#206 – Ancient Christianities
Recovering Evangelicals
Constantine, Theodosius, and the Putsch
Paula calls the fourth-century consolidation a political putsch that privileged Nicene Christianity by law.
Five centuries of vicious, in-house conflicts over the control of emergent Christian orthodoxy.
This week’s guest — Dr. Paula Fredriksen — discusses her latest book: Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years. Yes, that’s “Christianities” … plural! The focus of this retrospective is the multiple strands of Christian thinking which were vying for control during the first five centuries. It was a vicious, in-house competition to define Christian orthodoxy, with each side vilifying the other, caricaturing the ideas and their proponents, and even martyring them. And the ultimate winner of this competition got to re-write Christian history and almost completely erase our collective memory of the various “losers”.
We looked at the origin of Christianity. It was a derivative of Judaism, which itself had been morphing through various stages: from Abraham’s “Judaism” (a very polytheistic, Babylonian religion, which he focused onto one particular God), to that of Moses (a more monotheistic faith, although its adherents still struggled with polytheistic tendencies, with a very distinctive Egyptian flavor), to that of those Jews living during the Babylonian captivity after the first temple was destroyed, to the “Second Temple Judaism” that Jesus and the Apostle Paul knew.
We also looked at the driving forces on Judaism which eventually led to the branching out of Christianity. Was it the influence of Jesus? Or did Paul have a greater influence (because he traveled more widely, was fluent in a more global language, and actually wrote his ideas down)? Or did Greek Hellenization really set the stage for the inevitable split?
And then we talked about some of the many disputes and conflicts during those first five centuries over a variety of theological issues: the nature of God … Atonement … the end of the world … and of course, sex!
It was a great conversation, and Dr. Fredriksen has written a great book that is easily accessible to the non-expert. We highly recommend both!
As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …
Find out more about Dr. Paula Fredriksen at her faculty page at Boston University, and her latest book at Princeton University Press.
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