Christology in the early church:

What caused theological growth?

a. Evangelization itself: questions asked by people – how one God could be a father son and the
holy spirit
b. The gospel began with the evangelization of the jews and then quickly moved with St. Paul to
the Gentiles – a pagan philosophical environment: Platonist, Aristotelians and the stoics and the
sophist  new questions arise ( Paul in Corinth trying to explain to Platon philosophers on the
Resurrection of the Body )
c. The heresies: St Ignatius of Antioch was confronted by a group of people who is known as
docetist1

Saint Augustine: Faith seeks understanding  Fides quaerens intellectum

 St Ignatius of Antioch:
Quite early after the apostles – acquainted with Paul letters to the Corinthians, with John, he knew
Mathew’s Gospel – an Apostolic Father: 2 nd generation after the apostles. Born of Pagan parents, bishop
of Antioch in Syria.
Arrested by the romans to be murdered in the Coliseum: Syria to Turkey – Greece and off into Rome:
different Christian communities visited him along the way so he wrote letters to seven of those
churches: To six and Polycarp bishop of Smyrna.
Three Principle Themes:
a. Unity of the Church: one head Jesus Christ – unity with the bishop, successor of the Apostles –
the Eucharist is the ultimate expression, one faith one bishop
b. What breaks down the unity: Heresies that creates divisions – denial of Jesus was truly man bcs
it jeopardize ‫ يعرض للخطر‬his divinity
He uses language in a unique way: he speaks of Jesus saving us through his divine blood – God
doesn’t have blood but if the son of God, he who is the one who’s shedding his blood is none
other than the son of God
He talks about suffering of God
This is what the theologians will call later: the communication of idioms : divine in human
attributes can be attributed to the one in the same person so we can attribute human attributes
to the Son of God bcs the son of God actually exists as man. God being born, weeping and crying
1
Docetism, (from Greek dokein, “to seem”), Christian heresy and one of the earliest Christian sectarian doctrines,
affirming that Christ did not have a real or natural body during his life on earth but only an apparent or phantom
one. Though its incipient forms are alluded to in the New Testament, such as in the Letters of John (e.g., 1 John
4:1–3; 2 John 7), Docetism became more fully developed as an important doctrinal position of Gnosticism, a
religious dualist system of belief arising in the 2nd century AD which held that matter was evil and the spirit good
and claimed that salvation was attained only through esoteric knowledge, or gnosis. The heresy developed from
speculations about the imperfection or essential impurity of matter. More thoroughgoing Docetists asserted that
Christ was born without any participation of matter and that all the acts and sufferings of his life, including the
Crucifixion, were mere appearances. They consequently denied Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension into heaven.
Milder Docetists attributed to Christ an ethereal and heavenly body but disagreed on the degree to which it shared
the real actions and sufferings of Christ. Docetism was attacked by all opponents of Gnosticism, especially by
Bishop Ignatius of Antioch in the 2nd century.
 Poems of St Ignatius:
He’s uncreated yet born etc.
Expresses the dichotomy of Jesus being eternally begotten yet can actually become man, the
impassable became passable
If Docets were right that Jesus pretended to offer his human life on the cross than we’re not
saved from sin and death, and equally, if he didn’t rise as a human being that we can’t fully
share his resurrection.
Having said that, Jesus becomes the new day. The old day of Adam is over. We can now live the
life of the Holy Spirit.
He sees the Eucharist as the risen body and the risen blood of Jesus – the Docetist denied that –
it only pretends to be the blood and the flesh of Jesus. He has a phrase that is: the Eucharist is
the medicine of immortality
A great privilege of being a martyr bcs he’s conforming himself into the very likeness of Jesus –
he’s becoming the likeness of Christ

Apostolic fathers:
Apologists: defend the intellectual attacks from philosophers coming from the pagan
environment in which they lived.
Third generation after the apostles
Justin the Martyr
Christianity is the true philosophe into which we can attain the truth
Relationship between God and human beings, what unites hb with God? How can a human
being come to know God in order to obtain an understanding of who God is

Prevalent philosophy of the days:

a. Stoics2: theologically or philosophically they were pantheist: they believed that is in
everything and everything is in God – everything has a bit of God in him, a seed og God:
but human beings were able to know more – it is called the logos spermatikos – every
human being has a little word of God so they are able to know who God is
They talked about the inner and outer world.

Justin martyr uses that concept with trying to help us understand the Trinity that there’s
an inner word of God and an outer world of God

b. Platonism: one of the prominent philosophers at the time of Justin martyr was Plotinus who
developed Plato’s style: for Plotinus, God is transcendent and consequently separate and far
away from us
How did God create? God’s being was so full that the thing emanated out from him in a
sense naturally and one of the things that’s emanated was God’s word, his nous, his
knowledge – human beings – material manner.
Things that are made of manner are evil.

2
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy (developed by Zeno of Citium around 300 B.C. as a refinement
of Cynicism) which teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming
destructive emotions.