Jesus In Dura-Europos, Justin Martyr, And Tertullian
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1. What is the understanding of salvation and view of Jesus in Dura-Europos, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian? There was definite diversity in the early church concerning what salvation and Jesus meant for early believers. Some examples of this diversity can be observed when studying Dura-Europos, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian. For Dura-Europos, salvation meant deliverance and extraordinary transformation. Historians are able to infer this from the murals at Dura-Europos depicting scenes of Jesus healing. For Justin Martyr, Jesus was divine truth, and Christians or followers of Jesus were true philosophers. Martyr believed that followers of Jesus who knew the truth would demonstrate this truth through moral actions. And thus salvation meant truth and a moral life following the teachings of Jesus. For Tertullian, salvation meant the blood sacrifice that came from Jesus being sinless on behalf of the people to take away the sin of the people.
2.…show more content… What was a basic underlying concern of the Gnostic view of salvation, and how did Irenaeus' teaching about Jesus as the 'second adam' address the problem posed by Valentinus' Gnosticism? A basic underlying view of the Gnostics was that everything was spiritual, and the material world was only created because of the errors of one of the spiritual beings. This Gnostic view stands in stark contrast with the Christian view that God created the world, and declared creation good. Gnostics believed that salvation is leaving the material world behind, and only having the spiritual world. Because of the Gnostic view that the spiritual world is good and the material world is bad, Gnostics did not believe that Jesus had a physical body, but just a spiritual one. Irenaeus’s teaching on the second Adam helped to address this Gnostic heresy by explaining that Jesus was God in flesh, and that God’s creation, like the first Adam was good, but the first Adam fell into sin, and Jesus the second Adam, came to correct the Fall of the first