Lisa Maugans Driver: Christ At The Center
Driver provides an excellent summary of the practical issues that resulted from the Christians existing in a Roman world. Questions of citizenship became important as the Romans grew suspicious of the Christians and questioned their loyalty to the State. Other important features that would begin to play large roles in the formation of Christian doctrine also involved a conflict with traditional Roman customs. Christians viewed the dead through the lens of the resurrected Christ. Yet, in the Romans world, cemeteries were placed outside the Roman cities and away from the population of the living. However, with Christianity, the line between the living and the dead became blurred as the Church increasingly interacted with the holy bodies of the departed. For this reason, the cult of the martyrs became a staple in the Early Church, as Christians sought to be blessed with the same kind of faith as the one who had given their life for living Christ.
Moreover, giving one’s life became the ultimate expression of Christian loyalty when persecution arose. True Christians were willing to suffer and die for their faith. In this way, persecution created a crisis of pastoral care, as well as a crisis of true Christian identity. What was the process when a person lapsed in their faith under persecution but later sought readmission into the Church? Was readmission possible? The penitential process emerged out of this crisis and would occupy a prominent place in Christianity through the late Middle Ages.
Finally, the Early Church struggled amidst its ranks to define what it believed. Numerous individuals emerged with theories and explanations that attempted to express certain doctrines. But the Church would ultimately look to the fatherly leadership of the bishops to define the tenets of the faith and to articulate the more difficult matters like the true nature of Christ. Influenced by Greek philosophical notions, the Church attempted to understand how a perfect, incorporeal God could assume a created material substance and die for the sins of humanity. Through the Ecumenical Councils, the Church would argue, debate, and condemn its way into establishing what it called “orthodoxy,” so that subsequent generations might understand the intricacies of salvation, while protecting itself from those who sought to bring in ideas that were contrary to the Apostolic traditions of the Church. Thus, the Early Church, especially the fourth century Church with its many intellectual giants, finally settled the Christological issues that had created controversy for the previous generations of Christians, while providing firm footing for the generations yet to come.
The beginning chapters of this work offer the reader a fast-moving sweep of the history preceding the arrival of Jesus Christ. Although helpful, at times the early chapters seemed cumbersome and disorganized, lacking enthusiasm, as though they were written out of mere necessity in order to get to what the author really wanted to talk about, namely the developments of Christianity in the first through fourth centuries. This is the only criticism that I might offer as the rest of the work was done with obvious passion and interest of the subject matter.
Category: Fall 2011, Living the Faith, Pneuma Review
Followers
Fans
