1. Chapter 3 Light to the Gentiles
A History of God
Chapter 3
Light to the Gentiles

2. Gospels Gospel of Mark Gospel of Matthew
First full-length account of Jesus’ life
Written about 70 AD, 40 years after Jesus’ death
Presents Jesus as “a perfectly normal man”
Gospel of Matthew
Matthew addresses the concerns of a Jewish audience.
Written by a Jewish Christian.
Jesus was promised Messiah, in him the ancient prophecies had their fulfillment.

3. Who was Jesus?
Jesus never claimed to be God
Did not claim to be God incarnate

4. India: Bhakti [personal devotion]
Hinduism: Krishna
Krishna is a deity worshiped across many traditions in Hinduism.
Recognized as an avatar of Vishnu, he has been the object of personal devotion or bhakti

5. Bodhisattva
An enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to save others.

6. The West: Idealism The world is an illusion
Idealism is the philosophical theory that maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on mind or ideas.
It holds that the so-called external or "real world" is inseparable from mind, consciousness, or perception.

7. Idealism: George Berkeley
Berkeley was a talented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that is, the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas.
Berkeley's system, while it strikes many as counter-intuitive, is strong and flexible enough to counter most objections.

8. Gospel of John Jesus as Logos
The Gospel of John identifies Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos, through which all things are made.
The gospel further identifies the Logos as divine.
Second-century Christian Apologists, such as Justin Martyr, identified Jesus as the Logos or Word of God, a distinct intermediary between God and the world.

9. The Roman Empire
Religion and Philosophy

10. Gnosticism
Gnosticism is an ancient belief system whose basic tenets seem to reappear in many different times and cultures.
Gnostics hold that this world is essentially a prison for the spirit.
In Gnostic forms of Christianity, the creator god of the Bible is interpreted as an evil demiurge, who built the world to trap us.

11. Gnosticism
The real God is on a higher plane entirely, and Christ is our connection to him, providing the possibility of reuniting the trapped spark of spirit within us with its divine source.

12. Early Christian Writers: Marcion
Marcion (ca ) was an Early Christian theologian who was excommunicated by the Christian church at Rome as a heretic.
He propounded a Christianity free from Jewish doctrines
Jewish God too violent.

13. Early Christian Writers: Clement
Clement of Alexander (ca ): Yahweh and the God of the Greek philosophers were one and the same. Clement believed that Jesus was God.

14. Early Christian Writers: Irenaeus
Irenaeus [ ]: Jesus had been the incarnate Logos, the divine reason.

15. Origen
Like Plotinus, Origen wrote that the soul passes through successive stages of incarnation before eventually reaching God.
He imagined even demons being reunited with God.
For Origen, God was the First Principle, and Christ, the Logos, was subordinate to him.

16. Plotinus [ ]
Plotinus is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism.
He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle.
Ultimate reality was a primal unity, the One.

17. Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, founded by Plotinus and based on the teachings of Plato.
An enlightenment that was impersonal, beyond human categories and natural to humanity.

18. Triumph of Christianity: 4th Century
1. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire
2. “Supremely a religion of adversity, it has never been at its best in prosperity.”
3. Next issue: the nature of God – the Trinity.