De Carne Christi
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De Carne Christi
''De Carne Christi'' (, On the Flesh of Christ'' ') is a polemical work by Tertullian against the Gnostic Docetism of Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus and Alexander. It purports that the body of Christ was a real human body, born from the virginal body of Mary, but not by way of human procreation. Among other justifications for the incarnation of Christ, it states that "the choice of 'foolish' flesh is part of od'sconscious rejection of conventional wisdom" and that "Without true incarnation, there can be no true redemption... God must have flesh, in order to have a real death and real resurrection." (''De Carne Christi'', Mahé edition). The work contains the phrase ''prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est'' ("it is immediately credible – because it is silly" or "it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd".), which is commonly paraphrased as ''Credo quia absurdum ''Credo quia absurdum'' is a Latin phrase that means "I believe because it is absurd", originally ...
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Polemic
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics. A person who writes polemics, or speaks polemically, is called a ''polemicist''. The word derives , . Polemics often concern questions in religion or politics. A polemical style of writing was common in Ancient Greece, as in the writings of the historian Polybius. Polemic again became common in medieval and early modern times. Since then, famous polemicists have included satirist Jonathan Swift; Italian physicist and mathematician Galileo; French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire; Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy; socialist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; novelist George Orwell; playwright George Bernard Shaw; communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin; psycholinguist Noam Chomsky; social critics Christ ...
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Tertullian
Tertullian (; la, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; 155 AD – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" and "the founder of Western theology". Tertullian originated new theological concepts and advanced the development of early Church doctrine. He is perhaps most famous for being the first writer in Latin known to use the term ''trinity'' (Latin: ''trinitas''). Tertullian was never recognized as a saint by the Eastern or Western Catholic churches. Several of his teachings on issues such as the clear subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, as well as his condemnation of remarriage for widows and of fleeing from persecution, contr ...
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Gnosticism
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ... and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (''gnosis'') above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent demiurge, lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament) who is responsible for creating the nature, material universe. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct ...
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Docetism
In the history of Christianity, docetism (from the grc-koi, δοκεῖν/δόκησις ''dokeĩn'' "to seem", ''dókēsis'' "apparition, phantom") is the heterodox doctrine that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion. The word ''Dokētaí'' ("Illusionists") referring to early groups who denied Jesus's humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197–203), who discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery. It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the Gospel of John: "the Word was made Flesh". Docetism was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Ni ...
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Marcion
Marcion of Sinope (; grc, Μαρκίων ; ) was an early Christian theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ who was an entirely new, alien god, distinct from the vengeful God of Israel who had created the world. He considered himself a follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only true apostle of Jesus Christ, a doctrine called Marcionism. Marcion published the earliest extant fixed collection of New Testament books. Early Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian denounced Marcion as a heretic, and he was excommunicated by the church of Rome around 144. He published the first known canon of Christian sacred scriptures,Bruce 1988, p. 134. which contained ten Pauline epistles (the Pastoral epistles were not included) and the Gospel of Marcion which is a shorter version of the Gospel of Luke. This made him a catalyst in the process of the development of the New Testament canon by forcing t ...
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Apelles
Apelles of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἀπελλῆς; fl. 4th century BC) was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom much of modern scholars' knowledge of this artist is owed (''Naturalis Historia'' 35.36.79–97 and ''passim''), rated him superior to preceding and subsequent artists. He dated Apelles to the 112th Olympiad (332–329 BC), possibly because he had produced a portrait of Alexander the Great. Biography Probably born at Colophon in Ionia, he first studied under Ephorus of Ephesus, but after he had attained some celebrity he became a student to Pamphilus at Sicyon He thus combined the Dorian thoroughness with the Ionic grace. Attracted to the court of Philip II, he painted him and the young Alexander with such success that he became the recognized court painter of Macedon, and his picture of Alexander holding a thunderbolt ranked in the minds of many with the Alexander with the spear of the sculptor Lysippus. Hundreds of years later, Plutar ...
