Paper Summary:

This research sets forth the context in which Christian spirituality unfolded in the first century A.D., also known at the apostolic period. It discusses in particular evidence of how the apostles made connections from spiritual experience to the shared experience of faith in the Christian community. The paper examines how the apostolic generation arrived at and then fostered a cohesive doctrine of spirituality that centered around the figure of Jesus Christ, in the shape of a mission of love.

From the Paper:

"No less significant is the fact that this spirituality and the apostolic mission are new because they specifically differ from Judaism, not only in the content of the message but also in the behavior of the messengers. For example, Matthew's Jesus (13:14) refers to those who are taught in parables as a fulfillment of "the [Hebrew] prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing he shall hear, and shall not understand." What is implied here is that the teachings of Jesus are meant to be directly relevant to Jewish experience, but the Christian mission is also meant to reinterpret it and point it in new directions. When Matthew says that "every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven" (13:52), the implication is that the new interpretation, not the old law, will be preeminent, hence that the Christians and not the Jews (i.e., the new scribes and not the old black-letter-law priests of Judaism) are to have the keys of the kingdom."

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