Journal articles on the topic 'Early Christian Religion'
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1
Bernasconi, Robert. "Must We Avoid Speaking of Religion? The Truths of Religions." Research in Phenomenology 39, no. 2 (2009): 204–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156916409x448175.
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AbstractHeidegger already recognized in the 1920s the difficulties facing a phenomenology of religion, but the problems are greatly multiplied once one recognizes that many of the so-called religions were constituted as such only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and that the "invention" of these religions was according to an idea of religion shaped by Christianity. By investigating the incompatible attempts of Kant and Hegel to negotiate that idea, I identify the genealogy of the double bind whereby today it appears that one is faced with a choice between two violences: the violence of imposing the word religion on practices that do not readily follow the model of the Christian religion and the violence of refusing the word to non-Christian religions.
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Dean, Jason. "Outbidding Catholicity. Early Islamic Attitudes toward Christians and Christianity." Exchange 38, no. 3 (2009): 201–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157254309x449700.
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AbstractHow did early Islam gain its understanding of Christians and Christianity? How did it react to Christian claims of universality? To answer these questions, this article first identifies passages pertaining to the Christian religion in representative texts of the three main bodies of literature produced by the first Muslim writers and editors: the Qur'ān, the Hadith and the Sira. This data is then analyzed into five ideal-types of Islamic attitudes toward Christians and Christianity: 1) affirmations of the truth of the Gospel, 2) descriptions of Christians as true believers, 3) descriptions of Christians as sectarians, 4) accusations of disbelief (kufr) and 5) accusations of idolatry (shirk). The assertion of an historical relationship between sectarianism, disbelief and idolatry led to subordinating the Muslim-Christian dialogue on the recognition of the unicity of God, which could be conceived of as providing the basis either for a restricted religious pluralism or for an Islamic universalism.
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Schnelle, Udo. "Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung." New Testament Studies 61, no. 2 (February 26, 2015): 113–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0028688514000344.
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Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.
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Jacinto Zavala, Agustín. "The Philosophy of Religion in Nishida Kitarō : 1901-1914." Thème 20, no. 1-2 (October 16, 2013): 39–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/1018853ar.
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The Study of Religion (Shūkyō-gaku) is an early text from a one-year course, 1913-1914, which Nishida Kitarō imparted only once in his academic career. In this text, apart from references to mystics and to early and medieval Christian thinkers, Nishida tries to point out the basic elements of Eastern and Western religions through the writings of xviii-xxth century authors, among them participants in the Gifford Lectures, the Bampton Lectures and Hibbert Lectures. On the other hand, Nishida tries to find the corresponding characteristics of religion in Zen and True Pure Land Buddhism. In short, Nishida’s approach to a philosophy of religion gives us an overview of the problems concerning a Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
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Wilken, Robert L. "Religious Pluralism and Early Christian Theology." Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 40, no. 4 (October 1986): 379–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002096438604000405.
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Early Christians understood that not every way to God is sound or elevating, that some forms of religion set our hearts on lesser goods, some teach us to honor and venerate improper objects, some abase rather than uplift.
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Berzon, Todd. "Ethnicity and Early Christianity: New Approaches to Religious Kinship and Community." Currents in Biblical Research 16, no. 2 (January 30, 2018): 191–227. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1476993x17743454.
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This article outlines how recent scholarly interventions about notions of race, ethnicity and nation in the ancient Mediterranean world have impacted the study of early Christianity. Contrary to the long-held proposition that Christianity was supra-ethnic, a slate of recent publications has demonstrated how early Christian authors thought in explicitly ethnic terms and developed their own ethnic discourse even as they positioned Christianity as a universal religion. Universalizing ambitions and ethnic reasoning were part and parcel of a larger sacred history of Christian triumphalism. Christian thinkers were keen to make claims about kinship, descent, blood, customs and habits to enumerate what it meant to be a Christian and belong to a Christian community. The narrative that Christians developed about themselves was very much an ethnic history, one in which human difference and diversity was made to conform to the theological and ideological interests of early Christian thinkers.
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Forbes, Christopher. "Early Christian Inspired Speech and Hellenistic Popular Religion." Novum Testamentum 28, no. 3 (1986): 257–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853686x00156.
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Hegedus, Tim. "The Magi and the Star in the Gospel of Matthew and Early Christian Tradition." Articles spéciaux 59, no. 1 (April 22, 2003): 81–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/000790ar.
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Abstract The Matthean pericope (2.1-12) of the Magi and the star of Bethlehem prompted a variety of responses among early Christian commentators of the second to the fifth centuries. These responses reflect a range of attitudes among the early Christians towards astrology, which was a fundamental and pervasive aspect of ancient Greco-Roman religion and culture. Some early Christian writers repudiated astrology absolutely, while others sought to grant it some degree of accommodation to Christian beliefs and practices. Interpretations of the Matthean pericope offer an index to the range of such views. This paper examines the motifs of the Magi and of the star in Matthew 2.1-12 as well as a number of early Christian interpretations of the pericope as evidence of a pattern of ambivalence in early Christian attitudes toward Greco-Roman astrology.
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Sanneh, Lamin. "Pluralism and Christian Commitment." Theology Today 45, no. 1 (April 1988): 21–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004057368804500103.
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“In the early centuries, the new Christian religion moved forward like an oriental caravanserai, with its complex baggage of exotic teachings, baffling mysteries, and an eclectic ethical code. In the jumble and tumble of social encounter, Christians spoke a bewildering variety of languages. … Christian missionaries assumed that since all cultures and languages are lawful in God's eyes, the rendering of God's word into those languages and cultures is valid and necessary. … Far from suppressing indigenous cultures, the effect of missionary translation has been to stimulate indigenous renewal.”
