Getting to Know the Church Fathers

An Evangelical Introduction

Litfin, Bryan M.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781493404780
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

A Trusted Introduction to the Church Fathers This concise introduction to the church fathers connects evangelical students and readers to twelve key figures from the early church. Bryan Litfin engages readers with actual people, not just abstract doctrines or impersonal events, to help them understand the fathers as spiritual ancestors in the faith. The first edition has been well received and widely used. This updated and revised edition adds chapters on Ephrem of Syria and Patrick of Ireland. The book requires no previous knowledge of the patristic period and includes original, easy-to-read translations that give a brief taste of each writer's thought.

1
Ignatius of Antioch

DIED CA. AD 115

What will a condemned man say in the final days of his life? Much will depend on the spiritual fiber of the man. On May 19, 2005, Richard Cartwright was executed in Texas for a 1996 murder. According to the formal charges against him, he and some accomplices lured thirty-seven-year-old Nick Moraida to a remote park in Corpus Christi, where they robbed him of his wallet, money, and a watch. Cartwright delivered a fatal shot to the victim’s back with a .38-caliber pistol. The criminals then used the stolen money to buy drugs.1

While awaiting execution on death row, Cartwright became known for posting his periodic musings on the web. His posts reveal a man still battling inner demons. Instead of expressing remorse for his crime, he claimed the real problem was the Texas judicial system. Such deferral of guilt caused Cartwright to seethe with fury at his wrongful imprisonment. He directed his rage toward an ever-present enemy: the guards who (he claimed) tormented him in jail. Life in the maximum security facility degenerated into a cesspool of vitriolic anger, tragic self-pity, and cold, cruel loneliness. All these emotions emerged through Cartwright’s internet outlet. Here is an example of his pain:

December 24, 2004, 3:35 a.m.—I’m pacing my cage, 1, 2, 3, turn, 1, 2, 3, turn. It’s Christmas Eve and I pace. My emotions alternate from love to hate, pain to rage, hurt to confused. I pace trying to outrun the BEAST WITHIN. The beast made of my pain and hurt. There is no room for pity or sadness in here. No understanding of love from the powers to be . . . just pace my cage on Christmas Eve and keep my demons away. I’m at a breaking point. I don’t know when I will fight, but fight back I must. One can only be pushed and cornered for so long. You either snap back and fight or break. I will not let them break me.2

There is something deeply sad here. Cartwright’s bitterness, anguish, rebellion, and despair seep from his words. He has lost his humanity. He has become an animal. This is the way a man faces death when he has no redemptive hope, no higher meaning to lend significance to the prospect of his execution.

Much different was the profoundly Christian response of Ignatius of Antioch,3 whom we meet under similar circumstances of impending execution. We know virtually nothing of Ignatius’s life until we discover him through seven letters he wrote around AD 115 as he was taken in chains to be martyred in Rome for his Christian faith. Ignatius displayed none of the anger and hopelessness we see in Richard Cartwright. In his brief appearance to us in his letters, Ignatius is like a shooting star streaking suddenly across the sky, only to disappear in a blaze of glory.4 Truly he possessed a burning desire to, as he put it, “rise up into the presence of God.” A few centuries later, another preacher in Antioch, John Chrysostom, rightly referred to his predecessor as “a soul boiling with passionate divine love.”5

When we actually take time to meet the church fathers, we find them to be exceedingly relevant. They are Christians who faced struggles not so unlike our own. Ignatius of Antioch is no exception. Though he lived long ago, the contours of his spiritual life take a shape we can recognize today. And where he differs from us, we have the opportunity to gain a new perspective on the Christian life. As we get to know Ignatius, the picture will emerge of a dedicated pastor who hoped to protect his flock by dying for the true faith. His church was infiltrated by heretics and plagued with legalism. Many enemies questioned his pastoral authority. To understand Ignatius in context, let’s take a brief look at the Christian congregation he had inherited. Then we will discuss the two main threats to the gospel Ignatius faced, and, finally, we will look at his road to martyrdom.

Earliest Christianity in Antioch

When we think of the great cities of antiquity, perhaps names such as Rome, Athens, or Alexandria come to mind more quickly than Antioch. But Antioch surely deserves to be named among the foremost cities of the ancient world. The Jewish historian Josephus claimed that after Rome and Alexandria, “without dispute [Antioch] deserves the place of the third city in the habitable earth that was under the Roman Empire, both in magnitude and other marks of prosperity.”6 Antioch was founded as a Greek city in 300 BC in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquests. In Ignatius’s era, four hundred years later, it was the capital of the Roman province of Syria, with about half a million residents. Antioch was an affluent, cosmopolitan place with broad ethnic and religious diversity—including an established and influential population of Jews. The city’s site was strategic: nestled between the Orontes River and the flanks of Mt. Silpius, it could be defended easily. At the same time, it was widely accessible. The city had a port on the Mediterranean Sea only sixteen miles down the river, and it was centered at a major crossroads between Asia Minor to the west, Mesopotamia to the east, and Palestine and Egypt to the south. Antioch was famous for its long central avenue with marble pavement and a colonnaded pedestrian walkway on either side. Ignatius often referred to himself as the “bishop from Syria,” apparently taking no small civic pride in the prominence of his hometown and region.

