Primitive Catholicism

Primitive Catholicism

Author: Batiffol, Pierre, 1861-1929

Year: 1911

TABLE OF CONTENTS. Introduction to the Fifth French Edition (1911) v CHAPTER I. THE JEWISH DISPERSION AND CHRISTIANITY. I. Had the Judaism of the Dispersion any tendency to become a Church? — Legal and social status of the Dispersion — Religious and national institutions — Jewish hellenization, nothing apart from the religious and national life — Proselytism aims at imposing circumcision, and uncircumcized proselytes do not belong to God's people — In what way the body of proselytes paved the way for Christianity 1 II. Political confusion of Christianity with Judaism — In the year 64 this confusion comes to an end — Testimony of Tacitus — Christianity is legally forbidden — Pliny and Trajan — Nero, the first to interdict Christianity : testimony of Tertullian and of Suetonius 1 III. Christianity, no mere spiritual movement — Subordination of the outpourings of the Spirit, i.e. of charisms, to the good order of the communities and to the received faith — Christianity, no mere brotherhood of love and of mutual aid — Christianity, a religion of cities — Christianity, not a religion of colleges — Christianity, a religio illiota and a corpus or association 28 CHAPTER II. THE INFANT CHUR