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Digeser, Elizabeth DePalma. "The Emergence of the Christian Religion: Essays on Early Christianity." Journal of Early Christian Studies 7, no. 2 (1999): 306–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/earl.1999.0039.
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Navarro-Prado, Silvia, Jacqueline Schmidt-RioValle, Miguel A. Montero-Alonso, Ángel Fernández-Aparicio, and Emilio González-Jiménez. "Unhealthy Lifestyle and Nutritional Habits Are Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Diseases Regardless of Professed Religion in University Students." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15, no. 12 (December 14, 2018): 2872. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15122872.
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To date, few studies have evaluated the possible association between religion and nutritional habits, lifestyle and cardiovascular risk in the university population. This study identified differences in the eating habits of Christian and Muslim university students and determined a possible association between the impact of religion on their lifestyles and the parameters related to cardiovascular risk. A cross-sectional study was performed with a sample population of 257 students (22.4 ± 4.76 year) at the campus of the University of Granada in Melilla (Spain). An anthropometric evaluation and a dietary assessment were performed. Blood pressure was also measured. There was a higher prevalence of overweight (29.1%) among Christian university students. The prevalence of pre-hypertension was similar between Christians and Muslims (48.3%) but was higher among Christian males (74.5%). Christian students presented higher levels of visceral fat. Students of both religions ingested carbohydrates, saturated fatty acids and total cholesterol, proteins, sodium and alcohol in excess. Significant positive correlations were found between food energy, sweets, snacks, soft drinks and body mass index (BMI) in both sexes and between the consumption of sausages-fatty meats and the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and body adiposity index (BAI) variables. Muslim students were less likely to consume alcohol (odds ratio [OR] = 7.88, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.27, 14.54). Christian and Muslim students presented improvable lifestyles and intake patterns. The high intake of saturated fatty acids, total cholesterol, sodium and alcohol in Christian students could lead to the early development of cardiovascular disease.
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Ramelli, Ilaria L. E. "Christian Apokatastasis and Zoroastrian Frashegird." Religion & Theology 24, no. 3-4 (2017): 350–406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15743012-02403007.
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The theory of universal restoration (apokatastasis), the eventual eviction of evil and the purification, conversion and salvation of all rational creatures, was prominent in early Christian thinkers and present in more Patristic theologians than is commonly assumed. But, besides having philosophical, Biblical, and Jewish roots, may it have stemmed from another religion? The only suitable candidate would be Zoroastrianism. An analysis of the available sources concerning Zoroastrian eschatology shows that it is improbable that this may have influenced the Christian apokatastasis doctrine. At least, it is impossible to prove anything like this, mainly for chronological reasons. Fruitful interactions may, however, have occurred at the time of Bardaisan. This essays shows the importance of comparative religio-historical studies, and the reconceptualizing of theological doctrines into social discourse, for research into early Christianity.
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Aftyka, Leszek. "Christian Caritas in Christian Pedagogy." Journal of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University 5, no. 1 (April 20, 2018): 102–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.15330/jpnu.5.1.102-106.
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The article highlights the leading ideas of Christian pedagogy, which are the upbringing of children and youth of spiritual and moral values. The author stresses that Christian pedagogy serves the effective tool for the formation of the spirituality of the younger generation, the formation of philosophical representations and beliefs, etiquette, spiritual traditions and values of people in the universally accepted commandments of God. Considerable attention is paid to the formation of high morality of the younger generation, etiquette, love of people, religiousness, etc. In the Christian religion the highest value compared to all other virtues is „love”. The Christian love is rooted primarily in the commandment of love for God and man, that is why genuine charity comes from the heart full of love. This article presents the teaching of Christ for mercy to others and its practical application in the first Christian Communities. The author described the economic organization and charitable initiatives in the communities of early Christians
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Bremmer, Jan N. "Urban Religion, Neighbourhoods and the Early Christian Meeting Places." Religion in the Roman Empire 6, no. 1 (2020): 48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1628/rre-2020-0005.
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Malieckal, Bindu. "Early modern Goa: Indian trade, transcultural medicine, and the Inquisition." Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 26 (April 13, 2015): 135–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67451.
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Portugal’s introduction of the Inquisition to India in 1560 placed the lives of Jews, New Christians, and selected others labelled ‘heretics’, in peril. Two such victims were Garcia da Orta, a Portuguese New Christian with a thriving medical practice in Goa, and Gabriel Dellon, a French merchant and physician. In scholarship, Garcia da Orta and Gabriel Dellon’s texts are often examined separately within the contexts of Portuguese and French literature respectively and in terms of medicine and religion in the early modern period. Despite the similarities of their training and experiences, da Orta and Dellon have not previously been studied jointly, as is attempted in this article, which expands upon da Orta and Dellon’s roles in Portuguese India’s international commerce, especially the trade in spices, and the collaborations between Indian and European physicians. Thus, the connection between religion and food is not limited to food’s religious and religio-cultural roles. Food in terms of spices has been at the foundations of power for ethno-religious groups in India, and when agents became detached from the spice trade, their downfalls were imminent, as seen in the histories of Garcia da Orta and Gabriel Dellon.
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Morgan-Miller, N. W. "An Exploratory Study of Different Types of Violence Presented in Early Christian and Islamic Historical Documents." Psychological Reports 91, no. 2 (October 2002): 520–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pr0.2002.91.2.520.
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Source documents for Islam and Christianity were analyzed for violent themes. The two religions both condemned criminal violence, and neither supported random violence. Nonviolence was more common in the Christian sources while active violence was much more common in the Islamic documents. Although violence themes are a very small proportion of the content of the documents of either religion, those who seek to justify active violence against perceived enemies may find more support for their actions in early Islamic sources than in early Christian sources. Results are interpreted from a perspective of symbolic interaction.
