The following article is now online in PDF:
Colin J. Hemer, "The Manchester Rotas / Sator Square," Faith and Thought 105.1&2 (1978): 36-40.
My thanks to the Trustees of Tyndale House for their kind permission to reproduce this article.
The following articles are now available on-line in PDF:
John W. Drane, "Gnosticism and the New Testament 1," TSF Bulletin 68 (Spring 1974): 6-13.
John W. Drane, "Gnosticism and the New Testament 2," TSF Bulletin 69 (Summer 1974): 1-7.
My thanks to Professor Drane for his kind permission to reproduce these articles.
With new academic year due to begin in the next few weeks I thought it would be good to update my visitors on recent and forthcoming developments across the “Theology on the Web” websites.
Over the last few months I’ve been experimenting with different formats for the articles I upload. Since I began in 2001 I’ve scanned, OCR’d and then proof-read all the articles that I’ve placed online. This produces very clear text and very small file sizes, but it does have the disadvantage of being very time consuming as well as introducing typos.
The situation is at present that I have a full-time job in a Christian charity, a wife and three little boys, so website work must be confined to my lunch hour or late evenings. Although I received over a million visitors each year only 4 of these support the work regularly on a monthly basis. The two advertisers who paid for space on the websites have decided not to renew this year. All this means is that while I still hope to do this work full-time on the sites at some point there is no prospect of this in the near future on the basis of current funding levels. If you would like to support the development of the sites I suggest a number of ways of doing so here.
This has led me to change the format of the articles I upload to scanned PDF’s with OCR’d text. These retain the original layout, can be searched, cut and pasted and appear in search engines. They can be produced very quickly (I could scan and place online an entire book in a few hours) but the file size is around 15-20 times larger a word-processed version. A few people have complained about this change, but I would rather have the material available now rather in several years time (if ever) even if the format does not please everyone.
I have recently completed the entire 11 volumes of the Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society and will be integrating the articles into my site in the next few weeks. Vox Evangelica (which I began working on in 2006) should be complete by the end of next week. I have recently completed a table of contents for the Theological Students Fellowship (TSF) Bulletin (UK) and a number of these articles are now online. Anvil journal recently allowed me to publish around 27 of its articles and these are appearing as permissions from the authors are received. I am now working on a table of contents for Themelios (1962-1974) when it was published by IFES. I hope to be able to place many of these articles online as well in due course in partnership with Tyndale House and the Gospel Coalition.
Due to my present workload the launch of this site has been put back until sometime next year.
That’s all for now. Remember to subscribe to the site feeds to received the latest news. Thanks for visiting!
The following book is now available in both PDF and iPaper formats:
The following article is now online in PDF:
Frances Young, "Christian Attitudes to Finance in the First Four Centuries," Epworth Review 4.3 (Sept. 1977): 78-86.
This is very interesting article on a neglected subject - well worth a read.
Anyone who has studied church history will be familiar with the works of Henry Chadwick, particularly his book The Early Church, which is still a standard textbook on many courses, remarkably so, as it was first published in 1967. It was therefore with a great sense of loss that I read of his death today in The Telegraph. The Guardian's obituary can be viewed here.I have created a new group on Facebook called Theology on the Web. I am hoping that it will serve both to raise the profile of my websites and provide a forum for visitors to provide feedback on current and future projects. Feel free to sign up.
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
F.F. Bruce, "Church History and Its Lessons," J.B. Watson, ed., The Church: A Symposium. London: Pickering & Inglis, Ltd., 1949. pp.178-95.
George Santayana famous said that "Those who fail to learn the lessons that history teaches, are doomed to repeat them". It is therefore helpful to some of the lessons that Church History can teach today's Church regarding the form and ministry of the Church, the Church's relationship to the State and the Church's mission.
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
Arthur W. Klem, "Tertullian: Victim of Caricature," Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 5.4 (Fall 1962): 103-108.
Tertullian has always been a target for misrepresentation. Arthur Klem's article seeks to set the record straight.
