Monday, January 13, 2025

Apostolic Fathers

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Then we're in an area of rome that is relatively under populated
And it's the area where the church was largely active it would be the area around
the largely Jewish settlements in the Roman area of the 1st century [and]
Here we see clement [clement] of [rome] to distinguish him from another figure by the name of Clement later clement of Alexandria
But clement of rome is a 1st century man. He's a bishop there in the city of Rome and he
Is actually one of the disciples of the Apostle Paul?
Tradition actually has it that clement is the same clement that is mentioned in Philippians 4 3 where paul refers to
his fellow Servant clement and
Whether or not that's this clement or not it's hard to understand
But we do know that clement of rome is a disciple of Paul's
He sees himself as a successor of Sorts to the great apostle in
there in Rome clement as bishop and as a disciple of Paul heard that things were still not quite as
Good as they [should] [have] been in the church of Corinth
And so they're from the city of [Rome] clement writes a letter
In that letter today is known as first clement, but it is a letter from Clement to the city of [Corinth]
admonishing them on certain doctrinal points
encouraging them and in many ways
Mimicking though not trying to fully embody all of Paul's [writings] to churches of the first century in fact some have
[tongue-In-cheek] refer to this as 3rd corinthians
Because it seems very clear that clement in this letter is trying to say some things that
[forwards] it advances the gospel in the city of car than in the church of corinth that
Really mimic and push forward some of the things that Paul was trying to say
Then one of the things that was going on in Corinth
This time is there seems to have been some deacons and elders who had been deposed and there was some
consternation as to whether or not they should be allowed back into the church and under what order of discipline and
Clement encouraged them to allow them
So long as they are repentant to return to the office of leadership
he sees in their full removal and permanent removal a real heavy hand a
Clement says it this is not. How we do [things] the elders and the deacons those who were
Chastised and disciplined for a time need to be restored
He says in particular it is their job to offer up the gifts. Which is almost certainly a reference to the eucharist
That in the order of worship it is to the charge of the elders those who are ordained to offer up the eucharistic sacrifice
In so clement argues. It's a bit unseemly to permanently bar those who were under discipline who have now repented and [have] come back
Among other things clement refers extraordinarily to the resurrection [of] Christ
but he does a bit of a
Poetic sort of turn of Phrase he actually does a bit of what we call natural theology in this text
When he's referring [to] the resurrection of our Lord
He actually refers to the resurrection of a bird that he thinks is actually a historical
actual bird in real time and space and that is the bird the [Phoenix] and
[clement] really believes that it's a marvel that
The Lord in Sort of a symbolic fashion in the order of [Nature] has given this bird who dies and then is resurrected?
year by Year as an example of
the resurrection of our Lord
And of course not a few people throughout history who have come to realize that
the Phoenix is a mythological creature that it's not a historic creature have chuckled this because they
Laugh at climate being so foolish as to believe that a Phoenix was an actual bird
But his argument is simply that the resurrection is historically true that Christ was bodily resurrected it
He makes this sort of oblique appeal to this phoenix, but his point is Christ is risen he is on the throne
Restore these elders and these deacons and get on with the ministry. They are in Corinth, and
[if] we take a step back, and we look at this here. We have a direct disciple of [poles]
Ministering in the city of rome now if you are familiar with a book of actually now pull labored and strove and desired
Above all things that get to the heart of the roman empire to [the] city of rome itself
in order to do ministry
Tradition has it of course that paul does end up there in chains and that he is eventually beheaded
But he is not there to [establish] a church the best
he's able to do is to offer the book of romans to those in rome who are ministering and
It is at least a poetic ending in some ways that here. We have Paul's protege. What appalls direct disciples
Ministering living in rome and enacting the ministry that Paul himself was not able to do before his death
and not only that but we see clement taking up the charge of
Caring [for] some of the other churches that were under Paul's charge during his ministry and looking after
Feisty Old cars off there in the distance [and]
With this lecture we really get to this bridge point
This lecture is on the apostolic Fathers which is a name we use for those figures who come directly?
after the apostolic age
In many ways like in clement
We're talking about people who either knew the apostles or who through some degree of separation
Were directly linked to the apostles [themselves] and the importance of understanding the apostolic Fathers is?
That it provides the context in the earliest
vocabularies of Worship Church life
Discipline church structures in all these very interesting questions that we want to know about
What was the earliest worship like?
