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Home , Adamantius, AD 130, Basil of Caesarea, Catholic (term), Church Fathers, Council of Ephesus

THE FATHERS Dr. Chung (Chicago UBF)

When I told some people, “ going to write about the ,” one person said, “You mean that you are writing about the Roman Fathers?” Another person said, “Would that be someone like Jonathan Edwards, the colonial American theologian?” I explained to them that the church fathers I am writing about were people like St. Augustine and from the . They nodded their heads. I believe that the church fathers are the first generation of believers who continue to guide their spiritual descendants in the Christian church today. Like a family tree, these people I will write about are the ancestors and we are their descendants. I felt that we would be missing some real treasures if we do not explore our Christian origins. I have included a timeline so that we may know the chronological order of events in order to understand the context in which they took place. Although the origin of the church fathers start in the second century right after the death of Apostle John, I would like to describe the events surrounding the twelve apostles to the best of my knowledge first.

Before (BC)

800 Founding of 753 Founding of 347 Death of 332 the Great’s conquests; founding of 322 Death of Aristotle 300 Founding of 52 conquers 43 Founding of Lugdunum (); Roman Empire makes all Roman coins in Lyons. 27 Caesar becomes the first Roman emperor

Anno Domini (AD)

30 Death and of Christ 30s-60s Events of the Book of Acts 64 —first by Roman Emperor 70 Fall of 95 Domitianus (Domitian)—second persecution by Roman Emperor 100-165 Life of Justin 100+ Gnostic widely preached 115 travels to his martyrdom 130-202 Life of of Lyons 140 Marcion begins preaching heresy in Rome 156 Polycarp of martyred 170-215 Life of of Carthage 177 Blandina, , and companions martyred at Lyons and Vienne 180 Martyrdom of the of Sicily 186-251 Life of of Alexandria 203 Perpetua, Falicity and companions martyred; Origen’s Leonides martyred 250 Emperor Decius decrees severe persecution of 251-356 Life of the Anthony of 260-339 Life of of 299-373 Life of 303 Emperor Diocletian initiates the Great Persecution 312 Emperor Constantine victorious at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge: Donaist erupts in North Africa 313 Emperor Constantine issues the Edit of 318 Arius begins preaching heresy

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325 Council of Nicaea defined the 337 Death of Constantine 345-420 Life of 349-407 Life of 350-428 Life of 354-430 Life of 367 Letter of Athanasius lists the biblical cannon 378-444 Life of 381 Council of supports the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity 387 of Augustine 390 Death of Diodore of Tarsus 410 Alaric the Goth invades and ransacks Rome becomes of Constantinople 431 Council of condemns the doctrines of and Nestorius 440-461 Papacy of Leo the Great 451 defines orthodox 476 in the West deposed by a barbarian lord 500 End of the Roman Empire and the Ancient Period; beginning of the Medieval Period 1. The Church in Jerusalem

When we read the book of Acts, there was a very strong church presence in Jerusalem. When Apostle Peter addressed the crowd after , 3,000 people repented and were baptized in one day. They devoted themselves to ’ teaching1 and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to . But not everything went smoothly. There was a conflict between the Hellenistic and the Hebraic Jews.2 So the Twelve called an assembly that appointed seven men “to serve tables” (Acts 6). Then there was the life of Stephen and his martyrdom. Soon persecution against the Christians grew fierce and more general from Jews. Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod ordered the death of James the of John. When this move was well received by his subjects, Agrippa had Peter arrested, but he escaped. After the books of Acts, James the brother of Jesus who was the first overseer (bishop) of the church in Jerusalem was killed by orders of the high in AD 62, even against the desire and advice of some of the . Thereafter, the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem decided to move to Pella, a city beyond the Jordon.3 In AD 66, a rebellion broke out that would lead, four years later, to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies. The problem arose when the Roman governor, Florus took 17 talents from the Jerusalem Temple treasury since the Jewish leaders did not pay their taxes.4 The issue was not the amount of money, but that it was from ’s temple. Agrippa II tried to talk to Jewish leaders, but it was to no avail and a riot broke out. Nero, who was traveling in at that time, heard the news and sent the commander Vespasian to Jerusalem to suppress the riot. This Vespasian would later become the 9th emperor of Rome after Nero in AD 69. His son, Titus put down the rebellion in AD 70. During this period, , the brother of Jesus was also killed by the Romans. After this, many Jewish Christians moved out of Pella and Jerusalem to other cities. Wherever they went, they became workers before St. Paul.

1 This is very important description. The most authentic words of God in the first and second century was the apostles’ teaching and Paul’s letters to early Christians. The first 50 were copied by Constantine.

2 Here Acts makes clear that there were still no Gentiles in the church. It was rather a conflict between two groups of Jews.

3 Juston L. Gonzalez, The Story of : The Early Church to the Dawn of the (New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publisher, 1984), 21-22.

4 Nanami Shiono, Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani VIII (Seoul, Korea: Hangila Publishing Co., Ltd.,), 207.

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The missionary task itself was undertaken not only by Paul and others whose names are well known such as , Mark, to name a few, but also by countless other Christians who went from place to place taking with them their faith and their testimony. Many of these unknown Christians were merchants, slaves and others who traveled for various but whose travel provided the opportunity for the expansion of . The to the Romans shows that there was already a church in the imperial capital of Rome before Paul’s arrival. They say there was about 200-300 Christians living among 10,000 Jews, in sections 13 and 14 in Rome.5 During the reign of Nero, a fire began accidently in an oil warehouse on the night of June 18, AD 64. It lasted six days and seven nights, and then flared up for three more days. Afterwards, a rumor began circulating that Nero had gone mad and had ordered the city destroyed so he could rebuild it according to his fancy. In order to allay such suspicions, he used the Christians as a scapegoat. Although most of the city had been burned, two areas of Rome that were relatively undamaged had a very high proportion of Jewish and Christian populations living in them. Therefore, Nero could have the 200-300 Christians executed without any opposition. Apostle Peter and Paul were martyred around AD 67 or 68 in Rome. As an aside, I will very briefly talk about the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus and Luke, the Gentile. According to tradition, Apostle John took Mary to Pella and then . After Jerusalem fell, there was a severe famine that struck Jerusalem and Palestine. Therefore, Apostle John took Mary to Ephesus. They say that Mary’s house and were found in between 1882-1884 by Catherine Emmerich.6 We have learned and talked much about Matthew, Mark and John but not much is known about Luke, even though he was one of the four gospel writers and St. Paul’s best companion on his mission journeys (2 Tim 4:11). According to tradition, Luke was born in Antioch to a Greek family (Col. 4:4). His father’s name was Aeneas and his mother was Iris. Originally, they had been slaves of the Roman Tribune, Priscus in Rome. When Priscus’ son, Diodorus Cyrinus was appointed as a Roman judge in Antioch, Aeneas and Iris were sent with Cyrinus’s family. But because of their faithfulness and diligence, Priscus already freed them in Rome. With their freedom, however, Aeneas and Iris decided to continue to live with Cyrinus’ family. Luke’s childhood was not easy due to three major events. First his father, Aeneas died trying to put out a fire that was engulfing his master’s home. Second, Cyrinus’ wife, Aurelia who was like a second mother for Luke, died delivering a child. Third, and most significantly, Cyrinus’ daughter and his best friend, Rubria, became ill and died at the age of 14. When Cyrinus received a new position in Rome, he married Iris and adopted Luke as his step-son before moving to Rome. Luke did not follow his new family and instead, went to Alexandria to study medicine. While he studied there, he met the Jewish Christian teacher, ben Gamliel. We do not know exactly who Gamliel was but he might be one of the teachers who listened to boy Jesus when Jesus visited the Jerusalem Temple at the age of 12. Gamliel told this boy Jesus’ story with other stories to Luke, but Luke was not moved. Rather, he was bitter toward God because he had witnessed the death of three very close people. In particular, he had prayed earnestly to an unknown God for Rubria and was completely heart-broken when she died. He said, “If God is love, why did he take away innocent people’s lives.”7 After finishing his medical studies, he moved to Antioch and then to and worked as a ship doctor. Although appointed Luke to be a physician of Rome due to his family background (being the step-son of Cyrinus) and because he was widely known as a great physician even at a young age, Luke declined the offer because he had compassion for the sick people among the poor and the underserved. One day, as he was walking

5 Shino, Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani VII, 555.

6 Joo-Chan Kim, The Seven Churches in Asia Minor (Seoul, Korea: SanDukJeong Publshing, 2002), 22 7 Taylor Coldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician: A Novel About Luke, (Original English Edition By Doubleday and Company, Garden City, NY, 1959) 6, 188. [ Reprinted in 2008 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco by permission of the Taylor Caldwell Prestie Corporation c/o Willian Morris Agency, LLC 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY]

3 along the streets, he passed by a black slave. No one was interested in buying this slave because he was dumb. So Luke bought him and freed him. But this freedman now wanted to serve Luke. So Luke took him to his home and named him Ramus. One day Luke received a letter from Joseph ben Gamliel. The letter was written before Gamliel died. In it, Gamliel prayed for Luke to know Jesus.8 After reading Gamliel’s letter, Luke sent Ramus to Israel and asked him to investigate about Jesus. Ramus visited all the areas Jesus went to and wrote what had happened in Israel, especially and the surrounding areas during the time of Jesus and, what Jesus had done in his earthly messianic ministry.9 Although Luke became convicted that Jesus is the he could not accept him. Later on, he travelled to Troas to Philippi where he met Paul in a boat from Acts 16.10 Even though they never met before, they acted as if they were like old friends. While listening to Paul, Luke accepted Jesus as his own savior and became Paul’s companion as well as his personal doctor and began to travel with Paul until Paul’s death in between AD 49-68. After Paul’s death, he went to Ephesus. There he met Apostle John and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Can you imagine meeting and listening to one of 12 Jesus’ disciples, Apostle John who told him all the stories of Jesus? Can you imagine meeting and listening to Mary who bore the very child, the and the Messiah of the world? Luke began to write two books in the , Luke and Acts, after listening to Apostle John and Mary around AD 79. In these two books, he addresses the audience as “most excellent ”. Many people wonder who this Theophilus is? Some scholars point out that “theo” means God and “philius” is love. So they think that Luke wrote for those who love God. However, others scholars believe that this Theophilus was actually Vespasian’s older brother, Titus Flavius Sabinus II or a husband of Vespasin’s grand niece, Flavius Clemens. Luke wrote his two books to Clemens in order to protect Christians hiding his name. But there is some controversy over this theory since there was about a 20 year gap between his writing and Domitian’s persecution in AD 95. Near the end of his life, Luke went to Achaea, the region of Corinth and Athens and died while he preached the gospel. After his death, Apostle John brought his body to Ephesus and buried him there, and then moved to Constantinople. Some say his body is now in the St. Peter Church in Rome or the St. Giustina Church in Padova.11 Vespasian’s second son Domitian became the Roman emperor (AD 81-96) after Titus (AD 79-81). During his reign, he brought on the second persecution of Christians in AD 95. Actually he did not have any ill feelings towards the Christians. Romans at that time did not care about what other people believed since there were about 300,000 in Rome. Still, Domitian felt that at the very least, the royal family, since they were Romans, must believe in the Roman gods and them. As he did not have any children, he adopted his niece’s two sons as his own, to be future Roman emperors. This was not an uncommon practice. However, he learned that his niece, Flavia Domitilla and her husband, Flavius Clemens were Christians who did not worship the Roman gods. Therefore, he accused them as being atheists and also practicing Jewish customs. He executed Clemens and condemned Domitilla into exile. This brought on the persecution of Christians. Apostle John was arrested in Ephesus and sent to the island of . He quarried stones in the day and prayed in a cave at night. One night, John saw a . He called his assistant, Prochoros to write down ’s . In the midst of persecution, Revelation displays a much more negative attitude towards Rome than the rest of the . He said in :1, 6, “the great harlot…drunk with the blood of the and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” When Domitian’s reign came to an end, John was released and went to Ephesus. One day, he stood at an amphitheater in Ephesus and

8 Ibid., 333

9 Joo-Chan Kim, The Seven Churches in Asia Minor, 26

10 Luke used the pronoun "we" 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16, indicating that Luke was with Paul when the events described in these passages took place.

11 His authorship is supported by the uniform testimony of early Christian writings (e.g., the Muratorian , a.d. 170, and the works of Irenaeus, c. 180).

