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Reading the Early Church Fathers included participation in pagan sacrifice. This created a situation in which there were times and places when the churches were made up of aristocratic women and lower-class men, who had less to lose with regard to their career.
65. Hermas, The Shepherd 37.4, 98.3. In The Shepherd 14, Hermas also says that those who deny Christ in persecution often do so to protect their property.
66. Hermas, The Shepherd 6.8, 96.3. Note that this implies that there were some in the Church who were known to have denied the faith in the last persecution, yet reconciled to the Church. Hermas mentions one by name, a certain Maximus (The Shepherd 7.4). This could also argue for a later date than traditionally assigned.
67. Hermas, The Shepherd 6.7-8, 103.6. For Hermas, it is a foregone conclusion that there will be more persecution. Given the affinity of the structure of The Shepherd to the Book of Revelation, it is clear that Hermas believed Revelation to be predicting greater persecution in the future. See The Shepherd 22.1. Of course, he turned out to be right.
68. Hermas, The Shepherd 48.3-4.
69. Hermas, The Shepherd 65.5.
70. Hermas, The Shepherd 50-51.
71. Hermas, The Shepherd 17.5, 50.8-9, 51.10.
72. Hermas, The Shepherd 69.5.
73. Hermas, The Shepherd 65.5.
CHAPTER 3
1. See the introduction to Tertullian's On the Soul's Testimony.
2. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 10.
3. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 9.
4. Theophilus of Antioch, 7d Autolycus 2.3.
5. As proof of this, the apologists will point out that one of the newest additions to the Roman pantheon was Antinous, the young boy whom the emperor Hadrian had seduced. When
Antinous drowned in the Nile (possibly a suicide), Hadrian had him
Notes proclaimed a god. See Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 29, Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 6. Some also said that the gods were in fact demons.
6. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 3.1, 3.4, 3.29.
7. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 23, 44, 59, 60, Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 6.
8. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 3.4.
9. Ironically, when Athenagoras argued that Christians were morally superior to the rest of the Romans, he said, in effect,
Tf you don't believe us, just ask our slaves (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 32). Obviously, one of the ways in which the Church was not critical of Roman society was in its capitulation to the slave culture, though Christians would have argued that they treated their slaves better than the average Roman.
10. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 10.
11. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 4.3.
12. Cf. also Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1.5.
Theophilus said that when you see a ship sailing into harbor, you assume that there must be a pilot. Therefore, the universe must also have its pilot, who is God.
13. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 4.9.
14. It has been suggested that the author may be an apologist named Quadratus. A fragment of his apology is preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 4.3.1-2.
15. Epistle to Diognetus 9.
16. Epistle to Diognetus 7.7.
17. Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 12.
18. Justin mentions that Jesus was born 150 years earlier, which, assuming the birth of Jesus at 5 BCE, would put the writing of 1 Apology at 145 CE. There are other internal clues that point to a slightly later date, however, which shows that either Justin's statement was meant to be approximate, or he already had the current calendar's miscalculation in mind.
19. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 2, 45.
20. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 45, 68.
21. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 31, 36.
22. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 12.
23. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 45.
Reading the Early Church Fathers 24. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 67.
25. Interestingly, Justin does not mention singing, though it must be assumed that early Christian worship included singing (or chanting). Pliny's letter to Trajan, written about forty years earlier, does mention the singing of hymns to Christ. It is also interesting to note that in Justin's description of early worship the term he uses for "presider" (sometimes translated "president") is not the New
Testament term presbyter (priest) but rather the Greek word proestos, which means, simply, the leader—the one who stands in front.
26. Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 3.
27. Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 7.
28. See also Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 8, 18, 52.
29. The martyr document does mention the location of Justin's school, "above the baths of Martin."
30. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 4.29. The accusations against Tatian by later writers are contradictory.
Jerome called him the founder of a sect known as the Encratites; however, the Encratites already existed before Tatian left Rome.
Eusebius is probably correct in saying that Saturninus was the real founder of the Encratites. Others, including Irenaeus, have accused
Tatian of gnosticism, but there is nothing to support this in his extant writings.
31. Tatian, Address to the Greeks 5.
32. In spite of the later accusations of gnosticism, Tatian's Christology was more likely an influence on adoptionism and Arianism, both of which saw Christ as a created being who was not eternally coexistent with the Father. See James L. Papandrea,
Novatian of Rome and the Culmination of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock/Pickwick Publications, 2011).
33. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.11.8. For Irenaeus, the four gospels are the four pillars of the Church, and since there are four winds and four corners of the earth, there also must be four gospels—no more, no less. Irenaeus explains the symbolism of the four gospels: Matthew is the man, emphasizing Jesus' humanity;
Mark is the eagle, representing the Holy Spirit and prophecy; Luke is the calf, symbolizing Christ's role as priest and sacrifice; and John is the lion, which represents Christ's royal power. See also Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 6.25.
Notes 34. The fragment of Melito's apology is preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 4.26.
35. Note that Clement of Alexandria wrote that the "new song" of Revelation 5:9 and 14:3 is a reference to the new covenant
(Exhortation to the Greeks 1). See also James L. Papandrea, The Wedding of the Lamb: A Historical Approach to the Book of Revelation
(Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock/Pickwick Publications, 2011), 102—4.
36. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1.1, 1.12.
37. Theophilus of Antioch, 7o Autolycus 1.2.
38. Theophilus of Antioch, 7o Autolycus 1.5.
39. A note is required on the use of the words heresy and orthodoxy. It is assumed that the "heresies" were sincere attempts to interpret scripture, many of them motivated by the admirable conviction that no matter how one understands Christ, one cannot compromise monotheism. But it was not long after the writing of the apostolic documents we call the New 'Testament that the Church started to produce varying (and often mutually exclusive) interpretations of those documents. Often it happened that the position that would come to be confirmed as "orthodox" was not defined until it was forced to be by opposing alternative interpretations. In each generation of the Church's development, the orthodox response was a refutation of the alternatives by an increasingly refined defense of the conclusions of the previous generations.
Thus each generation's orthodoxy becomes the foundation for future generations. This does not mean that no one ever challenged the conclusions of a previous generation. But it does mean that when the dust had settled, the Church defined orthodoxy in such a way as to preserve consistency with the previous generations. The Church's tradition, then, is the collective contribution of the early
Church to the interpretation of scripture. Put more simply, tradition interprets scripture, and does so in a way that uses the consensus of the previous generations to refute the current alternatives (2
Pet 1:20). Therefore, the history of the Church, specifically the history of the development of doctrine, is the history of the interpretation of scripture.
40. Eusebius said that Clement of Alexandria's name was Titus Flavius Clemens, though there still may be some confusion woo