The First Fruits: Forging Faith From The Fathers

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    7KH)LUVW)UXLWV)RUJLQJ)DLWK)URP7KH)DWKHUV

    John Dao

    Box 76A

    December 13, 2010

    Church History 501

    Dr. Garth Rosell

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    Before doctrine, before Christian, before Church structures, and before the canon of

    Scripture, there was the Church, the body of believers of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Many

    of the resources that we take for granted in the Christian community today were unavailable or

    even just being formed to the first believers living right after the death and resurrection of

    Jesus, some of whom it was still within their living memory. How then did they live out their

    faith?

    Going back to the earliest writings of the Church, we begin to see a picture of not only

    how the Apostolic Fathers taught and wrote, but also on the kinds of things that were stressed.

    There are but a few early Christian writings outside of the New Testament that we possess,

    most notably are those of the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and

    Polycarp of Smyrna), a work entitled The Shepherd of Hermas which was popular during the

    time of Early Christians, an Epistle to Diognetus whose author is unknown, and a sort of

    teaching manual for ethical and liturgical practice referred to as the Didache, or teaching of the

    twelve apostles. From the reading of these early documents, three aspects of early Christian

    life seem to be emphasized more than any behaviors: obedience to Christ, the practice of

    Virtue, and unity among brothers.

    Almost all of it follows the same style of paraenesis. Fergusson writes Paraenesis is a

    broader term for moral exhortation to follow a given course of action or the abstain from a

    contrary behavior Common techniques of paraensis were reminding of what was known,

    complimenting what was done that was good, censuring wrong conduct, offering examples for

    imitation, stringing together brief precepts and admonitions, and giving reasons for

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    recommended conduct.1

    This style was adapted well by Paul (1 Thessalonians being a prime

    example) and was thus adopted by many of the early Christian writers following him. These

    Early writings did not emphasize orthodoxy (i.e. right belief) as much as orthopraxy, that is,

    right living and practice. They all deal mostly with practical concerns and issues arising within

    the Church and from the surrounding Greco-Roman context.

    It follows only naturally that obedience be the primary emphasis in the Early Church.

    This notion finds itself in Jesuss teachings as well: If you love me, keep my commands. (John

    14:15 NIV), Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but

    only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 7:21 NIV) as well as Jesus

    reinstatement of Peter in John 21:15-25 in his commands to Peter to feed his sheepafter

    asking about Peters love for him, among other places. Especially when we consider the

    context and exactly who the first believers would have been, this issue become expressly

    important.

    So just who were these first believers? From the letters of Paul as well as from the

    Didache and Clement, we see exhortations against long lists of vices. Being that these writings

    were largely practical in their concerns, it would not be so farfetched to say that these vices and

    warnings were not only precautionary, but also reactionary, that is, they were in direct

    response to ungodliness within the Church and surrounding culture.

    1Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds of Early Christianity. Third Edition. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans

    Publishing Company, 2003.

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    For example, the second and fifth chapter of the Didache contain very similar lists of

    prohibitions against murder, adultery, the corruption of boys (pederasty), fornication, stealing,

    witchcraft and magic, as well as the murder of children born and unborn, and coveting, lying,

    maliciousness and hypocrisy (having a double mind or double tongue). It is entirely probably

    that the first Church members were murderers, adulterers, fornicators, thieves and sorcerers

    among various other things. We can see this plainly in Pauls rebuke in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11,

    Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do no be deceived:

    Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers not male prostitutes nor homosexual

    offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the

    Kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were2. But you were washed, you were

    sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.

    Indeed, it seems that because many of those Paul preached to were not Jews but rather the

    Nations, they still carried with them the customs of the nations. In the Greco-Roman world,

    marriages and sexual relations were completely different from those of today. What was

    hedonistic to us was rather commonplace and public in the cities. Perhaps this was why it was

    so surprising to Peter that God would extend the gospel to the Gentiles, however without this

    open invitation the Church would not have grown. It was mostly from this destitute pool of

    immorality that Christianity pulled converts, as Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous.3

    This overarching and completely open acceptance of sinners we today would hardly

    want to associate with was one of the things that marked the Christian manner. The epistle of

    Mathetes to Diognetus goes into more about the Christian character in Chapter 5 stating, For Christians

