ABSTRACT
A comparison between Christian thought about the year 100 and Christian thought at the end of the second century as expressed in the early Catholicism of Tertullian and Irenaeus shows certain differences between them which allow us to see the significance and nature of the work of the second century. It is to be noticed that while both Johanninism and the thought of Clement of Rome were only local forms of Christianity, at the end of the second century Christian theology had become catholic in the true sense of the word, i.e. universal. This is the result of a process of concentration, conjunction, unification, and synthesis among the differing types of Christianity, which were commingling and interpenetrating diverse communities. Only in a very relative sense can it be said that the travails and trials of early Christianity to find intellectual expression gave birth to Johannine theology on the one hand and the precatholicism of Clement of Rome on the other.
