Christian Century Research Articles

Judíos e identidades locales en el mundo visigodo

ABSTRACT Visigothic councils repeatedly raised the concern of the religious and political elites about the alleged continuity of Jewish populations (or those with a Jewish past) within the kingdom of Toledo. The ‘plague', the ‘error', and the ‘sect' seemed to threaten with their blasphemy and infidelity every corner, every community, of 7th century Christian Hispania. However, neither the conciliar acts nor the theological literature of the period recognized a specific geographical location for this group. The Jew was – and had to be – everywhere, but was nowhere. What role did geography and space play in defining a Jewish identity from a Christian perspective? What part did Jewishness have in local identity? Why, beyond traditional topics and labels, do most sources of the period not speak of a situated Jew? Based on these questions, this paper aims to review the written and archaeological documentation of the 7th century, to analyze the presence, absence – or deprivation? – of geography for the Jews and to observe in which specific contexts and circumstances this issue becomes relevant. We, therefore, aim to understand Jewishness as a constituent part of local identities and not as an anomaly.

The View of Christian Authors on the Practice of Devshirme in the 16th Century Ottoman Empire

The paper examines how various 16th century Christian sources (the vitae of the Balkan martyrs and the notes of Western travelers) reflect one of the cruelest practices of the Ottoman Empire: It is the so-called devshirme or «blood tax» – a system of forced recruitment of Christian boys for their conversion to Islam, upbringing in Turkish culture and subsequent transformation into faithful servants of sultan – soldiers of the Janissary corps or civil servants. Author of the South Slavic vitae of St. George the New of Sophia warns his Christian readers against the dangers of devshirme, as the main character of the vitae even had to leave his native home in order not to become a janissary and to keep his faith. The South Slavic scribe is echoed by the author of the Russian vitae of St. George the New: he conveys a frightening description of devshirme as the most terrible atrocity of the «Hagaren tsars» – for the sake of the sultan’s «honors» Christian children forget their faith and turn into faithful servants of a foreign religion. More detailed descriptions of devshirme are found in the writings left by Western travelers and diplomats who visited the Ottoman empire in the 16th century. They also talk about the horrors of the «blood tax», but more focus on how the Christians of the Ottoman Empire tried to avoid this heavy levy, as well as on the fact that some Christians themselves were ready to give their children to the Ottoman sultans in order to provide them with better social standing in the future. Western authors do not ignore some of the abuses of the Ottoman authorities in collecting the «blood tax» in the second half of the 16th century, that can be explained by negative trends in the development of the Ottoman state in this period. Despite all of this, many European travelers and diplomats talk about the meritocratic approach of the Ottoman authorities to the formation of the state elite, which is partly expressed in devshirme. The Western authors find this approach as one of the main reasons for the success of the 16th-century Ottoman expansion.

The crisis of truth, and Its impact on human actions

Not only does Moral Theology tell us what we should do, but it also provides the reasons why we should do some things and avoid others. Over the centuries Christians paid attention to God’s creatures because they realised that He speaks to us through them and reveals His will as well (Rom 1). This issue also became the object of metaphysical inquiry. The concept of the truth of all things explained how man gets knowledge about God’s will through his creatures, which he subsequently should take into account in his moral conduct. The Enlightment proclaimed human freedom from religious beliefs and restrictions. Its philosophy, known as modern philosophy, tried to „conquer” metaphysics and the notion of the truth of all things. This paper presents these efforts and their consequences.

