Our Addiction to Violence Conflict and the Johannine Community (original) (raw)

From Conflict to Recognition: Rethinking a Scholarly Paradigm in the Study of Christian Origins

Tolerance, Intolerance, and Recognition in Early Christianity and Early Judaism. Edited by Outi Lehtipuu and Michael Labahn. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 19-46. , 2021

This article analyzes conflict as a major interpretative framework for early Christian texts. The language of conflict in these texts may be nothing more than a bellicose move to establish a certain form of religious identity and demarcate its boundaries. While conflicts existed between early Christ-believers, a focus on conflicts may distort our understanding of the past. Ancient texts also offer examples of respectful dialogue with those suspected of heresy and show that conflict is not the only option in religious dialogue.

Re-theorizing religious conflict: From early Christianity to Late Antiquity and beyond

In W. Mayer and C.L. de Wet (eds), Reconceiving Religious Conflict: New Views from the Formative Centuries of Christianity, Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World.

This article argues for a retheorization of contemporary approaches to religious conflict on the basis of recent neuroscientific research. A consequence of that retheorization, it is argued, will be an approach to the role of religion in society that takes religion and religious conflict in pre-Enlightenment society into account. Of particular value to this endeavour is a re-exploration of both traditional societies in which religion is ‘embedded’ and the ancient and late-ancient world in which the first ‘rise of intolerance’ is perceived to have taken place. In order to facilitate this process, a number of steps for achieving a retheorization are laid out. The article then engages in taking the first part of the first step, a critique of dominant and current approaches to the topic in early Christianity and late antiquity. This is sufficient to demonstrate that what is characterized as ‘the cognitive turn’ disrupts current approaches to religious conflict, while simultaneously pointing towards a number of neglected paths for research.

The Early Church -Internal and External Oppositions

INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY: AN AFRICAN READER, 2022

The emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire is a new religious faith with new ways of doing things made the people suspicious of what really Christianity was, either a political, religious, or even a funerary organization. Opposition against the Christian faith was not only external but even internal because the basis of foundations of the Christian faith was not well laid leading to heresies and schisms among the early Christians. This chapter explores the two sides of the opposition against the early Christians. Externally, the persecution and martyrdom are explored by considering the charges, allegations, demands, and the players in the entire phenomenon. The chapter assesses the reaction of the Christians especially the development of the early Christian martyr narratives and apologetic writings to the persecution and martyrdom of the early Christians. The early church was also full of some major internal conflicts. The chapter, therefore, evaluates the positions of some of the movements which were branded heretics. The chapter evaluates the developments of synods, creeds, and canon in response to the many internal conflicts among the early Christians. Finally, the chapter explores the various phases of Christianity in the various dispensations from the Great schism, medieval period, reformation, and the renaissance.

Addressing conflict in the fifth century: Rome and the wider church

2018

In seeking to trace the escalation, avoidance or resolution of conflicts, contemporary social conflict theorists look for incompatible goals, differentials in power, access to social resources, the exercise of control, the expression of dissent, and the strategies employed in responding to disagreements. It is argued here that these concepts are just as applicable to the analysis of historical doctrinal conflicts in Late Antiquity as they are to understanding modern conflicts. In the following, I apply social conflict theory to three conflicts involving the late antique papacy to see what new insights it can proffer. The first is Zosimus's involvement in the dispute over the hierarchy of Gallic bishops at the beginning of the fifth century. The second and longest case-study is Leo I's intervention in the Chalcedonian conflict over the natures of Christ. The final brief study is the disputed election of Symmachus at the end of the fifth century.

The Acts Against the Apostles: How Opposition Shaped Earliest Christianity

Journal for Freedom of Conscience, 10/1, 2022

Earliest Christianity emerges within the antagonistic religious and political context of first-century Jerusalem. In this article, it will be shown how opposition from the Jewish authorities of the Judean capital shaped the identity and mission of the earliest followers of Jesus. It is the initial censorship, arrest and intimidation of the apostles that create a stronger community – both socially and spiritually. It is also under this initial opposition that the priorities of Jesus' followers are more firmly established and the internal boundaries are more clearly defined, making a prime distinction between traditional Judaism and nascent Christianity. Furthermore, as the opposition increases in intensity and becomes fierce persecution, Jesus' followers experience miraculous interventions, but also tragic losses. In all this, the progress of the Gospel "to the ends of the earth" is initiated and secured. The religious persecution in Jerusalem prompts the scattering of Jesus' followers from Judea to Rome and beyond.

Conflict and Reconciliation: An Overlook through the History of the Society of Jesus

Annali di Studi Religiosi, 2020

Somewhat recently, reconciliation emerged as a theme in the mass media. Indeed, reconciliation is not a product of the mass media, but as a theme it serves to organize memory and make complex content simple. Other systems, such as religion and politics, in their turn have laid claim to this very theme. A certain type of historio-graphic production could be functional to the mass media system, which is always in need of information to carry out its communication. This type of historiography could be inscribed in a fictional discursive form. This paper argues an alternative to this type of historiographic production: this could be made starting from a theory that allows dealing with complexity and that has tools to differentiate the evolution of conceptual semantics capable of describing the social structure in which it operated.