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Babii, Mykhailo. "Religious Tolerance, Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Religion and Belief in the period of Establishment of Christianity." Religious Freedom, no. 24 (March 31, 2020): 10–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.32420/rs.2020.24.1783.
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The author examines the process of establishment of Christian understanding of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion and tolerance. In doing so, he draws on the achievements of the Greek and Greek-Roman traditions of interpreting freedom of conscience. The time of late antiquity accounts for the time of organizational establishment and strengthening of the new religion - Christianity. Describing this period, the author notes the presence of a variety of cults and sects in which foreign gods (in particular, Egyptian and Iranian) were worshiped. In this situation, individuals were free to choose their faith and satisfy their personal need for spiritual connection with God or gods. Against the background of the fall of the authority of ancient religions, the emergence and strengthening of the Emperor cult Christians seek recognition by the authorities, the equation of rights. After all, Christianity becomes a state religion. At this time, a new religious paradigm was emerging that could be a factor in the multi-ethnic, multi-tribal, or multilingual unity of the Roman Empire. The tendency of growing interest in monotheistic, in particular Jewish, religion became noticeable: the idea of one and all-pervading God was opposed to ancient polytheism.
The article reveals the peculiarities of the Christian understanding of freedom, which underlies the inner personal spiritual freedom bestowed by God. Christianity the first formulated the idea of freedom of religious conscience as freedom to choose religion. In addition to the individual dimension of freedom of conscience, Christianity has actualized the community's right to freedom of religion, freedom of outside religion, and worship. At the same time, it theoretically substantiated these rights and practically required its observance by the authorities.
The legitimacy of the affirmation of the principle of freedom of religious conscience is the Milan edict of 313, which opened the union of the Christian church and the state, as well as the constitutionalization of the Christian church as a state church. This provoked persecution on religious grounds and the struggle of different movements, both within Christianity and beyond, for the right to freedom of religion, the free expression of their religious beliefs.
Christianity significantly influenced the evolution of ideas about freedom of conscience, becoming the semantic nucleus of its modern understanding. However, early Christianity proved to be a force that, in the struggle for its claim, was repeatedly harassed, but also resorted to persecution of dissenters, showing intolerance to other worldviews and religions.
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Stievermann, Jan. "A “Syncretism of Piety”: Imagining Global Protestantism in Early Eighteenth-Century Boston, Tranquebar, and Halle." Church History 89, no. 4 (December 2020): 829–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640720001419.
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AbstractThis essay reexamines the network centered on the Boston Congregational minister and theologian Cotton Mather, the great Pietist theologian August Hermann Francke, several of the latter's associates in Halle and London, and Halle-sponsored Lutheran missionaries in the Danish colony of Tranquebar. It pursues the question what this network (which existed from circa 1710 into the 1730s) reveals about how the idea of a “Protestant religion” evolved as a theological construct and how “Protestantism” as a category of religious identity came to have meaning and resonance across denominational and linguistic divides. Through the Boston-Halle-Tranquebar exchange, the essay argues, “awakened souls” from Anglo-American Reformed and German Lutheran churches converged toward a conservative but dogmatically minimalistic understanding of the Christian religion that combined an intensely Christocentric, biblicist, and experiential piety with an activist-missionary and eschatological orientation—a package which was now equated with being truly “Protestant” or “protestantisch,” respectively. This reflects how the historical development of “Protestantism” intersected with larger philosophical and theological debates about “religion” and the different “religions” of humanity that involved Enlightenment thinkers as much as awakened Christians. The distinct version of “the Protestant religion” that first developed among the correspondents of this network would continue to evolve through the transatlantic awakenings of the eighteenth century and remain influential into the nineteenth century.
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Marshall, I. Howard. "Book Review: Early Christianity as a Religion: A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion." Expository Times 111, no. 8 (May 2000): 271. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/001452460011100806.
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Solberg, Winton U. "Science and Religion in Early America: Cotton Mather's Christian Philosopher." Church History 56, no. 1 (March 1987): 73–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3165305.
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Science and religion both constitute vital dimensions of experience, but people differ in their views on proper relations between the two. In modern times, when science increasingly dominates the outlook of society, many regard science and religion as incompatible and strive to maintain them in watertight compartments. In 1972, for example, the National Academy of Sciences, responding to a demand that creationism be given equal time with the theory of evolution in biology classrooms and textbooks, adopted a resolution stating that “religion and science are … separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief.” The battle over creationism continues, with the National Academy of Sciences and orthodox religious groups both insisting on the incompatibility of the two spheres.
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Adler, Judith. "Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian Asceticism." Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, no. 1 (January 2006): 4–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417506000028.
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Environmentalist writers and their critics agree that Western environmental problems, projects and movements have a marked religious dimension. In an often cited but now widely qualified paper, Lynn White located the roots of our ecological ‘crisis’ in a Judeo-Christian orientation to nature (White 1969). Some contemporary environmentalists call for a new “religion of nature” (Crosby 2002; Willers 1999) or, on the model of modernist negative-theologies, proclaim the death of Nature (Merchant 1980; McKibben 1989); others offer new interpretations of scripture and doctrine as guides for action (Bratton 1993; Hessel and Ruether 2000; McGrath 2002). Political opponents of environmentalist politics also focus on its religious dimensions, though with the aim of discrediting it as unscientific or, among Christians, as pagan (Rubin 1994; Huber 1999; Bailey 2002).
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PETROSYAN, Nelli. "Cultural Characteristic of Early Christianity." wisdom 2, no. 7 (December 9, 2016): 211. http://dx.doi.org/10.24234/wisdom.v2i7.160.
