Browsing by Author "Lee, Joowan"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemSocialisation of the Early Church and Roman culture : a church-historical enquiry with particular consideration of Constantine, Ambrose, and Augustine(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-11) Lee, Joowan; Muller, Retief; Punt, Jeremy; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. of Systematical Theology and Ecclesiology.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis constructs a narrative about socialisation in the early Christian community as connected to the social culture of Rome. It seeks to elucidate the meaning of church history in relation to the paradigm shift in Christian community formation. The socialisation of Christianity shows how each Christian community produced an integrated Christian culture suitable for that particular society to adequately explain the identity and values of Christianity to non-Christians and extend the sociocultural influence of the kingdom of God and the gospel in a secular society. Thus, the Christian community paradigm of an era created through socialisation can be viewed not simply as a sociocultural form of Christianity, but as a Christian mechanism that interpreted sociocultural values through their correlation with characteristic values of Christianity and synthesised such values in their lives. In particular, the church-historical cases considered in this study, those based on mutual understanding found among Christianity and Roman society, relate the character and form of the Jesus movement as a process of re-socialisation that occurred when the Christian community that originated from the sociocultural background of Judaism encountered Roman social culture. In other words, the transition witnessed in the Christian community paradigm reveals the sociocultural expectations of Christianity during that period, and early Christians’ understanding of a community ruled by God in secular society and, conversely, the way Christian communities used secular social culture. Christianity, as it developed in the Roman Empire, pursued the same characteristic values as the historical Jesus movement. However, it was not limited to any one particular sociocultural form or value but secured a multi-layered and comprehensive form in connection with various sociocultural values. In addition, historical Christian communities were differentiated in various forms according to the sociocultural characteristics of a region, but at the same time tried to form a fully Christian community as a Jesus movement through the universal Christian community paradigm. In other words, the historical Christian communities tried to closely match the constantly changing social cultures of the secular world to with central Christian values, rather than simply highlighting the gap between the essence and form of Christianity in relation to the interrelationship between Christianity and social culture. In that respect, the basic meaning of the socialisation of early Christianity can be said to have enabled the secular world to experience Christian faith by exposing the essential values of Christianity to the values of the world.