A good overview of early Christian orthodoxy?

[rgprice]

Anyone have a good source for a scholarly overview of early Christian orthodoxy from the 3rd through 6th centuries?

[StephenGoranson]

Maybe
Jaroslav Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine,
Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)

[MrMacSon]

A good question. That may depend on one's view of 'the state' of Christian orthodoxy in the 2nd century and even the first: ie. whether the author of any such scholarly overview of the 3rd-6th centuries held an orthodox view of earlier Christianity.

I'm gonna come back and place a quote from a prolific scholar of early Christianity here (albeit from 36-48 hrs ago from a YouTube video that is not [yet] public)

[MrMacSon]

A good question. That may depend on one's view of 'the state' of Christian orthodoxy in the 2nd century and even the first: ie. whether the author of any such scholarly overview of the 3rd-6th centuries held an orthodox view of earlier Christianity.

I'm gonna come back and place a quote from a prolific scholar of early Christianity here (albeit from 36-48 hrs ago from a YouTube video that is not [yet] public)
.

• I had M David Litwa's comments here in mind, but they pertain to the 2nd century.

However, I found these rather interesting excerpts from the book, Christian Solar Symbolism and Jesus the Sun of Justice, by Kevin Duffy, 2022:

Origen (c. 186–c. 253) left a decisive mark on Christian light and sun symbolism, distinguishing between the physical sun and the spiritual Sun, a distinction that would become standard in the fourth and fifth centuries ...

Origen brought different biblical voices into conversation with each other in innovative ways. Christ’s face shining like the sun at the Transfiguration is linked to various texts of Paul including 1 Thess. 5.4-5:

‘His face’ shall shine ‘as the sun’ so that it may be found shining on the sons ‘of light’ who ‘have stripped themselves of the works of darkness and put on the armour of light,’ and are no longer ‘sons of darkness and night,’ but have become sons ‘of God’ and walk ‘honourably as in the day’, and when he has been made manifest he will shine on them not simply ‘as the sun,’ but they see him to be sun ‘of justice.’ [In Evangelium Matthaei 12.37]

He links Zech. 6.12 and Mal. 4.2:

But do not take the statement that ‘he sprinkles to the east’ as superfluous. From the east came atonement for you; for from there is the man whose name is 'Rising'/‘East,’ who became ‘a mediator between God and man.’ Therefore, you are invited by this to look always ‘to the east’ whence ‘the Sun of Righteousness’ arises for you, whence a light is born for you; that you never ‘walk in darkness’. [In Leviticum Homilia 9.10]

Elsewhere, he brings both Zech. 6.12 and Mal. 4.2 to bear on the terse comment in the Gospel of John when Judas leaves the Last Supper to betray Christ: ‘And it was night’ (13.30):

When Judas received the morsel [and] went out immediately, night was present in him at the time he went out, for the man whose name is ‘Sunrise’ was not present with him because he left ‘the Sun of Justice’ behind when he went out. [Commentarium in Joannem 32.16]

Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 395) developed Origen’s approach, combining the imagery of darkness in Exodus with Platonism, especially Plato’s parable of the sun shining into the cave in the seventh chapter of his Republic. In an initial conversion, Moses sees God in a luminous burning bush: ‘At high noon a light brighter than the sunlight dazzled his eyes. Astonished at the strange sight, he looks up at the mountain and sees a bush from which this light is flaming up like a fire’ [Life of Moses 20]. Growing in knowledge, he ascends the mountain where God is in cloud and darkness: ‘He declared that he had seen God in the darkness, that is, that he had then come to know that what is divine is beyond all knowledge and comprehension’ [ibid].

Darkness expresses the mystery and incomprehensibility of God who is seen in a ‘luminous darkness’ [ibid]. To understand Gregory, we do not need to imagine visual phenomena ... his metaphors of light and darkness are more theological than psychological.
.

In the Byzantine Hippodrome in Constantinople, in a fluid pattern of symbolism, chariots and charioteers came to evoke variously Christ, the emperor and the sun-god. Such a fusion of a martial cult of the personality, Christianity and solar religiosity probably reflects the ambitions of a leader described as a fourth-century Roi-Soleil. It was, however, the Christian church’s cult of the Sol Justitiae that ultimately prevailed rather than Constantine’s Sol Invictus.
.

