Pocket History of Theology PDF
Preview Pocket History of Theology
Pocket HISTORY of THEOLOGY ROGER E. OLSON and ADAM C. ENGLISH Contents Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 ACT I A Story Takes Shape .................. 9 ACT II The Plot Thickens .................... 29 ACT III The Story Divides .................... 50 ACT IV Reforming, Revising and Rewriting the Story . . . . 69 ACT V An Unresolved Plot ................... 89 Index ................................. 109 Abbreviations ActI A Story Takes Shape he story of Christian theology does not begin at the beginning. That is, Christian theology began well after Jesus Christ walked the earth with his disciples and even after the last disciple and apostle died. Theology is the church's reflection on the salvation brought by Christ and on the gospel of that salvation proclaimed and explained by the first-century apostles. The apostles exercised tremendous prestige and authority in the early church. They were firsthand witnesses to the resurrection. While they were alive, their remembrances of Jesus' teachings and deeds were sufficient for the early church's discipleship training needs. When they died, however, Christianity entered a new era for which it was not entirely prepared. It would no longer be possible to settle doctrinal disputes by turning to an apostle. The next generation was compelled to reflect on Jesus' and the apostles' teachings on their own, and thus theology began. Of course early Christians did not have the luxury of reflecting on their faith in a historical vacuum. Their theology was forged out of debate and struggle. Theological controversy was initially provoked by internal factions within Christianity, like Gnosticism, and by opponents from without, like the Roman critic Celsus. GNOSTICISM CHALLENGES THE FAITH FROM WITHIN The Gnostics did not have a unified organization, and they disagreed among themselves over many issues, but they all believed that they possessed a special spiritual knowledge or wisdom that was greater than that possessed and taught by the bishops and other church leaders of the second century. In a nutshell, they believed that rnatter, including the body, is an inherently limiting prison or drag on the good soul or spirit of the human person and that the spirit is essentially divine, a "spark of God" dwelling in the tomb of the body. Salvation meant achieving a special kind of knowledge not generally known or even available to ordinary Christians. That gnosis, or knowledge, involved awareness of the true heavenly origin of the spirit within. In Gnostic teachings Christ became an immaterial spiritual messenger sent down from the unknown and unknowable God to rescue and bring home the stray sparks of his own being that had become trapped in material bodies. Some taught that this Christ appeared as Jesus but that Jesus was never really a physical human. This Christology is known as docetism, from the Greek word meaning "to appear" or "to seem." For these Gnostics,Jesus only seemed to be human. Surely God would not taint himself by actually becoming human. Other Gnostics taught a dualistic Christology in which "Christ" entered into Jesus at the baptism and left him just before he died. He usedJesus' vocal cords, for instance, to teach the disciples but never actually experienced being human. Many second-century Christians were attracted to this as a special form of Christian truth-higher and better and more spiritual than that taught by the bishops to the unwashed and uneducated masses. Gnosticism appealed to and fostered spir itual elitism, secrecy and division within the budding Christian Church. CELSUS CHALLENGES THE FAITH FROM WITHOUT While Gnosticism constituted a major internal threat to the church and its apostolic message, early Christian thinkers also had to contend with external challenges from Jewish and pagan writers such as Celsus. Celsus posed a serious challenge to the new faith because he clearly understood that at the heart of Christianity was
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