Lesson 5 Pages 148-211 Chapters 15-19
A. Terms to know:
a. Monotheism,
b. Polytheism,
c. Pantheism,
d. Theism,
e. Atheistic,
f. Existentialism,
g. Pragmatism,
h. Epicureanism,
i. Stoicism,
j. Mysticism and
k. Mythology.
B. It is a Hellenistic world that Paul is encountering. In Paphos he dealt with extreme mysticism in Bar Jesus. Bar Jesus claimed monotheistic Judaism, but probably claimed OT prophet office. Paul called him a false prophet. He went blind. Bar Jesus influenced Sergius Paulus, a god fearer.
C. Second situation where Paul encounters opposing religious system. Its name is Rabbinical Judaism or Yahwism (faith of the Pharisees). In Pisidian Antioch, the Jews incite religious women of the city to lead a riot against Paul. Usually this involves the more militant element of Pharisees.
D. At Lystra, Paul encounters polytheism at it's worst. They want to make he and Barnabas Gods. They want to sacrifice and bow down to them.
E. Polytheism, (belief in the existence of many gods or divine beings).
a. It has been widespread in human cultures, past and present, and has taken many forms.
b. Natural forces and objects—celestial, atmospheric, and earthly (such as stars, rain, mountains, and fire)—have often been identified with divinities.
c. Gods have also been worshipped in the form of vegetation (especially trees and cultivated plants)
d. Animals (for instance, the monkey in India and the hummingbird among the Aztecs).
e. The assumption of human forms and characteristics by divine beings (anthropomorphism), as in the emphatically human passions and behavior of the Greek and Roman gods, is virtually a universal feature of polytheism. "Polytheism,"
F. Pantheism (doctrine that identifies the universe (Greek pan, “all”) with God (Greek theos). pantheism, which absorbs the world into God.)
a. The thinker may start from an awareness of the divine reality and then begin to speculate on the relationship of the nondivine to the divine; this position is commonly called acosmic pantheism.
b. Conversely, the thinker may start from an apprehension of the full reality of finite, changing entities and give the name God to their all-inclusive totality; this is called cosmic pantheism. "Pantheism,"
G. Monotheism - one god. Theism or Christian Theism - three in one God. A Belief in the equality of the Godhead - the trinity. A term for what the Trinitarian faith believes. The Jews were angry because Paul was not preaching monotheism but Christian theism Saying that Jesus was co-equal with God. (Col. 1:6 & 1:15)
H. Pauline Kerygma upset the Jews - why? Jesus was the messiah and co-equal with God. Paul said that the Theophanies in OT were Christ. This infuriated them. It is why Stephen was killed - "I see Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father" (Acts 7:55). Son of the right hand was your heir.
I. Theism, religious belief in one Supreme Being who is the source and sustainer of the universe and at the same time is distinguished from it. Theism is now usually understood to mean the doctrine of the one, supreme, personal God, in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
a. As such, this belief is opposed to atheism there is no God.
b. Theism is distinguished from polytheism, which recognizes more than one god;
c. From pantheism, which denies the divine personality and identifies God with the universe;
d. From agnosticism, which denies the possibility of knowledge of God and suspends judgment on his existence; and
e. From Deism, which, although etymologically equivalent to theism, is generally defined as acknowledging the existence of God but denying his providence and active presence in the life of the world.
J. Atheism (Greek a, “not”; theos, “god”), doctrine that denies the existence of deity.
a. Atheism differs distinctly from agnosticism, the doctrine that the existence of deity can be neither proved nor disproved. Many people have incorrectly been called atheists merely because they rejected some popular belief in divinity.
b. To the Romans, the early Christians were atheists because they denied the Roman gods. Adherents of various Christian sects have applied the term to anyone unwilling to accept every tenet of their doctrine.
K. Existentialism - philosophical movement or tendency, emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice,
a. Other existentialist writers have echoed Kierkegaard's belief that one must choose one's own way without the aid of universal, objective standards. Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an objective judgment of right and wrong, existentialists have argued that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral decisions.
