Abstract

In A Political History of Early Christianity Allen Brent examines early Christianity and its triumph in Roman Empire. Starting with the description of the apocalyptic movement of the earliest form of Roman Markan Christianity, Brent moves on to illustrate various aspects that have made Christianity so powerful. Explaining numerous ideas involved in the rising of the Christianity, such as metaphysical reality, church organisation, nascent Trinitarianism, Allen Brent also emphasizes the impact of emperor Constantine’s position in the new Christian cosmic and political order: a Trinity of distinct coequal and co-eternal persons was to trump the claims of an imperial monarchy reflecting a cosmic one. Brent discusses the Christian history in the general context of political movements that seek initially to achieve a ‘root and branch’ transformation of present society.

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