Quiz #9 Flashcards
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Models of Christianization?
1) top-down, coercive or not:
- mechanisms of state power;
- compare persecutions
2) bottom-up:
- marginalized communities
Semi-Christianization?
- post-Constantinian social and other pressures to conform;
- clear anxieties about propensity to apostatize (apostasy - the abandonment of a religious or political belief);
- regular complaints in sermons about weakness of Christian morals
Conversion Narratives (testimony of personal religious experience) by who?
1) Paul;
2) Constantine;
3) Augustine
Lewis Rambo: Stages of Conversion
- context;
- crisis;
- quest (or search);
- encounter;
- interaction; (relationships, rituals, rhetoric, and roles);
- commitment;
- consequences
Catechesis?
- Gk. κατήχησις, “instruction by word of mouth”:
1) from κατηχεῖν, “to sound over”
2) thus κατηχούμενος, “one being instructed” —> catechumen - interestingly, only reified in Latin: catechismus;
- training in Christian lifestyle and doctrine
Justin Martyr to new converts
- condemnation of idolatry;
- unity of God;
- existence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
- creation;
- proof of the divinity of Christ - Son of God, incarnate, crucified, and raised;
- eternal recompense (reward);
- also concerned to rebut (refute) questions of Christian immorality
Bishops on Doctrine and Morals
- Irenaeus of Lyon;
- Cyprian of Carthage;
- Cyril of Jerusalem, c. 200: orthodoxy and organization;
- Ambrose of Milan: training to live in a state church;
- Augustine: training to live in the heavenly city.
Baptism means?
- Gk. βαπτίζω, “dip, plunge” (dive);
- compare other ritual purifications;
- after a process of instruction, sometimes up to three years;
- fasting, exorcisms;
- generally at Easter (at least in the 4th century);
usually adults, new converts
Metaphors and Symbols of Baptism
- the baptism of Christ;
- the parting of the Red Sea;
- circumcision;
- rebirth
Middle Platonism?
- 1st – 3rd centuries CE;
- reaction against Skepticism (dialectical criticism of all doctrines) at the Academy, post-Plato;
- draws consistent metaphysical system:
1) oscillation between Aristotelianism and Stoicism;
2) also incorporates Pythagoreanism
Neoplatonism?
- 3rd – 5th centuries CE;
- a 19th century German word;
- Plotinus’ Enneads;
- incorporates Stoicism and Gnosticism (maybe??);
- clear “school” curriculum of Aristotle and then Plato
Porphyry? raised in? studied in? major works?
- c. 232 – c. 305;
- raised in Tyre;
- studies in Athens and under Plotinus at Rome;
Major works:
- commentaries on Aristotle;
- commentaries on Plato;
- edition of Plotinus;
- historical works, including Against the Christians;
- philological works;
- On Abstinence;
Iamblichus vs Aedesius vs Plutarch of Athens found which school?
- Iamblichus founds the Syrian School c. 300;
- Aedesius found the Pergamum School c. 330;
- Plutarch of Athens founds School of Athens late 4th century.
Alexandrian school founded by and when?
- not the theological opposition to the Antiochene School;
- 5th to 6th centuries;
- founded by Ammonius, a pupil of Proclus
Tenets of Neoplatonism?
- non-materiality of the highest form of reality;
- belief that there is a higher level of reality than the visible;
- preference for intellectualism over empiricism;
- some form of immortality;
- the universe is essentially good;
BUT a real identity between the supernatural, in man and nature
