The Lord’s Supper. Part Three: The Early Church, 4th-5th Century

I previously wrote on the summary of Christian views on the Lord’s Supper dating from the 1st to the 3rd century. I couched this from the outset with the choice offered by the Anglican prelate James Ussher to consider whether the fathers not only taught that bread becomes Christ to us or that we might …

Christianity and Relics. Part Three: Spiritual Guides

Introduction In my initial entry on this series I had a look at the burial practices of the early church. Showing that up until the 4th century the normative practice was to bury the dead, this included the martyrs. In my second entry I chart how the martyrs themselves had come to be understood as …

Gregory of Nyssa, Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes 336,6

I got me slaves and slave-girls. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God …