Document Type
Article
Abstract
The first four centuries of church history were largely dominated by a diverse mix of philosophical arguments, theological debates, and seemingly intractable conflicts over the nature of Christ and his person. The paper presented here will endeavor to examine these through multiple lenses of understanding, historical, political, geographical, and theological. Perhaps the most defining conflicts of this period of upheaval were the gnostic controversy of the 2nd century, followed by the Arian controversy of the 4th century A.D (Pagels, 1974, & Haas, 1993). The theological kerfuffle's over Christ and his humanity considered against his deity were every bit as sociopolitical and geographical as they were theological. In a word, they were historical, and they must be broadly contextualized through a historical framework. The most salient focus of the research to be presented is an objective and honest consideration of the sundry conflicts and disputes, without taking sides as to any of their respective rightness or veracity, to understand the period with markedly superior clarity than has been done before. Moreover, the nature of these conflicts is often marked by a regrettable theological “victor’s bias”, wherein history is written by the conquerors in any respective conflict. In this case, the Nicene Orthodox faithful gradually subdued the gnostic, Modalist, and later Arian elements, which was the catalyst for Orthodox Christianity to establish its hegemony over the now vanquished theological competition. The analysis offered here will endeavor to show, not who was right and who was wrong, but rather, how these conflicts materialized and metastasized over the relevant geographic localities and provinces in which the faith of Christ Jesus grew. The reader will soon be both delighted and bereaved to learn that the early church period was, in 3 many respects, a flourishing and thriving marketplace of ideas, but many of these theories (and their exponents) have now been lost, obscured under the weight of sanctioned religious history.
Publication Date
Spring 5-1-2024
Recommended Citation
Monnett, Brent, "The Marketplace of Ideas Quenched: Examination of Christological conflicts, and their outcomes, in the Early Christian Church" (2024). University Honors College. 11.
https://scholars.indianastate.edu/honorsp/11