    2Emphasis is my own

    3Mark 2:17; 1 Tim 1:15

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    are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they

    observe they love all men, and are persecuted by all They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified;

    they are reviled, yet bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are

    punished as evildoers. The core of this sentiment can be summed up with three words that occur at

    the end of the long list of prohibitions in the Didache, Hate no one. It seems only to refer directly back

    to the previous list4: do not hate the murder, adulterer, or fornicator. Do not hate the thief or witch or

    those who kill children. Rather, it tells the community that they should correct some, pray for some,

    and some they should love even more than their own lives. It makes no mention to excommunication or

    shunning the sinner coming into the Church, or even staring at them until they feel uncomfortable and

    leave. Actually, it seems to imply that the worst sinners need the most attention, care, and love, not the

    most rebuke and condemnation. For the early Church, it is apparent that their own sins are still fresh in

    their minds. In order to grow, they could not afford to turn away even one sinner (unless of course, they

    became unrepentant and disobedient to the Lord Jesus Christ.) Imagine if Paul, the self proclaimed

    worst sinner5, was turned away from the community of believers? The results would have been

    disastrous.

    Polycarp in his letter to the Phillipians expresses grief over Valens, who seems to have little

    understanding to his position in the Church. He prays that the Lord would grant him True repentance,

    but his instructions to the Phillipians on what to do with this Church leader gone astray is very telling.

    He says And be ye then moderate in regard to this matter, and do not count such as enemies, but call

    them back as suffering and straying members, that ye may save your whole body. For by acting so, ye

    4Jones, Tony. The Teaching of theTwelve. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009.

    51 Timothy 1:15

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    shall edify yourselves.6 Again, the reaction of the Church is not to be judgment or casting out of such a

    sinner, even a sinner in a prominent position in the Church, but the response and goal is to save the

    entire body. How contrary is this attitude to todays Church which afflicts itself with amputations and

    does not seek to heal its wounds?

    Its no wonder then that in order to establish a unified holy, catholic, and apostolic

    Church, much effort was put into changing the old behaviors still afflicting its body. Repentance

    was central to life in the community and Life in Christ. Exhortations to repentance can be found

    everywhere throughout early Christian writings, all of which stems from Jesuss call to sinners

    to come to repentance. Clements First Epistle contains a wonderful example of an exhortation

    to repentance starting in Chapter 7. He writes, These things, beloved, we write unto you, not

    merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. For we are struggling on

    the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us. There is a feeling of a mutual

    call to repentance here which stands contrary to contemporary understandings of repentance

    which have a I, as your righteous brother, am calling you, the sinner, to higher standards

    sentimentality to them. Clement goes on to point to examples of men and women who

    repented, the heroes of the faith, as further support to repentance as the only way to salvation

    and in fact the only way to a relationship with Christ. Most remarkably, the examples of

    repentance he uses are examples of people being obedient to God. Noah who built the ark and

    was saved, Abraham who obeyed God and went to sacrifice his son Isaac and whose trust in

    God which led to his obedience was credited to him as righteousness, and Lot who obeyed God

    was saved from the destruction of Sodom and whose wife was made an example of the

    6Smyrna, Polycarp of. "The Epistle of Polycarp to the Phillipians." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: TheApostolic Fathers,

    Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 33-36. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

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    consequences of disobedience and unrepentance (in this sense, the turning back to the old),

    and to Rahab whose faith and hospitality saved the house of this lowly prostitute to show that

    redemption should flow through the blood of the Lord to all them that believe and hope in

    God.7

    It seems that only through obedience to the Word of God, and by corollary to Christ, can

    anyone say that they are truly repentant. There is no mention of prayer to ask Jesus into ones

    heart, nor any instruction to read the scriptures everyday (such was impossible for many people

    for various reasons: illiteracy and lack of personal copies of scripture as well as for the earliest

    of Christians, a lack of a New Testament). To the early Church fathers, repentance is not simply

    believing that Christ has died for our sins, but rather allowing yourself to submit to divine

    authority and obedience. Clement reminds the Church about the words of David, The sacrifice

    [acceptable] to God is a bruised spirit; a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.8 The

    foundation of the early Christian Church and for every Christian was repentance, in accord with

    the immortal words of our Savior, The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and

    believe in the good news!9

    But how does one repent? This is the second emphasis of the Early Christian Church:

    the practice of Virtue. Most of what the early Christian writings say about keeping to virtue is

    merely for the purpose of being able to be obedient to Gods will. It seems Christian morality

    7Rome, Clement of. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Vol. 1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers: TheApostolic Fathers, Justin

    Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 1-21. Peabody, MA:

    Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

    8Psalms 51:17 as quoted in the First Epistle of Clement

    9Mark 1:15 NIV

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    stems from Godly virtues of love, truth, humility, temperance, and reverence (or Godly fear).

