The imperial cult and the development of church order : concepts and images of authority in paganism and early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian
Allen Brent (Author)
"Recent studies have re-assessed Emperor worship as a genuinely religious response to the metaphysics of social order. Brent argues that Augustus' revolution represented a genuinely religious reformation of Republican religion that had failed in its metaphysical objectives. Against this backcloth, Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to that metaphysical failure. Callistus and Pseudo-Hippolytus gave different responses to Severan images of imperial power. The early, Monarchian theology of the Trinity was thus to become a reflection of imperial culture and its justification that was later to be articulated both in Neo-Platonism, and in Cyprian's view of episcopal Order."--Jacket
History
xxii, 369 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9789004114203, 9004114203
41886107
Christian and pagan cultus by the third century
The foundations of the imperial cult
Imperial ideology and the origins of church order
Clement of Rome and Domitian's empire
The Apocalypse and Domitian's iconography
Ignatius of Antioch and the Martyr's procession
Pagan and Christian Monarchisanism
The emergence of imperial and Catholic order