근세일본의 남만무역과 예수회 선교사추방령에 대한 연구

Purpose: This paper is an investigative study of the process from the introduction of flintlock guns by Polpogal trading ships in 1543, to Francisco Xavier's arrival in Japan six years later, to the edict expelling Jesuit missionaries in 1587. Research design, data, and methodology: This was the period when Nobunaga of Japan appeared and ruled the country, and Nobunaga committed suicide due to the Honno-ji incident and Hideyoshi Toyotomo became his successor. Then came the Azuchi-Momoyama period, when Hideyoshi unified Japan and there was serious conflict between trade with Portugal and Christian missionary work. Results: During the early modern Japanese Christian century (1549-1650), Christianity experienced an initial missionary period, a period of growth and development, and finally the appearance of martyrs. Nobunaga embraced Christianity to get rid of Buddhism, and Hideyoshi distributed an edict expelling Jesuit missionary Christianity to protect trade. During the Kirishitan century (1549-1650) in early modern Japan, Christianity went through a period of growth, a period of secrecy, and ultimately the emergence of martyrs. Nobunaga accepts Christianity to eliminate Buddhism, and Hideyoshi to promulgate an edict expelling Jesuit missionarie Christianity to protect trade. Implications: Starting with Sumitada Omura in 1563, Yoshitaka Kuroda in 1577, Sorin Otomo in 1578, Harunobu Arima in 1580, Yukinaga Konishi in 1584, and others were baptized and a group of so-called Christian daimyo emerged. They burn down Japan's shrines and Buddhism, dedicate Nagasaki as an ecclesiastical ordinance, and Hideyoshi expresses his disquiet and promulgates an expulsion order for the Jesuit missionaries.

Mulatto Bodies and the Body of Christ

Ten years ago, in an article for The Christian Century, theologian Jonathan Tran heraldedthe work of three black theologians J. Kameron Carter, Willie J. Jennings, and Brian Bantumas inaugurating a “new black theology.” According to Tran, these three thinkers represented “ amajor theological shift that [would] if taken as seriously as it deserve[d] change the facenot only of black theol ogy but theology as a whole.” Now that ten years have passed, thispaper asks: Has it? And arguing that it has not, I offer reflections on why it has not. At thecenter of my argument will be a critique of the way Carter and Bantum offered their revisedun derstanding of racial identity and hybridity by reimagining the identity Jesus throughmulatto/a bodies and persons. This, I will claim, is a dead end. It is a project that fails todo the very thing it sets out to do, and ultimately, collapses in on itsel f. My aim in makingthis critique is less refutation and more redirection. More specifically, I will hope to resolvesome of the problematic impulses in their appeal to mulatto identity, and in so doing, clearthe way for a new direction in Black Theology.

SCHOOLS AND THEMES OF ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOLOGY, AND HISTORY OF RELIGION IN ROMANIA

The article represents a brief presentation of the evolution of religious studies in Romania during the 19–20 centuries. The studies on the religious phenomenon written in Romania in the 19th century were closely related to the national problem. One of the fundamental questions that arose at the time was whether Christianity is an integral part of national identity. At the end of the 19th century Christianity was seen as a popular tradition, part of what was beginning to be known as folklore. As folklore represented the Romanian identity, it had to be preserved at all costs, therefore also the Christian elements found in popular traditions. Tudor Pamfile is the scholar who shows that folklore is not just a sum of superstitions that must be preserved because it represents tradition. He says that folklore represents a complex universe of meanings, a coherent world, which modern people no longer understand. After the First World War, Christianity is reconsidered. The rationalism of the 19th century is rejected, and "spiritualism" is adopted. Ernest Bernea, Ovidiu Papadima and other scholars wanted to show that the Romanian popular tradition, the basis of national identity, is permeated with the most authentic Christian vision. The Romanian popular tradition was no longer a matter of "superstition", but of the most authentic truth of life. Such an idea is spreading that the authentic man is a religious man. It is the basis of the conception of Mircea Eliade, who will become one of the most important researchers in the field of the history of religions in the world. He overcomes the issue of Romanian identity and its relationship with Christianity. He will be concerned in his works to show the universality of religious feeling, studying religious manifestations at a global level, from prehistory to the present. After 1945, the communist period was established in Romania. Religious history studies have been replaced by atheistic propaganda. However, scholars from the interwar period sought to study the religious phenomenon in Romania and the rest of the world. Also, many young people learned about Mircea Eliade and his work, carried out in France and the United States. One of them was Ioan Petru Culianu who managed to escape from Romania and become one of the great scholars in the field of history of religions. After the fall of the communist regime, religious history studies in Romania experienced a remarkable development.

