The First Fruits: Forging Faith From The Fathers

8/8/2019 The First Fruits: Forging Faith From The Fathers

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John Dao

Box 76A

December 13, 2010

Church History 501

Dr. Garth Rosell


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Dao 1

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,



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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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Bibliography

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


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

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

2004.

Apostles, The Twelve. "The Didache." In Early Christian Fathers, by Cyril Richardson. Philadelphia, PA;

London, UK: Westminster Press, 1995.

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

Publishing Company, 2003.

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

Mathetes. "The Epistle of Methetes to Diognetus." In Ante Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers, JustinMartyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 23-30. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

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

Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, edited by Alexander Roberts and James

Donaldson, 1-21. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

Smyrna, Polycarp of. "The Epistle of Polycarp to the Phillipians." InAnte-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic

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

2004.

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

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The First Fruits: Forging Faith From The Fathers