I am working on the pre-course material for my last Master's course at Briercrest Seminary, and as per my custom, I am getting my ideas out and posting them on this blog so that family and friends can have a general idea of what I am studying and I can sort my mind out in order to write the paper.
So I just finished reading a pile of literature from the 1st - 4th centuries written by the early Christians who inherited the Christian Church from the original apostles. So folks like Clement of Rome, Polycarp and Irenaeus (disciples of the apostle John) along with Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. All of these men (and many more) were the early thinkers and leaders of Christianity. The question I have to answer in five pages is "what is the value of reading them?"
Where to begin?
There is incredible value in reading the Church Fathers, especially if you ever plan on teaching or preaching. These guys knew there stuff. They lived and breathed Scripture. Faith for them wasn't a quasi-mystical spiritual experience, it was a way of life. These guys built the foundation from which all of Christianity built on; from the Roman Catholics, to the Eastern Orthodox, to the Evangelicals and Pentacostals and every 'independent' Christian group that can still be considered Christian. Making sense of the Scriptures and Christian teaching begins with them.
You know how we Evangelicals have our magazines and speakers and self-help books that are designed to be culturally relevant and full of helpful pithy things... well whatever helpfulness can be gleaned from such things probably comes from something that is better explained and more deeply considered by the Church Fathers. Even though they lived centuries ago in a different culture and a different language a lot of the material that they wrote about concerns issues and problems that have (and will always be) difficult to sort out. Things like how Jesus is God and man while still speaking to his Father in heaven who is also God, Church politics, the reality of Hell, the problem of evil and suffering, arguments against every type of false teaching, and a thorough understanding of God's plan of salvation for all people.
These people grappled with the teachings of the Apostles and the Scriptures and dedicated their lives to sorting out these sorts of issues as they presented themselves. They sometimes did not agree with each other and some of their teachings were later rejected as the body of Christian theology grew over the centuries, but the rigor they applied and the incredible faith they lived out can only be ignored to our peril. Many of these men wrote and taught during times when to be known as a 'Christian' meant that you could be arrested and sent to Rome to be killed by wild animals in the Colosseum or burned at the stake.
Taken together, these writings are an accurate testament to the history of the early Church. In a world where the saturation of mass media and Postmodern thought have made a culture where any claim of truth is just as valid as the next it is important to know your own religious history so that you can say with confidence and authority that, contrary to "The Da Vinci Code", the early Church did not decide to make Jesus a god in the 4th century for political reasons. Indeed, the generation of believers that succeeded the Apostles wrote about and understood Jesus as God incarnate in the flesh, forgeries not withstanding.
They are also useful for use in apologetics. Every modern group that says that they are Christian and yet follow a false teaching (Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Christian Science to name three such groups) is thoroughly refuted and exposed by the Church Fathers who encountered every type of heresy and stood vigilant against them. The methods employed are both theological arguments based on Scripture and philosophical arguments based on logic and reason written masters of both disciplines. Any modern day argument for the existence of God, the deity of Christ, or the place of Christianity within society will undoubtedly be based on something that these people already said some sixteen hundred years earlier. Why start with derivative literary works when you could begin with the source?
There is also value in seeing how the early Church Fathers used reason to grapple with the teachings of the Apostles and the Scriptures. There is a wideness and deepness in our tradition that is rich and divergent; I found it an eye opening experience. The pastoral care and saturation of Scripture found in Clement's writings were spiritual but also practical. Justin Martyr's account of the Jesus Movement in Rome was logical and philosophical. Origen's exhortations to Martyrdom and prayer were dripping with the Word of God even though his understanding of the deity of Christ was influenced too much by Platonic Philosophy. Athanasius was harsh and unyielding when he wrote about the heretics. Gregory of Nazianzus was a master orator, philosophy, theologian who's words entertaining and so full of truth and things that go over my head that they make me feel like an ignorant freshman all over again. Prudentius' early poems and stories brought Christianity into the arts by exhorting the ancient virtues but in relation to Christ and vindicating the martyrs. John of Damascus' defense for the use of holy images and locations... Forget John Piper or John Macarhur or any other author that conservative evangelicals rally around; you need to understand the Patristic Fathers first.
I also find that after reading such a variety of authors and styles, all of which were instrumental in founding the Church, you begin to see things with a wider lens and an appreciation for differences. Jesus said that his body, the Church, was made of many members and this is definitely true of these folk. Clement was a caring pastor and savvy church politician but he also needed the philosophical insights of Origen who in turn needed the theological hindsight of Cyril who needed the pugnacity of Athanasius, and on and on it went. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I appreciate different traditions now more than I did before.
Well, I've been writing for about an hour now and I think I've run out of ideas. I'll start this paper soon and that will be one more thing out of the way. Tally-ho!
