LESSON EIGHT

Apostolic ChurchPost – Apostolic Church Approx 30 AD Approx 100 AD Approx 450 AD AD (1688 in England PRESENT Transition PointsMAJOR CHANGE Early Church Medieval Church Reform ation

APOSTOLIC FATHERS(95-140) “To Edify Christians” APOLOGISTS( ) “To Defend Christianity” POLEMICISTS(190—250 ) “To Fight False Doctrine” PATRISTIC Latin pater“father”

Writings of the Apologists ( ) Justin Martyr Personal testimony The Old Testament predicted the coming of Christ A Dialogue with Trypho How is Christianity to be presented to the Greco/Roman world?

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA “Clements's reverence for the greatest and noblest achievements of Greek humanism is never unqualified. He loves Plato and Homer but he does not read them on his knees.” SYNCRETISM TERTULLIAN (OUINTAS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS) c. 155-c. 220

“What then has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the academy to do with the church? What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction is from the porch of Solomon who himself handed down that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with those who produce Stoic, Platonic, and Dialectic Christianity. We have no need of curiosity after we have Christianity, nor of inquisitiveness after we have the Gospel. Since we believe we desire nothing else to believe. For the first thing we believe is that there is nothing else we ought to believe.” Tertullian

“A Time of Productive Confusion” ORTHODOXYRight Belief HERESIES Opposed to True Teaching “…and giving thanks may praise, and praising thank the Father and Son, Son and Father, the Son, instructor and teacher, with the Holy Spirit, all in one, in whom is all, for whom all is one, for whom is eternity, whose members we all are, whose glory the heavens are; for the all good, all lovely, all wise, all just one. To whom be glory both now and for ever. Amen Clement of Alexandria

GNOSTICISM Dualism Docetic Salvation by knowledge MARCIONISM MONTANISM

“A Dominican scholar once remarked to me in the course of a conversation about Tertullian that it was amazing that such an intelligent man as he should have been led away by a movement like Montanism. That is one point of view, but it might equally well be said that there must have been something of more solid worth in Montanism than is generally supposed since it appealed to such an intelligent man as Tertullian.” F.F. Bruce The Spreading Flame quoted by Dr. Calhoun, Lec. 5, p. 6