The following Ph.D. thesis is now available on-line:
Chris Gousmett, "Shall the Body Strive and Not be Crowned? Unitary and instrumentalist anthropological models as keys to interpreting the structure of Patristic eschatology," PhD. Thesis, University of Dunedin, NZ, 1993.
My thanks to Dr Gousmett for reformatting his thesis and allowing me to place it on-line.
Abstract:
It is possible to discern a structure underlying the myriad details of Patristic eschatology through the use of two anthropological models, a unitary model, which sees the person as a unity of body and soul, and an instrumentalist model, which locates the person in the soul, which uses the body as its instrument. This latter view makes possible a judgement and entry into the appropriate eschatological state immediately after death, while the unitary view requires the resurrection to occur first. Some who held a unitary view (notably but not exclusively the Syrians) thought that the soul slept until the resurrection, while others held that the soul experienced pleasure or pain in anticipation of their future rewards or punishments to be received after the judgement.
The unitary anthropology is correlated with a positive assessment of bodily life, including marriage and sexuality, and (particularly during the first few centuries) expectation of life on a renewed earth in the eschaton following a millennium of peace.
The decline in millennialism, rise of asceticism, and glorification of virginity and denigration of marriage, as well as an eclipse of the centrality and significance of the resurrection of the body, are correlated with an instrumentalist view. Bodily life was often seen negatively, as the occasion, if not the source, of sin, and even innocent bodily gratification was shunned as a hindrance to the communion of the soul with God.
There is no direct correlation with the frequent contrast between the “resurrection of the body” and the “immortality of the soul” and the structures of Patristic eschatology. Many who held to a unitary anthropological model thought the soul immortal (although earlier Patristic writers rejected this concept), but also stressed that eschatological life also required the immortalisation of the body through its resurrection.
Those who held to an instrumentalist anthropological model mostly thought the soul was innately immortal, and provided sophisticated philosophical arguments for this view. However, it was the idea that the person was located in the soul, with the body as its instrument, that is the determining characteristic for the structure of their eschatology.
These ideas provide the background to the interpretation of Psalm 1:5, which in conjunction with John 3:18 was taken to mean that neither the saints nor the obdurate wicked would face the judgement on the last day. Others took Psalm 1:5 to mean that the wicked would not be judges, as they were wont to do during life. While there is no direct correlation between these interpretations of Psalm 1:5 and the two anthropological models discussed, it is not possible to understand the reasons for these interpretations without considering the influence of these models on Patristic eschatology.
Patristic anthropology and eschatology was shaped by the synthesis between pagan thought and Christian thought. The negative assessment of bodily life can be traced to pagan influences, and the consequences are considerable even today. Only by repudiating the method of synthesis can an authentically Christian anthropology and eschatology be developed.
The following articles are now on-line in PDF:
Graham Keith, " Patristic Views on Hell - Part 1," The Evangelical Quarterly 71.3 (1999): 217-232.
Abstract:
Graham Keith, "Patristic Views on Hell - Part 2," The Evangelical Quarterly 71.4 (1999): 291-310.In this period the doctrine of the last things was yet to be worked out in detail. Apart from the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment, no orthodox consensus was established. With such a climate Origen tried to extend the church’s teaching. He tied the traditional idea of a final judgment to God’s long-term strategy for the restoration of souls (or intelligences) after they had declined from the contemplation of God. In the process he produced a speculative and controversial picture which revolved round the willing subjection of all things to God. All God’s judgments were essentially corrective. This meant that Origen at least considered the possible salvation of the devil and his angels. But his treatment did leave several inconsistencies. This was probably of more use to the church than a systematised dogmatic statement, because it focussed the mind of the church on certain key issues on which it had to work out a biblical consensus.
In his approach to the doctrine of Hell Augustine was influenced in part by a desire to address pagan doubts about the scientific possibility (d a body being in a state of everlasting torment. But an even greater concern was prompted by various pleas within the church to tone down the Scriptural evidence for an eternal Hell. Augustine believed that if any of these pleas were accepted, dire pastoral consequences would be involved.
