Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsA Higher Ecclesiology for Evangelicals
Bryan Litfin's Getting to Know the Church Fathers, which has chapters on Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, Perpetua, Origen, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria, is designed to introduce the ancient church to evangelicals. Litfin writes about the lives and major issues of each person, then lists possible study questions, books for deeper exploration, and a short excerpt of the church father's writing. He is concerned that many Christians have rejected the church fathers under the impression that they were detached from Scripture, Roman Catholic, and that they represent the "fall" of Christianity after Constantine's conversion. Litfin spoke with CT about introducing evangelicals to Patristics.
Whom did you write the book for?
Someone like me, someone who had heard of the concept of the ancient church and thought Yeah, there were people in togas who got thrown to the lions. But I didn't really know who they were, and I certainly didn't feel any spiritual or theological connection to them. Then I began to see them as real people. I began to see them as my forefathers, that I might feel an organic connection. And that church history is a continuous story.
We can recover the fathers as our own and we can recover them through a direct line back, so that all the richness of church history becomes ours. That's what I want to do for the Christian today: I want the Christian to understand that there's a richness to their history that they're missing; embrace it and let it be something that inspires you.
Are there some negative views evangelicals hold that are valid?
Yes. I try not to go into that too much, not in order to hide those things but because they're so complicated. It just opens up a can of worms. I feel that perhaps the pendulum is so against them that I need to be positive to counter-weight that.
You have to realize that they're not evangelicals. So some of the points where we would differ with them would be the points where we would differ with Roman Catholicism. Some of their doctrine of salvation is going to be sacramental. They're not going to use the term inerrancy, but they give full credence to Scripture, and [see it as] inspired. Their anti-Semitism is something you can put in there as needing correction. There can be a works-orientedness to them, where there's a paying-off of God. You can see that in Tertullian, for example.
I'm not saying that anyone should hide anything or gloss over it. My thought was, let's do an initial foray. That's enough for most people, but then other people who want to have that deeper conversation—there's room for that.
You write that evangelicals need the church fathers. Why?
I don't think we can apply their situation to our situation. A sense of connection to the fathers grounds us in the bigness of the church, and that there are other stakeholders, and that there are others who have blazed a path that we should reluctantly move away from, not gleefully move away from.
At what point do you think Christians lost track of that?
It's probably coming out of the Reformation, and in particular out of the radical Reformation.
We can recover a sense of catholicity without having to go back to Rome. I'm not one of those guys wanting to cross the Tiber. I'm not even on the Canterbury trail. I'm not trying to meld with Eastern Orthodoxy, high Anglicanism, or Roman Catholicism. I'm a proud, dispensational, conservative, born-again fundie. But I think I can do that in a way that I'm catholic.
Star Trek Into Darkness
(on articles open to the public, you must at least register for a free account).
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Newsletters
Google
Comments
Displaying 1–3 of 6 comments
See all comments
Pastor Art
In the Father’s the cultural and historic standards of eye witness viability give credence for our need to hear them. As for the battles they fought still being fought I think that is because most “evangelical” people think that the “Church” started at the Reformation. This has allowed the lies to be repeated because we are left without authoritative pronouncements from the past correcting heresies. Wesley learned from the Father’s and England was spared the fate happening on the Continent. What about us today?
Adam
I'm disturbed to see the amount of misunderstanding displayed here. The Church Fathers are NOT distant relatives from a bygone age with fond memories of an early, out-of-date Church. They ARE the founders of our faith with, yes, Holy-Spirit-Inspired insight into a faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Their work may at times be difficult or suffer the inevitable complications of a fallen world or the intricacies of language, but it has conveyed Holy Tradition (which encompasses Scripture), giving us everything that we call the Christian Faith. It is arrogant and dangerous for us to presume that the Church Fathers had mostly a 'geographical' nearness to Christ. And, it's completely absurd to select writings from the Chruch Fathers á la carte outside of Holy Tradition. St. Ignatius of Antioch's life did overlap Christ's, and Ignatius wrote ardently for the Eucharist and authority of the bishop. Their very un-Evangelical pronouncements should not be ignored.
DONALD FAHRENKRUG
As a conservative, Independent Lutheran, I think church history is important. However, the "Fathers" have to be read with great caution. Inspired they are not. In fact, just like theologians today, they contradict one another and some of them had some pretty wild ideas. That being said, I do admire some of them for the battles they fought against the various hersies, some of which we are still fighting against. But I do NOT agree that because they were closer to the beginning that that necessarily gives them better insight. Almost from the beginning the early Fathers wanted to mix the law and the gospel and bring in this whole idea that we have to "accept" Jesus or make a "decision" or Jesus or help God save us. The same old story that the whole entire church has basically gone to--incorrectly I might add. We need to stick to the written, inerrant Word of God and we would not get into so much screwy theology. As 1 cor 4:7 says, we have NOTHING we haven't received.