4 shouted to the people, “In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” His assistant Prochoros wrote down what Apostle John said. This became the book of John. John died around AD 100 in Ephesus.12 During the reign of Emperor (AD 117-138), there was another revolt in Jerusalem. A Jewish zealot named Simon Bar Kohkba raised the revolutionary war against Rome between AD 132-135. The Romans captured any Jew including Jewish Christians and cast them out of Jerusalem. In this way, not even one Jew could live in Jerusalem anymore. Instead, they spread throughout the Roman Empire and began to be called the “Diaspora” or “Dispersion.” Since then, the Christian leadership passed to the Gentile Christians.13

2. Ignatius of Antioch, the Bearer of God

About AD 115, the elderly bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, was condemned to death by the imperial authorities. Since great festivities were being planned in Rome in celebration of a military , Ignatius was sent to the capital so that his death would help amuse the people. On his way to martyrdom, he wrote seven letters that are among the most valuable documents to our knowledge of early Christianity. Ignatius was probably born around AD 30 and he was one of the little children whom Jesus picked up and placed on his lap14 saying, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them for the kingdom of belongs to such as these” (Mk 9:35). By the beginning of the second century, Ignatius had gained great prestige in the Christian community because he was bishop to one of the most ancient churches, the . Antioch was founded as a Greek city in 300 BC in the wake of ’s conquests. In Ignatius’ era, four hundred years later, it was the capital of the Roman province of with about half a million residents. It was an affluent, cosmopolitan city with ethnic and religious diversity that was centered at a major crossroads between Asia Minor to the west, to the east, Palestine and Egypt to the south. Rome stationed three infantry divisions in Antioch to control Syria, , Palestine and Armenia as well as to watch the Persian military’s movements. If Antioch ranks with Rome as an important imperial city, it ranks with Jerusalem as an important city for the origin of Christianity. Indeed, it was at Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians” (Acts11:26). As recorded in the Book of Acts, the Antiochene church quickly recognized the legitimacy of mission work among the Gentiles. However, some skeptics in Jerusalem grew concerned, so they dispatched Barnabas to check things out. By the guidance of the Spirit, he immediately recognized the work among the Gentiles as the grace of God. He visited Tarsus and brought Saul (Paul) to Antioch. From Antioch, Paul and his companions set out on their missionary journeys with the news of God’s grace for Jews and Gentiles alike. But some men from Jerusalem arrived who argued that Christians should follow the Jewish law. This meant that the Gentile Christians should be Jews first. Paul vehemently opposed such legalism. The legalists who were advocating this sort of legalism had already been afflicting the Galatian churches. Even Peter and Barnabas fell prey to their error (Gal 2:11-21) and Paul opposed Peter to his face. After some heated argument, the Antiochene church sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem for an authoritative decision on the matter (Acts 15). Peter delivered a speech at the meeting which shows he had finally endorsed freedom of Christianity from the requirements of the Law. The council decreed that circumcision was not required for . What does all this have to do with Ignatius? Understanding this background helps clarify the same issues Ignatius was facing in Antioch sixty years later. Even though the council seemed to have reconciled with the Jewish legalists, called , they were not the only source of opposition to Ignatius. He faced another major opponent

12 Joo-Chan Kim, 152.

13 Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, 21-22.

14 Bryan M. Litfin, Getting To Know The Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction, 34.

5 in Antioch as well—the Gnostics. The term “Gnostic” is derived from the Greek word for knowledge, . was not a coherent or uniform set of beliefs. Rather, it was an array of movements that shared many common tendencies and features. The roots of the Gnostic heresy in Antioch go back to the earliest days of the church. In Acts 6:5 we read of an Antiochene Gentile named Nicolaus who had converted to and then to Christianity. Some early church fathers testified that Nicolaus did not remain in the true faith, for he reported to be the founder of the immoral sect mentioned in Relation 2:6, 14-15 called the Nicolaitans. The practices of the Nicolaitans included eating meat sacrificed to idols and indulging in loose sexual standards, evidently in an attempt to make Christianity more appealing to the masses and to reconcile it with pagan culture. The Nicolaitans were seen as forerunners of Gnosticism. The evidence from the ancient Christian writers strongly suggests that organized Gnostic doctrines were being vigorously propagated in Ignatius’s Antioch by very capable teachers. As a result, Ignatius fought against dual opponents, the legalists and the Gnostics.15 It is not clear whether he was accused before the authorities by a pagan, or by a dissident Christian who sought to undo him. In any case, for one or another Ignatius was arrested, tried and condemned to die in Rome. On their way to Rome, Ignatius and the soldiers guarding him passed through Asia Minor. A number of Christians from that area went to see him. Ignatius was able to see them and converse with them. It was because there was no general persecution of Christians throughout the Empire at this time, but that only those brought before the courts were condemned. This was why Ignatius could receive visitors. Ignatius’ seven letters are the outcome of these visits. He had received the bishop, two elders and a from the church in Magnesia. From Tralles, Bishop Polybius had come. Ephesus had sent a delegation headed by Bishop , who may well have been the same person about whom Paul wrote to Philemon. To each of these churches, Ignatius addressed a letter from Smyrna. Later, from Troas, he wrote three other letters; one to the church in Smyrna, another to its bishop Polycarp and a third to the church in Philadelphia. But the most significant letter was the one that Ignatius wrote from Smyrna to the church in Rome. Christians in Rome were considering the possibility of freeing him from death. He did not look upon this with favor. He wrote to them;

“I fear your kindness, which may harm me. You may be able to achieve what you plan. But if you pay no heed to my request it will be very difficult for me to attach unto God.” 16

As Ignatius goes on to say, his purpose is to be an imitator of of his God, that is, Jesus Christ. As he faces the ultimate , Ignatius that he begins to be a ; and therefore all that he wants from Christians in Rome is that they pray, not that he be freed, but that he may have the strength to face every trial. Shortly thereafter, Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna wrote to the Christians in Philippi asking for news regarding Ignatius. The answer from the Philippians has been lost, although it seems certain that Ignatius died as he expected shortly after he arrived in Rome.17

3.

Justin Martyr was born in around AD 100 where Jesus had met the woman at the well in . Young Justin was a lover of philosophy and made his way to Ephesus around AD 130 in order to study different philosophical teachers. His first teacher represented the stoic philosophy. Justin devoted himself to this teacher for an extended time. But eventually he grew disillusioned with for the teacher appeared to have no personal knowledge of God. This contrasted with his own view that it is “truly the duty of philosophy to investigate the

15 Litfin, 39.

16 Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, 43. 17 Ibid.,

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Deity.”18 This seemed to be unworthy of a person truly devoted to . So he next tried a prominent Pythagorean teacher who scolded Justin for not being educated in music, astronomy and geometry. He was deeply discouraged by demanding much time to study the preliminary matters. Finally he decided to try a teacher who was highly respected by the Platonists. emphasized finding the highest spiritual ideals which transcend the physical world. So he went one day to a lonely spot by the sea to contemplate Plato’s philosophy. There he met an old man who looked for his household. So they struck up a conversation and soon were engaged in a deep philosophical discourse about how to find God. Justin advocated a Platonic method whereby God was found through inner reasoning in the mind’s eye. But the old man pointed Justin in a different direction: to divine revelation. “Will the mind of man see God at any time, if it is uninstructed by the ?” he asked. The old man showed Justin that the philosophers had contradictory opinions on spiritual matters, so they could not be trusted to guide the seeker to ultimate truth. “If even the wisest teachers and philosophers do not know the truth,” Justin asked, “then where should I turn?” At this point the old man directed Justin to the Scriptures. The old man urged Justin with these words, “Pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom.” 19 The old man went on his way, and Justin never saw him again. In his the young truth seeker was deeply moved by what he had heard. He described his conversion experience like this:

“Straightway a was kindled in my soul; and a love of the , and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me; and while revolving his words in my mind, I found this [Christian] philosophy alone to be safe and profitable. Thus, and for this reason, I am a philosopher. Moreover, I wish that everyone, making a resolution similar to my own, would not keep themselves away from the words of the Savior.” 20

In Justin, a new kind of Philosopher had been born: one who grounded his philosophy in the Lord Jesus as the source of all truth. It was the beginning of an important trend in the ancient church. He did not wear toga like the Roman men, but wore the pallium, a Greek fashion which signaled a simple lifestyle, and identified its wearer as a philosopher. He walked the streets of Ephesus. One day while Justin was walking the street wearing his philosopher’s robe, he was greeted by a stranger. “Good morning, Philosopher!” called the man as he joined Justin at his side. The man introduced himself as Trypho, a Jewish who had recently fled Palestine to escape the war (instigated by Simon Bar Kohkba AD 132-135). Justin and Trypho began to converse about spiritual matters. Soon they were delving into biblical argumentation and theological apologetics from opposite angles. Their discussion went on two days. About twenty-five years later, Justin wrote down an account of the exchange, known as the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. In the Dialogue Justin offered many Christian explanations of prophecies and defended the of Christ. We do not know when Justin arrived in Rome. He opened a Christian school. He instructed students in theological philosophy, and also engaged in oral and written debates with pagans, heretics and Jews. He also wrote his First Apology to address to Emperor Antoninus Pius, which was published in AD 155 and attempted to explain the faith. Christianity was not a threat to the state, he asserted, and should be treated as a legal . He wrote "on

18 Thomas B. Falls, St. Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypo, revised by Thomas P. Halton (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), ANF1:194. 19 Litfin, 34.

20 Ibid.,

7 behalf of men of every nation who are unjustly hated and reviled."21 Justin's Second Apology was written soon after Marcus Aurelius became emperor in AD 161.22 In these writings, Justin tried to show that the Christian faith alone was truly rational. He taught that the (Word) became incarnate to teach humanity truth and to redeem people from the power of the demons. Here I would like to mention about Five Good Emperors; Nerva (AD 96-98), Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (AD 98-117), Publius Aelius Hadrianus (AD 117-138), Titus Antonius Pius (AD 138-161), and Marcus Aurelius (AD 161-180). They call the Golden Age, “Saeculum Aureum” on the reign of these five emperors (AD 96-180). The territory of the Roman Empire was largest at that time. They built up infrastructure in hardware and software systems which were complete that people whether Roman citizen or non-Roman citizen could travel to any place without fear and visa. Marcus Aurelius was one of the most enlightened minds of his age, a Platonic Philosopher. His book Meditations was one of the literary masterpieces of the time. He had one wife with 14 children, even though not all children survived. Even though he did not look for Christians to be condemned, he did not prevent Christian persecution.23 Justin’s boldness soon brought him into confrontation with a pagan teacher named Crescens who adhered to the philosophy of Cynicism. Crescens used Justin’s Second Apology to bring him to the authorities. Justin was brought to the Rusticus along with six of his friends. Rusticus asked Justin to summarize his doctrine. Without hesitation, Justin answered by describing his in one God, the maker of all things, and in his Son the Lord Jesus Christ who was predicted by the prophets. Next Rusticus examined Justin’s companions, including a woman. All of them confessed their faith in Christ. Fed up with the dialogue, Resticus got to the point. He ordered them to make to the gods, which they refused to do. Justin’s bold reply was:

“through prayer we can be saved on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, even when we have been punished [by you], because this shall become to us salvation and confidence at the more fearful and universal judgment— seat of our Lord and Savior.” 24

Rusticus dismissed Justin and his companions to be tied to a pole and mercilessly whipped. After this agony the Christian were beheaded. So it was Justin earned the name by which he is known to history: Justin Martyr.