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The article presents the cultural characteristic of early Christianity in Armenia. In the end of the 3rd century Christianity had a large number of followers. Christianity gave an opportunity to resist with national unity the external invaders and protect national independence and autonomy. Assessing correctly the situation, in 301 Tiridates III (287-330) by the initiative of Gregory the Illuminator declared Christianity as a state religion in Armenia. Gregory the Illuminatore could show that only due to Christianity it was possible to ensure the further history of Armenian people. He also explained the philosophical-anthropological bases of that religion, contrasting that with the visible simplicity of polytheism.
The adoption of Christianity was a powerful twist in country’s external and internal policy but it rejected by the religious aspect the faith of the centuries, the pagan culture and literature. But nevertheless, remained only pre-Christian spiritual and cultural values which were created by people.
Christianity created its culture, literature, school. In Armenia constructed Christian churches, next to them were opened Christian churches in Greek and Assyrian languages.
In the history of the Christian culture 4th and 5th centuries historical situations were the most important factors for the development of Early Medieval Armenian art and ecclesiastical literature and oriented its essence and uniqueness giving impetus to the creation of high bibliographic monuments.
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Hunter, David G. "The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church: Reading Psalm 45 in Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine." Church History 69, no. 2 (June 2000): 281–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3169581.
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Within the past decade or so, historical studies of early Christianity have been affected by what has been called the “linguistic turn.” This development has entailed a new appreciation of the varied forms of Christian “discourse” and their importance in shaping the cultural, political, and social worlds of late antiquity. For example, historians of religion and culture, such as Judith Perkins and Kate Cooper, have drawn attention to the way in which narrative representation in early Christian literature functioned to construct Christian identities and to negotiate power relations both within the church and in society at large. It has become increasingly difficult for historians to ignore the power of rhetoric in shaping the imaginative (and, therefore, real) worlds of late ancient Christians.
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Heim, S. Mark. "Scriptural paths for interfaith relations." Review & Expositor 114, no. 1 (February 2017): 63–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0034637316687357.
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Many aspects of Scripture bear on our relationship with neighbors of other faith traditions and on the realities of religious pluralism. Yet, the Bible does not give us direct teaching about the living religions around us. To find guidance we need to coordinate material from several contexts: material about the nature of believers’ commitment to Christ, general norms by which we should relate to our neighbors (and enemies), examples of interactions of Israelites and the God of Israel with those of other religious backgrounds, the example of the one “other” religion whose validity is affirmed in Scripture—the Judaism of Jesus and of early Christians, and evidence on the witness and encounter of early Christians with those of other faiths. This article will provide a brief overview of these resources and of the multiple perspectives available to orient Christian participation in interfaith relations.
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Klauck, H.-J. "Religion without fear. Plutarch on superstition and Early Christian Literature." Verbum et Ecclesia 18, no. 1 (July 19, 1997): 111–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v18i1.1128.
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After some introductory remarks on the role of fear in religious discourse. Plutarch’s treatise On Superstition is analysed according to its rhetorical outline. Questions of authenticity are discussed and answered by locating the essay in Plutarch’s early career. Then we ask for the place of “fear of God” in biblical teaching and theology, compare it to Plutarch and show some limits in Plutarch’s youthful thinking, which doesn't yet pay due respect to the life values of myth. We conclude with two New Testament passages, Romans 8:15, masterfully interpreted by Martin Luther, and 1 John 4:17f excellently explained by 20th century’s Swiss theologian and psychologian Oskar Pfister, and we show that these texts are propagating “belief without fear”.
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Latham, Jacob. "Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900." Religion 40, no. 4 (October 2010): 333–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2010.05.004.
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Pomplun, Robert Trent, Joan-Pau Rubiés, and Ines G. Županov. "Introduction: Early Catholic Orientalism and the Missionary Discovery of Asian Religions." Journal of Early Modern History 24, no. 6 (November 17, 2020): 463–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342666.
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Abstract New encounters in America, Africa, and Asia facilitated the “discovery” of non-Biblical religious traditions that were distinct from the ancient paganism known to Christian humanists and antiquarians from classical sources and patristic literature. Although Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism did not exist as concepts in the early modern period, the three articles in this special issue illustrate the learning process by which a number of influential and pioneering Catholic missionaries came to distinguish these various traditions from each other. We argue that they did not simply “invent” new religions arbitrarily: instead, on the basis of the very broad categories of true religion and idolatry, they engaged in some close interaction and “dialogue”—albeit usually polemical—with local religious elites and their writings, including Eastern Christians. In addition, in the case of the Jesuits in particular, we note that these various engagements were often connected events that influenced each other in important ways, from India to Japan, from Japan to China, and from all these to Tibet.
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Dagovych, Tetyana. "Law and religion in “Martian the Lawyer”, the dramatic poem by Lesia Ukrainka." Слово і Час, no. 1 (February 2, 2021): 39–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.33608/0236-1477.2021.01.39-55.
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The paper explains the attitudes towards law and religion in Lesia Ukrainka’s dramatic poem “Martian the Lawyer” (1911). The poem depicts the life of early Christians under the Roman law in the third century and obtains new relevance in the context of the movement ‘Law and Literature’, as the focus on law in this oeuvre allows a deeper exploration of its meaning. Law is connected with religion in two ways in the poem: as a part of the civil religion and as a system of prohibitions and punishments within the Christian community.