Women of Faith: Overcoming Challenges in the Church's Mission and the Academy

AbstractTwo recent books navigate the challenges and possibilities women encounter in church and society. Each proceeds from starkly different vantage points and targets distinct audiences. Dzubinski and Stasson's historical approach homes in on the horizon of ecclesial mission as depicted throughout the centuries of Christianity. This work is tailored especially for historians. Yuen and Collier‐Goubil focus on contemporary issues confronting women at the intersection of faith, the home, and the academy. This volume is written by and will appeal to a broad range of religious scholars, although it holds particular significance for those balancing a career in academia with motherhood. A comparison of these works offers unique insights into the shared concerns women with an array of vocations confront, as well as the distinct issues emerging from the arenas of ecclesial leadership, on the one hand, and the academy, on the other.

Freski w cerkwi św. Gabriela Monasteru Narodzenia NMP w Zwierkach: próba systematyki

Frescoes in Orthodox churches are indispensable element that has accompanied the Orthodox for many years. The first iconographic representations appeared in the early centuries of Christianity. Over time, after the legalization of the religion, Byzantine iconography began to gradually develop. It was from these regions, thanks to the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and ultimately after the baptism of Rus', that it reached the Slavic lands and today's Podlasie region. Near Białystok, there is the Monastery of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Zwierki, which is one of the relatively young monastic communities in Poland. This place serves as a pilgrimage destination as well as a sanctuary for the relics of St. Martyr Gabriel of Zabłudów. The main church of the monastery, dedicated to the local saint, has a unique and incredibly rich iconographic scheme of frescoes. These frescoes refer to the life of the saint and depict many contemporary saints, as well as scenes from the life of the Patroness of the monastery. The style itself refers to the old-Russian style, allowing us to feel the spirit of ancient temples. This work describes and systematizes the frescoes of the temple in detail to deepen their understanding and examination, as well as to catalog them for future use in scientific research.

“God Is One” or “the One Is God” in Hellenistic Jewish and Greco-Roman Theology

Abstract “God is one” is the theological foundation of many of the world’s religions. The Greek version of this expression, heis theos, was especially significant to ancient religious development. Past scholarship has tended to place its emergence early, among the sixth century BCE Presocratic philosophers. In this article, I argue that the expression “God is one” in Greek likely develops later, in Jewish writings of the Hellenistic period. My work supports a minority opinion in the scholarship that attributions in second century Christian apologetics of this expression to Presocratics such as Xenophanes should not be relied upon. Rather, I suggest that the expression heis theos emerged in the context of second to first century BCE Alexandrian Jewish theology in conversation with ideas from Greek philosophy.

Réflexions sur la liberté et mouvement dans les premiers siècles chrétiens

"Reflections on Freedom and Movement During the First Christian Centuries. Freedom and movement are two concepts that appear to have a shared destiny. Common sense tells us that freedom means being able to move freely and at will. Philosophers have long been interested in the concept of movement, as evidenced by Aristotle’s Physics. Freedom, on the other hand, is thought to be a later concern by some scholars. The ancient Greeks exercised freedom in the public sphere without thinking about it. However, over time, Early Christian authors, influenced by Stoics, have radically changed the ancient paradigm regarding freedom and movement. Keywords: movement, freedom, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Christianity, Christology"

Orthodox Poets of the Soviet Era: Aleksandr Solodovnikov, Vasily Nikitin, Sergey Averintsev, Elena Pudovkina