4. Irenaeus of Lyons

Irenaeus came to ministry in the western part of the Roman Empire, but he was born in the East and retained many points of contact with his native Asia Minor. Though we don’t know the exact date of his birth, scholars assign a date somewhere around AD 130. He grew up in Smyrna where Bishop Polycarp presided over the church. It was Polycarp whom Irenaeus remembered as a powerful and formative presence during the early years of his life. Through Polycarp, who had been a disciple of the Apostle John, the boy Irenaeus felt that he was experiencing a living connection with the apostolic age. He wrote:

21 Christianity Today, Justin Martyr Defender of the “true Philosopher,” [cited 31 December, 2013]. Online: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/evangelistsandapologists/martyr.html?start=2 22 Ibid.,

23 Shino, translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romanni VI, 137-146.

24 Erwin R. Goodenough, The of Justin Martyr (Asterdam, Netherland: Philo Press, 1968), 58-59.

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“I am able to describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and the manner of his life, and his physical appearance, and his discourses to the people, and the accounts which he gave of his time spent with John and others who had seen the Lord. And as he remembered their words, and what he had heard from them concerning the Lord and his and teaching, having received it from eyewitnesses of the ‘Word of Life,’ Polycarp passed on these things in harmony with the Scripture.” 25

Irenaeus sat in rapt attention listening to Polycarp’s holy memories, “noting them down not on paper, but in my heart.” Can you imagine sitting at the feet of a godly saint as he recalled the Apostle John’s recollections about his years spent with Jesus? Such was Irenaeus’ boyhood experience. It gave him a deep appreciation for the unbroken continuity of the Christian faith since the time of the apostles. Eventually Irenaeus immigrated to Gaul, a western mission field far from his home in Asia Minor. Scholars suggest that while on the way he stayed at Rome for a time. The chronology certainly makes this possible, for Justin was active in Rome at precisely the time Irenaeus would have been there. Irenaeus’ writings reveal that he held Justin in high regard and used him as a source of information about . to the coming of the Romans, the land we call France had long been populated with pagan Celtic tribes. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in 52 BC, bringing the defeated Celtic chieftain Vercingetorix to Rome in chains. In 43 BC the Romans established a hilltop town called Lugdunum (Lyons), the capital of Roman Gaul and served as the hub of an important road system and all Roman coins were made in Lyons. Our first historical evidence of Christianity in Gaul comes from a fierce persecution which broke out at Lyons and the nearby town of Vienne in AD 177, while Irenaeus was residing there. The ancient church historian Eusebius has preserved for us the letter which revealed that many brave believers from Gaul went to their deaths through horrendous tortures, and they wanted their fellow Christians in other lands to know about their sufferings for the Lord. Among the martyrs was the young slave girl Blandina, whose frail, petite body made the Christians wonder whether she was strong enough to make good her confession. But Blandina put their doubts to rest by enduring the most painful agonies the Roman sadists could inflict. They tortured her in shifts from morning to evening, until at last “they acknowledged that they were conquered, and could do nothing more to her. And they were astonished at her endurance, as her entire body was mangled and broken. Blandina repeated the same refrain over and over: “I am a Christian, and there is nothing vile done by us.”26 Another famous martyr of Gaul was named Sanctus. The torturers fastened red-hot brass plates and tormented him until he was “one complete wound and bruise, drawn out shape, and altogether unlike a human form.” The Romans threw him in a dungeon for a few days, and then brought him back to torture that he could not bear the touch of a hand, if they should again apply the same instruments they would overcome him.” The letter from the churches of Lyons and Vienne claims that just the opposite happened: “contrary to all human expectation, his body arose and stood erect in the midst of the subsequent torments, and resumed its original appearance and the use of its limbs, so that through the grace of Christ, these second sufferings became to him not torture, but healing.”27 Eventually Sanctus, Blandina, and many other confessors were thrown to the wild beasts in the Amphitheater of the Three (whose ruins can still be seen in Lyons today). There aged bishop of Lyons, Pothinus, who also died during the persecution from suffocation in the stifling prison. When the persecution subsided, Irenaeus was named to take Pothinus’ place as bishop. We do not know much about his ministry in Lyons. He probably embraced Christians after great persecution. One thing we know is that he maintained close ties with the church at Rome and fought Gnosticism. His first book was called Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, in which Irenaeus commented on the

25 Eusebius has recorded for posterity Irenaeus’ letter describing his childhood memories. It is found in Church History 5.20.7-7 (NPNF ser. 2, 1:238-239, slightly adapted for clarity). 26 Eusebius had recorded for posterity Irenaeus’s letter describing his childhood memories. It is found in Church History 5.1.19 (NPNF ser. 2, 2:214).

27 Ibid., 5.1.24 (NPNF ser. 2, 2:214).

9 basic he knew in his day and defended apostolic doctrine through scriptural . But most scholars consider Irenaeus’ other surviving work, his five-volume treatise entitled, The Detection and Overthrow of What Is Falsely Called ‘Knowledge.’ Today it usually goes by its shorter name, Against Heresies. The Gnostics were vigorous and capable teachers who were propagating their own peculiar views of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul opposed such early Gnostic-type beliefs in his epistle to the Colossians. The false teachers in Colosse had embraced human philosophies (2:8), Jewish legalism (2:16), the worship of angelic powers (2:18), and on the premise that the body is (2:21-23). These are some of the same features we discover in later, more developed Gnosticism. In contrast Paul says the true “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (2:3) can be found only in Christ, who reconciled all things by the blood of His cross (1:20). The writings of the Apostle John also reveal that Gnosticizing ideas had gained a strong following the first century. In respond John says, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching [of Christ himself], do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting” (2 :10). While an incipient Gnostic movement can be identified in the New Testament period, it is the second century which saw an explosion of formal Gnostic sects. They grew organized, and their teachers who were often intellectuals, grew more sophisticated. At a critical juncture in church history, Irenaeus immediately recognized the danger and offered his second book, Against Heresies as the Christian answer. By Irenaeus’ day, the multihued conglomerate of Gnostic beliefs had become a potent force that threatened to swamp the orthodox church. Especially, he records the doctrines of one particular brand of Gnosticism taught by a teacher named (or more precisely, by his disciples Ptolemy). For the Valentinian Gnostics, there were three kinds of people corresponding to the division of the human being into body, soul, and spirit. All human beings are divided into three classes; the physical, the soulish, and the spiritual. The lost “physical” people of the world are the pagan unbelievers. The “soulish” are people like Irenaeus who belong to the orthodox churches. Although they don’t have full gnosis or understanding of the truth, they can reach salvation through good works. Of course, the highest humans are the Gnostics themselves, who are the only true Christians. They do not have to perform good works since their salvation is assured by their inborn “spiritual” natures. Therefore, they can engage in certain activities (such as attending gladiator games or seducing married women) which are off limits to others.28 The rules of the common believers do not apply to them. There was another group of Gnostics which often said the “Christ” inhabited the body of the man Jesus of , but his body was not made of real flesh. Irenaeus viewed these heretics as a deadly threat to the church and fought against them to the end. The Gnostics robbed Christianity of what is actually its centerpiece: the saving work of Christ on the cross, and his bodily resurrection from the grave. This is exactly what the apostles had emphasized so clearly. Their preaching centered on the Crucified and Risen One. Repeating a very ancient summary of the gospel, Paul wrote, “What I received I pass on to you that Christ died for our sin according the Scriptures, that he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures” ( 1 Cor. 15:3-4) Irenaeus recognized that the Gnostics were not telling the same story that the apostles had told, so he made their lack of apostolicity a major part of his “refutation and overthrow.” Later tradition asserts that Irenaeus died as a martyr, but no certain evidence of this fact exists.

5. Tertullian of Carthage

Tertullian was born around AD 160 at Carthage, presently Tunisia, as a son of a Roman centurion. According to legend, Carthage was founded around 800 BC by a Phoenician queen named Dido. As the Republic of Rome began to grow in power, Carthage became its chief rival. Carthaginian general brought elephants across the Alps to fight the Roman legions during the Punic Wars.29 Eventually Rome triumphed and Carthage was razed to

28 Litfin, 86.

29 Shiono, translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani II, 458.

10 the ground and abandoned for a century. But Caesar Augustus resurrected it to serve as the capital of the newly- created province of Africa. Soon, Carthage was second only to Rome as a cultural and educational center in the West, and Tertullian received an exceptional in grammar, , literature, philosophy, and law. Little is known of his early life. After completing his education in Carthage, he went to Rome, probably in his late teens or early 20s, to study further and perhaps begin work as a lawyer. While in Rome, he became interested in the Christian movement, but not until he returned to Carthage toward the end of the was he converted to the Christian faith. In his early works he indicated that he was impressed by certain Christian attitudes and beliefs: the courage and determination of martyrs, moral rigorism, and an uncompromising belief in one God. By the end of the 2nd century the church in Carthage had become large, firmly established, and well organized, and was rapidly becoming a powerful force in North Africa. There, Tertullian wrote many treatises in the language. He was a master of the Latin language—the first Christian author to use this noble tongue instead of Greek. Although his abbreviated style often made it difficult to ascertain his exact meaning, nobody could miss his main points. With his words, he protected the Christians of his day by enclosing them in a fence made of words of God. He did two great things; defended against the heretic, Marcion and laid the foundation for the of the Bible.

First, we can see Tertullian’s fence-building at its best in his work called Prescription Against Heretics. In this treatise he marked out a safe space for the orthodox believers to live. The Gnostics constantly quoted Jesus’ words “Seek and you shall find” as for their theological deliberation. Tertullian responded emphatically, “My first principle is this: Christ laid down one definite system of truth, which the world must believe without qualification, and which we must seek precisely in order to believe it when we find it.”30 When it comes to something abstract like doctrine or ideas, how are we to know where the boundary line is drawn? In other words, how do we know what Christ really taught? Like Irenaeus before him, Tertullian believed the most convenient synopsis of Christian truth was found in the Rule of Faith. What then is the Rule of Faith? Did Tertullian’s appreciation for the Rule of Faith mean he preferred it over the Scriptures? One thing we should understand is that there was no completed Bible yet like our time. For Tertullian (as for all of the church fathers) the criterion for Christian truth was agreement with the teachings of Jesus Christ himself. Who were the people who closely listened to Jesus’ teachings? Obviously it was the apostles—those to whom Christ had revealed himself directly. And so, assuming the Rule was a summary of the apostles’ teaching, it was the key by which Scripture’s true meaning could be unlocked. In contrast, the interpretations of the heretic, which did not conform to the Rule, were shown to be erroneous because they lacked congruence with apostolic doctrine. Tertullian’s longest work is a five-volume anti- heretical treatise which is notable not only for its bulk, but because it blossomed into a sustained effort at verse-by- verse scriptural exegesis. As such it is considered one of the first Christian biblical commentaries. The work is known as Against Marcion, which immediately causes us to ask: Who was this fellow Marcion? And what made Tertullian direct the full force of his debater’s rhetoric against him in five long volumes? Marcion was a rich businessman with an interest in church affairs. As is often true in such cases, his money gave him the opportunity to propagate his own peculiar theology. He was from Sinope, a port city in the region of along the Black Sea. From that base he made his fortune in international shipping. But even as a young man, his theology was beginning to go astray. His father who was probably a bishop, was forced to excommunicate his son for heresy. So what was a young, rich and charismatic do? He went to Rome around AD 140 and made a huge donation to the church. But when the leaders found out what he was teaching, they returned the sum in full and excommunicated him. Yet this powerful man did not disappear off the scene; he became the overseer of a network of Marcionite churches. Once Polycarp ran into Marcion at Rome but completely ignored him. Marcion was feeling

30 Litfin , 100.

11 insecure and demanded of the bishop, “Acknowledge me!” “I do acknowledge you,” replied Polycarp. “You are the firstborn of !” 31

What made the church fathers so angry at Marcion? Why would Tertullian take five volumes to demolish this heretic? In a nutshell, Marcion taught that there are two Gods. The God that Marcion saw in the Old Testament was cruel, arbitrary, petty, warlike, and stupid. He was more than simply a God of strict justice: he was literally a very mean God. This even said horrible things such as “I create evil” (Isa. 45:7). In contrast, Jesus came to announce a new or “alien” God. The Father God was loving, kind, and forgiving. According to Marcion, the Jews worshiped the old Creator who had fashioned our contemptible world. But all along there has always been another God. Formerly unknown to humankind, he eventually sent Jesus to tell us that our sins are automatically forgiven without any punishment. Jesus’ purpose was to announce universal salvation for everyone. To do this he did not really need a human body; so Marcion (like the Gnostics) was a docetist who denied a real incarnation. Marcion’s dislike for the God of the Jews had profound implication for his understanding of the Bible. He completely rejected the Old Testament as being irrelevant for Christians. With respect to the New Testament, Marcion accepted only the and the letters of Paul. Marcion saw himself as the true inheritor of Paul.

