In creating this Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, the editors have made a number of decisions with regard to its subject matter, scope, and structure. Far from implying that “early Christianity” was a unified or monolithic movement, therefore, this encyclopedia uses the term as an umbrella covering a wide variety of historical phenomena. One can also question the appropriateness of its use for a number of groups that are currently seen as belonging to the extended family of early Christianity. Although the term naturally has a long history in the tradition of the Christian movement, its use, for example, to refer to 1st-century CE followers of Jesus is nevertheless an anachronism given that the term is first mentioned in the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch ( Magn. The label “Christianity” is itself not unproblematic.

Bauer’s groundbreaking study Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im frühesten Christentum in 1934, the scholarly world has come increasingly to the conclusion that the variety of early Christian groups was not the result of the disintegration of a single, original form of Christianity over the course of several centuries but rather that variety has always been at the heart of what we call early Christianity. The interplay of christology and ethics also underscores a multi-leveled understanding of ‘unity’ and a multivalent use of ‘flesh and spirit’.Early Christianity is a multi-faceted and complex phenomenon – if we can even refer to it as a single phenomenon at all. Arising from his particular experiences and specific circumstances, Ignatius’ contextualized paraenesis elevates the Son to an authoritative status parallel to that of the Father.

Ignatian exhortation thus merges an imitatio Christi with an imitatio Dei. Ignatius even prayed that he would be ‘an imitator of the suffering of my God’ ( Rom. 1.2) as well as ‘imitators of Jesus Christ’ ( Phld. Believers are to be ‘imitators of God’ ( Trall. 12.2), and ‘the love of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ ( Phld. 1.1), ‘the honor of the Father and the honor of Jesus Christ’ ( Trall. Ignatian moral instruction combines ‘the will of God and Jesus Christ’ ( Trall. inscr.), who is ‘the God who made you so wise’ ( Smyrn. His paraenesis is rooted in ‘the mind of God’, also described as ‘the mind of Christ’ ( Eph. vein I will explore is the integration of Ignatius’ high christology with his ethics. Yet further treasures remain to be mined, and the specific. Jesus Christ is included in such ‘nas-cent trinitarian’ passages as Eph. Jesus, who as God appeared in human form ( Eph. Scholars have long noted Ignatius of Antioch’s statements of high christology. Far from scandalous, these texts provide a positive link in the continuity from seminal apostolic trinitarian thought to the later trinitarian growth of the second century. Rather, Didache, Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas may very well presuppose a basic christocentric and trinitarian creation-redemption narrative. This article argues that the typical critical estimations of these writings as nontrinitarian are under-supported by the textual evidence. Nevertheless, these writings have sometimes been regarded as having sketchy, scant, or scandalous christologies and pneumatologies. AD 50-150), they should be regarded as essential links in any historical account of the development of trinitarian theology. Because these writings straddle the apostolic/post-apostolic eras (c. A survey of works on the development of nascent trinitarianism, especially in the last several decades, reveals that most treatments cut a wide path around three of the earliest Christian writings: Didache, Barnabas, and Shepherd of Hermas.

Barnabas evangelium deutsch pdf creator