L. Pragmatism, philosophical doctrine, developed by the 19th-century American philosophers Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, and others. Pragmatism was the first independently developed American philosophy.
a. According to which the test of the truth of a proposition is its practical utility;
b. The purpose of thought is to guide action; and
c. The effect of an idea is more important than its origin.
d. It opposes speculation on questions that have no practical application.
e. It asserts that truth is relative to the time, place, and purpose of investigation and that value is as inherent in means as in ends.
f. Pragmatism was the dominant approach to philosophy in the United States during the first quarter of the 20th century.
M. Pragmatism - basic philosophic system of Greeks. Whatever is the common good should be chosen.
a. A pragmatist does what is expedient ( not necessary right). In the Greek culture he would weigh options and chose the route that would obtain the greatest good - by logic.
N. Epicureanism, The essential doctrine of Epicureanism is that pleasure is the supreme good and main goal of life. A system of philosophy based chiefly on the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus.
a. Intellectual pleasures are preferred to sensual ones, which tend to disturb peace of mind.
b. True happiness, Epicurus taught, is the serenity resulting from the conquest of fear of the gods, of death, and of the afterlife.
c. The ultimate aim of all Epicurean speculation about nature is to rid people of such fears.
d. The goal of man is a life of pleasure, regulated by morality, temperance, serenity and cultural development.
e. Knowledge was king. Seeking a higher knowledge that would transcend them out of this world.
f. Christians took this idea and became Gnostics. Almost destroyed early church.
O. Mysticism, an immediate, direct, intuitive knowledge of God or of ultimate reality attained through personal religious experience.
a. Wide variations are found in both the form and the intensity of mystical experience.
b. The authenticity of any such experience, however, is not dependent on the form, but solely on the quality of life that follows the experience.
c. The mystical life is characterized by enhanced vitality, productivity, serenity, and joy as the inner and outward aspects harmonize in union with God.
P. In Paul's time, mysticism was touching spiritual realms that was not led by the Holy Spirit. There is Christian mysticism as well as non-Christian.
Q. Mythology, the study and interpretation of myth and the body of myths of a particular culture.
a. Myth is a complex cultural phenomenon that can be approached from a number of viewpoints. In general, myth is a narrative that describes and portrays in symbolic language the origin of the basic elements and assumptions of a culture.
b. Mythic narrative relates, for example, how the world began, how humans and animals were created, and how certain customs, gestures, or forms of human activities originated. Almost all cultures possess or at one time possessed and lived in terms of myths.
R. Stoicism - basis on which Roman law operated. The Stoic school was established at Athens about 280-300 BC by Zeno of Cyprus. Stoicism, school of philosophy, founded in ancient Greece, opposed to Epicureanism in its views of life and duty. The Stoic philosophy was developed from that of the Cynics, whose Greek founder, Antisthenes, had been a disciple of Socrates.
S. Stoicism was the most influential philosophy in the Roman Empire during the period preceding the rise of Christianity. The Stoics, like the Epicureans, emphasized ethics as the main field of knowledge, but they also developed theories of logic and natural science to support their ethical doctrines. They held that all reality is material, but that matter proper, which is passive, is to be distinguished from the animating or active principle, Logos*, which they conceived as both the divine reason and as simply a finer kind of material entity, an all-pervading breath or fire, such as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus had supposed the cosmic principle to be.
a. According to them the human soul is a manifestation of the Logos. Living according to nature or reason, they held, is living in conformity with the divine order of the universe. The importance of this view is seen in the part that Stoicism played in developing a theory of natural law that powerfully affected Roman jurisprudence.
b. The foundation of Stoic ethics is the principle, proclaimed earlier by the Cynics, that good lies not in external objects, but in the state of the soul itself, in the wisdom and restraint by which a person is delivered from the passions and desires that perturb the ordinary life.
c. The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic philosophy are A classification derived from the teachings of Plato.
1. Wisdom,
2. Courage,
3. Justice, and
4. Temperance,
a. A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism. All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another. They held that external differences such as rank and wealth are of no importance in social relationships. Thus, before the rise of Christianity, Stoics recognized and advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all human beings.