    All of these are exhorted to the early Christians to be practiced.

    Clement naturally flows into a call to humility, the cornerstone virtue of the repentant

    heart. Obedience cannot happen without virtue. Simply, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and

    a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.10

    Clement has a large section dedicated to humility in which

    he gives plenty of examples of people who have humbled themselves, such as Christ, Moses,

    Abraham, Ezekiel, Elisha, and Elijah, Job and finally David. He tells early Christians to follow

    after their example in order to strive for peace. He writes Wherefore, having so many

    examples set before us, let us turn again to the practice of that peace which from the beginning

    was the mark set before us. From humility and submission, peace and reconciliation are

    possible as well as the restoration of Eden in which man enjoyed a free and unmediated

    relationship with God the Father.

    Polycarp, in his letter to the Phillipians, exhorts them to virtue throughout the entirety

    of the letter as well. He emphasizes love as the chief virtue, saying that we are to love the

    things that Jesus loved and that he that hath love is far from all sin.11

    Ignatius writes about

    love The beginning of life is faith, and the end is love12

    Love then is the goal of the Christian

    faith and of the believers in the first Church. Paul, of course, talks about love in the famous (at

    least in Christian circles) 1 Corinthians 13 passage. Love then is an important concept to the

    early Church, but what exactly is meant by love

    10Matthew 7:18

    11Chapter III of the Epistle of Polycarp to the Phillipians

    12Antioch, Ignatius of. "The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: TheApostolic Fathers,

    Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 45-58. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

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    Clement exposits love in his epistle. In addressing recent discord occurring at the

    Church in Corinth, he writes, Let us therefore, with all haste, put an end to this [state of

    things] and let us fall down before the Lord, and beseech him with tears, that He would restore

    us to our former seemly and holy practice of brotherly love.13

    To Clement, reconciliation

    through love is of the utmost importance. That one would be brought to tears over division in

    the Church to us may seem a completely foreign concept, but it seems love is what drives the

    sentiment. At least in this way love can be thought of as harmony with each other.

    In the Didache as well, there is heavy emphasis on love. The very first line declares that

    there are two ways: a way of life and a way of death, and that a great difference exists between

    the two. The way of life, then, is this: First you shall love God who made you; second, love your

    neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you love all

    those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy. Actually, the entire first chapter seems

    to be a recapitulation of the sayings of Jesus. Of course we can see a direct correlation to the

    teachings of Jesus here in the greatest commandment: Love God with all your heart, soul,

    mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself14

    Love encompasses both a love for

    God leading to the obedience of His commandments and a love for each other despite iniquity.

    But in the addition of the practice of virtue, there is also the avoidance of vices. From

    both anger and jealousy murder is engendered, so they are to be avoided. Lust leads to

    fornication, filthy talking and lofty eyes lead to adultery so they too should be avoided. Lying,

    greed, and vanity lead to thievery, and omens, and astrology lead to idolatry so also they

    13Ch. XLVII

    14Mark 12:30; Matthew 36:40; Luke 10:25

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    the members of Christ, and raise up strife against our own body, and have reached such

    a height of madness as to forget that we are members of one another?15

    The image that we as the Church are to be one unitary body is a common illustration

    and metaphor to the life of the Church. The issue here is that of breaking down previous racial,

    class, and social barriers in order to forge a community that is in the world but not of it. For the

    first fathers, establishing the Church. What is really curious, however, is what Clement writes in

    Chapter LIV of his letter. He declares that the one who is filled with love and compassion will

    incur every loss in order to restore the unity of the Church. He then sites examples from

    heathen cultures, as if to say, If the heathens know how to do this, how much more should

    Christians?

