Item Detail
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28074
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2
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0
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English
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The Decline of Covenant in Early Christian Thought
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Early Christians in Disarray : Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy
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Provo, UT
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Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies ; Brigham Young University
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295-324
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While the defining treatment of the Christian apostasy in the Book of Mormon predicts that the covenants will be removed or lost (see 1 Nephi 13:26), this key element has never been systematically explored in Latter-day-Saint thought. I will show that the covenantal understandings of ordinances were lost or de-emphasized very early, and that this change made the later accommodation of Greek philosophy much easier for the third- and fourth-century Christians. But that only exacerbated the problem. As Christian thinkers turned increasingly to Greek philosophy after the mid-second century, they naturally shifted from the traditional Hebrew focus on history, including the covenants made at specific times and places, as a source of truth and obligation, to the Hellenistic contemplation of nature as a source of universal truth. And this shift solidified the attenuation of covenants in Christian thought and practice for the centuries that would follow. [From the text]