If Antioch ranks with Rome as an important imperial city, it ranks with Jerusalem as an important city for the origins of Christianity. Indeed, it was at Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). As recorded in the book of Acts, the Antiochene church quickly recognized the legitimacy of mission work among the gentiles. The city is first mentioned in Acts 11 immediately after Peter received a vision telling him that certain ritually unclean animals were now allowed as food—a sign that gentiles had been welcomed into the faith. We then learn that some disciples went to Antioch and began to preach there, not just to fellow Jews but to gentiles as well.

The hand of the Lord greatly blessed this ministry. However, some traditionalists in Jerusalem grew concerned, so they dispatched Barnabas to check things out. By the Spirit’s guidance he immediately recognized the work among the gentiles as the grace of God. He then went up the road to Tarsus (along the same road that Ignatius would travel to martyrdom a few decades later) to bring Paul down to Antioch. Paul and Barnabas met with the church there and taught the believers for a year. Eventually the Holy Spirit gave the Antiochene church this command: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). It was from Antioch that Paul and his companions set out on their missionary journeys with the good news of God’s grace for Jew and gentile alike.

Many scholars argue that Matthew’s Gospel was probably composed at Antioch.7 This would explain some distinctive themes that Matthew records in his narrative. On the one hand, the Gospel of Matthew is recognized as the most “Jewish” Gospel. It presents Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies (3:3; 4:14) and as a new Moses who expounds on the law (5:17–18). On the other hand, Matthew’s Gospel argues that the message that came to Israel had been rejected by the Jews, so it has now been extended to gentiles instead (8:11–12; 21:43). It is no coincidence that the full language of the Great Commission, in which the disciples are commanded to “make disciples of all nations,” is recalled only by Matthew (28:19). The author’s special concerns reveal to us that his community of worship had strong Jewish roots, yet had also embraced a mission to the gentiles and so was struggling with conservative Jewish Christians who wanted to keep the law intact for believers in the Messiah. This description fits perfectly with what we know about the Antiochene church.

The conflict about the place of the law in the Christian life can be seen in a dramatic incident that played out at Antioch (Gal. 2:11–21). The church there was accustomed to close fellowship between Jews and gentiles, including the practice of eating at a common table. But then some men from Jerusalem arrived who argued that Christians should follow the Jewish law. This meant Jewish and gentile believers must keep separate from one another at mealtimes. Paul vehemently opposed such legalism. His Epistle to the Galatians was written from Antioch around this time to counteract this dangerous theology. Adherence to ritual works is so tempting, Paul says, that it’s easy to be “bewitched” (Gal. 3:1) into abandoning the gospel of grace.

Unfortunately, both Peter and Barnabas fell prey to this error. When Peter had first come to Antioch, he willingly joined in the Antiochene church’s acceptance of gentiles by eating at the table with them. But when the legalists from Jerusalem arrived, Peter was intimidated and withdrew from fellowship with gentile Christians, and Barnabas joined him. This caused the apostle Paul to oppose Peter to his face. When even stalwarts like Peter and Barnabas were confused on this issue, we can see it was no small dilemma in the early church. The gospel of grace was not easy to establish. It required all-out effort from its most vigorous champion, the apostle Paul.

Although Barnabas wavered, he eventually came around to Paul’s essential message that the gospel is for everyone, and the two men decided to work together. Upon finishing their first missionary journey, Acts 14:26–27 records how they returned to Antioch rejoicing that God had blessed their ministry among the gentiles. But the legalists were still up to their old tricks. After some heated arguments, 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 that showed he had finally endorsed the Christian’s freedom from the requirements of the law. The council decreed that circumcision was not required for salvation (despite the protests from the former Pharisees who led the legalistic party). The Antiochene gentile believers were greatly encouraged when Paul and Barnabas returned home from Jerusalem with a letter that described them as “brothers who are of the Gentiles” (v. 23).

What does all this have to do with Ignatius? Understanding this background helps to clarify the issues he was facing in Antioch sixty years later. Who knows? Perhaps Ignatius watched these events unfold as a young boy. In any case, Ignatius the mature bishop was a devoted disciple of Paul, teaching that faith in Jesus Christ did not require adherence to the Jewish law.8 But the legalists were still disturbing the church in Antioch, along with another group of heretics we will soon meet. The very future of the Christian religion was at stake—and Ignatius viewed the truth as something worth dying for.

Ignatius’s Dual Oppo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Map
• Timeline
• Introduction
• 1. Ignatius of Antioch
• 2. Justin Martyr
• 3. Irenaeus of Lyons
• 4. Tertullian of Carthage
• 5. Perpetua of Carthage
• 6. Origen of Alexandria
• 7. Athanasius of Alexandria
• 8. Ephrem the Syrian
• 9. John Chrysostom
• 10. Augustine of Hippo
• 11. Cyril of Alexandria
• 12. Patrick of Ireland
• Epilogue
• Index
• Back Cover