Analysis of the text shows that Martian is a carrier of a sophisticated religious form, which implies the juridical elements codified in early Christianity, as well as a belief in law as the incarnation of the idea of truth and justice. The two antagonistic social and spiritual systems – early Christianity and the Roman law – fuse into one ideology that consumes the life of the protagonist. The difference between the juridical laws, the law of nature, and the commandments of Christian leaders disappears within this religious form. In the house of the hero, only those things that represent time or law remain, such as different types of timepieces and juridical texts; Martian’s home becomes a place for abstract ideas, but not for human beings with their needs and feelings. For the protagonist, there are no conflicts between law and religion, but there is a conflict between early Christianity and the Roman law on the one side and, on the other side, human compassion, which is supposed to be a crucial idea within Christianity but is not practiced in the local Christian community. Because of this conflict, Martian completely loses contact with human feelings and becomes an ideal lawyer, which is beneficial for his Christian community but tragic for himself and his relatives. This development signifies not only a sacrifice but also the full realization of Martian’s talent (Ukrainian: ‘khyst’). In some episodes within other poems by Lesia Ukrainka, law and religion are presented as intertwined or undifferentiated, but in “Martian the Lawyer” the author for the first time elaborates this issue thoroughly and creates an ambivalent and sophisticated dramatic situation.
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Loosley, Emma. "Art, Archaeology and Christian Identity in Contemporary Lebanon and Syria." Chronos 19 (April 11, 2019): 57–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.31377/chr.v19i0.456.
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In western society, as in the rest of the world, the vast majority of teenagers mould their identity by reacting to the world around them. However this sense of identity is unlikely in the early twenty-first century to be predicated by religion; music, sport, fashion and choice of friends are the elements by which schoolchildren and students define themselves and, with the notable exception of some members of minority religions, Faith is unlikely to play a major part in their formation of "self'. There is little understanding as to why immigrant Muslim, Sikh or Hindu communities place such a high value on their children remaining within the orbit of the local place of worship, as religion is seen by many of the white majority as a peripheral part of life.
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Stoneman, Timothy H. B. "Preparing the Soil for Global Revival: Station HCJB's Radio Circle, 1949–59." Church History 76, no. 1 (March 2007): 114–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000964070010143x.
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The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a fundamental shift in the character of the Christian religion—namely, a massive expansion and shift of its center of gravity southward. During this period, Christianity experienced a transformation from a predominantly Western religion to a world religion largely defined by non-Western adherents in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. From 1970 to 2005, the size of the Southern Church increased two and a half times to over 1.25 billion members. By the early twenty-first century, 60 percent of all professing Christians lived in the global South and East. The most dynamic source of church growth during this period was Independent (evangelical or Pentecostal) Protestant groups, which increased at nearly twice the rate of other Christian affiliations. The spread of evangelical Protestantism represents a truly global phenomenon and has included large populations in East and Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas.
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Schulting, Dennis. "The Functionality of Christian Life: Problems of The Early Hegel's Epistemology of Religion." Hegel Bulletin 27, no. 1-2 (2006): 107–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0263523200007564.
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In this paper I want to explore a central line of reasoning in Hegel's early philosophy of religion, which he expounded in fragments he wrote while he was in Bern and Frankfurt in the 1790's. These fragments are known under the titles, Fragmente über Volksreligion und Christentum (dated around 1793–94), Die Positivität der christlichen Religion (1795–96), Entwürfe über Religion und Liebe, and a later essay entitled Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksat, they were written sometime between 1798 and 1800, a few years before Hegel published his seminal Jena texts, but they remained unpublished in his lifetime. These texts have, since Nohl's edition of 1907, come to be known collectively as Hegel's ‘theologische Jugendschriften’. I believe that they contain the inchoate system of Hegel's thought in general and his mature philosophy of religion in particular. My main claim here is that Hegel believes that there is an intimate relation between reason and religion, so much so in fact that one can argue that there is reason in religion.In the first section of my paper, I elaborate on some general problems concerning the relation between faith and reason, in particular, concerning the criterion of truth and viewpoint-neutrality. In the second section, I introduce Hegel's well-known problematic of the sublation of conceptual oppositions, which in the context of an account of the positivity of religion he already articulates, in some form, in these early documents and which may provide a solution for the problems that, in the first section, I argue arise around the relation between faith and reason. This will be merely a rough outline. I subsequently discuss, very briefly, some central aspects of Kant's philosophy of religion, to which to an important extent Hegel's is indebted. In the fourth section, I go on to indicate, also very broadly, the sense in which Hegel attempts to improve upon Kant and thus apparently proves to be more consistent than him. I then raise an issue concerning Hegel's particularist position in his epistemology of religion, which does not sit well with the notion of rationality as viewpoint-neutral. To illustrate this, I look at Hegel's reading of the Eucharist. This is all very sketchy and is meant mainly to elucidate the sense in which, according to Hegel, there is reason in religion.
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Hutter, Manfred. "Manichaeism in the Early Sasanian Empire." Numen 40, no. 1 (1993): 2–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852793x00022.
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AbstractIt is well-known that Mani knew Christian Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism and also a little of Buddhism and used different items from these religions. As we can see from the Šäbuhragän, the central themes of Mani's teachings at the Sasanian court were the "two principles" and the "three times", but he reworked them and brought them close to Zurwanism, because King Šäbuhr did not favour 'orthodox' Zoroastrianism but 'heretical' Zurwanism. Thus Manichaeism could flourish for thirty years within the Sasanian empire. After Šäbuhr's death the Zoroastrian priest Kirdir gained influence at the court, thus Manichaeism -and Zurwanism-met restrictions which finally led to Mani's death. In consequence Manichaeism and Zurwanism, which always favoured universalism, were put aside in order to establish Zoroastrianism as a nationalistic religion in Iran.
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Panegyres, Konstantine. "THE RHETORIC OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN ARNOBIUS’ADVERSVS NATIONES." Classical Quarterly 69, no. 1 (April 22, 2019): 402–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838819000272.
