When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome by Richard E. Rubenstein, Michelle Brook
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(Paperback - First Harvest Edition)
Details from Seller
- ISBN: 0156013150
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Pub. Date: July 2000
- Condition:
Comments from the Seller: 2000-07-10 Paperback Book Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade Paperback. Minor cover wear...VERY GOOD.
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Authorized Seller Since: 2007
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Synopsis
This paper version of the 1999 cloth edition concentrates on the time after 324 AD when Christianity became the official religion of the emperor, Constantine. Accepted by Rome, Christians turned to fighting each other, specifically over the precise degree of Christ's divinity. On one side was Arius, a Greek ecclesiastic maintaining that Christ was the holiest of mortals but not the Eternal God of Israel. On the other was Bishop Athanasius and his followers arguing that Christ was precisely God on earth and equal to God. Intrigues and deaths ensued over the attempt to form a unified Church, a conflict lasting 60 years and 20 ecumenical councils. Rubenstein (conflict resolution and public affairs, George Mason U.) describes the controversy, discusses the origins of the Nicene Creed, the nature of morality and sin, the consequences of fundamentalism, and the intertwining of religion and government. You-are-there reportage and an appendix of principal characters makes the book suitable for a wide audience. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Boston Globe - Jack Miles
A splendidly dramatic story...Rubenstein has turned one of the great fights of history into an engrossing story.
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When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Romeby Anonymous
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10/02/2002: One would not have expected a book on early Christian doctrinal controversies by a professor of contemporary conflict resolution to have in the few short years since it was published become almost a bestseller and standard work. One reason for this is the objectivity that an academic outside the normal inner circle of writers on patristics brings to bear on the subject - coupled with the added objectivity that a Jewish (and one suspects agnostic) writer has in treating a controversy that is still live among Christians today. However I feel the real reason for this book's success is in the quality of the writing. Without 'dumbing down' Rubenstein has managed to communicate a substantial amount of information and argument in a compelling, almost novel-like journalistic narrative. This ability to communicate complex ideas and events is where the book really earns its five stars. A third reason why this book has struck a cord is that it fills a void in terms of human treatment of the Arian-Athanasian controversy. Classic historians of dogma such as Harnack concentrate on the ideas to the exclusion of the personalities - which has its place, but not to the point where key events such as Athanasius' murder of Arius by poisoning are ignored (as in some histories of doctrine). Not here - Rubenstein treats the doctrinal battles through the people who fought them. The book naturally does not cover the pagan background (J. G. Griffiths), nor much in the way of source material (W.G. Rusch), nor a scriptural critique of the Trinity (J.H. Broughton or A.F. Buzzard) but what it does cover is done excellently.
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