Lecture 9: Extreme Christianity in the 2nd
and 3rd Centuries
o As in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, the prophetic
power of celibate women provides a radical alternative to
the domestic roles society imposed on them; thus, the New
Prophecy implicitly challenged conventional society.• The Montanist movement was strongly ascetical; it forbade
second marriages, imposed strict rules for fasting, and advocated
the willing acceptance of martyrdom rather than flight in times
of persecution.
o It was sufficiently popular to have converted the intellectual
Tertullian in North Africa in the year 206; his last writings are
marked by Montanist tendencies.o The prediction that the “New Jerusalem” would appear in the
village of Pepuza probably hastened, by its nonrealization, the
fading of the movement.o It was condemned by Asian synods before the year 200 and by
the bishop of Rome Zephyrinus (d. 217).• Later prophetic figures in Christianity, both male and female,
would make appeals to a new age of the Holy Spirit (see Joachim
of Fiore) or to visions (see the female medieval mystics), but
ecstatic speech tended always to be suspect as a manifestation of
unreliable “enthusiasm.”Dualistic Visions of Christian Existence
• The third manifestation of radical Christianity came through
a number of powerful teachers in the 2nd century who advocated
strongly dualistic visions of Christian existence that posed a
challenge both to societal conventions and the very order of
creation. The geographical distribution of these teachers and their
followers suggests the popularity of this dualistic ideology among
many followers of Christ.• A teacher known only as Tatian came from Assyria to Rome around
150 to become a disciple of Justin. He wrote a deeply learned but