At a very early stage in Church history, influences from the Greco-Roman world forcefully pressed the traditional God of Judaism through a system of pagan philosophy. The theological battles which followed produced serious problems for Christianity, and imperial edicts made accepting philosophical statements about God a matter of life or death.
Today, scholars are inviting us to reexamine whether these philosophies played any role in the preaching of the historical Jesus. Could reacquiring the Jewish worldview of the first century help us to better understand Jesus' theology in our own time? Could revisiting Church history show us where we went wrong?
In The God of Jesus in Light of Christian Dogma, Chandler embarks on a dynamic investigation of the developmental history of orthodox theology and its impact on popular interpretations of the New Testament. Relayed in two parts, the first provides a panoramic view of Hellenic influence on the early Christian faith, while the second revisits biblical interpretation. Writing for both the dedicated Christian student and the interested public, Chandler boldly appeals to both ancient history and modern scholarship to inform us about the origins of our most sacred traditions, and challenges the reader to contrast those ideas with the words of Jesus.
