Imperishable Inheritance

I am now in my first semes­ter on the cam­pus of South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and I was for­tu­nate enough to par­tic­i­pate in an intro­duc­tion to church his­tory with Dr. Michael Haykin. Dr. Haykin has an amaz­ing abil­ity to stir in his lis­ten­ers a love for study­ing church his­tory, and his abil­ity to teach his­tor­i­cal the­ol­ogy is unmatched in con­tem­po­rary Evangelicalism.

For the class, we have to do sev­eral pro­files of impor­tant fig­ures in early church his­tory, and I would liked to share those sum­maries in a series on this blog. Each sum­mary will con­tain an overview of their life, major works, and if applic­a­ble any the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy that the indi­vid­ual engaged in. In addi­tion, I would like to include an excerpt of their writ­ings if it is avail­able. Dr. Haykin stresses pri­mary sources in his teach­ing method and includ­ing excerpts from these writ­ers is helpful.

Defin­ing the “Church Fathers”

This series will be focused on the “church fathers” or also known as the Patris­tics. Before we begin, it would be help­ful to define who the church fathers were. In his book Redis­cov­er­ing the Church Fathers,¹ Haykin defines a church father by quot­ing from The Oxford Dic­tio­nary of the Chris­t­ian Church:

“[Authors] who wrote between the end of the 1st century…and the close of the 8th century…[they also] defended the Gospel against here­sies and mis­un­der­stand­ings; they com­posed exten­sive com­men­taries on the Bible, explana­tory, doc­tri­nal, and prac­ti­cal, and pub­lished innu­mer­able ser­mons, largely on the same sub­ject; they exhib­ited the mean­ing and impli­ca­tions of the Creeds; they recorded past and cur­rent events in Church his­tory; and they related the Chris­t­ian faith to the best thought of their own age.“²

We will see through each per­son that we pro­file that they con­tributed to a wide range of Chris­t­ian liv­ing and the­o­log­i­cal issues. The tumul­tuous time after the Apos­tles was filled with brave men and women who fought for the truth of the Gospel and a bib­li­cal world­view, and their con­tri­bu­tions are as rel­e­vant today as they were then. Our world of ram­pant idol­a­try, sen­su­al­ity, hos­til­ity to the Gospel, and rel­a­tivis­tic thought is very close to the world­view and cul­tural issues dealt with by early Christians.

Why Study the Church Fathers?

All of this begs a ques­tion: Why should I care? These men and women lived cen­turies ago, and surely we have pro­gressed beyond the ques­tions dealt with by the early church right? As men­tioned in the last sec­tion, the truth is that our cur­rent con­text is very sim­i­lar to the Greco-Roman world of the church fathers. To neglect the ques­tions they grap­pled with and wrote on would be a pro­found mistake.

In con­tem­po­rary Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, this is a pop­u­lar “no creed, just Jesus” men­tal­ity, and to think this is the height of pre­sump­tion and folly. The Chris­t­ian faith con­tains propo­si­tional truths, and it was nec­es­sary then and now to be peo­ple defined by doc­trine. When we move away from con­fes­sional ortho­doxy we open the door to an onslaught of heresy. Instead, we need to turn to church his­tory for wis­dom and insight, and this is espe­cially true in our tech­no­log­i­cal cul­ture that only val­ues what is new and leads us to view any­thing in the past as inferior.

Dr. Haykin in lec­tures I attended, and in his book on the church fathers he out­lines sev­eral rea­sons we should study the church fathers.³

• Chris­tian­ity is a his­tor­i­cal reli­gion: The Bible is the story of God’s work in his­tory, and it doesn’t end with the Apos­tolic age. History’s cli­max is the incar­na­tion, death, res­ur­rec­tion, and ascen­sion of Jesus; and all of his­tory pro­gresses towards the time when he will come and cul­mi­nate history.
• Noth­ing is really new: Solomon declares in Eccle­si­astes 1:9c that “there is noth­ing new under the sun,” and he says this for good rea­son. Our cul­ture today deals with vari­a­tions of Gnos­ti­cism, Modal­ism, Athe­ism, Rel­a­tivism, and other here­sies all of which the church has dealt with in her history.
• Study of church his­tory builds humil­ity: When you read how these men and women labored in the defense of the Gospel it builds a thank­ful humil­ity. It also makes you real­ize how lit­tle you really know. It’s amaz­ing to think about how much we owe to peo­ple we have never met.
• Lib­er­ates us from the tyranny of the present: Our present world, now more than ever, val­ues what is tran­sient, new, and shiny. Church his­tory makes us value things absent in our cultures.
• Gives us mod­els for imi­ta­tion: Read­ing about great apol­o­gists, the­olo­gians, and pas­tors gives us incred­i­ble exam­ples in which to emulate.
• They aid our apolo­get­ics and bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tion: The church fathers dealt with issues we face today and defended the faith with clar­ity and pre­ci­sion. The church fathers also pro­duced an abun­dance of com­men­taries and exe­ge­sis on bib­li­cal texts, and they are help­ful in many instances to under­stand the Bible.
• To clar­ify bad press about the fathers: Mod­ern attacks against early church his­tory (such as Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code) hor­ri­bly mis­rep­re­sent the early church and church fathers. It is impor­tant we under­stand what these men and women actu­ally wrote and believed.
•  To receive spir­i­tual nur­ture: Read­ing Augustine’s and Patrick’s writ­ings are two exam­ples of incred­i­ble spir­i­tual zeal and edi­fi­ca­tion. When we inter­act with these titans of our faith we can receive abun­dant spir­i­tual encouragement.

I look for­ward to shar­ing with you great sto­ries of these incred­i­ble heroes. I hope they pro­vide the same encour­age­ment I have received in my brief but soon to be life-long study.

Foot­notes

1. Michael A.G. Redis­cov­er­ing the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Wheaton, Ill.: Cross­way Books, 2011). [Back]
2. “Patris­tics,” in F.L. Cross and E.A. Liv­ing­stone, eds., The Oxford Dic­tio­nary of the Chris­t­ian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1997), 1233. Quoted in Haykin, Redis­cov­er­ing the Church Fathers, 16. [Back]
3. Haykin, Redis­cov­er­ing the Church Fathers, 17–28. [Back]