In general theological terms this study examines the interplay of early Christian
understandings of history revelation and identity. The book explores this interaction through
detailed analysis of appeals to mystery in the Pauline letter collection and then the discourse
of previously hidden but newly revealed mysteries in various second-century thinkers. T.J. Lang
argues that the historical coordination of the concealed revealed binary (the mystery
previously hidden but presently revealed) enabled these early Christian authors to ground
Christian claims - particularly key ecclesial hermeneutical and christological claims - in
Israel's history and in the eternal design of God while at the same time accounting for their
revelatory newness. This particular Christian conception of time gives birth to a new and
totalizing historical consciousness and one that has significant implications for the
construction of Christian identity particularly vis-à-vis Judaism.
