John Anthony McGuckin - The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com

2017 by John Anthony McGuckin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Pressis the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges, and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are the authors translation.

Cover design: David Fassett

Images: Christ Pantocrator, Byzantine School, Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, Egypt / Photo Zev Radovan / Bridgeman Images

ISBN 978-0-8308-9952-4 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-4098-4 (print)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McGuckin, John Anthony, author.
Title: The path of Christianity : the first thousand years / John Anthony
McGuckin.
Description: Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000167 (print) | LCCN 2017000761 (ebook) | ISBN
9780830840984 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780830899524 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Church history--Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. |
Church history--Middle Ages, 600-1500.
Classification: LCC BR165 .M35 2017 (print) | LCC BR165 (ebook) | DDC
270--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000167

Jewish Christian groups

Encratites

Nazarenes (Nazoraioi)

Ebionites

Elkesaites

Montanism

Asia Minor Quartodeciman communities

Christian gnosis

A context

Valentinus (fl. 120160)

Bardesanes (c. 154222)

Basilides (fl. 135161)

Marcionism

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 135200)

The apostolic fathers

Clement of Rome and the pseudo-Clementines

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35107)

Hermas (active 90150)

Polycarp (c. 69156)

Papias of Hierapolis (active early second century)

The Letter of Barnabas

The Didache

The Letter to Diognetus

The second- to third-century Monarchian movement

The anti-Monarchian early Logos school

Justin Martyr (d. c. 165)

Tertullian (c. 155220)

Hippolytus (c. 170235)

Novatian of Rome (c. 200258)

Neros persecution

Domitians persecution

Trajans persecution

The Severan interlude

The persecution of Maximinus Thrax

The Decian persecution

The persecution of Valerian

The Diocletianic persecution

The memory of a persecuted community

The principate and dominate (27 BC to AD 313)

A Christian response to Roman oppression: Tertullians social theology

Mithras

Isis, queen of magic

Cybele

Manichaeism

Justin Martyr (d. c. 165)

Tatian

Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133190)

Melito of Sardis (d. c. 180)

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150215)

Theophilus of Antioch

Tertullian (c. 155240)

(Marcus) Minucius Felix (later second century)

The Alexandrian catechetical school

Origen of Alexandria: Master theologian and philosopher

Origens biblical theology of salvation

Origens heritage: Dionysius of Alexandria

The school of Caesarea

Arius and Alexander in conflict

The Council of Nicaea 325

Searching for commonality and consensus

The Synod of Serdica 343

The Synod of Alexandria 362

Athanasiuss opponents

Eusebius of Nicomedia

Aetius and Eunomius of Cyzikos

Basil of Caesarea (330379)

Gregory of Nazianzus (329390)

Gregory of Nyssa (c. 331395)

Eastern penitential canons

The Synod of Ancyra 314

Monastic influences on penance

Western penitentials and the system of confession

Feudal ideas of restitution and expiation

Purgatory as posthumous expiation

Feudal atonement theory in the West: Anselms Cur deus homo?

The emergence of varieties of Christian monasticism

Syrian monasticism

Aphrahat the Sage

Macarius the Great

Mar Isaac of Nineveh

Symeon Stylites

Egyptian monasticism

Tales of Antony

Tales of the desert: The Christian fayyum

Pachomian federated monasticism

Other notable Egyptian monastic centers: Gaza and Sinai

Monasteries in Palestine and beyond

Euthymius

Mar Saba

Early monasticism in the West

Martin of Tours

John Cassian in Marseilles

Irish monasticism

Columba

Columbanus

Hilary of Poitiers

Ambrose of Milan

Augustines City of God

Augustine and the Donatists

Pelagius

Caelestius

John Cassian

Jerome and his agenda

Pope Damasus

Popes Felix and Leo

The Acacian schism

The Vandal kingdom

Boethius among the Ostrogoths

The clash of Antioch and Alexandria

The reform campaign of Nestorius at Constantinople

Cyril of Alexandrias countercharge

The Council of Ephesus 431

Ephesus II 449 and its aftermath

Damascius of Athens and the neo-Platonic school

Dionysius the Areopagite

The Digest (or Pandects) of Justinian

The Institutes of Justinian

The Novels of Justinian

Justinians Corpus Iuris Civilis

Eucharistic

Baptismal rites

Penitential rites

The African rite

The Ambrosian rite

The Mozarabic rite

The Gallican rite

The Celtic rite

The Antiochene liturgical family

The Alexandrian liturgical family

John Mauropous

Constantine (Michael) Psellus

John Xiphilinus

Constantine Leichoudes

Pre-third-century writers

Origen

Lactantius

The fourth-century Fathers

Augustine

Byzantine attitudes

Latin hymns

Pre-sixth-century Syro-Byzantine hymns

Apostles

Christian prophets

Presbyters

Bishops

Deacons

Widows

Virgins

Scriptural evidences

A tradition rooted in eschatology

Wealth in the earliest centuries of the church

The patristic-era teachings

The Jesus tradition

The Pauline and Pastoral Letters

The patristic era: The triumph of renunciation theory

This intellectual and social history of the early church in its first thousand years has been designed from the outset as a textbook. I hope it will be useful to a wide range of readers: clergy, seminarians, a diverse array of students of Christian thought and culture, and also to the general reader who has an empathy for this great culture-building religion and who might wish to know how the church got to be the way it is. Most important things were settled by the fifth century. Much of what we now see as characteristics of the Christian movement are variations on the foundations, reactions to it, reactions to the reactions, and so on. One thing is abundantly true of Christianity: it was born of an eschatological philosophy that looked to the past and from which it took its bearings for the future. It has remained, ever since, a profoundly conservative force even when, as often was the case, it was being socially and religiously radical and proleptic. The churchs history, accordingly, is like a vast antique emporium, where very little has ever been thrown away and some archaic things are, most surprisingly, still being pressed into daily use. An understanding of how the church in the first millennium got to be the way it is will not only offer the reader a fascinating gallery of stories in their own right, but might also explain much about the contemporary church: why some parts of it seem so slow to acknowledge change of any kind, and why other parts seem not to be able to change fast enough; why some aspects of Christian pastoral practice have been, and remain, moving and admirable, and why other aspects seem less than attractive in a modern age that values individual freedoms and responsibility.