The article explores the work of Orthodox poets during the Soviet era, particularly focusing on Aleksandr Solodovnikov, Vasily Nikitin, Sergey Averintsev, and Elena Pudovkina. It formulates a general principle of the poetic style of these authors as the principle of soul, word, and world transformation, realized through prayerful and confessional expressions. The distinctive feature of the resurging Orthodox poetry in the 20th century primarily lay in its pursuit of maximum immediacy, simplicity, and originality, deliberately transcending “literariness,” which was particularly burdensome for individuals of the 20th century. In turn, the analysis reveals that due to this aspiration for the primacy of the word, it unexpectedly proves to be far more complex than it appears at first glance. It carries not only profound meanings of Orthodox faith but also the deep tradition of Christian “literariness” in the best sense of the term—an active continuity with the texts of predecessors, reaching back to ancient Russian and Byzantine heritage. Moreover, it strives to reproduce the spirit of the Gospel’s word, as far as it is humanly possible. Literary creation for an Orthodox person is justified and beneficial only when it constitutes a part of their spiritual self-improvement and transmits the experience of this work to others. It represents the work of soul transformation by the grace of God, captured in the word. Spiritual poetry is traditional not only in content but also in form, oriented toward classical poetry of the 19th century as its model. In cases when it diverges from this model, it does not tend toward the modernism of the 20th century but, conversely, delves into the deep archaism of the early centuries of Christianity, sometimes directly aligning with the structure of the Gospel’s word and canonical church hymns. This is logical since the breakdown of classical poetic structure in the 20th century was a consequence of secularization—the despiritualization of the world and language. Accordingly, the reverse process inevitably led to the revival of the style of classical poetry and even its earlier form—the church poetry.

True Faith and Philosophy as a Way to Overcome Religious Prejudices according to 1st and 2nd Century Christian Sources

The authors explore religious prejudices in early Christianity, Judaism, and paganism using 1st and 2nd-century sources. During that era, ethnic and religious biases affected various societal levels. The first section examines biases among Gentiles and Christians toward Jews, followed by biases between Gentiles and Jews toward Christians, and the prejudices of Christians and Jews toward Gentiles. The second section delves into prejudices between Christians and Jews, focusing on how society reacted to Christians’ distinctiveness from Jews, hindering their integration due to pagan religiosity. In response, Christians presented their faith as a bridge, emphasizing its universality for all people, not solely for the Jewish community. They offered a pathway for communion and reconciliation, asserting the superiority and broader interpretative nature of Christian faith over Judaism. Jesus Christ’s life, St. Paul’s teachings, and events from the Acts of the Apostles affirmed the faith’s universal significance. The third section centers on ‘barbarian philosophy’ as an attempt to unify Christians and pagans amid growing societal tensions in the 2nd century. Christian apologists, once pagan philosophers, aimed to alleviate prejudices by aligning their received faith with their society, employing ‘barbarian philosophy.’ This approach viewed Christianity through rationality, rooted in the universal divine Logos, appealing to all people as the creator and advocate.

Disciplinary Procedures in the Early Church

The paper refers to numerous documents from the period of the early Church which give testimony to the fact that the Church was never ruled by a charismatic anarchy or boundless democracy. Nevertheless, the data concerning the arrangement of the Church, which is passed on to us through the Scriptures, specifically the New Testament, and the writings of Apostolic Fathers, is not found in the form of a systematic treatise. Rather, it is found occasionally, mostly in connection with resolving some concrete issue. It is therefore necessary to arrange these various mentions in logical accordance with one another. The text of the paper firstly analyzes the issue of charismatic authority which is, above all, described in the Acts of the Apostles, Pauline letters, and especially in the early Christian treatise, the Didache. This treatise also mentions the hierarchical duties of the bishops and deacons, which can also already be seen in the New Testament alongside the duties of apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and presbyters. Some of the Church offices mentioned have primarily a missionary role, others are established for the pastoral care of existing and stable Christian communities. The Church order described in the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew is chiefly addressed to these stable communities. The First Epistle of Clement, written still in the first Christian century, gives testimony to the deposing of presbyters in the Church of Corinth and the intervention of the Roman authority in this dispute. Canon Law, which gradually begun to develop in the Church, followed directly in the footsteps of these disciplinary customs, which we know from early Christian literature.

