After the Apostles

by Walter H. Wagner

Book Overview

Perhaps the most enigmatic period of the Christian era, the second century was nonetheless decisive for the survival and posture of the fledgling churches. Their scriptural canon, liturgical practices, church structure, doctrinal norms - all were forged in the tumult of this century.

Through deft use of available data and texts, Wagner brings this period to life. Selecting five fateful challenges - issues of Creation, human nature, Jesus'...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0800625676
• ISBN13: 9780800625672
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

An illuminating Analysis. Needs more scholarly aids

Wagner, Walter, After the Apostles (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1994) This review gives me the opportunity to discuss a book by a scholar I know and have studied with for close to a year. The author believes the volume would benefit from a new edition, but that does not detract from the value of the distinct point of view Dr. Wagner impresses on his material. One is drawn to compare this book and Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, which tends to go much further afield, in discussing the Gnostics and the Marcionists, and in dwelling on Ehrman's strengths and interest in the shenanigans which were carried out by early scholars, monks, scribes, and forgers. Thus, while Ehrman may be more fun to read, Wagner's book sustains more substance by staying closer to home, where home is five writers on church organization and theology in the second century CE. Another book to which Wagner is a nice complement is Wayne Meeks' The First Urban Christians, which deals with the social and economic life of early Christians you don't get in many histories of Christianity. Meeks succeeds in describing what attracted the average Greco-Roman to Christianity. Wagner discusses the things the average early Christian never heard about, and still does not hear about today. The book has three Parts, and each part, like the three acts of a play, depends on the narrative established by the previous Parts. Part I deals with the Greco-Roman culture and the politics of the Empire at the highest levels. My greatest discovery in this section was two basic concepts in Greek culture. The first was aretç or `virtue, excellence, or goodness'. The discussion among the ancients about whether virtue was innate or acquired, and whether it varied by race, gender, class, and occupation sounded so contemporary that it seemed to deflate much of the hauteur from the postmodern sense of earlier intellectual views of culture. Plato believed that aretç was innate, but, per Meno, that didn't mean that it didn't need some stiff training to bring it to the surface. But only the wealthy had the time to cultivate this virtue. This helped to sustain the rigid class lines of Roman patrician, equestrian, and plebian classes. The second concept is paideia, or `culture', and the means by which it was transmitted. This is similar in function to the Medieval trivium and quadrivium. Where aretç was the refined human nature, paideia was the educational curriculum intended to bring this out. One of the hot button items among early Christian writers was the role paideia had in the Christian life. A familiar problem to those who loved Greek and Roman mythology was that there was a glut of deities. Syncretism was the order of the day, going back to the time when the first `long haired Achaeans' settled in the Greek peninsula before 1600 BCE. Layered on top of the Olympians, Asiatic mysteries, and Egyptian cults was the cult of the emperors. Therefore, the Roman governors tended to be very tolerant of