|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Christianity
Free Online Custom Essays, Research Papers, Admission Essays, Thesis, College Papers, English Papers, Analyzed Essays, Essay Papers, Non-Plagiarized Essays, Term Papers, Coursework Essays, Custom Papers
|
|
| |
|  Saint Augustine And His Environment |
|
| The Confessions of Augustine (354 - 430) show us, more clearly than any other literary work of late antiquity, what it was like to approach Christianity through the outlook of Greek philosophy, and more generally from the literary and cultural background of the later Roman Empire.
Augustine was born in an empire that officially accepted Christianity, but where traditional religion and non-Christian cults and philosophies retained much of their influence. The official Catholic Church, then as now, did not seem to have much to offer to an educated, curious, and intense person such as Augustine. Compared with the zealous Donatist schismatics (who disavowed clergy who had shown weakness in persecutions) or the sophisticated Manichean elite (to be discussed shortly), the body of Catholics seemed lazy and complacent. Ordinary Christians did not understand Christian theology, and Augustine was later appalled by the ignorant and superstitious views that he derived from his Catholic upbringing. Many Catholics accepted their Christianity rather nominally; they believed that once they received baptism they would have to give up sin, and to avoid such a grave inconvenience they did their best to postpone baptism until their deathbed. Augustine's parents and others of their social class held their Christianity together with basically pagan, ultimately Homeric, ambitions for wealth, success, and honour; and for Augustine, as for the young men who admired Gorgias, these ambitions led naturally to a career in rhetoric and public speaking. |
|
| full text » |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| Christian Doctrine of God |
|
| A long series of reflexions, arguments, controversies, schisms, heresies, and persecutions resulted in some measure of agreement, eventually over most of the Christian world, on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The doctrine claims that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons (hupostasis), not three Gods, but one substance (ousia). As the so-called Athanasian Creed (late fifth century?) puts it: 'And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal; as also there are not three uncreateds, nor three infinites, but one uncreated and one infinite.' The Catholic position rejects two accounts of the persons and the substance:
1. If we regard hupostasis as Aristotle's first substance and ousia as second substance, we might think the persons are related as different individual human beings are related to other members of the human species. This view 'divides the substance', since the three persons must have more than the specific unity of members of a species; and so it falls into the heresy of Tritheism.
2. If we regard ousia as first substance, we might suppose that the three persons are simply different aspects of the same individual, as the Prime Minister and the First Lord of the Treasury are the same person performing different roles. Such a view cannot account for the real differences between the persons; it was not God the Father who was crucified. This view 'confounds the persons', and so falls into the Sabellian heresy. |
|
| full text » |
|
|
|
|
| |
| The Person of Jesus Christ |
|
| Christians formed themselves into local communities, for ritual observances, including Baptism and the Eucharist, for teaching and preaching, on the model of the Jewish synagogue, and for mutual support and practical activities. But they also sought a rational, authoritative account of their faith; and Christian teachers, organized from the earliest times in the orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, claimed universal assent from the Church. Christian thinkers tried to work out a systematic view of the person of Christ and his relation to God that would explain all the New Testament claims about the work of Christ. The doctrinal formulas that were eventually accepted as Catholic teaching and as authentic interpretations of the Apostolic faith were certainly not accepted because they were clear, easy to understand, or immediately plausible. They were accepted, however, because clearer, more easily intelligible, and more immediately plausible solutions seemed not to capture the facts about Christ expressed' in the New Testament accounts of him. |
|
| full text » |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