Second, the canon of scripture. The word “canon” comes from the Greek word, kanon, which referred to a straight read used as a measuring rod. Books that are canonical “measure up” to the ultimate standard, thus becoming a measure of truth themselves. The process of canonization for the Old and New Testaments followed different courses. The early Christians had embraced the Jewish scriptures from the very beginning. While they were not always clear about the exact boundaries of some disputed writings, the core books of the law and the prophets invariably possessed authoritative status in the church. However, the ancient Christians did not at first refer to these works as the “Old Testament.” They were simply called “Scripture,” and quotations were often introduced with the formula, “It is written…” The earliest believers did not have any awareness a second “Testament” to complement the first. For them the scriptures were the writings that Jesus himself had read and interpreted. In this process of recognition, we can discern four stages:

First Century: Writing of the Biblical Texts. Most evangelical scholars would agree that all twenty-seven books which comprise the New Testament were completed by the first century. (AD 50-60—Paul’s , AD 54— Mark, AD 69—Mathew, AD 79—Luke and Acts, AD 95-97 John and Revelation) It is important to note that from a theological perspective, the inspired books are Scripture from the very moment of their writing.

Second Century: Authoritative Core Texts, With Some Dispute. During the second century the core of the New Testament came to have widespread authority throughout the church. This is not to say the biblical writings had possessed no authority before, for they certainly did. But what we find in the early to mid-second century is that Christianity became more of a book-based religion than it had been previously. Back in the apostolic days, the eyewitnesses of Jesus were still alive, so Christianity was spread through verbal proclamation rather than through texts. At that time it was still primarily an oral religion. The situation obviously changed in the second century and thus the faith became more literary. There was a greater sense that the Christian religion possessed its own central books. During this period the four and the letters of Paul crystallized as core works. Other important writings such as Acts, 1 John, and 1 Peter were widely viewed as authoritative as well. However, there were some New Testament books that the early believers were unsure about (such as the tiny letters of 2 and 3 John). And there were other uninspired writings, such as an epistle thought to have been written by Barnabas. So the shape of the cannon at this time was an authoritative core. And Tertullian played a vital role in the canonization process. Tertullian wrote:

31 Ibid., 106.

12

“I lay it down as my first position, that the evangelical Testament has apostles for its authors, to whom the Lord Himself assigned this of publishing the gospel…Of the apostles, John and Mathew [who were Jesus’ disciples] first instilled faith into us; and the apostolic men Luke and Mark renewed it afterwards. These men all started with the same principles of the faith: the one and only Creator God, and His Christ who was born of the and came to fulfill the law and the prophets. Never mind if some variation occurs in the order of their narratives, provided that there is agreement in the essential matter of the faith—in which there is [total] disagreement with Marcion.” 32

Third Century: Awareness of a Two-Testament Bible. Irenaeus was the first to use the term “New Testament” in connection with a body of writings. A little later Tertullian was even more clear in his usage of this term. In fact, he is the church father to whom we assign the honor of giving us the literal term “New Testament” (from the Latin novum testamentum). We see, then, that at the dawn of the third century a new awareness arose among the Christian faithful: that their Bible was comprised of both an Old and New Testament. The church continued to function with this awareness for more than a century, until Emperor Constantine’s imperial acceptance pronouncements about the extent of the biblical cannon.

Fourth Century: List-Making, Exclusion, and Final Closure of the Cannon. When the church found itself no longer persecuted by Roman authorities, and instead being favored by the emperor, it gained new opportunities to define its sacred cannon. Constantine told his trusted advisor Eusebuis to have fifty copies of the scriptures made for use in prominent congregations. Eusebuis took great interest in the matter of the cannon, listing out those books he believed to be definitely canonical during the fourth century.33 However, the first list was in all of church history to clearly and unequivocally accept the twenty-seven books of the New Testament which was composed by Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in the year of AD 367. Thirty years later, a council at Carthage ratified this same list (except for Revelation, which was added a few years after that). Here we see that the canonization of the New Testament as a centuries-long process. It was begun informally as soon as people like Peter started calling Paul’s epistles “scripture” (2 Pe. 3:16). But it wasn’t really completed until around the year AD 400. From this point on, the church had possessed a closed New Testament canon. Do you know how the “Apostles’ Creed” was formed? It had happened in the time of Maricon heresy. The purpose of that creed was clearly to reject and counteract the teachings of Gnosticism and Marcion.34 Marcion tried the first attempt to put together a “New Testament.” To respond to Marcion’s challenge, the church at large began to compile a list of sacred Christian writings, and called it the “New Testament.” Another element in the church’s response to heresies was what we now call the “Apostles’ Creed.” The notion is that the apostles gathered before beginning their mission and composed this creed in Rome around the year of AD 150. It was then called “symbol of the faith.” The word, “symbol” in this context did not have the meaning that it has for us today; rather, it meant a means of recognition, such as a token that a general gave to a messenger, so that the recipient could recognize a true messenger. Likewise, the “symbol” put together in Rome was a means whereby Christians could distinguish true believers form those who followed the various heresies circulating at the time, particularly Gnosticism and . Any who could affirm this creed were neither Gnostics nor Marcionistes. One of the main uses of this “symbol” was in baptism, where it was presented to the candidates in the form of a series of three questions:

Do you believe in almighty? Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy and of Mary the virgin, who was crucified under , and died rose again at the third day, living from among the dead, and ascended unto heaven and sat at the right of the Father, and will come to

32 Thomas P. O’Mally, Tertullian and the Bible: Language, Imagery, Exegesis (Nijmen: Dekker &van de Vegt, 1967), 72-73.

33 This is the first 50 Bible copies. 34 Justo L. Ganzalez, Church History: An Essential Guide (Nashville, TN: Abringdon Press, 1996), 29.

13

judge the quick and the dead? Do you believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy church, and the resurrection of the flesh? 35

Two things stand out in reading these questions. The first is that we have here the core of what later came to be called the “Apostles’ Creed.” The second is that this creed had been built around the Trinitarian formula that was used in baptism. Since one was baptized “in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” these questions were posed as a test of true belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In the time of Tertullian, there was persecution in Carthage. According to the surviving text, The Passion of Saints , Perpetua was born into the family of a high-ranking official in Roman North Africa. She and her household slaves, Revocatus and Felicity with two other companions named Saturnius and Seundulus, were arrested and put into a dungeon. One day her father Vibius lay weeping at her feet—just as she had been laid at his feet as a newborn. “My daughter,” Vibius cried, “have pity on me!”36 It was hard for her to bear it. Later they entered the arena and were mauled by the wild animals. Their courage was spread throughout the world and Perpetua was known as the prophetic.

6. Origen of Alexandria

Origen was born in the year of AD 185 in Alexandria, Egypt. When he was seventeen, his father Leonides was taken prisoner and martyred under the persecution of Emperor Septimus Severus in AD 202. With all the zeal of a teenager, Origen wanted to rush to the prison to join his father in death. But his mother could not bear the loss of her son as well as her husband, so she hid his clothes so he could not go outside. When Origen was young, his father drilled him in the Bible and made him recite it daily. His father homeschooled him with unusual rigor, giving him a fine education that he became a teacher. Teaching was a respected occupation in Alexandria, a city known throughout the world for its intellectualism. (Julius Caesar automatically gave Roman citizenship to non-Romans who were teachers and medical doctors.)

Alexandria had been founded in 332 BC by the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great, who personally laid out the lines of the city that would bear his name. He chose a strip of land in the Nile delta between the Mediterranean shoreline and a freshwater lake. Two great harbors for sea traffic were built, while canals gave access to the Nile River and the Red Sea. The fertile delta soil produced an abundance of crops that guaranteed the region’s prosperity. Merchant ships came from everywhere to trade, guided into the port by a 400-foot-tall lighthouse that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. By Origen’s day the city was second in importance only to Rome—but Rome was certainly in terms of scholarship. This was because Alexander the Great had ordered a magnificent library to be built in this city. In the third century before the Christian era, the library housed around 500,000 books and scrolls (including many items ransacked from passing ships or permanently “borrowed” from other great cities). The intellectual heritage of Alexandria exerted a profound influence on Origen. Though he was long dead by Origen’s day, Plato’s philosophy lived on through his writings and his school of thought. He was the first to try to reconcile Greek philosophy with the revelation of the Bible through an allegorical method of interpretation.37 The young Origen went on to achieve unheard-of stature for a Christian theologian. He began to earn respect even from the secular philosophers of Alexandria. His brilliance soon became legendary, and pagan intellectuals from the Mediterranean came to dispute with him. He wrote many books. Among them, the most famous book was

35 Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, 63. 36 Litfin, 123. 37 But Origen receives a lot of criticism today because of his allegorical interpretive method.

14 called First Principles. The tile indicates his purpose: to lay out of Christian faith. Book four (4) provides his basic rules for interpreting scripture. The first thing Origen wished to establish was that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And he said that God had intentionally invested the Bible with multiple layers of meaning. But he points out an undeniable problem: divine inspiration does not prevent some people from interpreting scripture poorly. He was saying that most people fail to recognize the deeper truths enshrined within the pages of the Bible. Too often, interpreters stay at a superficial level, instead of perceiving the “mystical economies”—the spiritual insights to which the outer words of scripture often point. The interpreter is urged to move beyond the Bible’s “body” to discover its inner “soul.” He also used words like “senses” of scripture. The spiritual sense of scripture could take several forms. First and foremost, it offered a Christ-centered interpretation (even in obscure texts that did not obviously seem to be speaking about him). Other aspects of Origen’s spiritual sense included moral applications to the soul’s relationship with God or cosmic explanations about the final destiny of our world. Ask yourself: when you read the Book of Leviticus with all its Jewish legal technicalities, how on earth do you make it relevant if you can only rely on the literal sense? It’s pretty difficult to apply the regulations about sacrifices and ritual purity to our lives today. In contrast, Origen’s on Leviticus make room for Jesus Christ at every turn. He well-viewed all of Scripture as wondrously fertile and packed with allegorical possibilities. He believed this was the Bible’s own method of interpretation, for the Apostle Paul had said in Galatians 4:24 that an Old Testament reference “may be interpreted allegorically.” By means of divine allegory, every word on every page of Scripture could be made to speak with overflowing riches about Jesus Christ, the Christian life, and the Christian’s eternal hope. Origen was a bold man of action who became famous in Alexandria for his courageous witness. Despite the danger from the Roman authorities during a time of Christian persecution; Decius (AD 249-251) was the first emperor who issued a non-Christian certificate called Libellus in order to arrest Christians throughout the Roman world.38 When he died, Libellus also disappeared. Two years later, however, when Valerian (AD 253-260) became the emperor, he forbid any Christian meetings, and arrested Christians without , exiled and executed them. Valerian went to war against Sasan Persia (AD 226-651) and was captured by Sasan Parisian King Shahpuhr 1 in AD 260. This news became the biggest shocking news in the entire Roman Empire. Christians enjoyed peace until Diocletian (AD 284-305). Despite the danger from the Roman authorities, Origen continued to instruct new believers in the essentials of the faith even when other teachers had fled the city. In fact, several of his students went on to be martyred. At great personal risk Origen visited them in prison to encourage them; for he was more than just their teacher—he was their mentor and disciple. Eusebius, the historian writes;

“Not only was he with them while in bonds until their final condemnation, but when the holy martyrs were led to death he was very bold and went with them into danger. As he acted bravely, and with great boldness saluted the martyrs with a kiss, oftentimes the heathen multitude around them became infuriate and were at the point of rushing upon him…So great was the enmity of the unbelievers toward him, on account of the many people that were instructed by him in the sacred faith, that they placed of soldiers around him in the house where he lived. Day by day the persecution burned against him, so that the whole city could no longer contain him.” 39

Here we see a man who considered himself dead to the things of this world and alive only to Jesus Christ. In the his little book of encouragement called An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen put it in this way;

38 Shino, Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani XII, 231.

39 Eusebius, Church history 6.3.4 (NPNF ser. 2, 1:251, slightly adapted for clarity.)

15

“I think that God is loved with the whole soul by those who through their great longing for fellowship with him draw their soul away and separate it not only from their earthly body but also from every corporeal thing…If such a view seems hard to anyone, then he has not [truly] thirsted for God, the Mighty One, the living God.” 40

Origen’s zeal for martyrdom marked him as a Christian who understood the cost of discipleship. He wanted to purge his soul of any earthly affection that competed with the love of God. While Origen’s reputation as a fearless advocate of the Christian faith continued to grow, he also became known for his life of austerity and physical renunciation. However, his prominence in Alexandria brought him into conflict with the bishop Demetrius. Perhaps jealousy was involved. As Origen matured and became the leading Christian intellectual in the city, the conflict with Demetrius came to a head. Origen finally decided to move to Caesarea in Palestine, where the bishop was more favorably disposed toward him. He went on to have a long and productive career there. Of the great benefits of this new location was the availability of Jewish with whom Origen could have scholarly discussions about the and meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures. He also profited from his proximity to the lands of the Bible. He could actually visit the lands he was studying as he produced the numerous commentaries and sermons that marked this phase of his life. Unfortunately, those peaceful decades of productive ministry would not conclude with the gentle death of a respected scholar—though Origen probably wouldn’t have had it any other way. During the hot persecution of Emperor Decius which began on AD 250, Origen was thrown in prison as a prominent Christian leader. Eusebius says that “the demon of evil marshaled all his forces and fought against Origen.”41 Origen adamantly held on to his faith during the horrible tortures in the Roman dungeon. He endured burning by fiery implements and the extreme stretching of his limbs in the stocks. Though he was not killed in prison, the trauma of torture finally claimed Origen’s life. Later generations coined a nickname for Origen, Adamantius, which means “made of steel.”

