Talk:History of Christian theology/Archive 1

Archive 1

Thoughts

I have been thinking about this page a bit. I think the first matter is structural, i.e. identifying which phases of Christian thought to segment things into. The second is topical, i.e. what matters need discussion.

On (1) examples would be the apostolic preaching, post-apostolic fathers, post-nicene fathers, late antiquity, middle ages Latin and Greek, the Reformation, etc.

On (2), important topics would be the development of the creeds, christology & mariology (always related in antiquity), heresies, papal jurisdiction, east-west topics like the et filio and purgation, theology of the crusade, scholasticism, and so forth. I suppose doctrinal enforcement would be important also, i.e. the role of the Emperor, the place of the inquisition, and so on. I am rambling a bit, but I think we need to hammer out a structure first, then fill in the gaps. The current structure is a good start, but needs to reworking. Lostcaesar 12:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts. I have started acting on some of them but it is clearly a task that needs more than just me to work on. If you can help, it would be much appreciated. --Richard 16:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

How very odd that a whole section on Christian theology should start off with a page on which "Bible" is spelled with a lower-case b. The whole thing is a challenging study, and I congratulate you on a very fine piece of work, so my quibbling over small bits is certainly no criticism of the very fine whole.

"Nicene" is derived from the name of Nicea, a place. "Christology" is the study of a christ, it's true enough, but here it refers to a particularly interesting one, the son of Mary, who, like Nicea, has a proper name. Above we have "...the role of the Emperor, the place of the inquisition..."?? There is no particular emperor involved in that phrase, so I don't see why one would capitalize it, any more than one would, say, the role of the Weather, perhaps with respect to some event. The Inquisition, on the other hand, is a particular series of events and is conventionally upper-cased.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 09:45, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Heresies

I have been pondering how best to treat heresies in this article. The breakout of "Early Heresies" as a separate section is a legacy from structure of the History of Christianity article. I don't know if we should have a major section on "Heresies" or if we should just spread the discussion of heresies throughout the chronologicial narrative.

--Richard 16:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not believe that the Waldensians should be considered a heresy. They were early Protestants rather than a heresy. [Comment by User:Penguin07dude 09:57, September 24, 2009]

The Trinity

Somehow, somewhere, we should highlight the doctrine of the Trinity and how the mainstream doctrine of the Trinity was developed. This is connected to Christology and the filioque but there's more to it than just that.

The critical point that I think we need to make is that the mainstream of Christianity is Trinitarian and that only offshoots like Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses do not subscribe to the Trinitarian doctrine.

--Richard 17:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Organization

Yes, I do think that this is article is a good idea. I would say that there are really 2 options for organization: (1) primarily Chronological, and (2) primarily Topical. The article as it is organized right now is neither, or rather, both.

If the intention is to go chronological, then remove topical organizations, and make the article division primarily about dates. For Example:

• Emerging (Pre-Nicene) Christian Theological Developments (30-315)
• Nicaea to Chalcedon (315-450)
• etc

If the intention is to go topic, then descibe the major developments under topical headings, arranged (very roughly) chronologically. And change the title to "Development of Christian theology", with divisions:

• Events in the development of the Canon
• Events in the development of Trinitarianism
• Events in the development of Christology
• etc.

The Christian theology article, it seems to me, has been trying to do both of these things, plus describing the different schools of theology and theological controversies. There is room, in my mind, for both a chronology and a description of the development. I think you are better off with the chronological method for this particlar article.

Further, consider starting with a slightly narrower focus. Maybe starting with pre-Great Schism or pre-Reformation, and broading the focus as the article develops. Hope all this helps. -- Pastordavid 21:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Evangelical protestants

The article is too focused on evangelical protestants, who are not the same as Arians or Nestorians and Albigenses, and who are a minority now even in places like Switzerland, Australia or England. The US is one of the only countries which has a significant amount of evangelicals, and so it appears that the article is too focused on the typical bible belt history of theology. 69.157.241.150 (talk) 16:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

This article needs an intro

The current intro doesn't seem to me to really be an introduction to this article, it talks about one of the core pieces of Christian theology.... Sethie (talk) 20:50, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedily deleted because no analysis of evidence has been given that the current version of the article contains any copyvios, only that it was (allegedly) created by a "copyright violator, all versions tainted". Oh really, you have checked every single version of this article and discovered that they are all "tainted", have you? --Smeat75 (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem

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