Christian Missions and Economic Empowerment of the People of Cross River State, Nigeria, 1885-1960

The nineteenth century Christian missionary activities in Cross River State as in other parts of Nigeria were mainly targeted at evangelisation of the people. Christianity has become the dominant religion in Cross River State and the people believe that it is a religion of civilisation and development. The resultant effect of different positions of some scholars is that colonialism has become a stigma for Christianity in contemporary times. To this extent, missionary work in Africa will continue to attract stringent and critical historical examination. It will however be intellectual dishonesty to write off the positive results of missionary work in Cross River State. This paper therefore, examines the contributions of missionary work in empowering the people of Cross River State from 1885 to 1960. The research adopted historic-structural approaches using primary and secondary sources. This includes qualitative interviews and books and journals. The findings of this research show that modern medical practise, theological education as well as education generally, skills acquisition, poverty alleviation and attention to the vulnerable such as children, orphans, widows, the sick and the elderly, through appropriate influence on negative traditions are some of the areas where missionary work has impacted positively on the people. It concludes that the Christian Missions contributed tremendously to the economic empowerment and enlightenment of the people of Cross River State of Nigeria.

The Garden Realm of Pale Ratiocinations: Toward the Abolition of a Dark Fantastic Theological Imaginary of Human Being

ABSTRACT Anti-Blackness adumbrates rationality and reaches into phobic realms, what Frantz Fanon called the “paralogical.” Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s The Dark Fantastic links the dark fantastic imagination and the Dark Other of speculative fiction to their cultural iterations and augments the paralogicality of anti-Blackness by accounting for the narrative roles of hesitation and belief. This paper argues that it is further necessary to assert the narrative significance of nineteenth century Christian, pre-Adamite and/or Serpent Seed theological anthropologies for the production of what one might call a dark fantastic theological imaginary of human being. The paper argues, further, far from being a bygone heresy, the pre-Adamite mythos lives on in the “thin blue line” anthropology of contemporary policing. The paper therefore looks ultimately for abolitionist possibilities to interrupt this imaginary, which it sees in the theological counternarrative of Black being in Matt Ruff’s novel Lovecraft Country and its TV adaptation by Misha Green.

Images of Priesthood and Monasticism in the Works of John Chrysostom: Rhetoric and Historical Reality

The article provides a comparative analysis of the attitude to priests and monks, the manifestations of which can be found in the works of the outstanding thinker and theologian, representative of patristics, John Chrysostom (347–407 A. D.). It is shown that depending on the purpose of each specific work, he used his own rhetorical abilities in different ways when speaking about priests and monks. When Chrysostom considered each of these figures separately, without comparing them with each other, he certainly showed considerable elevation. For example, when he wanted to exalt the exploits of monks and virgins, he did it in the most refined way. At the same time, in the treatise “Six Discourses on the Priesthood,” while highly evaluating the functions and role of priests, he downplayed the role and importance of monks. In particular, in the last part of this work, Chrysostom portrays the figure of a monk as a kind of egoist who thinks only about his own salvation and has no connection with the outside world. In order to clarify the nature of this duality, we examine the uncertainty and variability in the nature and status of monasticism in the first centuries of Christianity, in particular, we pay attention to the complex nature of the monastic movement in the 4th century, when Chrysostom lived and worked. The historical comparison we have made allows us to assert that in those times, when the Church institution was being formed and its integration into society was still ongoing, the institution of the priesthood had already acquired a fairly stable (“routinized”) charisma, while monasticism had not yet undergone such “routinization.” But, as shown in the article, in general, the institution of monasticism was of great importance for the early Church. Based on this, we conclude that the downplaying of the image of monasticism, which can be seen in the “Six Conversations on the Priesthood,” did not reflect reality in its entirety, but the specific rhetorical intentions of the author of this treatise, due to the specifics of the historical moment.