7. Eusebius of Caesarea

When we hear the name of Eusebius, the first thing came to our mind is the greatest Christian historian. His book, Church History became the standard of Christian history, was translated in many languages and read last 1,800 years. However, he was not only the great Christian historian, but he was a bishop of Caesarea and an excellent scholar. The year of 250 to 312 was the most difficult time for Christians. The persecution reached the climax. The Christians could not stand on earth and against the severe persecution that they hid underground, so- called, catacomb. In this difficult time, Eusebius was born. He was born around the year of 260, most likely in Palestine where he spent most of his early years.42 He spent most of his life in Caesarea and that he served as bishop. That is why we call him Eusebius of Caesarea. But we knew nothing about his parents that whether he grew up in a Christian home or was converted as a youth. In any case, the person who left a deep impression on Eusebius was . Pamphilus was a native of Berytus—now , in —who had studied on Origen’s work in that city. After holding some important posts in Berytus, Pamphilus went to Caesarea, probably at the request of the bishop of that city. The church of Caesarea had kept Origen’s library and Pamphilus spent long working with it and adding to it with the help of young aids who were impressed by Pamphilus’s intellectual curiosity and profound faith. One of young aids was Eusebius. Pamphius was captivated by Eusebius’

40 Rowan Greer, Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer and Selected Works (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1971), 42.

41 Eusebius, Church History 6.39.5 (NPNF ser. 2, 1:281).

42 Gonzalez, 129-130

16 intellectualism. Pamphilus, Eusebius and several others spent several years working as a team, probably living, sleeping and eating in the same room. Eventually, the disciple outdid the master, and Eusebius traveled far and wide in quest of documents regarding Christian origins. During that period of joint work, Pamphilus and Eusebius wrote several books, although most of them have now been lost.

But their peaceful and scholarly life would come to an end. It was still the time of persecution and the treat that had always loomed on the horizon not became the storm of the great persecution under Diocletian. By June of 303, the persecution made itself felt in Caesarea. From then on, the storm grew worse. In 305 Maximinus Daia, a bitter enemy of Christianity achieved imperial rank. Two years later Pamphilus was arrested. But then there was a lull in the storm and the great Christian scholar simply remained in prison for two years before being condemned to death. During that time, he and Eusebius collaborated on a five-book Defense of Origen to which Eusebius added a sixth book after his teacher’s martyrdom. Eusebius was not arrested. Why this was so is not clear. At least on two occasions he left the city and one may suppose that part of his reason for doing so may have been to avoid arrest. At that time, most Christians held that there was no shame in hiding during a time of persecution, for martyrdom was something for which one had to be chosen by God. In any case, Eusebius did not suffer personally during the persecution. In the midst of such evil times, Eusebius carried on with what would become his most important work, his Church History. This work which he later revised is of great importance for later church historians. Without it, a great deal of the story that we have telling would have been lost. It was Eusebius who collected, organized and published practically all that is now known of many persons and episodes in the life of the early church. Without him, our knowledge of the early would be reduced by half. Finally, in 311 things began to change. First came the edict of Galerius. Then Constantine defeated Maxentinus, and Constantine and Licinius met and put the end to persecution. This is called the . From the point of view of Eusebius and his surviving companions, what was taking place was a direct intervention by God. From then on Eusebius—and probably similar a vast number of other Christians whose opinions were not set down in writing—began looking upon Constantine and Licinius as the instruments of the divine design. A few years before Constantine became sole emperor, Eusebius had been bishop of Caesarea. This was a great responsibility for persecution had disbanded his flock which he now had to gather and organize anew. Furthermore, the bishopric of Caesarea had jurisdiction, not only over the church in the city itself, but also over the rest of Palestine. Now become a and administrator, Eusebius had little time of his literary and scholarly pursuits.

He had been bishop of Caesarea for a number of years when a new storm came to break the peace of the church. This was not a matter of persecution by the government, but rather a bitter theological debate that threatened to rend the church asunder; the . Eusebius had met Constantine years before when the future emperor visited Palestine with Diocletian’s court. In Nicaea at the time of the Council, he saw the emperor seeking the unity and well-being of the church. He too seemed to be inclined towards at the Council of Nicaea at the beginning, but he took an opposite stance, only to waver again once the Council had disbanded. Because of this he was criticized. But Eusebius was convinced that after the great trials of his earlier years, Constantine had been raised up by God, he did not hesitate to support the emperor. In his final years, the draft of his Church History did not simply seek to retell the various events in the earlier life of the church. It was really apology that sought to show that Christianity was the ultimate goal of human history, particularly as seen within the context of the Roman Empire.

8. Athanasius of Alexandria

The year of AD 303 was not a good one for the Christian church. In this year the reigning emperor, Diocletian began to issue a series of edicts against the faith. First, church buildings were leveled and Bibles burned. Church leaders were thrown in prison. Finally the persecution was extended to all Christians. It was as if a mad rage had taken hold of the Roman Empire, particularly in the eastern provinces that many Christians sought their hidings in

17 catacombs in and in other places. Numerous Christians were tortured in the most hideous ways. This dark of church history has come to be called the Great Persecution. Diocletian realized that he could not rule the entire Roman Empire and so divided it into four parts, with each part to be ruled by a tetrarch. Diocletian (the Senior, Augustus) and Galerius (the Junior, Caesar) ruled the eastern part of the empire, Maximian (the Senior, Augustus) and Constantius Chlorus (the Junior, Caesar) ruled the western part of it. Constantius Chlorus was a father of Constantine. In AD 312, the main rival who emerged to oppose Constantine was Maxentius the son of Maximian. Constantine moved toward Rome to meet his enemy head on. At this critical moment, he claimed to see a miraculous sign in the . Above the noonday sun there appeared a cross of light inscribed with the words, “Conquer by this.” Constantine then had a dream telling him to fashion a Christian banner decorated with and jewels. Emboldened by this apparent aid from the Christian God, Constantine marched against Maxentius. The battle is called the Battle of the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome in AD 312.43 Though Constantine’s forces were badly outnumbered, he pulled off a stunning military victory. He contributed his great victory to the God of Christianity. Immediately he arranged a meeting at Milan with an ally from the East, Licinius. Together they issued a famous document called the Edict of Milan. It proclaimed that “the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared and absolutely, to remain in it, and not to be disturbed or molested in any way.”44 The Edict of Milan symbolizes the dramatic transition from the era of Christian persecution to the era of imperial support for the faith. In AD 324, Constantine defeated Licinius and became a sole ruler of the Roman Empire. We expect that now the of culture in the way and theology would penetrate to all levels of society in the fourth century. But strangely theological arguments were everywhere. One eyewitness put it like this: “All the affairs of the city are full of this stuff! The alleys, the markets, the wide avenues, and the neighborhood streets! The clothing merchants, the bankers, and those who sell us food! If you ask someone for a penny, he philosophizes to you about “the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you should inquire about the price of bread, the store owner answers, ‘The Father is greater, and the Son is subordinate’ and so on. Everyone from the emperor to the common man was debating Christian doctrine.”45 This can be a very healthy thing. But what happens if the theological consensus starts to settle upon an incorrect view? This is precisely what happened in the time of Athanasius. The view of Arius began to receive imperial favor, and were accepted by many across the empire. Athanasius stood alone against Arius with few others and saved the Trinity of God. Athanasius was born around AD 299 in the prominent Egyptian city of Alexandria. One day bishop Alexander of Alexandria happened to glance up before breakfast to see some boys playing on the beach. The boys were pretending to be at church, going through the motions of the and performing mock ceremonies. Athanasius had performed all the rituals and had spoken the precise words of his baptismal liturgy without error. After consulting some of his assistant , Alexander took Athanasius under his wing and made sure he got a very good Bible education. Under Alexander’s guidance, Athanasius emerged as a rising young star. In the year of AD 318, a problem within the church at Alexandria came to Bishop Alexander. Arius, a popular pastor who presided over an influential in the city was teaching some strange ideas about Jesus Christ. But Alexander did not jump to conclusions. He gathered together the church leaders under jurisdiction to investigate the matter. They learned that Arius taught a new doctrine that had never been officially taught in the church: the Son of God is a created being, not eternal at all. He is separate from, and inferior to, the Father. Bishop Alexander had no choice but to excommunicate Arius. Then he fled to Palestine and Syria. He continued to find ample support for his views in those regions. Soon the whole Christian church was in an uproar over whether the Son was eternal like the Father or was a created being. As our basic context, Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Origen already encountered this.

43 Shino, Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani XIII, 207.

44 The edit is recorded by Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died 48 (ANF 7:320, slight adapted for clarity). 45 The comment is found in Gregory of ’s work, On the Deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit (, vol. 46, 557B).

18

The concept of God’s Logos (or Word) was helpful to the church fathers in describing the divine existence of Jesus Christ before his Incarnation, while at the same time maintaining his distinction from his heavenly Father. The Logos is God’s eternal conversation partner. This conceptualization allowed him to be united with God the Father, yet distinct from him as well. Among the church fathers, Tertullian was particularly clear in explaining the Trinity. He defined the Trinity as three unique persons with one shared substance. Arius took Origen’s words “The Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28) in a sneaky way. Then Arius claimed, “There was, when he was not.” In other words, there was a time when the Son of God did not exist at all—not even as the Logos. Arius also took :16 that Jesus Christ was “begotten.” The Son must have been generated by the Father at an identifiable moment—and before that moment, he did not exist. In this way, he argued that Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, was not eternal but a created being. He stepped outside of what the ancient Christians had come to believe about their Savior and our Savior. The theological argument between Bishop Alexander and Arius threatened Constantine’s plan to use Christianity as a unifying force in his empire. So he decided to call a council at Nicaea (modern Iznik, Turkey near Istanbul) for the bishops to settle the matter once. He sent messengers across the empire inviting the bishops to attend the council at imperial expense. About 300 bishops came to the council. Mostly bishops from the eastern region came to the council and less than 10 bishops from the western region came.46 Many of the bishops had been maimed in the Great Persecution. One of them could not use his hands because red-hot irons had destroyed the nerves. Others had had their eyes dug out or their arms cut off. In short, the Council looked like an assembled army of martyrs,” remarked one ancient historian.47 On a June morning in AD 325, the bishops gathered expectantly in the imperial place’s great hall. There was ongoing furious debates. But the bishops under the guidance of Alexander and Athanasius refused to allow anything that might suggest Christ was a created being. Soon their Nicene party began to prevail. At last a creed was formulated with which almost all the bishops could agree. In its most important sentence it claimed that Christ was “of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.”48 Here the creed introduced a nonbiblical word which has nevertheless become the hallmark of Nicene Trinitarianism. It is still taught today by evangelicals as orthodox doctrine. The Greek word for “consubstantial” was homoousios, “of the same substance.” If the Father and the Son shared the same substance, then certainly the Son could not be a created being. Bishop Alexander died three years after Nicaea and naturally Athanasius became the bishop of Alexandria. But the theological debate had not disappeared. Emperor Constantine had supported the decision of Nicaea and favored the Arians in an attempt to make everybody happy. Soon Constantine ordered Bishop Athanasius to readmit Arius to the church. But Athanasius refused to do so because he believed Arius did not really accept the vital principle of Nicaea: homoousios, the identical substance of the Father and the Son. Still trying to resolve the thorny debate, Constantine convened another council called Tyre. Athanasius came reluctantly, but soon realized the council leaders had stacked the deck against him. So he slipped out of Tyre heading up to Constantinople to appeal directly to the emperor. But Constantine had gone to Jerusalem to attend the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When Constantine arrived back in Constantinople, Athanasius finally got his audience with the emperor. But Athanasius’ enemies had followed him from the council at Tyre to charge him with a new crime: not only was he guilty of opposing Arius, who had just been judged orthodox; he was even accused of hindering the precious Alexandrian grain shipments from reaching the capital city. Constantine demanded to know whether such high treason had any basis in fact. Athanasius vehemently denied the charges. Growing angry, he warned the emperor that God would be his judge in these matters. Because of this, Athanasius was exiled to on the German frontier. It would not be the last time the bishop would see exile.