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In this paper I discuss the ways in which the early Christian writer Arnobius of Sicca used rhetoric to shape religious identity inAduersus nationes. I raise questions about the reliability of his rhetorical work as a historical source for understanding conflict between Christians and pagans. The paper is intended as an addition to the growing literature in the following current areas of study: (i) the role of local religion and identity in the Roman Empire; (ii) the presence of pagan elements in Christian religious practices; (iii) the question of how to approach rhetorical works as historical evidence.
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Reed, Annette Yoshiko. "Christian Origins and Religious Studies." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 44, no. 3 (September 2015): 307–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0008429815595810.
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This essay reflects on the relationship between the study of the origins of Christianity and the discipline of Religious Studies in conversation with William Arnal’s “What Branches Grow out of this Stony Rubbish? Christian Origins and the Study of Religion,” published in Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses in 2010. Extending Arnal’s call for specialists in the New Testament and early Christianity to engage Religious Studies, it explores a reorientation of perspective, towards the aim of a doubled lens from and upon both Christian Origins and Religious Studies. Particularly promising may be the interrogation of ancient and modern practices of periodization and category-creation, especially as they intersect with imperial and anti-imperial discourses about “origins,” knowledge, and power.
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Lockley, Philip. "Christian Doubt and Hope in Early Socialism." Studies in Church History 52 (June 2016): 364–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/stc.2015.21.
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The diverse forms of socialism which emerged in the nineteenth century had a complex relationship with both Christian beliefs and the Churches. Socialist movements are commonly remembered as anti-religious and anti-clerical. Doubt, forged in the familiar nineteenth-century ‘crisis of faith’, shaped not only Marxism, but also Owenism, the earlier social theories of Robert Owen. Church historians have long pointed to another narrative of socialism and religion in the Victorian era: the rise of Christian Socialism after 1848, led by F. D. Maurice, J. M. Ludlow, Charles Kingsley and others. Here, they recall a response to doubt with faith, and an answer to anti-clericalism with a new vision for the Churches’ social role. Yet socialism before 1848 had a more contested interaction with Christianity than this history assumes. By exploring the specific nature of Christian doubt among early Owenite socialists, then following how this doubt was answered by contemporary Christian supporters of Owen, this essay uncovers an alternative, noteworthy response to doubting Christianity – the nature of Christian hope in early socialism.
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Nicklas, Tobias. "Neutestamentlicher Kanon, christliche Apokryphen und antik-christliche „Erinnerungskulturen”." New Testament Studies 62, no. 4 (September 14, 2016): 588–609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0028688516000229.
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Is Christianity a ‘religion of (canonical) books or a ‘religion of memories’? What role did the books that would eventually become canonical play in various early Christian contexts? This article explores the history of the canon, especially in relation to early Christian ‘landscapes’ and ‘places of memory’. The role of ‘canonical’ and so-called ‘apocryphal’ writings in the construction and development of these ‘places of memory’ is discussed. It is argued that instead of labelling the latter works ‘apocryphal’, it would be better to call them ‘useful for the church’.
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Walker, Anthony R. "The first Lahu (Muhsur) Christians: A community in Northern Thailand." Acta Orientalia Vilnensia 11, no. 2 (January 1, 2010): 7–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.15388/aov.2010.3650.
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Universiti Brunei DarussalamBetween 10 to 20 per cent of all the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Lahu people now subscribe to one or another version of the Christian religion.The largest proportion of present-day Lahu Christians inherited the genre of this Western religion propagated by American Baptist missionaries in the former Kengtung State of Burma (from 1901 to 1966), in Yunnan (from 1920 to 1949), and in North Thailand (from 1968 to 1990). For this reason, it is often thought that pioneer American Baptist among the Lahu, William Marcus Young (1861–1936), was the first to induct a representative of this people into the Christian faith.In fact this is not the case. The first Lahu Christians lived in North Thailand, baptised by long-time Chiang Mai-based American Presbyterian missionary, Daniel McGilvary. This was in 1891, thirteen years before Young’s first baptism of a Lahu in Kengtung, Burma, in October 1904.The paper addresses three questions. Why were Lahu living in upland North Thailand in the early 1890s? Why did one small Lahu community decide to embrace the Christian religion? Finally, why, in stark contrast to Baptist Christianity in the Lahu Mountains, did this fledgling Lahu Presbyterian community disappear, apparently without trace, sometime after 1920?
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Shaw, Brent D. ":Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making.(Gender, Theory, and Religion.)." American Historical Review 110, no. 3 (June 2005): 847–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ahr.110.3.847a.
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Richie, Tony. "Continuing the Conversation on King: My Really Final Response to Tony Moon?" Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19, no. 1 (2010): 170–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/174552510x489955.
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AbstractTony Richie contends that Bishop J.H. King and a close circle of comrades and colleagues, influential in early Pentecostalism as leading administrators, educators, thinkers, and writers, and including G.F. Taylor and A.A. Boddy, exhibited various levels of (what today is known as) inclusivism regarding Christian theology of religions. He suggests this striking discovery has significant import for the developing field of Pentecostal theology of religions. However, as Tony Moon has rightly pointed out, King did not present non-Christian religions as direct divine instruments or agents of Christ's atonement benefits. Richie agrees with Moon that King primarily encourages hope for some of the humanly unevangelized. Yet Richie, in agreement with Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, also argues that King's thought can be particularly complex. King's complexity especially shows in his perception of the trans-historical 'essential Christ' and 'religion of Christ'. Thus, Richie persistently suggests that at least King, but probably Taylor too, holds out a well-grounded but cautiously guarded optimism, not so much on world religions per se, as in the boundless Christ and an unbounded—but not boundary-less—religion firmly and forever rooted in the revelation of and redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Ramseyer, Robert L. "Reason, Religion, and Decision-Making in Mission." Missiology: An International Review 14, no. 3 (July 1986): 301–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182968601400304.