Often we don't have a lot of documentation of what happens after the book of acts [for] sometime
the period of [persecution] and the period of Loe writing output by the early church means that
Sometimes I just have to piece things together through fragments and archaeology
But when we look at the apostolic fathers we have in Written form though
Not as much as we'd always like but we have in written form the earliest evidence of the earliest church
Then we need to begin by reminding ourselves [of] the context in our previous lectures. We've looked at the greco-Roman world
first by looking at the Greek world and hellenization
and then by looking at Roman paganism very
Explicitly both in terms of how they worshiped and in terms of the wars and [the] armies it just the sort of overall
Ethos of the Roman World
We even looked at some of the roman philosophies and the greek philosophies [that] were at least dominant over
The centuries of the time either prior to the church or during it
but the church right now is dealing with two contexts that it has to sort of wedge itself between and distinguish itself from
on the one hand there [is] Judaism and
The earliest Church struggled to Define itself over it against the Jewish church
This is not hard to believe if you look at the book of acts
there is so much of the ethos and the ethnic identity and the
Ritual identity of Following Torah that is there in the early church
And there's so much of the structure of the synagogue
That comes over into the earliest days of the church
that at times
Again, not unlike Paul's disciples or any of the other
figures in the new testament period
trying to parse out the subtle differences at times between
followers of Christ and those who externally follow the Jewish ways
Was not always an easy task
Increasingly though it does become easier in terms of your allegiance
In particular the Obvious allegiance of the church to the Messiah to Christ as lord to him as the incarnate God
That he came down and bore our sins on the cross and was resurrected
Was simply not tolerable in the Jewish Faith?
Still the Jewish Faith is what gave birth to the Christian world?
The Christian world was not a wholesale rejection of Judaism by any means
The Old testament Scriptures are the Christian scriptures
It's just that the church sees the fulfillment of these scriptures in the person and work [of] christ
But on the other hand on the other side
Apart from Judaism there was this pagan world this hierarchical world this very much have have [nots] world
There were those who the elites to be roman to have your citizenship to be part of the army this was considered to be virtuous
But [By-and-large] Christians did not come from any of these rags if from the early days any of these ranks at all
And so we can really characterize the earliest century or two of the church
But really one word
vulnerable
the early Church was vulnerable
It had a vulnerability because it had no natural power base. It was neither Roman
It was not embraced by any means or nor would it ever be embraced by the Roman aristocracy or by the Roman pagan practices
but it also wasn't Jewish and
As we've seen before the jews had carved out a little niche at least for a time
Where they were able to do their worship and offer their sacrifices in their own way
So long as they from time to time made sacrifice on behalf of the [emperor]
Christians however had no such pocket no such place where they could kind of keep to themselves and yet also not
participate in the Roman pagan world
Christians worshiped predominantly in houses in all of the Christians views and expressions
And [it's] theology from the earliest days from the very new testament itself
Seems to run against the grain of just about every major principle of the Roman world
the Romans appreciate Power but Christians live in meekness
The Romans appreciate powerful gods, but our God came and died and suffered on their cross
Romans believed that Caesar is lord and yet on the lips of all Christians from the very beginning is the claim that Christ is Lord
Caesar is not Lord Christ is Lord and [so] from the beginning Christians are on something of a collision course of the Roman world [as]
the Jewish World of the Christian world begins to separate and
So all these things are happening roughly at the same time and there really is no single moment when these things begin to unravel
when Christianity more and more separates itself from the Jewish synagogue world and from the ethos of early Judaism and
When it become more and more the anathem of the roman people's as a pitiable
foolish weak religion
But there are some indications the jews themselves for all the peace that they had carved out for [themselves] over time
increasingly came to loggerheads with the Roman state and
There wasn't back the Jewish war which in [eighty] [seventy] of course
culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem itself in the entire destruction saved for the wailing wall that still stands of
the Jewish Temple
Now what does this mean [for] the early church?
Well essentially it meant that the church transitioned as it already was with the ministry of Paul
from a more palestinian focused ministry in around the area Jerusalem
To a ministry that we might as well describe as a ministry to the diaspora to [the] Jews who [were]
Further afield who were more in the far-flung lands of the roman world as well as to the gentiles of those regions as well
So as rome and the Jews come to war
Christians find their expansion and their opportunities for ministry
Growing on the outreaches and in the farthest areas of the Roman world
exact numbers and expansion statistics are
almost impossible at this point
but we can have some sort of round numbers in the first ten to fifteen years after the death of Christ in his resurrection the
Earliest Church was really focused around the areas of Palestine and syria
By the time you get it in the early second century though
You start to see that the church has expanded rapidly not only Beyond the borders of Palestine and syria
But [all] the way into the heart of rome and even up into Modern [de] [gaulle] itself in some areas
so if you just look at the map the church has gone from
Jerusalem essentially and it is expanded all the way through Asia Minor through parts of Greece and
In the realm and up Beyond rome into the farthest reaches of the Roman empire
And it is within that expansion of the early church that we really see the flourishing of the apostolic [Fathers] themselves
Now who the [Ops] [taluk] Fathers?
Put simply the apostolic fathers were a group of figures who lived Roughly from 75 on up until about?