46 Shiono, Translated by Kim Seok-Hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani XIII, 333.

47 , Church History 1.6 (NPNF ser. 2, 3:43).

48 Litfin, 177.

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Constantine died in AD 337 and the empire was divided among three of his sons, but the second son, Constantius became a single emperor. Unfortunately, this emperor favored the doctrines of Arius.49 Arius’ theological views continued to spread through the East, though Arius had recently died. A neo-Arian party emerged which went so far as to say that the Son is “dissimilar” from the Father. Eventually Athanasius was allowed to return to his home church in Egypt. Nevertheless, Emperor Constantius made his life very difficult. Once Athanasius’ church was stormed during a midnight service by Constantius’ soldiers. Athanasius was able slip through this midst, which he viewed as miraculous. But Athanasius never stopped in his anti-Arian campaign. The bishops of Rome through these decades supported the and Athanasius often was able to find refuge in the Latin West under the protection of the Roman church. The three great eastern church fathers, , and his younger brother (they were from the region of Cappadocia and so called the Three Cappadocians) were Athanasius’ theological allies in the battle against Arianism. Probably Athanasius’ most loyal bastion of support came from among the who lived in the Egyptian desert. In particular, there was an elderly and pious monk named Anthony. Through vigorous networking with like-minded allies, and also through a massive outpouring of anti-Arian wirings, Athanasius began to see his polemical efforts pay off. The torrent of Arianism at last slowed to a trickle. Athanasius died on May 2, AD 373 without seeing Nicene Trinitarianism formally triumph. But in AD 381, emperor Theodosius convened the second universal council of the church: the great Council of Constantinople. Here the “Necene Creed” assumed its final form—the form that is still used by Christians today. And it is here which remained the word homoousios, that essential theological term which declared the Father and the Son to share the identical substance. Both of them fully God; both of them are eternal. If someday you should recite the Nicene Creed in church, perhaps you can think of the tenacious little bishop of Alexandria with a great big smile on his face. Indeed, Athanasius possesses a profound understanding of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

9. John Chrysostom

The bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom whose nickname “Golden Mouth” was born around AD 349 in Antioch. He was educated under Libeanius, the most outstanding orator of his day. He reminds us of many modern university professors: brilliant, humane, learned—and hostile to the Christian faith. When asked which of his students should succeed him in his professorship of rhetoric, Libeanius replied, “It ought to have been John, had not the Christians stolen him from us.”50 John Chrysostom must have been a great communicator to have impressed his pagan teacher so much. John’s father was a high-ranking army administrator who died early, but left his family a substantial estate in Antioch. John’s mother Anthusa, a devout Christian did not remarry in her 20’s and raised him. John’s fine education and public speaking skills would have opened many doors for him to pursue a distinguished career in the civic bureaucracy of Antioch. But his deep spiritual interest drew him inexorably toward ministry in his local church. The bishop Meletius noticed this promising young man of eighteen and drew him into the inner circle. John received baptism and was named to the important position of , the of the Scripture in the ancient . Because he wanted to live the most godly life possible, John met regularly with other young men to read the Word, fast, pray and hold each other accountable in temptation. Later he decided he must turn his back to the busy life of the city to pursue solitude and ascetic rigor in the craggy mountains above Antioch. He sojourned in the wildness under the guidance of a spiritual mentor who lived with great self-discipline. High on Mt. Silpius, overlooking the city below, John battled against his flesh in order to defeat its desires. He studied so much Sripture that he was able to memorize vast portions of the Old and New Testaments. John’s ancient biographer wrote, “He never relaxed for that two-year period, not in the days nor at night and his gastric organs became lifeless and the

49 Ibid., 179 50 , Ecclesiastical History 8.2 (NPNF ser. 2, 2:399). Quotation taken from J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom: Ascetic, , Bishop (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 8.

20 proper functions of the kidneys were impaired by the cold.” 51 In fact, for the rest of his life John had digestive troubles. The word, “” refers to a lifestyle of spiritual retreat from the cares of the world to focus solely on God. Sometimes it was pursued in solitude, and other times in a community. In addition to worship, prayer, study of the Bible, and Christian service, the monastic life normally required asceticism: the disciplining of the body against its fleshly desires. In the ancient church we can discern a very early monastic expression in the widows who lived together, devoted to prayer and good works, as outlined in 1 Timothy 5. We also find individuals in the second and third centuries who remained in their homes while practicing personal asceticism and . Origen is a good example of this. Such early ascetic tendencies crystallized into a more structured monastic movement in the fourth century. The earliest monastic movement blossomed in the desert of Egypt and Syria. This was because, after the rise of Constantine, martyrs were no longer being made. The age of persecution had passed. So, monasticism became the new vehicle for expressing one’s total devotion to Christ. The tears of replaced the blood of the martyrs. The last Roman emperor (West) was deposed in AD 476 by King Odoacre of the Heruli. But the Heruli were soon overcome by the Ostrogoths. The suffered under the government since they were Arians. Sometime later the Byzantines defeated the Ostrogoths in AD 562 and took the region. But their rule was brief, for in AD 568 the Lombards who also were Arians invaded the land. During this series of misfortunes, Benedict who founded the community of Monte Casino, Italy and in AD 529 gave it a Rule which would set the course of monasticism for centuries to come. Among the basic principles of the Benedictine Rule were physical labor and of obedience, chastity, poverty and stability. Soon Benedictine monasticism expanded throughout , and gave signs of great adaptability to diverse circumstances. Thus, monks were teachers, copyists of ancient manuscripts, druggists, agriculturists and missionaries.52 Although Benedict himself had little to say about study, soon this was one of the main occupations of Benedictine monks. In order to celebrate the Divine Office, books were needed. Monks became adept at copying both the Bible and other books, and thus preserved them for later generations. Their house also became teaching centers, particularly for the many children that were placed under their care in order to be trained as monks. And many also served as and pharmacies, or as hostels where a weary traveler could find shelter. In AD 589, the that Benedict had founded at Monte Cassino was looted and burned by the Lombards. Most of the monks fled to Rome, taking their Rule with them. Gregory who became followed their Rule in the city of Rome and later it spread out through the western church.53 After six years at the mountain top, John came back on earth. His health was simply too poor to remain among the monks in their high huts and saves. After a period of time to regain his strength, John resumed his duties as lector in the church of Antioch. A few years later he was made a deacon and then . As such, he knew took on the responsibility of public preaching. Over nine hundreds of his sermons still survive. His sermons provide us with a wealth of insight into the power of the preacher in the ancient church. In his sermons John reveals his deep devotion to the Bible. The power with the golden mouth used the power of his words to unleash the power of the Word. Today we would call him an “expositor” of the Scriptures. At times his sounds more like Bible commentaries, as he provides verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. When John interpreted the Bible, he used a very different method than what we have already seen in Origen. If Origen’s “Alexandria” method was allegorical, John’s “Antioch method was the literal sense.” Today scholars make a distinction between them and call them, “Alexandrian” and “Antiochene.” The three men—Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuesia, and John Chrysostom—are known today as leading figures in the “Antiochene” school of

51 Robert T. Meyer, Palladius: Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 45 (New York, NY: Newman Press, 1985), 35.

52 Gonzalez, Church History: An Essential Guide, 43. 53 Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, 242.

21 biblical interpretation. Both John and Origen were willing to seek a higher meaning in the text of Scripture. To fail to do so would be to turn the Bible into a history book instead of the church’s book. John’s preaching in Antioch proved extremely popular with the Christian masses. He had a knack for making the literal meaning of Scripture relevant to his congregation’s needs. His illustrations were colorful, his topics timely and pertinent. He never wanted to leave Antioch. In AD 397, however, John received an imperial order to be the bishop of Constantinople. In the age of Imperial Christianity, church controversies were not fought solely through scathing pamphlets and morning diatribes. They inevitably involved behind the scenes conniving to gain the support of the political powers. This is exactly what we find in the case of John Chrysostom. When Constantinople’s previous bishop had died, the bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus was favored. But John Chrysostom was chosen—an Antiochene, a theological rival to Alexandrian. Perhaps we can image Theophilus’ frustration. From that day, Theophilus became John’s sworn enemy. The story of and architecture is conveniently divided into pre- and post-Constantinian periods. Prior to Constantine, Christians are tended to be simple—rather primitive style as seen in the ancient burial catacombs. Everything changed with Constantine’s rise to power. Across the empire, he financed the construction of many new churches. Among them was a new in Constantinople called the , later known as the Church of Hagia , or . Today the resplendent building in this site is not the one Constantine ordered to be built, which burned down in riot when John Chrysostom was sent into exile. The we see today was dedicated in AD 537. The Great Church was eclipsed only by another stunning building in the city: the Church of the Holy Apostles. When John preached from there, he was preaching from the church that not only held the bodily remains of Emperor Constantine in its mausoleum, but also what were believed to be the bones of Luke, Andrew, and Timothy. Although today we cannot visit these original churches where John Chrysostom ministered, we can gain a sense of their beauty from Eusebius’ description.54 The new bishop preached with passion and conviction. For all Christians, the words spoken by the John standing in the is God’s man, for the hour constitute a holy treasure. At the same time, he embarked on a radical course of , based on the austere principle he had embraced all his life. For example, he instituted standards for the corrupt he found in the city, purging out the bad apples. He sold many church treasures to fund hospitals for the sick and for lepers. And he quickly put an end to the extravagant banquets his predecessors had been accustomed to offer. Such action caused the social elite in Constantinople to resent their new pastor, whom they viewed as something of a spoilsport. When John ate his meager meals alone in his private quarters, the grumbling among the aristocrats couldn’t be stifled. When he decried the corruption and sensuality he saw in the imperial court, powerful forces began to stir against this reformer. Theophilus of Alexandria, who had been watching and waiting for the right moment, now saw his chance. He seized upon an ill-chosen expression in one of John’s sermons and called a church council and condemned him. And the many people whose morality John had criticized over the years now leapt at the chance to get revenge. After a few months of further intrigues, confrontation, and humiliation, John received a new order to exile. His friends gave advices to him, but he refused it and quietly surrendered to the soldiers who went after him rather than stirring up a riot that would cause the people further suffering. But the riot was inevitable. Mobs flocked to Hagia Sophia and the surrounding area. The army was ordered to quell the disturbance, and in the ensuing staring the cathedral and several public nearby caught fire and were destroyed.55 The preacher with the golden mouth was led to exile in the remote village of Cucusus. As the controversy became widespread, the little town of Cucusus seemed to have become the center of the world. Soon he was sent to a remote village in the cold, bandit-infested mountains on the Black Sea. It was intended to be a shameful punishment. But perhaps there was no better place for John Chrysostom to end his earthly sojourn than in suffering and solitude, away from the busy capital with its opulence and power. It is good to describe about the political background of the Roman Empire at the end of fourth century and the early fifth century. It was a very difficult time for the Romans. The Huns from Central Asia who migrated to Eastern Europe for survival pushed the Vandal, the Goth, the Frank and many other tribes. The Germanic tribes could not

