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Through deft use of available data and texts, Wagner brings the enigmatic second century to life. Selecting five fateful challenges--issues of Creation, human nature, Jesus' identities, roles of the church, and Christians in society--he shows what was at stake for emerging Christianity and how its five key players responded. Map; glossary; bibliography.
- Sales Rank: #1122529 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
- Published on: 1994-01-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .69" w x 5.50" l, .86 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
An illuminating Analysis. Needs more scholarly aids
By B. Marold
Wagner, Walter, After the Apostles (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1994)
This review gives me the opportunity to discuss a book by a scholar I know and have studied with for close to a year. The author believes the volume would benefit from a new edition, but that does not detract from the value of the distinct point of view Dr. Wagner impresses on his material.
One is drawn to compare this book and Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, which tends to go much further afield, in discussing the Gnostics and the Marcionists, and in dwelling on Ehrman's strengths and interest in the shenanigans which were carried out by early scholars, monks, scribes, and forgers. Thus, while Ehrman may be more fun to read, Wagner's book sustains more substance by staying closer to home, where home is five writers on church organization and theology in the second century CE. Another book to which Wagner is a nice complement is Wayne Meeks' The First Urban Christians, which deals with the social and economic life of early Christians you don't get in many histories of Christianity. Meeks succeeds in describing what attracted the average Greco-Roman to Christianity. Wagner discusses the things the average early Christian never heard about, and still does not hear about today.
The book has three Parts, and each part, like the three acts of a play, depends on the narrative established by the previous Parts.
Part I deals with the Greco-Roman culture and the politics of the Empire at the highest levels. My greatest discovery in this section was two basic concepts in Greek culture. The first was aretç or `virtue, excellence, or goodness'. The discussion among the ancients about whether virtue was innate or acquired, and whether it varied by race, gender, class, and occupation sounded so contemporary that it seemed to deflate much of the hauteur from the postmodern sense of earlier intellectual views of culture. Plato believed that aretç was innate, but, per Meno, that didn't mean that it didn't need some stiff training to bring it to the surface. But only the wealthy had the time to cultivate this virtue. This helped to sustain the rigid class lines of Roman patrician, equestrian, and plebian classes. The second concept is paideia, or `culture', and the means by which it was transmitted. This is similar in function to the Medieval trivium and quadrivium. Where aretç was the refined human nature, paideia was the educational curriculum intended to bring this out. One of the hot button items among early Christian writers was the role paideia had in the Christian life.
A familiar problem to those who loved Greek and Roman mythology was that there was a glut of deities. Syncretism was the order of the day, going back to the time when the first `long haired Achaeans' settled in the Greek peninsula before 1600 BCE. Layered on top of the Olympians, Asiatic mysteries, and Egyptian cults was the cult of the emperors. Therefore, the Roman governors tended to be very tolerant of all sorts of beliefs, as long as you did nominal obeisance to the imperial cult.
This part includes a thumbnail history of the emperors from Augustus (31 BCE - 14 CE) to Severus Alexander (222 - 235 CE). This reveals that several emperors were very good managers, and the good ones tended to rule for the longest time. This explains the success of the empire, but this information has little relevance to the second and third Parts.
Part II discusses five central cultural and theological issues facing five influential second century Christian thinkers.
The first challenge is the nature of the creator and creation. The terms of the problem are set by the fact that the OT has four or five different creation accounts, all of them describe God as a creator, but all of them also state that he didn't start with nothing. So where did the `formless void' and `face of the deep' come from? The wisdom literature (such as Sirach) added `Sophia' (Greek for `wisdom'), a spiritual `force' which carried out God's plans. Intertestamental writings such as Enoch added some baroque embellishments to the story.
The second challenge was a classic Greek question on the nature of humans and their destiny. The OT answer, contrary to Israel's Babylonian neighbors, put humans in a favorable role, just below the immortal angels, highest of the mortal flora and fauna on earth. From this discussion arose the questions of free will and free choice, which is still with us today. The most famous Christian answer to this problem is from Paul, who assumes a dual nature of flesh and spirit, plus the basis for the argument against free will, which will become so important to Luther and Calvin.
