The imperial cult and the development of church order : concepts and images of authority in paganism and early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian /
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Recent studies have re-assessed Emperor worship as a genuinely religious response to the metaphysics of social order. Brent argues that Augustus' revolution represented a genuinely religious reformation of Republican religion that had failed in its metaphysical objectives. Against this backcloth, Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to that metaphysical failure. Callistus and Pseudo-Hippolytus gave different responses to Severan images of imperial power. The early, Monarchian theology of the Trinity was thus to become a reflection of imperial culture and its justification that was later to be articulated both in Neo-Platonism, and in Cyprian's view of episcopal Order. Contra-cultural theory is employed as a sociological model to examine the interaction between developing Pagan and Christian social order.
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1 online resource (xxii, 369 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-343) and indexes. :
9789004313125 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Cultural episcopacy and ecumenism : representative ministry in church history from the Age of Ignatius of Antioch to the Reformation, with special reference to contemporary ecumeni...
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Bishops are to be understood primarily as representatives of cultures regardless of where their people are territorially located. The vindication of this thesis has implications also for ecumenical reconciliation between episcopal and non-episcopal communions occupying the same geographical territory. The author compares the approaches and insights of both Vatican II and Lambeth 89 on this issue, and then proceeds to a historical and theological analysis of the development of the threefold Order in the early centuries, which he illuminates with the aid of contemporary sociological and cultural theory, in particular that of Durkheim. Key themes in the development of Order are identified in the classical texts of Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Tertullian and the Church Order literature. The author's conclusion is that we need both to break the geographical and jurisdictional mould in which our understanding of church Order has become set.
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1 online resource (xiv, 250 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-228) and indexes. :
9789004319875 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.