Ambrose of Milan (340–97) has had a lasting influence in the Western church, through his disciple Augustine and through his own writings. Quoting a pagan philosopher Secundus, Ambrose describes marvelling at the beauty of the sun, adding that beyond it he sees the Sun of Justice:

It is true that it is the eye of the world, the joy of the day, the beauty of the heavens, the charm of nature and the most conspicuous object in creation. When you behold it, reflect on its Author, when you admire it, give praise to its Creator. If the sun as consort or participant in nature is so pleasing, how much goodness is there to be found in that ‘Sun of Justice’? [Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel, 4.1.2]

In Ambrose’s hymns, which are still in use, he exploits the perception of light and sun at the service of spiritual renewal.² In two of these hymns, ‘Splendor paternae gloriae’ and ‘Deus Creator omnium’, Ambrose focuses on morning and evening light, respectively. The second strophe of ‘Splendor paternae gloriae’ asks Christ to irradiate our sense experience: ‘And true sun, descend, / gleam with everlasting glow; / and pour the Holy Spirit’s / beam into our senses.’

---

When he was baptized by Ambrose in Milan, the North African Augustine [of Hippo (354-430)] learnt to call Christ ‘Sun of Justice’, ‘Spiritual Sun’ and ‘True Sun’. Sensitive to the beauties of light, he remarked on the beauty of the rising sun gradually illuminating a valley, and of African sunlight, the queen of all colours, pouring down over everything.⁷ All this experience is open to everyone: ‘Only the literate can read the books, but even the illiterate can read the book of the world’.⁸

Spiritual conversion involves learning a different way of looking at the world. The unredeemed person is, metaphorically, a figure bent over (incurvatus in se), head bowed, with hands covering the eyes because the light is too intense.⁹ For believers, there follows a process of healing and conversion that is intellectual (being freed, for example, from the materialist philosophy of Augustine’s youth), moral and religious. Augustine felt that he was still viewing sunlight with unconverted eyes. A process of conversion is figuratively moving from seeing sunlight shining on a wall or on fabric, then on gold or silver, and then looking at a bright sky or dawn light. Eventually, we will come to delight in seeing the sun directly without flinching.¹⁰ This is to see the face of God: ‘The angelic choir makes an eternal holiday: the presence of God’s face, joy that never fails. This is a holiday of such a kind as neither to be opened by any dawn, nor terminated by any evening’.¹¹

---

2. Brian P. Dunkle, SJ, Enchantment and Creed in the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 63–7

7. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 23.
8. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 45.7. PL 36. 518. ET Expositions of the Psalms 33–50 (III/6) (ed. John E. Rotelle, OSA; trans. and notes Maria Boulding, OSB; Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), p. 315.
9. Lydia Schumacher, Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 60–2.
10. Augustine, Soliloquium 1.23. PL 32. 882.
11. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 41.9. PL 36. 470. ET ‘Augustine of Hippo Sermon on Psalm 41(Vulgate)’ (trans. Bernard McGinn), in The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (ed. Bernard McGinn; New York: Random House, 2006), pp. 21–34 (24).

[MrMacSon]

... I found these rather interesting excerpts from the book, Christian Solar Symbolism and Jesus the Sun of Justice, by Kevin Duffy, 2022:

Origen (c. 186–c. 253) left a decisive mark on Christian light and sun symbolism, distinguishing between the physical sun and the spiritual Sun, a distinction that would become standard in the fourth and fifth centuries ...

Origen brought different biblical voices into conversation with each other in innovative ways. Christ’s face shining like the sun at the Transfiguration is linked to various texts of Paul including 1 Thess. 5.4-5:

‘His face’ shall shine ‘as the sun’ so that it may be found shining on the sons ‘of light’ who ‘have stripped themselves of the works of darkness and put on the armour of light,’ and are no longer ‘sons of darkness and night,’ but have become sons ‘of God’ and walk ‘honourably as in the day’, and when he has been made manifest he will shine on them not simply ‘as the sun,’ but they see him to be sun ‘of justice.’ [In Evangelium Matthaei 12.37]

He links Zech. 6.12 and Mal. 4.2:

But do not take the statement that ‘he sprinkles to the east’ as superfluous. From the east came atonement for you; for from there is the man whose name is 'Rising'/‘East,’ who became ‘a mediator between God and man.’ Therefore, you are invited by this to look always ‘to the east’ whence ‘the Sun of Righteousness’ arises for you, whence a light is born for you; that you never ‘walk in darkness’. [In Leviticum Homilia 9.10]

Elsewhere, he brings both Zech. 6.12 and Mal. 4.2 to bear on the terse comment in the Gospel of John when Judas leaves the Last Supper to betray Christ: ‘And it was night’ (13.30):

When Judas received the morsel [and] went out immediately, night was present in him at the time he went out, for the man whose name is ‘Sunrise’ was not present with him because he left ‘the Sun of Justice’ behind when he went out. [Commentarium in Joannem 32.16]

Origen refers to 'a' or 'the Sun of Justice/Righteousness' several times in Contra Celsum including, "the One Logos, risen like the Sun of Justice" (Philo said, 'the title sun is that of the divine Logos' in On Dreams I.85)

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium notes:

• Under Aurelian (270-5) and into the first quarter of the 4th c., the distinction between the Sol Invictus and the emperor became confused

• Sol Invictus appeared on the coins of Galerius and Maximus and later, through 323.

