In my History of Christianity course we have now moved from the initial Christian communities and we are now entering the third century. At this point Christian communities have grown beyond the Holy Land and can be found through Asia Minor, Greece, Rome and a large portion of Northern Africa. As each of these communities began to grow and spread across the Roman Empire they began to form their own identity. This identity was usually forged in slight variations of practices as well variations in the understanding of the nature of Christ. The Christians in North Africa will be different then the Christians in Greece. We are now immersed in two early Christian writers who are lumped in with several more writers/thinkers/bishops that have come to be known as the Patristics.
As Christianity spread these writers struggled to form the identity of the early Christian Church. They sorted out different theories surrounding the nature of Christ and the Trinity. They defended their beliefs and practices against other groups who proclaimed their version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ultimately they laid the foundation upon which we have created our identity, our scriptures, and our doctrine of the church today. I am reading works from two of the Patristics...Origen and Tertullian. These two men are not saints, and at certain times their works were declared heretical, but yet still hold an important role in the understanding of and formation of the Christian faith. Now I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to read 3rd Century Christian works but they are not easy. Not easy at all.
The excerpts that I am reading from Origen is from On First Principles. Now this isn't the first time that I have read Origen. In fact Mark and I spent a considerable amount of time reading and discussing his commentary on the Gospel of John. Origen was hard to read then and is still hard to read now. In this reading he is writing about how scriptures should be read. He believes that one cannot read the scriptures on just a literal level and that there is more to it than that. He comments about the spiritual side and that there are things we must figure out for ourselves in order to truly understand what was written. Now at first glance this sounds very familiar, in that the Anglican tradition is based on this very idea that there is more to the scripture than what it says on the surface. As opposed to the more modern Evangelical Christians who base their faith on the totality of scripture and that if the Bible says, it must be true. I was surprised to find out that someone from the 3rd Century was already thinking that way. However, I ran into my official mentor Jeremy who is focusing on the Patristic era for his MA warned me that the literal understanding of scripture for Origen is different from our modern literal understanding of scripture. So then what does he mean???
In the excerpts from Tertullian we are diving head first into one of the first descriptions and understanding the nature of Christ and the Trinity. Now this is some heavy stuff. At this point in time there are various people making very different claims about the divinity and nature of Christ. So in order to provide some clarity on the subject Tertullian throws his hat into the ring and defends his beliefs. In his work On the Flesh of Christ, he writes about how the Spirit and flesh of Jesus did not meld into one being, however the Spirit was dwelling within him, as a separate yet unified entity. Que??? I get the general gist of his argument and I see how this defense works against the claims laid by others, especially Marcion. Fortunately we will be discussing this tomorrow in class, bright and early. There is nothing quite like Christological arguments at 8:00 on a Friday morning. I will let you know if it becomes any clearer.
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