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Outline the two main challenges that faced the church and the ways the church responded to those challenges. .

Outline the two main challenges that faced the church and the ways the church responded to those challenges.

Answers

1. Difficulties in establishing a firm base for its doctrines and a strong institution capable of propagating its faith. Up to 325 council of Nicaea – there was no single church of practice but there were many sees – religious sects/groups in various towns e.g. see of Alexandria, Antioch – Christians were not united. There were no uniform practices/agreed faith no agreed canonical writings, no catechetical schools and no theory of Christian education. Each see had different interpretations. The Nicene Creed which was written in 325 united the Christians.

2. How to deal with the dominant graeco roman culture – Hellenism. How to challenge this culture and still be relevant to the Romans – and still propagate their faith.

The church responded to these challenges in various ways;
a. Early Christians tried to compromise by fusing because Christians were poorand illiterate; they were not able to make a good compromise. Christianity was still being challenged.

b. Better education Christians joined the faith and these were people who wanted their children to have education so they allowed them to go to the pagan schools which in turn exposed them to Greek mythology, deities, religion, beliefs. This diluted the Christian faith.

3. Knowledgeable people e.g. Tertullian said that faith alone is not enough. He said what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the academy and Christians and heretics? For him and other Christian fathers they did not want Christians to mix with graeco Romans.

4. In the 3rd century, the church produced the apostolic constitution. This was document which was addressed to both the laity and the clergy to warn them against pagan influence on education. Part of it said have nothing to do with heathen writings, refrain from strange discourses, laws or false prophets. The church argument was that the scripture writings contained the whole truth and so exposing yourself to other literature was exposing Christians to errors.

5. However by the 4th century only a small minority of Christians continued with this negative attitude towards the Hellenistic culture. Early Christian fathers especially clement of Alexandria origin and Augustine tried to bring an acceptable synthesis. In this synthesis they sought to preserve the Christian culture at the same time retain the positive elements of Hellenism. This was more acceptable to Christians and some Christians even bishops could teach in the schools.
Synthesis included; trying to overcome the conflict

a. The Christian theory of education recommended that the content of instruction should be drawn from the scriptures and other Christian writings. Classics were to be used sparingly in schools.

b. The form of instruction would follow the grammatical and theoretical patterns of pagan schools.

c. Christian text writers were to prepare materials suitable for Christians following guidelines given by Augustine. Isnpite of these early problems, the church became triumphant and continued growing.

marto answered the question on May 17, 2019 at 07:21

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Outline the two main challenges that faced the church and the ways the church responded to those challenges. .

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