Alongside his response to the various critiques of Hell, Augustine laid much stress on the seriousness of Adam’s original sin. He also rejected the Platonist view, effectively endorsed by Origen, that all divine punishments are essentially corrective. Augustine felt no need to give a detailed rationale for God’s justice, which he saw as a datum of revelation and a matter of faith for the believer. It was, however, a weakness in Augustine (and the patristic period generally) that he was content to work with a model of divine anger which stripped it of any passionate element. This foreclosed the possibility of tying God’s wrath more closely to the outworking of God’s justice.
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
Graham Keith, "Can Anything Good Come out of Allegory? The Cases of Origen and Augustine," The Evangelical Quarterly 70.1 (1998): 23-49.
Though allegory is regarded with suspicion in churches today, it was enthusiastically embraced by many in the early church, including Origen and Augustine, the subjects of this paper. Origen believed not only that an allegorical interpretation was demanded by inconsistencies and absurdities in the literal text of Scripture, but that Scripture itself enjoined this hermeneutic. It was God’s way of stimulating believers to a maturer faith and discipleship. The rule of faith gave a framework in which error could be avoided.
Augustine shared Origen’s respect for the church’s traditional teaching. He differed, however, in the essentially aesthetic qualities he found in allegory. This was a technique he believed would give added pleasure to any worthwhile work of literature. He was also happy to accommodate a variety of suitable meanings in some passages of Scripture since he felt that human words were limited and sometimes obscure.
With their use of allegory, Origen and Augustine raise the question how do particular passages of Scripture set in a specific time and environment relate to the things that are unseen and eternal? They did, not, however, provide a suitable rationale to justify the various connections they made through allegory between diverse parts of the Bible.
The following article is now available in PDF:
Chris Gousmett, "Creation Order and Miracle According to Augustine," The Evangelical Quarterly 60.3 (July 1988): 217-240.
This article was particularly helpful to me when I was doing research on the early church's understanding of Genesis 1-11, so I am pleased to make it available here.
The following book is now available online in PDF:
Gerald L. Bray, Holiness and the Will of God. Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1979. Hbk. ISBN: 0551055936. pp.179.
Contents
Preface
1: Past and Present
2: The Man and his Times
3: The Nature of Holiness
4: The Pattern of Authority
5: The Holy Life
6: Epilogue
Notes [now included as footnotes in each chapter]
List of Tertullian's Work's
Bibliography
Index
My thanks to Professor Bray for his kind permission,
The following article is now online in PDF:
J. Stafford Wright, "The Canon of Scripture," The Evangelical Quarterly 19 (1947): 93-109.
Stafford Wright describes for the formation of the Protestant 66-book biblical canon.
The following article is on-line in PDF:
F.F. Bruce, "The Earliest Latin Commentary on the Apocalypse," The Evangelical Quarterly 10.4 (Oct. 1938): 352-366.
This is one of FFB's earliest articles and his first for The Evangelical Quarterly. It provides a helpful discussion of Victorinus' Commentary.
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
H.P.V. Nunn, "The Background of the Epistle of Clement of Rome," The Evangelical Quarterly 18.1 (Jan. 1946): 39-45.
H.P.V. Nunn, "The 'Shepherd' of Hermas," The Evangelical Quarterly 18.2 (April 1946): 109-122.
H.P.V. Nunn, "The Epistles of Ignatius," The Evangelical Quarterly 18.4 (Oct. 1946): 262-272.
Good articles providing introductions to the Apostolic Fathers and their writings are hard to find, so I was very pleased to find these.
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
Trevor A. Hart, "The Two Soteriological Traditions of Alexandria," The Evangelical Quarterly 61.3 (1989): 239-259.