    Even Ignatius picks up on this same language of unity. A good portion of his letter to the

    Ephesians is concerned with a call to unity and its merits. In fact, every single one of his written

    letters16

    contains an exhortation to unity! Now Ignatius wrote all these letters while on the

    road to Rome to be martyred, so of course he would write some of the same things in each of

    his letters. Common to all of them is a call for their Church to be unified, with Bishops,

    deacons, elders and laity all under the one divine will of Christ. In one beautiful passage in his

    letter to Polycarp, Ignatius fully explains the duties of the Church:

    Give ye heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to you. My soul be for theirs

    that are submissive to the bishop, to the presbytery, and to the deacons: May I have my

    portion with them from God! Labor together with one another; strive in company

    15First Epistle of Clement Chap XLVI

    16With exception to the Letter to the Romans which is more concerned over his impending martyrdom

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    together; run together; suffer together; sleep together; and awake together, as the

    stewards, and associates, and servants of God. Please ye Him under whom ye fight, and

    from whom ye shall receive your wages. Let none of you be found a deserter. Let your

    Baptism endure as your arms; your faith as your helmet; your love as your spear; your

    patience as a complete panoply. Let your works be the charge assigned to you, that you

    may obtain for them a most worthy recompense. Be long-suffering, therefore, with one

    another, in meekness, and God shall be so with you. May I have joy of you forever!17

    Here we see for the first time in writing a hierarchical structure forming within the Church, but

    above all that is a beautiful picture of the Body and Bride of Christ made perfect. In a sense,

    the Body had gone through a terribly traumatic fall, and was dying until that Great Physician

    came to do his healing work. This focus on Unity no doubt stems from Jesuss prayer for the

    future disciples in John 17, that is the Church, which states that it is by the unity of the Church

    that Christs divinity be made manifest unto the world.

    The Didache itself gives a different picture of communal living. As an early manual for

    Christian community living written for and by Hellenized gentiles, the Didache points to a

    simpler Christianity that lacks much of the nitpicky details that the Church today splits itself

    over; things such as what is a sacrament, what is the right way to baptize, and so on. It

    emphasizes the oneness of God and thus the oneness of all those who are under God. If the

    Didache was written around the same times as the earliest Gospels, it could have very well

    17Antioch, Ignatius of. "The Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers, Justin

    Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 93-96. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

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    been the first thing a new believer would have read. It could have served as a training manual

    to catechumens seeking to be baptized into the faith.

    Everything written in the Didache seems to be about interpersonal relationships. It

    doesnt say anything about the nature of God or of Christ, and there is also not a single word

    about evangelism, or even sharing ones faith. Actually, there is no mention of anything akin to

    the evangelism of today mentioned anywhere in the letters of the Apostolic Fathers or the

    Didache. It is hard for us to imagine today a course for new believers that did not stress the

    sharing of ones faith and why, and yet evangelism doesnt even seem to be an issue for new

    believers, however we of course know evangelism was taking place through Paul and others,

    else the faith would not have spread, but Ignatius points out It is better for a man to be silent

    and be [a Christian] than to talk and not be one. Early Church writers put the emphasis on

    doing, not simply teaching. It exhorts teachers like Paul to also be doers.

    The Epistle to Diognetus contains a description on how a Christian is to be a Christian

    unto the world, what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world The soul dwells

    in the body, yet is not of the body the soul loves the flesh that hates it, and [loves also] the

    members; Christians likewise love those who hate them. The soul is imprisoned in the body,

    yet preserves that very body18

    In essence, Christians are to be the preservers of the world,

    to keep it from dying, or to be the salt of the Earth.19

    The only gospel present in early Christian

    writings is the social gospel. Thus, it is the way one lives that truly was the work of evangelism.

    Some have been gifted with the task of teaching and are appointed to that task. Coming back

    18Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chapter VI

    19Mark 9:50

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    to Clement, we read that There is a kind of mixture in all things, and thence arises mutual

    advantage so let everyone be subject to his neighbor, according to the special gift bestowed

    upon him.20

    We all have a specialized task, and it is only through unity that the body can

    function. As Clement points out, a general is nothing without his soldiers and vice-versa

    Why is it that the Church of today stands in stark contrast to the Early Church? Even

    when we read in Acts 2 about the earliest gathering of the disciples, it is still remarkably striking

    to the ekklesia of today. What can studying the early church teach us about living as Christians

    today? I believe there to be three areas upon which it would behoove the Church today to

    return to: unity of believers, holy living (orthopraxy), and discipleship.

