Patristics and Succession

Looking at the patristic period of Christian history (c. 100-451), Christianity was far more theologically diverse than the Roman church gives it credit for. One of the Roman Church's arguments for its status as the true church is that the Roman Church is the development of the early periods of Christianity: it is most true to the early forms of Christianity. This assumes that there was a single type of Christianity which Rome adheres to and other denominations do not. However, there is no one theology of the patristic period. There were many, conflicting theologies. Different cities represented different schools of theology: the theologians from Alexandria are referred to as, surprise, Alexandrine theologians, and they are different from the theologians from Antioch, known as Antiochene theologians. Also, there were the theologians from North Africa, such as Tertullian and Augustine. The Roman Church may agree with some of these guys, but they cannot agree with them all. To give it credit, though, the Roman Church is probably the most diverse church, able to hold in unity the most disparate group of believers.

The Interpretation of Needs

"There is no difficulty in securing enough agreement for action on the point that education should serve the needs of the people. But all hinges on the interpretation of needs; if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being and prepare for immortality, then education of the mind and the passions will take precedence over all else. The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority. Those who maintain that education should prepare one for living successfully in this world have won a practically complete victory...[Such an education] neither encourages reflection nor inspires a reverence for the good."
- Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1954), 49.

Freedom Old and New

Augustine makes a distinction between the freedom of the first man and the freedom of the last men, or as he puts it, the freedom of the first immortality and the freedom of the second immortality. The freedom of Adam was that he had the ability to not sin. The choice was his. The freedom of the resurrected is that they are unable to sin. In this way they are more like God, who also cannot sin. This inability is a gift from God and something for which we will be eternally thankful. The inability to sin must proceed from our hearts, which must then have no desire to sin. If the resurrected wanted to sin but were unable to, then their inability to sin would be bondage and not freedom. If Adam's freedom was less than the new freedom, then freedom is both doing what one wants and wanting the right things. Because Adam did not want the right thing, his freedom was less than the new man's. The freedom of the resurrected will be freedom from the battle of the soul which Paul talks about, freedom from wanting to please God but doing things that will displease him.