ABSTRACT
There have been broadly four phases in the development of Christianity in Africa. The first of these, which is not part of our main concern here, relates to North Africa where by the middle years of the second century a strong Christian community had emerged, centred on both Carthage and Alexandria. It was presided over in turn by such influential theologians as Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 Ce), his pupil Origen (c. 185–254); ‘the brilliant, exasperating, sarcastic, and intolerant yet intensely vigorous and incisive in argument’ Tertullian (160–220), who determined the terminology of Latin theology for the future and was to join the ecstatic religious sect, the Montanists; Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who was martyred in 258; Athanasius, the long-serving Bishop of Alexandria (c. 296–373); and Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354–430), most influential of all (see Chapter 9).