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A continuum in criteria for decision-making is proposed. Human culture pulls toward the “closed” end where decisions are dependent on precedent and tradition, on logic and consistency. The God of the Bible, a law unto himself is at the other “open” end. Jesus and the early Christians were near the open end where considerations about people are always more important than precedent, logic, and consistency when decisions are made. However, we, as human beings, are always being pulled by our culture toward the opposite end of the continuum. A model of incarnational decision-making is outlined, modeled on the example of Jesus in the Gospels, in which decisions are made by those who are fully involved in the situation rather than by those who are “disinterested” and “objective.” The implications of this for Christian mission today are probed.
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Blumberg, Ilana M. "Sympathy or Religion? George Eliot and Christian Conversion." Nineteenth-Century Literature 74, no. 3 (December 1, 2019): 360–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2019.74.3.360.
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Ilana M. Blumberg, “Sympathy or Religion? George Eliot and Christian Conversion” (pp. 360–387) This essay argues that a postsecular moment requires our return to George Eliot to consider anew the relations between religion and secularity. Looking at her early works, in particular “Janet’s Repentance” (1857) and The Mill on the Floss (1860), I suggest that Eliot offers us a counterintuitive narrative in which her heroines’ ethical transformation coincides with a conversion to Christianity rather than a move away from it. Rather than imagining a thoroughly Christian England revitalized by its turn to humanist religion, Eliot depicts a nominally Christian England, attached to hollow forms and mere custom, in need of conversion to an ardent faith. In these novels, evangelicalism, for all its flaws, functions as the vessel for such conversion when human beings’ own agency fails. I suggest here that what we have construed as sympathy over recent decades of critical reading may be more intelligible if we read it as grace, thus leaving us to reassess the extent to which major mid-Victorian intellectuals sought to conceive a post-Christian ethics.
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Pankov, G. D. "Theological-legal concept of redemption in the mirror of Orthodox-theological criticism at the end of XIX - early XX centuries." Ukrainian Religious Studies, no. 27-28 (November 11, 2003): 128–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.32420/2003.27-28.1471.
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Theology can be considered a specific culture of self-expression, self-determination and self-justification of certain denominations. Christianity defines itself as the "religion of atonement" or the "religion of the Cross", as evidenced by the words of the apostle Paul: "We preach the crucified Christ." The idea of redemption is a central idea without which it is impossible to understand the Christian tradition. Therefore, for theology, conceptualizing the idea of atonement means directing intellectual efforts to identify and justify the essential side of Christianity. For academic religious studies, the study of the theological concept of redemption has a dual meaning: first, it allows to understand the essential aspect of the Christian religion, and secondly, to understand the theological culture of thinking.
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Schröter, Jens. "GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HUMAN LAW: A NEW TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE ON LAW AND THEOLOGY." Journal of Law and Religion 32, no. 1 (March 2017): 9–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2017.21.
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It is a remarkable fact that ancient Christianity did not establish a distinct legal system. The early Christians did not take over the Jewish law as the basis for the church. Rather, they accepted the administrative and legal context of the Roman Empire and developed their religious and ethical views within this framework. Consequently, unlike in Judaism and Islam, a “Christian law” was not established, even not after the acceptance of Christianity as the official religion in the Roman Empire or as Christianity became the prevailing religion in the Middle Ages and remained so into modern times. Nevertheless, Christianity developed its own perspective on legal and ethical matters. Distinctive for this view is the difference between the commitment to God's will on the one hand and the respect for human legal systems on the other. In other words, Christianity developed a perspective on the relationship of law and theology that can be described as the implementation of a double directive: Christians are bound to an ethos oriented towards God's will, but at the same time they accept the rules and authorities of this world. This view also means that God's commandments found in the scriptures of Israel are now interpreted in a new way. They are not regarded as ethical and ritual rules that would separate Christian communities from society. Rather, God's law, interpreted by Jesus Christ, serves as the guideline for a life of the Christian believers within the world of the Roman Empire. Both of these concepts—the acceptance of the legislation of the society and the commitment to God's will—can come into conflict with each other, as has often happened in Christian history. Already in early Christianity it was pointed out that obedience to God should prevail over human law.
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van den Heever, Gerhard. "Introduction: Paul, Founder of Churches. Cult Foundations and the Comparative Study of Cult Origins." Religion & Theology 20, no. 3-4 (April 2, 2014): 259–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15743012-12341262.
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AbstractIn this introduction to the discussion on James C. Hanges,Paul, Founder of Churches, the significance of the comparative work on the cult founder-figure and typology of cult foundations is discussed. The essay argues that this serves to ground any interpretation of the cult founding work of the apostle Paul in an understanding of the materiality of religion. This gives impetus to a more concrete conceptualisation of Christian origins. Further reflection on this comparative enterprise is offered by means of three discussion foci, namely Discourse, imperial context, spatiality; Diaspora religion; and New Religious Movements. It is argued that the pervasiveness of imperial discourse and its spatial encoding allows us to see Paul’s cult foundations as sites of imperial resistance. Diasporas and diasporic religions provide key illuminations for understanding the broader context of the foundations of cult groups by Paul. Study of new religious movements will also aid in concrete descriptions and analysis of the making of early Christian groups and their organisation.
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Metzger, Mary Janell. "“Now by My Hood, a Gentle and No Jew”: Jessica, The Merchant of Venice, and the Discourse of Early Modern English Identity." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 113, no. 1 (January 1998): 52–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/463408.