54 Litfin, 203. 55 Ibid.,

22 but invade the territory of the Romans crossing over the Rhine and Danube Rivers. The most serious damage to Rome was caused by the Goth led by a leader of Alaric. (There were the two different ; and Ostrogoths. Alaric was from Visogoths.) Emperor Theodosius (AD 379-395) had the excellent general named Flavius Stilicho. Stilicho’s father was a Goth and his mother was a Roman. He was a semi-Barbarian. But from Julius Caesar, the retired Roman soldiers were sent to newly conquered areas to build towns and they married the native women. Their children were regarded as Romans and got Roman citizenship. There was not any resistance to be semi-barbarians at that time. Emperor Theodosius loved Stilicho so much that he let Stilicho marry his niece, Serena. Stilicho was a very brave and excellent Roman general that he defended almost all barbarian invasions. Even Alaric could not dare to fight against Stilicho. On the death-bed, Theodosius asked Stilicho to take care of his two sons, and . Arcadius was seventeen years old who became an Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople and Honorius was ten years old who became the Western Roman emperor in Milan. At this moment, the Roman Empire was divided into two. Many of the Germanic tribes invaded Roman territory from England to the Black Sea. Alaric even invaded Greece. Stilicho ran from East to West, even to North Africa constantly on the move to fight against barbarians. He could be the emperor of the Western Empire. But he kept his oath to Theodosius and gave his daughter to Honorius in marriage. Roman Emperors never had eunuchs until Constantine moved his palace to Constantinople in AD 324. Since Constantine travelled a lot, he hired palace magistrates and eunuchs to take care of an emperor’s business. Eunuchs were incredible people. They could survive in the palace intrigue and they were the masters of schemes. Since they didn’t have families, they loved wealth and power, full of envy and jealousy toward men (they say). Arcadius had a name Eutolopius. He manipulated the court’s decision and instigated the Western Roman Empire’s ruin. Honorius also had a eunuch name Olipius. Olipius lied to Honorius that Stilicho planned to raise his son as an emperor while Stilicho was fighting in North Africa. Honorius killed his father-in-law Stilicho for treason. Honorius killed Olipius, knowing his intrigue, but it was too late. Without Stilicho, no one could fight against Alaric.56 Two years after Stilicho’s death, Alaric ransacked Rome in AD 410 and took gold, silver, any valuable jewels and even people as slaves. The news that the capital of the world, Rome, was plundered shocked the people of the entire Roman Empire and they cried for it, saying, “O Eternal City Rome, the queen of the world, the mother of gods, the mother of elite men is ruin!”57

10. Augustine Of Hippo

Two of Augustine of Hippo’s most significant writings are City of God and . In his City of God, Augustine pictured the Christian as an alien or exile in the world. Believers must wander far from their heavenly home while sojourning temporarily in the City of Man. And in his Confessions, he used the concept of restlessness to narrate the story of his own life’s journey. Certainly he discovered through firsthand experience that the human heart is restless until it rests in God. Augustine’s birthplace was the Roman African town of Thagaste (modern Souk Ahras, in ). His father Patrick was a minor Roman officer and his mother Monica was a devout Christian. Both parents were aware of the child’s exceptional and sent him to the nearby town of Madaura, and later to Carthage to study rhetoric which led him to worldly success. Augustine was some seventeen years old when he arrived at the great city, Carthage that for centuries had been the political, economic, and cultural center of Latin-speaking Africa. Although he didn’t neglect his studies, he also set out to enjoy the many pleasures that the city offered. In spite of his mother Monica’s warning he had a concubine who bore a boy Adeodatus. As a young man he decided to look to human philosophy to assuage his guilt and provide him with the . The particular philosophy he embraced was called Manicheism. Manicheism was a Persian religion system that had recently migrated into the Roman Empire. Its main teaching was radical dualism of light and darkness, or good

56 Shino, Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani XV, 170. 57 Ibid., 191

23 and evil. The Manichees taught that in a great cosmic battle, the good side had been defeated by evil; so now the world was a mixture of both principles. Only the of the Manichees, called the Elect,” could release the light. This philosophy appealed to Augustine, but he was too much of an intellectual to remain with the Manichees for long. At age twenty-two Augustine took his first teaching post in Carthage and then moved to Rome. At the height of his career, he was nominated for a prestigious professorship of rhetoric in Milan. According to Roman history, the city mayor of Rome, Simmacus nominated Augustine for the professorship.58 His job was to give speeches in honor of prominent and to promote the state’s . The new position offered Augustine the chance to mingle with the aristocratic elite. Milan in the late fourth century was the perfect place for an up-and-comer like Augustine. The Roman Empire had been split into two halves, and Milan housed the western emperor’s palace and its affiliated governmental apparatus. Situated in northern Italy with access to strategic Alpine passes, Milan had become the capital of the West like Constantinople was in the East. The city of Rome was in serious decline and had ceased to function as the administrative center of the empire. So it was not Rome but Milan that lay at the center of a vast mosaic of imperial bureaucracy and cronyism. There he was engaged to a teenage girl through his mother, Monica’s efforts because she believed a good marriage would cause her son to settle down and get baptized as a Christian. That tortured his soul more because he had to send away his teenage son’s mother to Africa. Augustine agreed to attend the services led by in Milan. Ambrose was fifteen years older than Augustine, and he came from a much different background. Whereas Augustine had to claw his way up the social ladder from the fringes of the empire, Ambrose was reared with privilege. Educated in Rome, the son of a highly-placed father, Ambrose pursued a career in law until a governorship opened up for his northern Italy. With a family whose heritage in the church was longstanding and well known, Ambrose was widely respected as a godly Christian statesman. When Milan’s bishop died, there was danger that the Arian and Nicene factions were rioting over the church. Ambrose had to intervene this faction and restore order in the church. The people saw Ambrose as the right person to be a bishop. The crowd demanded Ambrose by acclamation. When it became clear he could not evade this unexpected pastoral call, he was baptized and so became a bishop. In fact, he would be the greatest bishop Milan had ever seen. Augustine’s initial purpose was not to hear what Ambrose had to say, but to see how he said it since Augustine had doubt about the Bible: how can one claim that the Bible, with its crude language and its stories of violence and falsehood, is the Word of God? However, as time went by he found that he was listening to the bishop less as a professional, and more as a seeker. Ambrose interpreted allegorically many of the passages that had created difficulties for Augustine. Since allegorical interpretation was perfectly acceptable according to the canons of rhetoric, Augustine could find no fault in this. By then, Augustine’s major intellectual difficulties with Christianity had been solved. But there were other difficulties of a different sort. From his own Neoplatonic perspective, Augustine was convinced that if he became a Christian, he must give up his career in rhetoric, as well as his ambitions and every physical pleasure. It was precisely this last requirement that seemed most difficult. At this point a battle raged within himself. It was the struggle between willing and not willing. At this time, a Roman African named Marius Victorinus, the most prominent scholar of his day who had translated into Latin the works of the Neoplatonists, presented himself at church and made a public profession of his faith. The people marveled that such an eminent pagan could be converted. Through Victorinus, Augustine met his friend Ponticianus, a high-ranking court official who was also from Africa. Ponticianus visited Augustine’s house and saw the Apostle Paul’s book on a table. Augustine explained that he had been ruminating on Scripture lately. At this, the conversation sparkled. Ponticianus shared with Augustine the story of the Egyptian monk named Anthony whose had been recorded by Bishop Athanasius. Having never heard of Anthony, Augustine was astonished to hear about the monk’s heroic self-denial. That very day, both of them quit their jobs and broken off their engagement, dedicating themselves full-time to God’s service. Their two fiancées decided to do the same.

58 Ibid., 238

24

But he was well aware of the high standards of holiness required for the followers of Jesus. In contrast, when he looked in the mirror he perceived himself as “twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers. And I looked and was appalled, but there was no way of escaping from myself.”59 He confessed;

“I was unhappy young man, wretched as at the beginning of my adolescence when I prayed to you for chastity and said, ‘Grant me chastity and continence—but not yet.’ I was afraid you might hear my prayer quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I referred to satisfy rather than suppress.”60

Greatly disturbed in his soul, Augustine fled outside to a quiet garden. He was torn in two: to love the sins of the flesh or to love God. At that moment, Augustine felt that Lady Chastity appeared to him, saying, “Are you incapable of doing what these men and women have done? Do you think them capable of achieving this by their own resources and not by the Lord their God?” Augustine burst into tears. As he sobbed in agony, he heard a child’s voice telling him to “Pick up and read!” It didn’t sound like any children’s game he knew. Perhaps it was a divine command? Augustine rushed over his book of Paul’s letters and read the first words upon which his eyes fell: “Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” (NIV: Rom 13:13-14) It was all he needed to hear. At that moment, Augustine gave his life to Christ. Finally he had found rest. On Easter , the night of 24, AD 387, a band of Christians in rough robes approached the New of Milan with its nearby baptistery. There was Augustine among them. Bishop Ambrose performed baptism immersion in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Augustine was reborn again. Augustine headed home to Africa. When he reached Tagaste, he sold most of the property that he had inherited, gave some of the money to the poor and with the rest he settled at Cassiciacum with his son Adeodaus. But a series of tragedies struck in a short span. His devout mother Monica died and then Adeodaus. He was not shaken, but wrote his first Christian works about the difference between Christian teaching and some elements in . In AD 391, he visited the town of Hippo in order to talk to a friend whom he wished to invite to join the small community at Cassiciacum. While at Hippo he attended church, and bishop Valerius, who saw him in the congregation, preached about how God always sent for the flock, and then asked the congregation to pray for God’s guidance in case there was among them someone sent to be their . The crowd began to shout Augustine’s name and push him forward. Suddenly he found himself—like Ambrose before him—called into pastoral ministry when he least expected it. Believing the call to be from God, Augustine acquiesced to the people’ desire. He went to serve the Christians of Hippo as a presbyter and then as a bishop for the next four decades.61 Today among the ancient ruins in Annaba, Algeria, the outline of Augustine’s church can still be seen. Although ancient Hippo could never have claimed to be at the center of things like the great cities of the empire, Augustine nonetheless made his presence widely felt. Through his doctrinal treatises, numerous letters and attendance at church councils in the nearly metropolis of Carthage, Augustine soon became one of the great churchmen of his age. There was no theological dispute in which he was not involved. In his theology, Augustine emphasized the utter necessity of , for he knew we are sinful and helpless people. There were two major groups in his day that tended to downplay grace. On the one hand, there were the Pelagians, who said human beings were not born into sin. Pelagius was a British monk who was famous for his piety and austerity. He taught that no one had inherited the guilt of ’s sin. Adam certainly was a bad example, but he did not pass a sin nature to his descendants. So the human will is completely unconstrained. We can freely choose to sin, or we can be righteous. In

59 Litfin, 225.

60 There are numerous English of Augustine’s Confessions. One of the most popular is Henry Chadwick, Saint Augustine: Confessions NPNF ser. 1, 1:124 (Oxford: , 1991), 145. 61 Ganzalez, The Story of Christianity, 212.

25 fact, it is possible (though not many people can actually accomplish it) to live a perfect life and earn salvation through good works or law-keeping. Augustine directed all his considerable theological firepower against this pernicious teaching. Largely due to his influence, was condemned at several councils in Africa, and finally defeated at a major council at Ephesus in AD 431. The other major group with a deficient view of grace in Augustine’s time was an African counter-church movement called . The history of Donatism went back to Carthage in the day of Great Persecution (AD 303) under Diocletian. When that ordeal ended, a deacon named Donatus and his followers insisted that no one who had capitulated under the threat of torture could be considered a faithful Christian. They were unwilling to extend grace to church leaders who had been weak in the face of persecution. performed by such leaders were declared invalid. And so the Donatists founded a schismatic church under new bishops who rebaptized their adherents. They became an extremely rigorous and exclusive group and widely spread through North Africa. And the Catholic Church condemned them as heresies. In Augustine’s day, a century later, this break-way movement was still going strong, even though the age of persecution had long since passed. The Donatists continued to view the Catholics as “polluted.62 Donotists believed only the most righteous, the devoted, the most purified people could be called true Christians. Some zealous Donatists even roamed the countryside as a band of thugs who took it upon themselves to enforce their strict legalism through beating with clubs.63 Since Donatists were regarded as heresies and were persecuted, they joined rebellious groups. During Emperor Valentinianus III’s reign (AD 425-455; he was only four years old when his mother ruled as regent), Galla Placidia made Bonipacius as a military minister for Africa and sent him to take care of rebels. He was an excellent general and put down rebels in North Africa. But Galla Placidia heard some rumor that Bonipacius tried to make an independent empire in Africa. So she sent other Roman troops to arrest Bonipacius. Bonipacius asked for military help to Genseric, the leader of the Vandals who were in . Instead of helping Bonipacius, the Vandals fought against Bonipacius from AD 429, and Donatists sided with the Vandals. Bonipacius abandoned North Africa and went to Italy on AD 430. And Carthage was taken by the Vandals in 439. They then took to the sea and occupied Sicily, Corsica and . In AD 455, they sacked the city of Rome, and the destruction they wrought was even greater than that of the Goths forty-five years earlier. Their rule in North Africa was disastrous for the church since they were Arians and persecuted the Catholics. 64 Augustine opposed Donatism because he believed it had a faulty doctrine of the church. Whereas the Donatists considered the church to consist only of the “pure,” Augustine advanced an called the “mixed church.” He said the church is composed of sinners and saints. As anyone who had ever darkened the door of a church knows, good people can do bad things. There are varying levels of within the . Augustine fought hard against the legalism and pride of the Donatists. By the time he died, Donatism was well into decline. In the year that Augustine died, (AD 430) the Vandals from beyond the empire were poised to vandalize his city of Hippo. They besieged its walls even as he lay dying on his bed. But Augustine was not too concerned about them. He asked for absolute privacy with no disturbance. For ten days he prayed and wept and communed along with God. He mediated on Psalm 51 during his last days in the earthly city and then journeyed home toward .