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Valentinus (Gnostic)
Valentinus (also spelled Valentinius;  – ) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen. Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those quoted in rebuttal arguments in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline. His doctrine is known only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples, the Valentinians. He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature received the ''gnosis'' (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser or uncertain form of salvation, and that those of a material nature were doomed to perish. Valentinu ...
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Pope Alexander I
Pope Alexander I (c. 75-80 AD - c. 115) was the bishop of Rome from c. 107 to his death c. 115. The Holy See's ''Annuario Pontificio'' (2012) identifies him as a Early centers of Christianity#Rome, Roman who reigned from 108 or 109 to 116 or 119. Some believe he suffered martyrdom under the Roman emperor Trajan or Hadrian. Life and legend According to the ''Liber Pontificalis'', it was Alexander I who inserted the narration of the Last Supper (the ''Qui pridie'') into the liturgy of the Mass. However, the article on Saint Alexander I in the 1907 ''Catholic Encyclopedia'', written by Thomas Joseph Shahan, Thomas Shahan, judges this tradition to be inaccurate, a view shared by both Catholic and non-Catholic experts. It is viewed as a product of the agenda of ''Liber Pontificalis''—this section of the book was probably written in the late 5th century—to show an ancient pattern of the earliest bishops of Rome ruling the church by papal decree. The introduction of the customs of ...
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Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, names and titles), was a first-century Jews, Jewish preacher and religious leader; he is the central figure of Christianity, the Major religious groups, world's largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the Incarnation (Christianity), incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah#Christianity, Messiah (the Christ (title), Christ) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Historicity of Jesus, Jesus existed historically. Quest for the historical Jesus, Research into the historical Jesus has yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament reflects the historical Jesus, as the only detailed records of Jesus' life are contained in ...
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Mary, Mother Of Jesus
Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is a central figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches believe that Mary, as mother of Jesus, is the Theotokos, Mother of God. Other Protestant views on Mary vary, with some holding her to have considerably lesser status. The New Testament of the Holy Bible, Bible provides the earliest documented references to Mary by name, mainly in the canonical Gospels. She is described as a young virgin who was chosen by God in Christianity, God to annunciation, conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit ...
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Conventional Wisdom
The conventional wisdom or received opinion is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted by the public and/or by experts in a field. In religion, this is known as orthodoxy. Etymology The term is often credited to the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who used it in his 1958 book ''The Affluent Society'':''E.g.,'Mark Leibovich, "A Scorecard on Conventional Wisdom", ''N.Y. Times'' (March 9, 2008) However, the term dates back to at least 1838. ''Conventional wisdom'' was used in a number of other works before Galbraith, occasionally in a benign''E.g.,'1 Nahum Capen, ''The History of Democracy'' (1874), page 477("millions of all classes alike are equally interested and protected by the practical judgment and conventional wisdom of ages"). or neutral''E.g.,'"Shallow Theorists", ''American Educational Monthly'' 383 (Oct. 1866)("What is the result? Just what conventional wisdom assumes it would be."). sense, but more often pejoratively.''E.g.,'Joseph Warren Beach, ''The Te ...
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Credo Quia Absurdum
''Credo quia absurdum'' is a Latin phrase that means "I believe because it is absurd", originally misattributed to Tertullian in his '' De Carne Christi''. It is believed to be a paraphrasing of Tertullian's "''prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est''" which means "It is completely credible because it is unsuitable", or "''certum est, quia impossibile''" which means "It is certain because it is impossible". These are consistent with the anti-Marcionite context. Early modern, Protestant and Enlightenment rhetoric against Catholicism and religion more broadly resulted in this phrase being changed to "I believe because it is absurd", displaced from its original anti-Marcionite to a personally religious context. History of the phrase Origins The original phrase, before being transmuted through Enlightenment rhetoric to its modern form "I believe because it is absurd", appeared in Tertullian's work '' De Carne Christi'' (), read by scholars as "I believe because it is unfitting ...
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