The third challenge is the nature of Jesus, the Christ. This is where the rubber hit the road for most theology for the first 400 years of Christian thinking. It was the primary motivation behind the need to formulate the Nicene Creed in 325 CE (and that didn't really put the issue to rest). The easiest answer is that Jesus was born and lived as a human, who was, through apotheosis, risen. like Elijah, into the heavens. Well-known Greek characters of legend such as Asclepius and Apollonius of Tyana were also ascribed this fate. A second option was that Jesus was an angel in mortal form, much as the angels who made visits to Abraham. Angels were also common in Daniel and inter-testamental writings. The third option is that God himself entered the world as a mortal. This had precedents in Greek myths, but it suggested the Docetic heresy that Jesus was never really human, which undermines so much of the testimony of the Gospels.
The fourth challenge in the nature of the church organization. Issues regarding local church gatherings or ekklçsia were important to early Christians because Jesus' teachings made it important, and Paul made it an important theological issue. It was literally `God's Plan' in a sense, replacing the role of the covenant for the Jews. But how was this ekklçsia to be organized? The first was similar to a Greek ekklçsia or congregation, similar to local social or commercial gatherings, where decisions were made by communal agreement. A second organization recognized local leaders or presbyters, which had some resemblance to the first apostles in Acts, who had the power to appoint deacons. In this model, authority came from association with apostles of the original twelve. The third organization used the notion of the bishop, whose authority was also, at first, traceable to the first apostles.
The fifth challenge may have passed into dim historical interest in the age of Christendom, but it has resurfaced with the modern secular nation-state. This is the role of Christianity in the prevailing Greco-Roman society. The one extreme is best represented by modern ultraconservative denominations, both traditional like the Old Order Amish and recent, like Branch Davidians, who isolate themselves from society, technology, art, and education (paideia). This view arose out of a Gnostic view of life and the world. The other extreme is far more common today. It is inclined to accept any human act or creation, barring immorality, as pleasing to God, since it was a product of his own creation. The earliest Christian writings were a mixed bag, since, like Paul, they may disparage Greek culture while using Greek rhetoric with the best of them. Christians, in turn, were accused of all sorts of unpleasant behavior. So who was to answer for the Christians.
Part III reviews the responses of five early church leaders to these three challenges. They were:
Ignatius of Antioch (Syria) a bishop and student of John the Apostle, martyred in Rome ca. 108 CE.
Justin Martyr (ca. 100 - 165 CE) was a Christian writer famous for his apologies and paideia learning.
Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150 - 215 CE) teacher and advocate of paideia, doctrine close to Docetism.
Tertullian (ca. 160 - 220 CE) N. African Latin writer, formulated Trinity and advocated Roman primacy.
Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 130? - 202 CE) wrote against Gnostics and advocated Roman primacy.
The concluding chapter balances the five writers' opinions against one another on the five issues. On reading this presentation, one has no difficulty understanding the diversity in modern Christian denominations. Dr. Wagner's book can use a much better index and more footnotes, to replace the noisome endnotes. I sometimes wished I knew where it was that Tertullian said .... Just a bit more copy editing also, is called for. One may also wish that the history of the emperors be replaced with some background on how and when NT documents became available to these writers.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Solid Scholarship
By BLL
This is a work of solid scholarship that covers an important period in the history of Christianity. The section on the social and political context of the second century C.E. is particularly helpful for the general reader. Wagner analyzes the philosophies of five early Christian leaders--Ignatius of Antioch, Turtulian, etc.--using the categories of biography, and then the leaders' views on human nature, identity of Jesus, the Church, and Christians and society. This approach allows comparisons and, because the topics are so important for us today, provides contemporary readers with a window on the diversity of the early church that helps us understand current controversies.
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