Pocket History of Theology

116 Pages·2005·1.514 MB·English

by  Roger E. Olson, Adam C. English

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