the spirit, built of Christian stoicism on the rock of predestination." § 161. The Academy of Geneva. The High School of Reformed Theology. I. Calvin: Leges Academiae Genevensis, or L’Ordre du Collège de Genève, first published in Latin and French. Geneva, 1559. Republished by Charles Le Fort, professor of law at Geneva, on the third centennial of the founding of the Academy, June 5, 1859, and in Opera, X. 65–90. II. Berthault: Mathurin Cordier. L’enseignement chez les premiers Calvinistes. Paris, 1876 (85 pp.).—Massebieau: Les colloques scolaires du seizième siècle et leurs auteurs.

• From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

  Something ought to be said of these Churches; though little is known except what is revealed by the fact, in itself of no slight value, that they had sustained two persecutions at the hands of the heathen government in the fourth and fifth centuries. One testimony is extant as early as the end of the second century, to the effect that in Parthia, Media, Persia, and Bactria there were Christians who "were not overcome by evil laws and customs."[292:2] In the early part of the fourth century, a bishop of Persia attended the Nicene Council, and about the same time Christianity is said to have pervaded nearly the whole of Assyria.[292:3] Monachism had been introduced there before the middle of the fourth century, and shortly after commenced that fearful persecution in which sixteen thousand Christians are said to have suffered. It lasted thirty years, and is said to have recommenced at the end of the Century. The second persecution lasted for at least another thirty years of the next, at the very time when the Nestorian troubles were in progress in the Empire. Trials such as these show the populousness as well as the faith of the Churches in those parts,--and the number of the Sees, for the names of twenty-seven Bishops are preserved who suffered in the former persecution. One of them was apprehended together with sixteen priests, nine deacons, besides monks and nuns of his diocese; another with twenty-eight companions, ecclesiastics or regulars; another with one hundred ecclesiastics of different orders; another with one hundred and twenty-eight; another with his chorepiscopus and two hundred and fifty of his clergy. Such was the Church, consecrated by the blood of so many martyrs, which immediately after its glorious confession fell a prey to the theology of Theodore; and which through a succession of ages manifested the energy, when it had lost the pure orthodoxy of Saints. 9.

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  Some were wealthy and provided financial support for the apostle; others served as patrons for entire church- es, allowing congregations to meet in their homes and supplying them with the resources necessary for their gatherings. Some women were Paul's co- workers on the mission field. Why, then, do most people today think that all of the early Christian leaders were men? This question has generated a number of inter- esting studies in recent years. Here I will present one of the persuasive perspectives that has emerged from these studies. Despite the crucial role that women played in the earliest Christian churches, by the end of the first century they faced serious opposition from those who denied their right to occupy positions of status and authority. This opposition succeeded in pressing Christian women into submission to male authority and obscured the record of their earlier involvement. WOMEN IN PAUL'S CHURCHES Despite the impression that one might get from such ancient Christian writings as the Pastoral epistles, women were not always a silent presence in the churches. Consider Paul's letter to the Romans, in which he sends greetings to and from a number of his acquaintances (chap. 16). Although Paul does name more men than women here, the women in the church appear to be in no way infe- rior to their male counterparts. There is Phoebe, a deacon (or minister) in the church of Cenchreae, entrusted by Paul with the task of carrying the let- ter to Rome (vv. 1-2). There is Prisca, who along with her husband Aquila, is largely responsible for the Gentile mission and who supports a congrega- tion in her own home (vv. 3-4; notice that she is named ahead of her husband). There is Mary, Paul's colleague who works among the Romans (v. 6). There are Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis, women whom Paul calls his "co-workers" for the gospel (vv. 6, 12). And there are Julia and the mother of Rufus and the sister of Nereus, all of whom appear to have a high profile in this com- munity (vv. 13, 15). Most impressively of all, there is Junia, a woman whom Paul names as "foremost among the apostles" (v. 7). The apostolic band was evidently larger--and more inclusive than the list of twelve men of common knowledge. Other Pauline letters provide a similar impres- sion of women's active involvement in the Christian churches. In Corinth women are full members of the body, with spiritual gifts and the right to use them. They actively participate in ser- vices of worship, praying and prophesying along- side the men (1 Cor 11:4-6). In Philippians the only two believers worth mentioning by name are THE NEw TEST/UENT: A HSTORC.