The History of Christian Theology Parts I–III
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The History of Christian Theology Parts I–III Phillip Cary, Ph.D. PUBLISHED BY: THE TEACHING COMPANY 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 1-800-TEACH-12 Fax—703-378-3819 www.teach12.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2008 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Scripture quotations are from Professor Cary’s own translations and from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ®, Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Phillip Cary, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, Eastern University Professor Phillip Cary is Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, where he is also Scholar-in- Residence at the Templeton Honors College. He earned his B.A. in both English Literature and Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, then earned an M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in both Philosophy and Religious Studies at Yale University. Professor Cary has taught at Yale University, the University of Hartford, the University of Connecticut, and Villanova University. He was an Arthur J. Ennis Post-Doctoral Fellow at Villanova University, where he taught in Villanova’s nationally acclaimed Core Humanities program. At Eastern University, he is a recent winner of the Lindback Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. His specialty is the thought of Augustine, on whom he has written three scholarly books for Oxford University Press: Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self (2000), Inner Grace (2008) and Outward Signs (2008). He has also written Jonah for the Brazos Press series, Theological Commentary on the Bible, as well as numerous articles for philosophical and theological publications. Professor Cary has published scholarly articles on Augustine, Luther, the doctrine of the Trinity, and interpersonal knowledge. Professor Cary produced the following popular courses for The Teaching Company: Augustine: Philosopher and Saint and Philosophy and Religion in the West. He also contributed to The Teaching Company’s third edition of the course titled Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition. ©2008 The Teaching Company. i Table of Contents The History of Christian Theology Professor Biography .................................................................................... i Course Scope ............................................................................................... 1 Lecture One What Is Theology?............................................. 3 Lecture Two Early Christian Proclamation ............................. 7 Lecture Three Pauline Eschatology......................................... 10 Lecture Four The Synoptic Gospels ...................................... 13 Lecture Five The Gospel of John .......................................... 17 Lecture Six Varieties of Early Christianity ......................... 20 Lecture Seven The Emergence of Christian Doctrine.............. 24 Lecture Eight Christian Reading............................................. 28 Lecture Nine The Uses of Philosophy ................................... 32 Lecture Ten The Doctrine of the Trinity .............................. 36 Lecture Eleven The Doctrine of the Incarnation ....................... 40 Lecture Twelve The Doctrine of Grace...................................... 45 Lecture Thirteen The Incomprehensible and the Supernatural......................................... 50 Lecture Fourteen Eastern Orthodox Theology............................. 55 Lecture Fifteen Atonement and the Procession of the Spirit..... 59 Lecture Sixteen Scholastic Theology......................................... 63 Lecture Seventeen The Sacraments................................................ 67 Lecture Eighteen Souls after Death.............................................. 72 Lecture Nineteen Luther and Protestant Theology....................... 76 Lecture Twenty Calvin and Reformed Theology....................... 80 Lecture Twenty-One Protestants on Predestination ........................... 84 Lecture Twenty-Two Protestant Disagreements................................. 88 Lecture Twenty-Three Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation........ 93 Lecture Twenty-Four Anglicans and Puritans..................................... 97 Lecture Twenty-Five Baptists and Quakers...................................... 102 Lecture Twenty-Six Pietists and the Turn to Experience................ 106 ii ©2008 The Teaching Company. Table of Contents The History of Christian Theology Lecture Twenty-Seven From Puritans to Revivalists .......................... 110 Lecture Twenty-Eight Perfection, Holiness, and Pentecostalism....... 115 Lecture Twenty-Nine Deism and Liberal Protestantism ................... 119 Lecture Thirty Neo-Orthodoxy— From Kierkegaard to Barth ............................ 124 Lecture Thirty-One Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism............. 128 Lecture Thirty-Two Protestantism after Modernity........................ 132 Lecture Thirty-Three Catholic Theologies of Grace......................... 137 Lecture Thirty-Four Catholic Mystical Theology........................... 141 Lecture Thirty-Five From Vatican I to Vatican II .......................... 145 Lecture Thirty-Six Vatican II and Ecumenical Prospects............. 150 Timeline ................................................................................................... 154 Glossary ................................................................................................... 165 Biographical Notes.................................................................................. 203 Bibliography............................................................................................ 213 ©2008 The Teaching Company. iii iv ©2008 The Teaching Company. The History of Christian Theology Scope: This course surveys major developments in the history of Christian theology, which is the tradition of critical reasoning about how to teach the faith of Christ. Taking the centrality of Jesus Christ as the distinctive feature of Christianity, it focuses on theological concepts by relating them to Christian life and experience, including especially practices of worship. The course begins with the first Christian theological writings, the books of the New Testament, the earliest of which, the letters of Paul, reflect a worship of the exalted Christ at the right hand of God, in light of which later documents, such as the Four Gospels, tell the story of the historical Jesus, his earthly life, death, and resurrection. The course proceeds to examine the theology of the early church, how it read the Jewish scriptures and how it used Greek philosophy, as well as how the very idea of official Christian doctrine and its opposite, heresy, arose in response to the large variety of early Christianities. The survey of ancient Christian theology concludes in Part I by presenting three key doctrines: Trinity, Incarnation, and grace. Part II covers medieval and Reformation theology. The distinctive features of Eastern Orthodox theology are discussed, including the use of icons, the theology of the Transfiguration, the distinction between divine essence and energies, and the disagreement with the Western churches about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son.” Key developments in medieval Catholicism are examined, including scholastic theology, the use of logic and analogy, the seven sacraments, and the soul’s existence in heaven, hell, or purgatory in the time between death and resurrection. Reformation theology begins with the doctrine of justification by faith alone and the Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel, followed by the Reformed tradition and the development of Calvinism, with its distinctive commitment to the knowledge of eternal salvation, from which flows its embrace of the doctrine of predestination. The Anabaptists, such as the Mennonites, form a third and radical wing of the Reformation, while the Anglican tradition of the English Reformation aims for a middle way between Reformed theology and Catholicism. Part III begins by tracing the course of Protestant theology through the modern period. Modernity means a gradual secularization of Western Christendom, as can be seen in the theology of Baptists and Quakers, both ©2008 The Teaching Company. 1 of which offer an alternative to state churches and advocate religious liberty for all. True religion comes to be seen increasingly as a private inner experience rather than outward conformity to an institutional church, as can be seen in the Puritan emphasis on conversion, which leads to the Pietist emphasis on true Christianity as well as to the tradition of revivalism that is so strong in America, including the Methodist emphasis on holiness and its offshoot, Pentecostalism. On the other hand, the increasing secularization of modern culture and especially of historical scholarship on the Bible poses new problems for Christian theology, to which deism, liberal theology, neo-Orthodoxy, evangelicalism, and Fundamentalism are responses. The course concludes by treating the history of Roman Catholic theology