Medieval
theology
Regarding
Jenny Adams’s article, “Positively Medieval” (December/99),
I find it strange that Adams describes Fulton as seeming to assert
that “Before that time [the turn of the first millennium], pious
Christians prayed to Christ as the all-powerful King of Heaven
rather than as the man who died a humiliating death.” My understanding
of the early Christians was their joy in proclaiming the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus.
I
quote from Raymond E. Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah (1977):
“The oldest Christian preaching about Jesus concerned the death
and resurrection, as may be seen in the formulas of Acts 2:23,
32; 3:14–15; 4:10; 10:39–40; and I Cor 15:3–4. Not only did these
events constitute the clearest instance of God’s salvific action
in Jesus, but also it was through them that the disciples came
to a more adequate understanding of who Jesus really was.”
Irving
E. Fasan, AB’47, JD’57
Chapel Hill,
North Carolina