Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Notes of the Overview of the Early Church Fathers: On the Trinity and Incarnation      In our exploration of early Christian thought, our focus is directed towards understanding the evolving perspectives on the Trinity and the Incarnation as articulated by influential figures within the Church such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian, Origen of Alexandria, Athanasius, and others, thus providing a comprehensive understanding of the theological landscape that shaped Christianity during its nascent stages. While I cannot go over all the early church fathers since that would take up the length of the book, investigating these influential individuals who are mostly saints will have to suffice. This will also ignore early modalist theologians (who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were one person and modes of God), gnostic theologians (who believed in many gods and that Jesus was not a human), and Jewish-christian th...

  Between Heaven and Earth: The Quest for the Historical Jesus                What can we know about the “historical Jesus”? Firstly, it must be explained what is meant by the term. The historical Jesus refers to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as he existed in history, separate from the religious beliefs and doctrines that have developed around him. It is an attempt by scholars to reconstruct the life, teachings, and actions of the actual person who lived in the 1st century C.E. in ancient Palestine. I will assume that you have some background knowledge of what the four canonical Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and why they will be useful in our quest. However, we need to truly examine these Gospels to determine how useful they are in seeing who Jesus truly was. One must question their historicity, authorship, dating, and examine what they say. It might be surprising to read that the oldest Gospel in the...