11. Cyril of Alexandria

Cyril was born around AD 378 and educated in Alexandria’s fine school. He was a nephew of Theophilus who brought accusations over John Chrysostom and let to his exile. He was already a lector in the church with a bright future in the ministry. He had a real knack for theology and deep devotion to Christ. But Cyril was also exposed at

62 The word “catholic” means “universal,” but it also means “according to the whole.” To spate itself from the various heretical groups and sects, the ancient church began calling itself “catholic.” 63 Ibid., 156-157.

64 Ibid., 231-232; Shino, Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani XV, 233

26 an early age to the rough-and tumble world of ecclesiastical politics and had learned the down-and dirty politics. Many historians have even viewed his behavior as harsh, opportunistic, and devious. When Bishop Theophilus died in AD 412, Cyril was made the next bishop of Alexandria—though not without controversy. The imperial politicians favored a candidate who was likely to be more docile than Cyril. So they sent in troops to enforce their will. But Cyril had his own sort of troops: the crew of young men whose job it was to carry the sick on stretchers to the Christian hospitals. They defended Cyril. Cyril was an heir to Alexandria’s rich intellectual and theological tradition. Since its very beginnings, the city had been home to many eminent philosophers. Its library was a jewel of the ancient world. The city’s intellectual renown served as a beacon for the Mediterranean’s greatest thinkers. Soon Alexandria garnered a reputation for its distinguished Christian theologians, such as Origen and Athanasius. As one of the Alexandria’s theologians, Cyril lavished loving care on the Pentateuch, , the Minor Prophets, Luke and John. He wrote much more than this, but not all of it has survived. Even if Cyril had not won fame for his role in the fifth-century Christological controversies, he would be noteworthy as a profound exegete. In all his reflection on Scripture, he always found a way to uncover the mystery of Christ. The Council of Nicaea in AD 325 had declared Jesus Christ to be homoousis or “of the same substance” with the Father. Athanasius and the three Cappadocians were the primary defenders of this point against the heresy of Arians who said Christ was an inferior creation. Thus the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, which was worked out during the fourth century, insisted that Christ was fully God in every way. But now, in the fifth century, the pump was primed for a new debate: how exactly is the man to be considered a divine being? Or to put it another way: since Nicaea has declared Jesus is God, what is the precise relationship between his humanity and divinity? The debate moved from Trinitarian questions to Christological ones. In Christology there are two tendencies which, if followed to their extremes, will lead to heresy of one kind or another. The first tendency is to overemphasize Jesus’ humanity.65 Some ancient thinkers even viewed him as a “mere man,” not a divine figure at all. To explain his divine and works, they said he was simply a man who had been “adopted” by God and given the empowering presence of the divine Logos within. There so-called Adoptionists argued that the godly human named Jesus, at a specific point in time (usually his baptism) became God’s special son. If anyone went so far as to call Jesus a “mere man” infused with divinity, he was rejected as an Adoptionist heretic. Yet many Antoichene theologians tended toward a Christology that overemphasized Christ’s humanity. While the Antiochene theologians certainly did the church a favor by insisting Jesus was a true human being, their earthly focus and pronounced Christological dualism needed to be balanced by the other side. The Alexandrian theologians provided the necessary counterbalance—and they in turn had to be kept from extremes by Antioch. As an Alexandrian theologian, Cyril always felt inclined to elevate the divine nature of Christ. While he was not an out-and-out denier of Jesus’ humanity, he tended to emphasize the unity of Christ and his awesome deity. The fifth-century debates over Christology came to a head under a man now viewed as a “heretic”-- Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople. He was trained in Antioch, so when he ascended to one of the most powerful bishoprics in the empire in AD 428, he made it his business to advance Antiochene theology. The spark that set the controversy alight had to do with the proper way to refer to the Virgin Mary. Nestorius rejected the “God-Bearer” as a designation for the mother of Jesus. In strong and uncompromising language, he endorsed the Antiochene separation between the human and the divine in Christ. For the Nestorian party, Mary could be called the “Man-Bearer.” This means God could not be born of a woman. Mary only gave birth to a man. To this man, divinity was somehow conjoined. Such erroneous doctrine falls far short of the mystery of the incarnation, in which, Mary did indeed give birth to God in the flesh. Jesus is fully God and fully man from the moment of his virginal conception. Cyril found out what his fellow bishop in Constantinople was teaching, he was shocked into action. He accused Nestorius of believing in two sons: the son of God and the son of Mary. Urging Nestorius to recant, Cyril wrote a letter instructing him in the correct view:

65 Litfen, 244.

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“It was not the case that initially an man was born of the holy Virgin and then the Word simply settled on him—no, what is said is that he underwent fleshly birth united from the very womb…In this way we shall confess one Christ and Lord, not worshipping a man ‘along with’ the Word…but worshipping one and the same Christ because the Word’s body is not dissociated from him.”66

We can see that Cyril’s primary concern was for the unity of the God-Man. But Nestorius did not respond to Cyril’s concerns. He viewed Cyril as a typical Alexandria bishop, always trying to undermine the eastern capital of Constantinople. Now things began to snowball. A great theological controversy was coming to a head. In the summer of AD 430, Cyril wrote to the bishop of Rome, Leo the Great about the controversy he was having with Nestorius. He mailed a packet of Nestorius’s problematic writings, contrasting them with a carefully-arranged dossier of testimonies from earlier church fathers. The Roman church had always been respected in early Christian circles. Along with the other great cities of the empire—such as Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus or Carthage—it shone brightly in the constellation of Christian congregations. Rome was the old imperial capital, the largest and most populous city in the world, the natural place to look for leadership. In AD 410, Alaric the Goth and his herd descended on Rome. He didn’t actually do much damage, but the psychological blow was enormous. Barbarians sacking the Eternal City, Rome! It had been exactly 800 years since it had last happened. Such was the tumultuous age in which Pope Leo lived. Though Augustine died just in time to miss seeing his city fall to the Vandals, Leo was unable to escape that fate. The government and the emperor’s court had long since fled to the safety of Milan, and from there to Ravenna’s protective marshes. Rome was now a shadow of her old self. So in AD 452 when Attila the Hun was advancing toward the city with conquest in mind, the bishop of the Christian church was one of the few men with enough public standing to go out and parley with him. While the exact nature of those events is uncertain, we do know that Leo took on unprecedented responsibilities during his ministry. He found himself functioning like a politician: bargaining with invaders or engaging in a flurry of diplomatic correspondence with the imperial courts as Ravenna and Constantinople. He wasn’t trying to become a despotic medieval pope; he simply had no other choice. No one else was left to do the job. Only fifteen years after Leo died, the Roman Empire in the western lands came to an inglorious end as the barbarians finally took over. But Leo couldn’t afford to give in to his fears during those chaotic times. There were Christians in the city who needed their pastor to stand firm. This was true not only in the realm of war and statecraft but also in the realm of theology. Leo the Great was going to play a pivotal role as he joined forces with Cyril to defeat the Nestorian heresy. Theirs was an age of great theological achievement amidst precipitous societal decline. Though they didn’t know it, these later church fathers were living in the twilight of a dying civilization. What kind of Christianity would be handed to the ? What kind of Jesus would be bequeathed to future generations? These were the vital questions Leo and Cyril were trying to answer. After the Roman church had had a chance to evaluate Cyril’s dossier Nestorius, they sided completely with the Alexandria bishop. Then Cyril asked the Roman church to enforce this decision on their behalf. As it turns out, a major council was in the works. Originally it was Nestorius’ idea, for he had hoped Cyril would be discredited. But soon things began to spin out of his control. The council’s location was moved from Nestorius’ own backyard in Constantinople to the city of Ephesus. For one of these reasons, the bishop of Ephesus did not like Constantinople’s interference in the affairs of Asia Minor by means of political power. Also Ephesus was a focal point of Marian devotion, since it was the traditional location where Apostle John had taken Jesus’ mother to live out her old age. In a single day of Council meeting, Nestorius was declared a heretic and his ideas were condemned. But as important as the was, it did not bring final resolution to the Christological debates in AD 431. It took another major council two decades later to produce an authoritative Christological creed. This council took place at Chalcedon, a small town across the water from Constantinople. The Definition of Chalcedon still stands today as the hallmark of . All evangelical Christians hold to the theology taught as Chalcedon as the standard of biblical faith. When this council met in AD 451, Cyril had already died. Nevertheless, his theology lived on in the

66 Lionel Wickhan, Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 7

28 words of the creed: Christ is one person (or hypostasis) who possesses two natures--divine and human. Cyril and Leo affirmed Christ’s true humanity and his dual natures well-handed down to the Middle Ages.

We can divide the history of Christianity into ten parts:

1. The Ancient church: From the beginnings of Christianity until Constantine put an end to persecution (Edict of Milan, year 313) 2. The Christian Empire: From the Edict of Milan (313) to the last Roman Emperor of the West (476) 3. The : From the Fall of Augustine (the last West Emperor, 476) to the schism between East and West (1054) 4. The High Point of the Middle Ages: From the schism between East and West (1054) to the beginning of the decline of the Papacy (1303) 5. The : From the first signs of decline in the Papacy(1303) to the (1453) 6. Conquest and Reformation(1517): From the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the end of the sixteenth century (1600) 7. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 8. The Nineteenth Century 9. The Twentieth Century and the End of Modernity 10. The Twenty Century and Beyond.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chadwick, Henry. Saint Augustine: Confessions NPNF ser. 1, 1:124 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1991. Coldwell, Taylor. Dear and Glorious Physician: A Novel About Saint Luke. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1959.

Falls, Thomas B. St. Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypo, revised by Thomas P. Halton Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003.

Gonzalez, Juston L. The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publisher, 1984.

______. Church History: An Essential Guide. Nashville, TN: Abringdon Press, 1996

Goodenough, Erwin R. The Theology of Justin Martyr. Asterdam, Netherland: Philo Press, 1968

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Greer, Rowan. Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer and Selected Works. New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1971.

Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 8.2 (NPNF ser. 2, 2:399). Quotation taken from J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom: Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1995.

Kim, Joo-Chan. The Seven Churches in Asia Minor. Seoul, Korea: SanDukJeong Publshing, 2002.

Litfin, Bryan M. Getting To Know The Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2007.

Meyer, Robert T. Palladius: Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 45. New York, NY: Newman Press, 1985.

O’Mally, Thomas P. Tertullian and the Bible: Language, Imagery, Exegesis. Nijmen: Dekker &van de Vegt, 1967.

Shiono, Nanami. Translated by Kim Suk-hee, Res Gestae Populi Romani I-XV. Seoul, Korea: Hangila, 2003.

Wickhan, Lionel. Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1983.

Christianity Today, Justin Martyr Defender of the “true Philosopher,” [cited 31 December, 2013]. Online:http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/evangelistsandapologist s/mart yr.html?start=2

Eusebius has recorded for posterity Irenaeus’ letter describing his childhood memories. It is found in Church History 5.1.19; 5.20.7-7 (NPNF ser. 2, 1:238-239).

Eusebius, Church History 6.39.5 (NPNF ser. 2, 1:281).

Theodoret, Church History 1.6 (NPNF ser. 2, 3:43).

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