Early Christian Doctrines
J. N. D. Kelly
Number of quotes: 11
Book ID: 428 Page: 3
Section: 1A
…the difference of atmosphere becomes immediately apparent as one crosses from the apostolic to the post-apostolic age.
Quote ID: 8694
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 428 Page: 3
Section: 1A
But, so far as the central stream of Christendom was concerned, the brilliant upsurge of fresh ideas which had distinguished the earlier centuries had spent itself. By the sixth century, both in East and West, the reign of formalism and scholasticism was well under way.….
Being still at the formative stage, the theology of the early centuries exhibits the extremes of immaturity and sophistication.
Quote ID: 8695
Time Periods: 25
Book ID: 428 Page: 4
Section: 1A,2D
Further, conditions were favourable to the coexistence of a wide variety of opinions even on issues of prime importance.
Quote ID: 8696
Time Periods: 2345
Book ID: 428 Page: 11/12
Section: 2B2
Syncretism was the product of this mutual jostling of religions; the gods of one country were identified with those of another, and the various cults fused with and borrowed from each other indiscriminately.*John’s note: 2nd – 3rd centuries A.D.*
Quote ID: 8697
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 428 Page: 12/13
Section: 2B
Two phenomena in the welter of superstition and genuine piety call for notice. First, the extraordinary vogue of the so-called mystery religions.….
Secondly, the growing attraction, for educated and uneducated people alike, of a monotheistic interpretation of the conventional polytheism. More and more the many gods of the pagan pantheon tended to be understood either as personified attributes of one supreme God or as manifestations of the unique Power governing the universe.
*John’s note: 2nd – 3rd centuries A.D.*
Quote ID: 8698
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 428 Page: 13
Section: 2B
When in 274 the emperor Aurelian instituted the state cult of Sol Invictus, he was not merely saluting the sun as protector of the Empire, but acknowledging the one universal Godhead Which, recognized under a thousand names, revealed Itself most fully and splendidly in the heavens .
Quote ID: 8699
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 428 Page: 83/84
Section: 2B,4A
These ideas derive almost exclusively from the Bible and latter-day Judaism, rarely from contemporary philosophy. Echoes of later Stoicism, however, are audible in Clement’s references{9} to God’s ordering of His Cosmos. When we pass to the Apologists, the infiltration of secular thought is even more obvious.*John’s note: “These ideas….” About God being one, in the earliest post-apostolic writers*
Quote ID: 8700
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 428 Page: 87/88
Section: 1A,3C
No steps had been taken so far, however, to work all these complex elements into a coherent whole. The Church had to wait for more than three hundred years for a final synthesis, for not until the council of Constantinople (381) was the formula of one God existing in three co-equal Persons formally ratified. Tentative theories, however, some more and some less satisfactory, were propounded in the preceding centuries.
Quote ID: 8701
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 428 Page: 91
Section: 2B1,2D3B
The Holy Spirit Clement regarded{4} as inspiring God’s prophets in all ages, as much the Old Testament writers as himself. But of the problem of the relation of the Three to each other he seems to have been oblivious.
Quote ID: 8702
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 428 Page: 95
Section: 2B1
The Apologists were the first to try to frame an intellectually satisfying explanation of the relation of Christ to God the Father. They were all, as we have seen, ardent monotheists, determined at all costs not to compromise this fundamental truth. The solution they proposed, reduced to essentials, was that, as pre-existent, Christ was the Father’s thought or mind.
Quote ID: 8703
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 428 Page: 193
Section: 2A4
The Church’s sacraments are those external rites, more precisely signs, which Christians believe convey, by Christ’s appointment, an unseen sanctifying grace.….
…there are no absolutely certain instances of their use before the Alexandrian fathers and Tertullian respectively.
Quote ID: 8704
Time Periods: 234
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