General Education Studies
CWC: An Overview
CWC is broken up into three chronological units. While there are common themes and questions running throughout the semester, each unit features its own distinctive personalities and stories. Here's an overview:
Unit One: The Ancient World
Key Stories
- The Christian church began its ministry and mission in the midst of Greco-Roman culture. Among other things, Christians had to respond to Greek philosophical debates (e.g., what is the right use of this life? is the soul eternal? how do we know what we know?) and Roman power.
- After enduring three centuries of persecution, the church came to be protected and privileged by Roman power. In AD 313 the Roman emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, officially ending the occasional persecutions that had cost many Christians their lives. While the influence and support of Constantine and subsequent Christian emperors enabled unprecedented growth in church numbers and power, it caused new problems for Christians: How should the church relate to the state? What happens when it becomes culturally, politically, socially, and even economically beneficial to become a Christian?
Key Witnesses
- Christian martyrs: Jesus had warned his disciples that they too would have to "carry his cross" (Luke 14:27), and indeed many Christians in the first centuries of the church joined their Lord in dying at the hands of the Roman Empire. In CWC we read the story of two young African women, Perpetua and Felicitas (d. 203), who refused to perform a ritual sacrifice for the emperor and were killed in the gladiatorial arena.
- Tertullian (ca. 160 - ca. 230): African theologian who is best known for asking "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" That is, why should Christians look to Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics for truth when they have the Gospel? A vigorous opponent of heresy in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries (though his own orthodoxy was questioned later in his life), and a staunch defender of Christian pacifism.
- Anthony of the Desert (ca. 251 - 356): Also known as Anthony the Great, this Egyptian Christian is recognized by the Eastern and Western churches as the founder of Christian monasticism. Abandoning all his wealth as a young man (inspired by Jesus' words in Matthew 19:21), he adopted a life of radical hardship and discipline, living in tombs and the wilderness and spending hours in prayer and meditation. Some of Anthony's followers set up monastic communities, which attracted thousands of Christians who found that the church after Constantine was too comfortable and too much like the surrounding culture.
- Augustine (354 - 430): Perhaps the single most influential Christian theologian since the apostle Paul, Augustine was another of the Africans who did so much to shape the "Western" church. Although he lived a monastic life himself, Augustine was closely involved in the life of the institutional church as a bishop and as a theologian who defended what he viewed as orthodox belief against heretics like the Pelagians and Donatists. His enormous work City of God helped guide Christian views of history, politics, and "just war" for centuries to come, and his Confessions was the first spiritual autobiography.
>>Continue to Unit 2...