Preface

Preface and Guide to the “Posts”

I started the First Thoughts blog after writing the First Thoughts booklet in 2012 (see Booklet tab). I hoped the blog would provide an easy way to share my 40+ year odyssey to discover the ancient theology that empowered and emboldened the praxis of the early Christian followers of The Way (ἡ ὁδός) and to provide a forum to post new new information as I continued my own journey. Over the 10+ years since, I have created over 275 posts as inspiration and/or revelation led. I try to keep the posts mercifully short. The posts are mostly ad hoc, one-offs, unless I needed more than one short post to cover a given topic. If a series of posts seemed to fit into an important or logical subject, I linked them into Categories so readers could access them all in one place.

Recommended process to get the most out of the First Thoughts blog

First, Read the “Welcome!” tab first to get good introduction to the blog.

Second, read the First Thoughts booklet under the “Booklet” tab. It’s less than 50 pages and describes the “what, why, how and so what” of the blog.

You are already reading the “Preface” tab, so that’s good!

Last, access all of the Posts under the “Posts” tab. Oh, use the search box for any specific interest. It works really well.

Use the “Reader’s Guide” tab for a list of books recommended for additional reading.

Setting the historical stage and context of the early church that the First Thoughts blog focuses on

The blog primarily focuses on the period from about 30 AD to about 450 AD. St Paul and the Apostles were very active in spreading the Gospel in the Eastern Mediterranean by 50 AD. The oldest of our Christian writings, 1 Thessalonians, was written by Paul about this time. The balance of the New Testament was written by about 110 AD. The early Christians were surprised when Christ had not returned (the Parousia- second coming) by the time the first generation was dying off. The church figured out that it needed to get institutionally organized for the long haul.

The church continued to grow rapidly throughout the Mediterranean. This in spite of persecution from the Roman government. Most persecutions were targeted or local/regional in scope. Empire-wide persecutions occurred under Nero in 64 AD, Decius 249-251 AD, and the last great persecution by Diocletian 284-305 AD.

By 300 AD the church had organized itself into Five Co-equal Patriarchates (the Pentarchy): Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It should be noted that during this period the vast majority of Christian theological texts were first written in Greek, including the entire New Testament. It was not until 405 AD that Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible was completed. Rome was the only Patriarchate to use Latin. The other four were Greek.

By the 3rd century, theology began to diverge between the four Eastern Greek patriarchates and Western Latin Rome. The contrast was most apparent in North Africa; between Carthage, in the Roman Colony of Numidia, and the See of Alexandria, in Egypt. The situation changed drastically for Carthage (and neighboring Hippo Regius) when the City of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 AD, just 5 years after Jerome finished the Vulgate and three years before Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, began writing the City of God. The sack of Rome signaled the decline and ultimate fall of the Western Roman Empire with the Vandals laying siege to Hippo Regius (Augustine’s diocese) in 430 AD (Augustine died during the siege) and capturing Carthage in 439 AD. The entire Western Roman Empire fell for good in 476 AD.

The Eastern Roman Empire, moved to Constantinople (old Byzantium) by Constantine the Great in 330 AD, would flourish for another thousand years until 1453.

It was Constantine the Great who issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD which legalized Christianity and ended Christian persecution. Enjoying its status and imperial patronage, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire by the Edict of Thessalonica of Emperor Theodosius in 380 AD.