T.*Logos (Greek, “word,” “reason,” “ratio”), in ancient and especially in medieval philosophy and theology, the divine reason that acts as the ordering principle of the universe.
d. The 6th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term Logos in a metaphysical sense. He asserted that the world is governed by a fire like Logos, a divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the flux of nature. He believed that this force is similar to human reason and that his own thought partook of the divine Logos.
e. In Stoicism, as it developed after the 4th century BC, the Logos is conceived as a rational divine power that orders and directs the universe; it is identified with God, nature, and fate. The Logos is “present everywhere” and seems to be understood as both a divine mind and at least a semi-physical force, acting through space and time. Within the cosmic order determined by the Logos are individual centers of potentiality, vitality, and growth. These are “seeds” of the Logos (logoi spermatikoi). Through the faculty of reason, all human beings (but not any other animals) share in the divine reason. Stoic ethics stress the rule “Follow where Reason [Logos] leads”; one must therefore resist the influence of the passions—love, hate, fear, pain, and pleasure.
f. The 1st-century AD Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus employed the term Logos in his effort to synthesize Jewish tradition and Platonism. According to Philo, the Logos is a mediating principle between God and the world and can be understood as God's Word or the Divine Wisdom, which is immanent in the world.
g. At the beginning of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is identified with the Logos made incarnate, the Greek word logos being translated as “word” in the English Bible: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . .” (John 1:1-3, 14). John's conception of Christ was probably influenced by Old Testament passages as well as by Greek philosophy. The Logos was identified with the will of God, or with the Ideas that are in the mind of God. Christ's incarnation was accordingly understood as the incarnation of these divine attributes.
h. They believed that:
1. Matter is passive, but non the less - there is divine energy that dwells in it.
2. Ethics were a protest against moral indifference. A protest movement against immorality and abuse in Greek culture.
3. Believed that reason was supreme, but that even it should conform to universal good.
4. The individual was not placed above the corporate. Because of their moral practices
5. they developed a philosophy of indifference to pleasure and pain, and an external good and evil system. It was morality based on pride.
6. To stoics, god was not so much a divine personality who actively engaged in the affairs of human beings, as a divine principle that pervaded and governed the universe.
The reason Paul was unsuccessful in Athens was due to stoic influence.
a. They regarded his teaching as foolishness.
b. To the stoics the whole universe was only one substance.
c. They believed the world had a soul that directed it's own affairs.
d. Natural disasters were shrugged off as being a decision of the world's soul.
e. Apatheia or apathy is a word that developed from the Stoics. To them apathy was the basis by which they ruled their lives.
f. Because all things are controlled and directed by divine reason or presence, the disinterested person is uncontrolled by concerns and cares of the world.
g. It also results in a self-sufficiency and a spiritual autonomy which characterizes the life of the truly liberated person.
h. Stoicism and pantheism are married.
Philosophies Paul came up against (summary for test)
a. Stoicism
b. Epicureanism - knowledge was king
c. Mystery religions - perverse demonic systems (Artemis of Eph.)
d. Syncretism - id. of local gods with Mt Olympus gods
e. Platonism - all things existed because of sovereign being
f. Pragmatism
g. Existentialism
Religions Paul Encountered
i. Rabbinic Yahwism - faith of the Pharisees
j. Mythlogy -
k. Atheism
l. Emperor Religion - worship of caesar
m. Magical Mysticism
n. Pantheism - God is part of all things
o. Polytheism
6 Heresies if the Early Church
a. Judaizers – legalism
b. Gnosticism - Jesus was a man, not co-equal with Father. Came from Epicureans - knowledge is all. They believe that Jesus had divine knowledge fall on him and made him the messiah. Goal is to return to the absolute deity beyond matter and in some sense be absorbed into the deity. Christian Scientists.
c. Marcionism
1. Marcion (circa 100-160), founder of a Christian sect, born in Sinope, Pontus (now Sinop, Turkey), and probably the son of the bishop of that city. He went to Rome about 140. Several years later, differing with the established Christian church on doctrine, he was excommunicated as a heretic and founded his own sect. The Marcionite sect, highly ascetic and celibate, grew rapidly until it was second in strength only to the original church; it had churches and an Episcopal hierarchy and practiced the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, the latter without the use of wine.