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Recent readings of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which have been concerned primarily with the play's representation of difference, especially that of gender, religion, or race, often leave Jessica out of their analyses. Yet Jessica, as both a Jew and a willing Christian convert, enables the play to resolve the problem posed by the equations of white Christianity and national identity in the emerging discourse of English imperialism: how to render the Jew's difference as a difference of nature and as a difference of faith involving the act of will implicit in Christian baptism? Only by taking Shylock's measure in the light of the gender, racial, and religious ideologies that integrate his daughter into Venetian society can we account for the play's early modern representations of racialized Jews and of the Christians who imagined them.
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Solty, Ingar. "Markt-Religion." PROKLA. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft 46, no. 182 (March 1, 2016): 35–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.32387/prokla.v46i182.99.
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The paper starts with a critique of the common notion of a fundamental divide between right-wing evangelicals and libertarians,“ i.e. „value“ and „business conservatives.” It also problematizes the underlying return of Lukacs’ian/Frankfurt School type of theories of „false consciousness,“ which fall behind the achievements of Gramscian and post-Althusserian theorizations of ideology and points towards the lack of a religious/Christian Democracy cleavage in the U.S. and, as a consequence, the specifically particularistic nature of the U.S. welfare state. The article then proceeds by linking the regional specifics of right-wing evangelicalism in the South and bordering Mid-West to U.S. capital’s domestic spatial fixes during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Finally, challenging right-wing populism in the United States would necessitate a break with the neoliberal anti-discrimination approach professed by the liberal Democrats.
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Brooks Holifield, E. "Let the Children Come: The Religion of the Protestant Child in Early America." Church History 76, no. 4 (December 2007): 750–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640700500043.
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In 1844, the Congregationalist minister Enoch Pond in Bangor, Maine, reminded his fellow clergy that they had been commissioned not only to feed the sheep of their flocks but also to nurture the lambs. Under no circumstances, he cautioned, would a good minister neglect the children, for both Christian parents and their pastors felt “the deepest anxiety” that the children of American parishes would not “receive that wise government, that faithful discipline, that Christian instruction and restraint, which, by the blessing of God, shall result in their speedy conversion, and bring them early and truly into the fold of Christ.” He called for pastors to pray for the children, to convene meetings of praying parents, to pay attention to children during pastoral visits, to impart special instruction to children from the pulpit, to visit their schools, to institute Sunday schools, to teach children the Bible, and to offer catechetical instruction. The devoted pastor would acquaint himself with children, “enter into their feelings, and interest himself in their affairs; and thus engage their affections, and win their confidence.“Christian clergy in America had long heeded such admonitions. Seventeenth-century Puritan ministers made serious, if sporadic, efforts to teach the catechism, often invited groups of children into their homes for instruction, contended over the implications of the baptismal covenant, and urged parents to teach their offspring religious truths and Christian practices. Eighteenth-century Anglican clergy made similar efforts to instruct children, and their revivalist counter-parts in New England and the Middle Colonies encouraged the conversion of children at younger than customary ages. Jonathan Edwards devoted careful attention to his four-year-old convert Phebe Bartlet, who followed in the path of her converted eleven-year-old brother by announcing, after anguished prayers and cries for mercy, that “the kingdom of God had come” to her.
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Duncan, Mike. "The Missing Rhetorical History Between Quintilian and Augustine." Rhetorica 33, no. 4 (2015): 349–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rh.2015.33.4.349.
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Current histories of rhetoric neglect the early Christian period (ca. 30–430 CE) in several crucial ways–Augustine is overemphasized and made to serve as a summary of Christian thought rather than an endpoint, the texts of church fathers before 300 CE are neglected or lumped together, and the texts of the New Testament are left unexamined. An alternative outline of early Christian rhetoric is offered, explored through the angles of political self-invention, doctrinal ghostwriting, apologetics, and fractured sermonization. Early Christianity was not a monolithic religion that eventually made peace with classical rhetoric, but as a rhetorical force in its own right, and comprised of more factions early on than just the apostolic church.
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Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh. "Before isis: What Early America Thought of Islam." Sociology of Islam 8, no. 1 (February 24, 2020): 17–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22131418-00801006.
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Early America engaged with Islam through multiple channels. As American missionaries traveled abroad in search of converts, and lived among Muslims, they often viewed the religion and its adherents through the lens of Christianity. For some, Islam’s prophet was a false hero, “an impostor,” and the message of the religion was an unfortunate pastiche of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Simultaneously, American scholars of religion and the ancient Near East in the nineteenth century approached the Islamic world out of an academic desire to understand Middle Eastern antiquity. Through this process of intellectual inquiry, the American academy eventually developed an interest in the study of Islam itself. Thus, two dominant strands of thought emerged that led to divergent discourses about Islam in the United States. These two discourses—an academic one versus a popular one rooted in missionary experiences—have endured and shaped the contemporary understanding of Islam in America.
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Czachesz, István. "The transmission of early Christian thought: Toward a cognitive psychological model." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 36, no. 1 (March 2007): 65–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000842980703600104.
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This article uses current developments in cognitive science to explore the emergence of early Christian religion. In particular, it considers Sperber's epidemiology model, Rubin's serial recall model, ritual form theory and Boyer's theory of religious concepts for understanding the transmission of early Christian thought. Whereas Sperber's approach focusses on ideas (internal representations), Rubin concentrates on the transmission of texts (public representations). Two preliminary hypotheses are put forward in an attempt to apply cognitive scientific research to formative Christianity: the cognitive relevance hypothesis about core christological concepts, and the optimal transmission hypothesis addressing the balance of tradition and conceptual innovation.