    It seems that the power of the Early Church dwelled in the closeness of the community.

    This is may be why arguments and lawsuits within the Church were such a big deal to Paul and

    Clement and the other Church fathers. There was much hard work poured into growing

    churches in places where such things had not even been heard of. Divisions in the church

    threatened all of that. Jesus wisely said that a house divided upon itself cannot stand21

    . It

    almost pained me to read the exhortations to unity when today the church in itself is splintered

    into many denominations. It could do us some good to find universal ground, if after all we

    share in one baptism, one grace given to us by God, and are under one Authority, namely that

    of Christ.

    The documents of the Early Church seemed expressly concerned with practical concerns

    more than theological debates about the nature of God or atonement. Today it is easy for

    20Ch. XXXVII

    21Mark 3:25

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    Christians the profess and believe all the right things, and even to teach the faith to others

    without ever having to practice the faith. This stress on orthodoxy has left us with Christians

    fully versed in the Bible and training up others just like themselves but never knowing salvation

    personally. Not to say that we should quit teaching the faith. By no means! But rather there

    needs to be a balance between living the faith and teaching it.

    This also effects the way we should view evangelism. As I mentioned before,

    evangelism is hardly mentioned, if at all, in the writings of the Apostolic era of the Church.

    Today evangelism takes all sorts of forms: TV, Radio, door to door, tracts, magazines, movies,

    newspapers, blogs, as well as what we call evangelistic outreaches which may include

    handing out coats, or groceries, or throwing a block party. None of these things are bad, but

    they all portray evangelism as an event. You go out to evangelize, and when you are done you

    go back to normal Christian life. To the early Christians, evangelism was a way of life. It was all

    in how you treated other people, to react in love instead of anger, to react with joy to

    persecution, and to turn the other cheek. In a way, its as if the church today doesnt take

    Christ seriously when he talks about the kind of radical lifestyle a righteous person should have.

    We have traded the Greatest Commandment which has been prevalent throughout early

    Christian writings for the Great Commission, which doesnt really get a mention. We have lost

    sight of the core of Judaism as well as the power of deep relationships and community.

    Lastly, discipleship today is completely lacking when compared to such heavy emphasis

    in training up the Church to practice virtue and to do Gods commandments. Ironically, the

    Great Commission was never to make converts to Christianity, but rather to make disciples.

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    Common practice of the day is that when someone becomes a believer, you pray the sinners

    prayer, hand them a Bible, tell them to read it every day and pray, and then send them on their

    way. This in no way fulfills the great commission to make disciples. Early church goers would

    have to be trained first as catechumens before they could be baptized. They were assigned

    mentors to help them as they learned what it meant to be a Christian because it is in these

    crucial moments that someone can slip right back into their old habits. Now some churches do

    a good job with discipleship, however most are completely lacking in this area. There is a huge

    disconnect with youth in our churches today for this very simple reason: no one has connected

    with them. We live in a society which thousands of people leave the church every year because

    theyve not experienced anything genuine within its walls. What I am getting at is real deep

    relationships, that very thing which powered the early Church and was one of the main driving

    forces behind its growth. Love cannot be expected to thrive in communities in which the

    members do not share with each other their needs. The hand may think that it only needs the

    head to be able to move, and thus neglects the arm, but it is not so. In the same way have we

    isolated ourselves from each other in our churches.

    So if we could learn anything from the example of the earliest Christians, its that life in

    Christ was meant to be shared. It is only when we draw closer to each other that we are able to

    draw closer to Christ Himself. It is only in close community in which we learn to love. There is

    no such thing as a Christian outside the Body, just as the vine is attached to the branches. Just

    exactly how we came so far from these early Christian societies is the subject of another study,

    but they were the first to have to figure out what it meant to be a Christian in the world.

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    Ironically, many of us today are looking to the past for a more authentic Christianity in order to

    decipher what it means to be a Christian in this post-modern world.

    We disagree on how to appropriately serve God, but one thing we can be certain: We

    are wrong on some major doctrine somewhere. No one has it perfect, but we should all act

    with grace. To end with a quote from the Didache, For if you are able to bear the entire yoke

    of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able to do this, do what you are able.

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    Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984by International Bible Society. Used by Permission of Zondervan. All rights Reserved.