Final Conclusions: Pre-Nicene Christology Revisited

Abstract

In exploring ancient world visions and theories, the modern historian of ideas undeniably pursues a task similar to that of an archeologist, since s/he has to uncover these visions from many layers of sediment accumulated over centuries. Paul's vision of the Heavenly Anthropos represents a remarkable synthesis between a Second Temple and Hellenistic trend which hypostasized the idea of Divine Image into a heavenly character and the tradition which elevated the primordial Adam to a luminous figure. One of the most absorbing paschal doctrines of salvation is soteriology, a speculation finding its roots in the Pauline tradition. Several Jewish and Hellenistic sources of the time reveal the fact that the educated authors of Late Antiquity were frequently describing God as possessing a noetic nature, sometimes even a noetic Form, inaccessible to human comprehension.Keywords: ancient world visions; eikonic soteriology; heavenly Anthropos; late antiquity