Blessed Victors: Theology of Persecution in the Third Century Church

The late second through third centuries saw the remarkable confluence of the early church's developing identity, theological understanding and praxis, with a period of opposition and intermittent persecution from the world around it. Theology necessarily engaged with the persecution experience, as the church considered the goodness and providence of God, the Name to be confessed and the purposeful outcome of the antagonism they faced. Ruth Sutcliffe argues that the early fathers' theologica...