This investigation is in the discipline of theology (Church History) and seeks to discover how and why the early Christians separated themselves from the world in which they lived, and the results thereof. A study is made of the Roman Empire of the first three centuries, its politics, commerce and industry, and entertainment. The Christians’ separateness-policy under these three headings is then examined in some detail. They lived and worked among the people of the empire, but were separate from them in their code of conduct. The Christians’ separateness in politics was expressed by their refusal to worship the state gods and participate in the ceremonies, festivals and sacrifices associated therewith. They were ‘atheists’ who brought down the wrath of the gods upon the land. They followed a non-violence policy and preferred not to join the army and were viewed as disloyal subjects. People of all class-distinctions were welcomed at their gatherings and this was seen as a challenge to Roman sovereignty and the established class-order. The Christians’ separateness in commerce and industry was expressed in their refusal to join the guilds and to make sacrifices to the gods. They would not take jobs that promoted immorality or idolatry or that devalued human life. Their allegiance was to Christ and not to human patrons, and they supported one another financially within the Christian fellowship. The Christians’ expressed their separateness in leisure and entertainment by refusing to attend the games and spectacles of the arena and would not take part in the sacrifices associated with them. They spoke against gambling and the activities of the theatre, and followed a new style of sexual conduct that taught modesty, purity, and the sanctity of marriage. Rather than take part in meals that encouraged drinking and immorality, they met for simple Love Feasts. Many Christians died cruel deaths in these arenas. In spite of the opposition, Christianity continued to grow and by the end of the third century was a ‘state within a state’, independent and able to take care of her own. The last great persecution took place between AD 303-313 when severe and cruel ultimatums were issued to the Christians. Eventually the pagan world was convinced that if Christianity was worth dying for then it was worth living for. Many believed that their own gods had failed them. In AD 313, emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity to be legal, and not long afterwards Christianity was proclaimed the state religion. Some hundred years later, it was the empire that ended, not Christianity. A comparison can therefore be made of the separateness of the early church who believed Christ’s words stating that they were ‘in the world but not of the world’, and today’s contemporary Christian and Pentecostal movements who claim to use the early church as a role-model. / Dr. M. Nel Prof. L. Grundlingh

No Abstract is provided. / Thesis (DD (New Testament Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

The aim of this thesis is to investigate what can be discovered from Luke-Acts about early Christian baptism, recognising that the environment in which Luke's tradition developed was both Jewish and Gentile. The thesis begins with a brief survey of the Jewish practice of ritual washings. The ideas and practices which encouraged the formal rite of John the Baptist and the early church are identified and evaluated. The second chapter focuses attention on Acts 2:37-3:21. Baptism is defined in this passage (Ac. 2:38) in the context of the proclamation by Peter (Ac. 2:14-36) and the life of the community, which includes koinonia (Ac. 2:42-47), the performance of a miracle (Ac. 3:1-1 0), and a further proclamation (Ac. 3:12-26). Using the methods of redaktiongeschichte and narratological analyses, the literary unity of Luke-Acts will be shown in the light of the elements of baptism. In the third chapter the different accounts of baptism recorded in Luke-Acts will be analysed and compared in order to determine how the church tradition which Luke represents understood baptism, and what was the significance of the rite and the practice of baptism in the early church. Finally, in order to emphasise the importance in the Greek world of the ideas and example of the moral philosophers, the meaning of terms related to baptism, such as akouo, metanoeo and pisteuo, is examined in the light of both Jewish and Greek concepts. The community life of the baptised expressed also practices and ideas which appear to owe more to the Greek world than the Jewish. These concepts include parrhesia, koinonia, and the way in which Christianity is described by its members and outsiders- Christianoi, hairesis, hodos. Finally the setting of the Christian meetings in the Gentile context is discussed. The conclusion indicated by the evidence is that Christianity was organised in a form which was scarcely distinguishable from a school under a kathegetes. Baptism initiated the believer into a relationship with a teacher. It was the nature of the teacher as well as the content of the teaching which gave to Christianity its uniqueness.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Faculty of Theology and Religion Studies at the University of Zululand, 2002. / The thesis of this study is that the concept of the church as oikost as found in. Luke-Acts provides principles to inspire the church to meet some present challenges- The concepts of church and family in the Gospel of Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles were examined. It was found that the first church community was constituted on the pattern of the extended family in the Greco-Roman world of the first century. This allowed for the development of a rich culture of interpersonal relationships. It was within this environment that the love taught and exemplified by Jesus found its first concrete expression. In family churches, comprising of between 50-100 members, care was taken of individuals in a holistic sense. This was especially important in a society that existed long before the invention of social services, pensions, hospitals and care for the aged. This example set by the first church had far-reaching political consequences. In the fourth century it was this kind of church structure that was taken as a model for the whole of the Roman Empire. This study reflects a distinctive choice regarding methodology in the application of a unique combination of both the contextual and social-scientific methods. A danger of contextual methodology is to concentrate on the present context at the expense of the context of the text. A deliberate attempt is made to avoid this by an inclusive approach of both contexts. The second part of the combination in the methodology of this thesis is the application of the social-scientific approach to the Biblical text and to our present context. This method is used as an extension of the contextual method, in order to avoid possible distortions caused by the latter. This pursuit does not seek to operate at the exclusion of other accepted approaches to the Biblical text, namely those of the literary, linguistic and historical, but functions eclectically whilst highlighting the rewards of the social-scientific methodology. The term 'social-scientific' is used in this study to broadly embrace the sociological approaches to the study of the New Testament text and to our present context. In addition to uncovering the social context of the Biblical text, this study is equally eager to understand the 'now' of one's own Sitz im Leben. Therefore, current social-scientific insights together with those from family sociology are utilised to balance the methodological framework. In short, a social-scientific understanding of the concept of oikos will assist in analysing the context of the Biblical text. A social-scientific analysis of the present context will facilitate a re-contextualisation of the church as oikos in the new South Africa. Chapter one outlines the methodology. A social-scientific study of the concept of oikos in Luke-Acts is engaged in chapter two. Chapter three commences with a sociological perspective of the family. This includes a contextual analysis of families in South Africa. The next chapter (chapter four) explores ministry perspectives to ascertain how the local church can function as oikos. Chapter five proposes a model for the ministry of the church while chapter six contextualises the church as oikos. A final concluding chapter summarises and synthesises the research.

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When reading the Bible in an independent way, i.e., not through the lenses of any official Church dogma, one is amazed by the many voices that come through to us. Add to this variety the literaiy finds from Nag Hammadi, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls, then the question now confronting many spiritual pilgrims is how it came about that these obviously diverse theologies, represented in the socalled Old and New Testaments, were moulded into only one "orthodox" result. In what way and to what degree were the many Christian groups different and distinctive from one another, as well as from other Jewish groups? Furthermore, what was the influence of other religions, Judaism, the Mysteries, Gnostics and Philosophers on the development, variety of groups and ultimately 021 the consolidation of "orthodox" soteriology? / Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics / M.Th. (Systematic Theology)

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