2. Marcion rejected the Old Testament and almost all of the New Testament, including the accounts of the incarnation and the resurrection, basing his teachings on ten of the Epistles of St. Paul and on an altered version of the Gospel of Luke. His tenets included a belief in the eternity of matter, which was later developed by the Greek teacher Hermogenes, and a dualistic interpretation of God, whereby God is divided into the just God of Law, who was the Creator of the Old Testament, and the good God, the infinitely superior deity revealed by Jesus Christ. Marcionism flourished in the West until about the 4th century, when it was probably absorbed by Manichaeism; traces of it remained in the East into medieval times. An important rival to the established church, Marcionism was attacked by such Christian writers as Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.
Monarchianism - Believes in no trinity
p. Monarchianism, Christian heretical doctrine of the 2nd and 3rd centuries opposed to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; it strongly maintained the essential unity of the Deity and was intended to reinforce monotheism in Christianity. Monarchians were divided into two groups, the Adoptionists, or Dynamic Monarchians, and the Patripassians, or Modalistic Monarchians. The Adoptionists taught that Christ, although of miraculous birth, was a mere man until his baptism when the Holy Spirit made him the Son of God by adoption. This doctrine was taught by Paul of Samosata, at one time bishop of Antioch. Adoptionism, or adoptianism, was revived in Spain about the end of the 8th century, when it was again condemned as heresy.
The Patripassians believed in the divinity of Christ, but regarded the Trinity as three manifestations, or modes, of a single divine being.
a. They taught that the Father had come to earth and suffered and died under the appearance of the Son; hence their name (Latin pater; patris, “father”; passus, “to suffer”).
b. This doctrine was taught by the Roman Christian prelate Sabellius and is thus sometimes referred to as Sabellianism.
Manichaeism - believes in different truths; many paths to God.
q. Manichaeism, ancient religion named for its founder, the Persian sage Mani (circa 216-76?); for a period of several centuries, it presented a major challenge to Christianity.
r. The fundamental doctrine of Manichaeism is its dualistic division of the universe into contending realms of good and evil: the realm of Light (spirit), ruled by God, and the realm of Darkness (matter), ruled by Satan. Originally, the two realms were entirely separate, but in a primal catastrophe the realm of Darkness invaded the realm of Light, and the two became mixed and engaged in a perpetual struggle. The human race is a result and a microcosm of this struggle. The human body is material, therefore evil; the human soul is spiritual, a fragment of the divine Light, and must be redeemed from its imprisonment in the body and the world. The path of redemption is through knowledge of the realm of Light imparted by the succession of divine messengers that includes Buddha and Jesus and ends in Mani. With this knowledge the human soul can conquer the carnal desires that perpetuate its imprisonment and so ascend to the divine realm.
s. The Manichaeans divided themselves into two classes according to their degree of spiritual perfection. Those who were called the elect practiced strict celibacy and vegetarianism, abstained from wine, did no labor, and preached. They were assured of ascent to the realm of Light after death. The auditors, much more numerous, were those of lower spiritual attainment. They were permitted marriage (although procreation was discouraged), observed weekly fasts, and served the elect. They hoped to be reborn as the elect (see Transmigration). Eventually all fragments of divine Light would be redeemed, the world would be destroyed, and Light and Darkness would be eternally separated.
Docetism -
t. Docetism, an early Christian heresy affirming that Jesus Christ had only an apparent body. The doctrine took various forms: Some proponents flatly denied any true humanity in Christ; some admitted his incarnation but not his sufferings, suggesting that he persuaded one of his followers—possibly Judas Iscariot or Simon of Cyrene—to take his place on the cross; others ascribed to him a celestial body that was incapable of experiencing human miseries.
u. This denial of the human reality of Christ stemmed from dualism, a philosophical doctrine that viewed matter as evil. The Docetists, acknowledging that doctrine, concluded that God could not be associated with matter. They could not accept a literal interpretation of John 1:14 that the “Word became flesh.”
v. Although Docetism is alluded to in the New Testament, it was not fully developed until the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when it found an ally in Gnosticism. It occasioned vigorous opposition by early Christian writers, beginning with Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus early in the 2nd century. Docetism was officially condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
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