LESSON EIGHTLESSON EIGHT

Apostolic Church

Post – Apostolic Church

Approx

30 AD

Approx

100 AD

Approx

450 AD

1517 1648 AD

(1688 in England

PRESENT

Transition PointsMAJOR CHANGE

Early Church

Medieval Church

Reformation

APOSTOLIC FATHERS (95-140)

“To Edify Christians”

APOLOGISTS (125-195)

“To Defend Christianity”

POLEMICISTS (190—250)

“To Fight False Doctrine”

PATRISTIC Latin pater “father”

Writings of the Apologists (125-195)Writings of the Apologists (125-195)

Justin Martyr 100-160

•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 noblestachievements 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 academyto do with the church? What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction is from the porch ofSolomon who himself handed down that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with thosewho produce Stoic, Platonic, and Dialectic Christianity. We have no need of curiosity after we haveChristianity, nor of inquisitiveness after we have the Gospel. Since we believe we desire nothing else tobelieve. For the first thing we believe is that there is nothing else we ought to believe.”

Tertullian

“A Time of Productive Confusion”

ORTHODOXY Right 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, forwhom is eternity, whose members we all are, whose glory the heavens are; for the all good, alllovely, 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 itwas amazing that such an intelligent man as he should have been led away by a movement likeMontanism. That is one point of view, but it might equally well be said that there must have beensomething of more solid worth in Montanism than is generally supposed since it appealed to such anintelligent man as Tertullian.”

F.F. Bruce The Spreading Flamequoted by Dr. Calhoun, Lec. 5, p. 6