The interval between the close of the post-apostolic age and the end of the second century, or from about 140 to 200, may be called the Critical Period of Ancient Christianity. In...
In the fourth period of the Church under the heathen Empire, or the period of the consolidation of the Church, the number of Christians increased so rapidly that the relation of th...
The procedure of the Roman Government against the Christians first took a definite form with the rescript of Trajan addressed to Pliny circa A. D. 111-113, but there is no formal i...
In the third century religious syncretism took two leading forms--the Mithraic worship, which spread rapidly throughout the Empire, and the fashionable interest in novel religions...
The definition of the Council of Chalcedon, in spite of its condemnation of Nestorius and its approval of the letters of Cyril, was a triumph of the Antiochian school and a condemn...
The Diocletian persecution and its various continuations, on account of the severity of the persecution and its great extent, seriously strained the organization of the Church for...
The Sixth General Council was the last great diplomatic triumph of Rome in the East in matters of faith, though two centuries after, in the matter of Photius, Rome played a brillia...
By the eight century the veneration of pictures or icons had become wide-spread throughout the Eastern Church. Apart from their due place in the cultus, grave abuses and superstiti...
With the condemnation of Pelagianism the doctrine of Augustine in its logically worked out details was not necessarily approved. The necessity of baptism for the remission of sins...
The Church at no time degenerated into a mere department of the State. In spite of the worldly passions that invaded it and the dissensions that distracted it, the Church remained...
When Theodosius had successfully forced upon the East the theology of Nicaea, his policy as to religious matters was manifest. No longer was heresy to be allowed. Laws were to cont...
Although Christians were at first favored by Septimius Severus, they were still liable to the severe laws against secret societies, and the policy of Septimius was later to enforce...
Justinian I, the greatest of all the rulers of the Eastern Empire, succeeded his uncle Justin I (518-527); but he had, from the beginning of the latter's reign, exercised an ever-i...
Christianity was regarded as a revealed philosophy by the apologists. This they considered under three principal aspects: knowledge, or a revelation of the divine nature; a new law...
By the middle of the second century there were current in the Church brief confessions of faith which had already been in use from a time in the remoter past as summaries of the ap...
The Gnostics claimed apostolic authority for their teaching and appealed to successions of teachers who had handed down their teachings. This procedure forced the Church to lay str...
The Asia Minor school regarded Christianity primarily as redemption, salvation, the imparting of new power, life, and incorruptibility by union with divinity in the Incarnation. It...
No general persecution of the Christians was undertaken by the Roman Government during the second century, though Christians were not infrequently put to death under the existing l...
The theology of the Church, as distinguished from the current traditional theology, was the statement of the beliefs commonly held by Christians but expressed in the more precise a...
Ecclesiastical councils were the first defence against heresy. As the Church had not as yet attained its hierarchical constitution and the autonomy of the local church still persis...
Asceticism in some form is common to almost all religions. It was practised extensively in early Christianity and ascetics of both sexes were numerous. This asceticism, in addition...
Shortly after the Council of Nicaea, Constantine seems to have become aware of the fact that the decision at that council was not acceptable in the East as a whole, representing, a...
According to Justinian's scheme of Church government, the Emperor was the head of the Church in the sense that he had the right and duty of regulating by his laws the minutest deta...
The Gnostics used in support of their doctrines writings which they attributed to the Apostles, thus having a direct apostolic witness to these doctrines. This they did in imitatio...
Three types of theology developed in the ante-Nicene Church: the Asia Minor school, best represented by Irenaeus (v. § 33); the North African, represented by Tertullian and Cyprian...
Christianity was probably planted in the British Isles during the second century; as to its growth in the ante-Nicene period little is definitely known. Representatives of the Brit...
During the third century the belief in chiliasm as a part of the Church's faith died out in nearly all parts of the Church. It did not seem called for by the condition of the Churc...
The Arian controversy in bringing about the affirmation of the true deity of the Son, or Logos, left the Church with the problem of the unity of the divine and human natures in the...
So long as chiliastic expectations were the basis of the Christian's hope and his judgment of the order of this present world, the Christian felt that he was but a stranger and soj...
Although Theodosius the Great had been the dominating power in the government of the Empire almost from his accession in 379, he was sole ruler of the united Roman Empire for only...