St. James’ Sunday Study Group Lectures

Extreme Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries

Lecture # 9
Nov. 17, 2019 11:45 am. To 1:00 pm.

Some Christians in the age of persecution willingly accepted martyrdom as a witness to Christ and their hope in the resurrection from the dead. Others composed apologetic literature, seeking a place in the intellectual world of the empire. But there were other manifestations of the Christian religion in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, even those that can be considered extreme. The deeply experiential character of this religion manifested itself especially in phenomena that, at the same time, resembled aspects of Greco-Roman religion and appeared to threaten good order within Christianity. None of these manifestations truly represented Christianity’s future, but none of them was ever totally suppressed, and each recurred in different forms through the centuries.