This article deals with Clement of Alexandria and Athanasius. It concludes:
What distinguished Athanasius from the Alexandrian catechetical and apologetic tradition which formed his inheritance was a profound recognition of the bankruptcy of hellenic thought as a framework within which to proclaim and expound the becoming of God in the incarnation. This was a message which could only meet with resistance from hellenism, and which as such had to be proclaimed over against it. To seek to accommodate the Greek philosophical framework would have been to concede in advance the ground upon which one stood as a Christian theologian. If we can learn anything from comparing these two traditions in Alexandrian theology, therefore, it is the ever-present danger inherent in any attempt to commend Christianity to its cultured despisers. What we must never forget is that it is precisely insofar as the gospel is a scandal to human wisdom that it confronts men and women in all its relevance. To the extent that we seek to lessen that scandal, therefore, we hinder rather than aid its cause. There can be no question as to the responsibility of Christian theology to address unbelief in every age. The real question remains, however, as to the most appropriate form of that address. It may well prove to be the case that far more is to be lost in seeking to deal with unbelief on its own terms than is ever to be gained.
The following article is now online in PDF:
G.L. Prestige, "Lecture 3: Origen: or, The Claims of Religious Intelligence," Fathers and Heretics. Bampton Lectures 1940. London: SPCK, 1940. Pbk. pp.43-66.
G.L. Prestige's lecture is (in my opinion) one of the best short summaries of the life, works and significance of Origen. It should be required reading for anyone taking a course in early church history.
The following article is now on-line in PDF: In contemporary discussions of the NT canon, focus has been on its polemical aspects, that is, when it was closed. By so doing the idea of a canonical process suffers. In attempting to understand Tatian’s Diatessaron in this process it is argued here that the very existence of the harmony testifies against a closed fourfold Gospel canon in the mid-second century. A proper distinction between canon and scripture is foundational in this understanding. Discussions about the closed NT canon belong to a day far removed from Tatian’s. By placing Tatian’s Diatessaron in the perspective of process we are less tempted to view his use of the four Gospels as proving their canonicity, a view which is anachronistic and inaccurate.
Craig D. Allert, "The State of the New Testament Canon in the Second Century: Putting Tatian's Diatessaron in Perspective," Bulletin for Biblical Research 9 (1999): 1-18.
Abstract:
The following article is now available in PDF:
F.F. Bruce, "Marius Victorinus and his Works," The Evangelical Quarterly 18 (1946): 132-153.
The study of Marius Victorinus seems to have been neglected, but Bruce's article serves as a very helpful introduction. I have added a new bibliography page on him here.
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
F.F. Bruce, "The Gospel of Thomas: Presidential Address 14 May 1960," Faith and Thought 92.1 (1961): 3-23.
F.F. Bruce compares some of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas with those in the Canonical Gospels - an interesting study.
The following article is now available on-line in PDF:
F.F. Bruce, "Some Notes on the Fourth Evangelist," The Evangelical Quarterly 16 (1944): 101-109.
F.F. Bruce examines what light the evidence of the early church throws on the authorship of the Gospel of John.
The following article is now available in PDF:
Harold H. Rowdon, "Theological Education in Historical Perspective," Vox Evangelica 7 (1971): 75-87.
The article includes a helpful description of theological education in the early church.
Several years ago I purchased a number of images of the early church fathers and others) from André Thevet, Les Vrais Pourtraits et Vies Hommes Illustres, 1584 edition from the Special Collections Library, University of Michigan. I have permission from the Special Collections Library to sell scans of these images on CD-ROM to support my website. These images would of be of interest to anyone teaching a course on early church history, publishing a book on that subject - or who just wants a cool desktop for their computer. Full details and thumbnail images can be found here. The cost is £14.99 (post-free worlwide).
Alternatively you might be interested in a Augustine mug featuring an image from Thevet's book, available from my Cafepress shop, The Enterprising Bookworm.
Proceeds from these sales go toward site development.
Phil S. over on hyperekperissou provides a helpful overview of the latest developments on Patristic-related blogs - thanks Phil!
The following article is now on-line in PDF:
Peter M.Head, "Tatian's Christology and its influence on the composition of the Diatessaron," Tyndale Bulletin 43.1 (1992): 121-137.
Phil S. over on hyperekperisou is hosting the first Patristics Carnival. Those interested in early church history will find his discussion of sites specialising in this subject of great help. Good work Phil!
The following article is now available in PDF:
Graham Keith, "Formulation of Creeds in the Early Church," Themelios 24.1 (October 1998): 13-35.
As the title suggests, Dr Keith documents the development of credal statements and their importance in the early church.
