Alan Kreider

“This, the Christians believed, was God’s work and not theirs. So they did not engage in frantic action to save those who…

— Alan Kreider

“An unmixed marriage, Christian with Christian—this according to Tertullian enabled believers to live life in its fullness. This is not what we…

— Alan Kreider

“At the heart of early Christian worship was table fellowship. Throughout the first three centuries Christian communities gathered once a week for…

— Alan Kreider

“Does my subjectivity shape the book? Of course it does, and that dynamic can be bad or good, or both! For example,…

— Alan Kreider

“According to Tertullian, impatient actions do not produce what they promise. Instead, impatient actions make things worse, bringing about massive misfortunes. “Now,…

— Alan Kreider

“The Christians’ focus was not on “saving” people or recruiting them; it was on living faithfully—in the belief that when people’s lives…

— Alan Kreider

“When people seek to follow Christ, according to Origen, God forms them into people who embody this patience. Christ’s followers are not…

— Alan Kreider

“Origen was most articulate about this struggle. “For you who are redeemed by Christ,” he challenged believers in Caesarea, “a physical sword…

— Alan Kreider

“So, in our imaginative scenario, Constantine the Christian decided to adopt a policy of mission true to the early Christians’ tradition of…

— Alan Kreider

“We can hear the catechist intoning precept 26: “That it is of small account to be baptized and to receive the eucharist…

— Alan Kreider

“As Tertullian put it around AD 200, “Christians are made, not born.” 4”

— Alan Kreider

“In all their activities Christians are “filled with joy uttering and doing the precepts of the Lord,” teaching their children never to…

— Alan Kreider

“the church’s growth; it is life in “the way of Christ,” distinctive and hopeful. Christians, as Cyprian knew well, were growing in…

— Alan Kreider

“Ancient writers, we have seen, more often mention exorcism than anything else as a cause of conversion to Christianity.”

— Alan Kreider

“In this chapter and the next, I will contend that the Christians’ habitus was formed patiently, unhurriedly, through careful catechesis as well…

— Alan Kreider

“According to Justin, patience is central to the life of his community in Rome. Justin uses various sayings of Jesus to illustrate…

— Alan Kreider

“Of course, there were innumerable conversions during these years, as Christianity became the religion of Western Europe and Christendom took its characteristic…

— Alan Kreider

“Religion must be defended not by killing but by dying, not by violence but by patience.”

— Alan Kreider

“It appears that when women and men experienced God in affective worship, they were enabled to act with courage and passionate discipline.…

— Alan Kreider

“Tertullian presents the Christian assemblies in terms that non-Christian readers would recognize; he attempts to establish common ground. But Tertullian is also…

— Alan Kreider

“By the early fifth century the problem had become so acute that some theologians updated the church’s theology of witness so that…

— Alan Kreider

“Tertullian recounts the narrative of Jesus, whose labors (unlike Hercules’s) did not include killing, capturing, and stealing43 but who instead kept a…

— Alan Kreider

“They were convinced that many people were living in fear, sensing that they were in bondage to demons. “For many years Satan…

— Alan Kreider

“According to “Clement,” when the Christians talked about loving your enemies, their neighbors had been interested. But when they found that the…

— Alan Kreider

“As Tertullian put it, “We make the sign of the cross on our foreheads at every turn, at our going in or…

— Alan Kreider