Under Caesar’s Sword

Abstract In 2019, Cambridge University Press published an edited volume entitled Under Caesar’s Sword, the product of a three-year study on contemporary Christian responses to persecution in various parts of the world. As part of the overall findings, the project directors noted three primary methods of response: (1) Survival strategies (trying to avoid the attention of the persecutors); (2) Association strategies (building relationships beyond their own communities in order to create a broader network of potential support); and (3) Confrontation strategies (directly challenging the persecutors through various means including martyrdom, which Christians accept as an act of resistance). These categories provide a useful heuristic tool for reevaluating the discourse in some early Christian texts, including the apocryphal acts of the apostles and other texts related to martyrdom. This article employs the insights from Under Caesar’s Sword to explore examples of all three strategies from the earliest Christian centuries. However, not all strategies were equally appreciated in that time. Because suffering came to be so closely linked to Christian identity, survival strategies were sometimes critiqued as evidence of a lack of faith.

An Unknown German Translation of Toledot Yeshu by Franz Ferdinand Engelsberger, a Seventeenth Century Christian Convert from Judaism

In this article, I focus on a hitherto unknown version of the polemical text Toledot Yeshu published in 1640 by a convert from Judaism named Franz Ferdinand Engelsberger. Following a short biography of Engelsberger, I describe the text and focus on a number of its unique features, that do not appear in other versions of the narrative. In addition, I demonstrate that the text includes certain narrative elements that were known thus far only from the later Huldricus’ version of the story from 1705. These elements indicate that the boundaries between the three main families of the texts identified by Di segni are not as strict as previously thought and that there was much fluidity between the different versions.

Strangers in a Strange Land: Translating Catholicism in Early Modern Japan

Though many scholars have understood Tokugawa Japan's encounter with Christianity (1549-1650) to have ended in failure, an analysis of the period's religious literature demonstrates the considerable extent to which missionaries engaged with Japanese culture. This article examines several Kirishitan (Japanese Christian) texts printed between 1590 and 1620, devoting particular attention to the theological and philosophical terminology they employed. While sometimes borrowing directly from Latin and Portuguese, the new Catholic lexicon also drew from pre-existing Japanese vocabulary in the context of Buddhist and Neo-Confucian spirituality. Along with the education reforms introduced by the accommodationist Jesuit Alessandro Valignano, projects of Catholicism in translation complicate the picture of defeat and mutual misunderstanding that are often thought to characterize Japan’s Christian Century.

The Wandering of the Mother of God with the Child in the Folk Tradition of the Border Between Slavia Orthodoxa and Slavia Catholica: Apocryphal and Folklore Motifs

The narrative of the wandering Mother of God with the Child is popular within the corpus of the Folk Bible circulating on the frontier between Eastern and Western Christianity. In vernacular oral traditions transmitted on the borderlands of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, we find not only interpretations of the canonical source of the New Testament motifs “Flight to Egypt” and “The Massacre of the Innocents” (Mat 2:13–19), but also some parabiblical motifs reaching back to apocryphal texts of the first centuries of Christianity (e.g. Prot. Jas., Arab. Gos. Inf.). The latter reflect traditional developments, incorporating portrayals of biblical characters into the native worldview of narrators. The motif of the wandering Mother of God with the Child is found in several types of oral transmission: a) The Nativity/Christmas ritual: carols, pastorals, church songs, sermons and homilies, fairground performances; b) in traditions relating to Marian devotion (folk Marian songs, iconography in Eastern Christianity); c) in axiological and moral traditions: songs, legends, charms. This paper presents collected variants of the motif of Wandering in folk culture and analysis of the origin of the motifs and their adaptation in the environment of vernacular tradition and of the social, religious and theological messages contained in the texts.