Early Christianity In Rome

Pope: evangelisation is a task for all Catholics

Commenting on the title,  the Pope said: "the faith cannot endure by itself in the world, it is not automatically transmitted to men's hearts but always has to be announced. And the announcement of the faith, in order to be effective, must come from a heart that believes, that hopes, that loves, a heart that adores Christ and believes in the power of the Holy Spirit. ... The response of faith arises when, by God's grace, man discovers that believing means finding true life, the 'full life'". The Holy Father highlighted the fact that "the Church, each one of us, must bring the world the good news that Jesus is Lord, the One in Whom God's closeness and love for each man and woman became flesh. This announcement must resound anew in regions of ancient Christian tradition". The Pope then recalled his words at World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany: "The happiness you seek, the happiness you have the right to enjoy, has a name and a face: Jesus of Nazareth, concealed in the Eucharist. "If mankind forgets God, this is also because Jesus is often reduced to the status of a wise man, and His divinity is diminished if not denied outright. This way of thinking makes it impossible to comprehend the radical novelty of Christianity, because if Jesus is not the only Son of the Father, then God did not enter into the history of mankind. The truth is that the incarnation is at the very heart of the Gospel. May we, then, show increasing commitment to renewing evangelisation, which is a task not just for the few but for all the members of the Church". "Should we too not share the beauty and reason of the faith, and carry the light of God to the men and women of our time with courage, conviction and joy?" Pope Benedict asked. "Many are the people who have not yet met the Lord; they must be given our special pastoral attention. ... Today this is more urgent than ever and requires us to commit ourselves trustingly, upheld by the certainty that the grace of God always works on the heart of man". The Pope went on to explain that the messengers of the good news of the Gospel are the baptised, especially parents "whose job it is to seek Baptism for their children. ... Children need God from an early age. They have the capacity to perceive His greatness; they know how to appreciate the value of prayer and ritual, and to discern the difference between good and evil. Thus they must be guided in the faith from earliest infancy".

Triablogue: Understanding the Early Development of the House ...

William L. Lane [Wesleyan University (B.A.), Gordon Divinity School (B.D.), Westminster Theological Seminary (M.Th.), and Harvard Divinity School (Th.D.), who has written a commentary on Mark for the New International Commentary on the New Testament series and a two-volume commentary on Hebrews in the Word Biblical Commentary series ]; contributed a paper to this work, entitled “Social Perspectives on Roman Christianity during the Formative Years from Nero to Nerva: Romans, Hebrews, 1 Clement . Roman Christianity is anchored in Judaism, and it was successful in missionizing the Jewish Diaspora community in Rome, which was largely organized in the form of district synagogues. Romans is addressed to a troubled community in Rome, largely the result of Claudius’s expulsion of synagogue and church leaders [in 49 AD: see Acts 18:2-3] who had been responsible for the disruption of civil peace in the city, and the tensions resultant upon the return of these groups to a church that was now predominantly Gentile. The exegetical key to the letter is to be found in Romans 15:1-13; viz., that Roman Christians, comprised of Jews and Gentiles, are to welcome one another, just as they have been welcomed and accepted by Christ. The household setting of Roman Christianity provides the social context for the development of leadership structures; many of these church hosts provided leadership, and there appears to be a close relationship between such patronage and developing leadership. While wealthy patrons contributed to the expansion of Christianity, those churches dependent on the households of wealthy patrons also showed signs of fragmentation and dissension. In this way, the theme of reconciliation, referred to by Lane earlier, takes on expanded importance: “One of the purposes of Romans was to urge reconciliation between alienated constituencies of Jews and Gentiles, and to reinforce unity in a fragmented church denied the privilege of common worship.” This latter emphasis is not unimportant, given Lane’s conviction that there is no evidence for a common meeting of the Christians in Rome, let alone a single church structure. Hebrews provides independent testimony to Roman Christianity in the decade following Romans. In all likelihood it was directed to one of the several house churches in Rome, the roots of which lie in the life of a Hellenistic synagogue.

Judaism and Christianity in first-century Rome

The dealings of the Roman government with these two groups, and their dealings with each other, are the focus of this book.t

The early Christians in Rome

For more than sixty years — that is, from the day that Nero charged the then comparatively little band of Roman Christians with being the authors of the ...

Backgrounds of early Christianity

Of the seven Jewish catacombs discovered in Rome, only three are ... Vaults of Memory: Jewish and Christian Imagery in the Catacombs of Rome (Boston, 1985). ...

Christianity in ancient Rome, the first three centuries

The earliest travellers who brought to Rome the belief that Jesus of Nazareth ... The persecution of 64 must have been devastating for the early Christian ...

A new history of early Christianity

By the time Paul wrote to the Romans, he assumed that most Christians had come from pagan ... Hard though it is to reconstruct the early church in Rome, ...