• After Constantine I the image of the solar god-emperor vanishes, then Sol Justitiae (or Sol Salutis), the sun of justice/righteousness and of salvation, merged with the image of Christ

• Cyril of Alexandria's commentary on Malachi includes, "Christ rises upon the world as the Sun of Justice, of most perfect knowledge, enlightening our eyes and souls."

Which would fit with

a fusion of a martial cult of the personality, Christianity and solar religiosity probably reflect[ed] the ambitions of a leader described as a fourth-century Roi-Soleil ... the Christian church’s cult of the Sol Justitiae that ultimately prevailed rather than Constantine’s Sol Invictus.
.

There's also the Χριστὸς Παντοκράτωρ, the Christ Pantokrator, one of the first images of Christ developed in the Early Christian Church and which remains a central icon of the Eastern Orthodox Church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator

The development of the earliest stages of the Χριστὸς Παντοκράτωρ icon from Roman Imperial imagery has been traced:

• Eduard Syndicus; Early Christian Art, 1962; pp.96–99;
• Hall, A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art, 1983; pp.91–97
• +/- Christoph Schoenborn, God's Human Face: The Christ-Icon, 1994.

(Παντοκράτωρ is used nine times in the Book of Revelation: 1:8, 4:8, 11:17, 15:3, 16:7, 16:14, 19:6, 19:15, and 21:22. The references to God the Father and God the Son in Revelation are, at times, interchangeable in Revelation, but Pantokrator appears to be reserved for the Father except, perhaps, in 1:8.)

[Irish1975]

Charles Freeman’s 381 AD

[Leucius Charinus]

Scholarly overviews of early Christian orthodoxy from the 3rd through 6th centuries follow the sources for that period. The Christian sources are found in the literature of Ecclesiastical History (EH)

Ante Nicene Fathers - 10 volumes:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nic ... an_Library
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Series I) - 14 volumes:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_a ... :_Series_I
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Series II) - 14 volumes:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_a ... _Series_II

In addition to that literature are various compilations of law codes, various abbreviated pagan histories and the "Res Gestae" of Ammianus Marcellinus. Edward Gibbon is IMO still a good read.

[Irish1975]

Orthodoxy is not a set of beliefs or a theology or a sect or a style of religion. It is a political concept, meaning agreement with The Truth. Maybe in some abstract way, The Truth is whatever the authorities say it is, whether bishops, heretics, philosophers, prophets, sages, magoi, etc. But when the emperors used their legal authority to establish their Truth of the One God, that is when orthodoxy became a thing. That did not happen earlier than Theodosius in the 380s. The distinction orthodoxy/heresy entered the Theodosian imperial legal code in the 5th century, then into the Justinian code of the 6th century, and from thence into medieval Christian europe (East and West) and beyond. With the geo-political triumph of Western Christianities, we adopted the normative falsehood that orthodoxy is a theological rather than a poltical concept. But the proper historical meaning has to do with the legal/illegal distinction that was established by the emperors.

A more concrete way to put it is that during the reign of Constantius, orthodoxy was not Nicene Trinity. It was Arianism, while the Athanasians were heretics. The distinction was manifestly political in the 4th century. And over the centuries the Church managed to retroject that victorious orthodoxy of Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome back onto the 2nd and 3rd centuries, in which context it is anachronistic. Hence Leucius’ appeal to the ante-Nicene fathers. But as Litwa says in the youtube cited by MrMacSon recently, there was no actual « orthodoxy » in the 2nd century, since there was no central authority.

Thus to speak of a « history of orthodoxy » from 3rd to 6th centuries is like talking about the history of Communism from the middle ages to Stalin.

[StephenGoranson]

Additional views:

Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity.
Translated by a team from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, and edited by Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel.
Bauer, Walter, 1877-1960
Philadelphia, Fortress Press [1971]

Orthodoxy and heresy in early christian contexts : reconsidering the Bauer thesis
edited by Paul A. Hartog.
Eugene, OR : Pickwick Publications, c2015.

[rgprice]

Thanks all