150 to 200 ad now that last number obviously is a bit of a wide berth 50 years is a bit of a stretch in
Really going on up to the year 200 [is] a bit far to still be talking about the apostolic Fathers
But give or take this is Roughly the time of the apostolic Father's age
in all we mean by apostolic Fathers is this
History [has] accorded the earliest writers in the earliest figures and pastors of the earliest church with the name of the fathers
Now it depends on how you ask if you ask a roman catholic the patristic s-- age as it's called the age of the fathers
Can go quite some time it can go all the way up until the fifth century or even Beyond
If you talk to others, they don't really like this term at all certain
and a baptist groups tend not to prefer to give an honorific to one age of the church and
Those who see the early church is somewhat Corrupt anyway tend not to glory in the writings from this period Anyway
but both protestants and Catholics are
agreed that there was this patristic age this age of the earliest centers of the church the [church] fathers and
So all kinds [of] folks in the first at least four or five centuries the church can be called the [Father's]
the Fathers of Orthodox you might say or the fathers of the church and
So [agustin] and Jerome and all these earliest figures can be considered [Father's]
When we refer to the apostolic fathers were only referring to this earliest century of the church
Those who are the bridge between the apostles themselves and the Patristic age [I]?
[mean] the figures [that] we're talking about are not all that numerous and the writings from these folks are not all that
Significant there are the short epistles or short little [tracts] and treatises?
But we can list them [here] just so that you're aware of them does [clement] of [rome] who we've already mentioned those ignatius of antioch
polyCarp and [papias]
There are a couple of books that are
Given the name of an author that we're not entirely
sure of its authenticity in terms of the name of the person who wrote [it] and
There are other books that simply have no author at all the shepherd of hermas for example has no author listed with it
It's a prophetic utterance two of these texts in particular though. We're going to separate and isolate and sort of study just briefly
One is the epistle of dog Netis which we're actually gonna look at in our next lecture on early heretics and Christian
Orthodoxy right now. We're going to look at the did okay?
Now the [didache] is a very important book from this earliest time and in fact it is actually the earliest surviving
catechism from the Early Church
The dead okay now the name the Dead Akkada simply means the teaching or sometimes the teaching of the twelve
Now this text had for a long time been lost to us in the west
It was ash in 1873 that someone
Rediscovered the text in another codex and ever since then it's been studied as one of the earliest if not the earliest
Texts that we have from the first and second century
Dating it is next to impossible, but it is certainly extraordinarily early either late first century or the early second century
And this text is a catechism. It's designed to instruct new Christians on the
order in the structure of the Faith and the way to live the Christian life in this period of time and
For that reason alone. It is extraordinary because it [says] so many things about the early church pattern of life that we're always interested in
Now the teaching of the decay is vital for understanding its impact in the earliest [centuries]
And it actually brings together all that we've talked about so [far] in this [lecture]. Which is the early Christian desire to
distinguish itself as
the culmination and the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures
Well yet also saying that the Christian way is different and on the other hand
distinguishing the Christian Faith from the pagan world around it and
so if you go into the decay
And you read it the earliest sort of move that the text makes is it lays out what it calls the two ways
And it says that there is one way which is the way [it] death in the other way
Which is the way unto life?
and
It opens in a very strikingly Jewish way it opens with the shema
The call and deuteronomy, and elsewhere in the old testament that here o israel the lord our God is one
It opens [with] this and then it goes on to list the greatest commandment that we should love our neighbors ourselves
and it goes on down a list of
programmatic comments, really
About the ways that Christians are to live their lives
it then next transitions to a number of prohibitions against activities or
Engagements with the world around it the Christians. We're supposed to take care and distance themselves from
They were for example to Avoid things like murder and adultery sexual promiscuity
Theft very sort of
earthy ethical things
Then there were other things that were listed that are clearly coming from the Roman pagan world things like Magic sorcery
infanticide abortion
Perjury coveting all these things that are part and parcel to some of the Roman ethos
It even speaks about not bearing False testimony about not holding grudges not being double-minded
Acting as though are yes as are yes, and our know is [our] [know]
In other words the [de] decay is calling for Christians to be upstanding
Citizens in the context of the ancient world that they do not participate in the things they consider to be idolatrous
But on the other hand
They will not be vindictive
Oppressive backbiting kinds of folks who are after their own gain and against that of their neighbors
So the text lays out all these things that the Christian is supposed to do as it conducts himself in the world
the other half of the document though
deals with the rituals and the formation of the church's worship and it's this section that always draws the attention of
students and scholars and experts and novices and everyone in between
Because in this section the dedication a is out some
Instructions for Baptism and the eucharist and for fasting in the early church that are
unrivaled in their explicit design
Baptism for example for all the debates that a lot of modern
Post-reformation will people have over baptism particularly in the mode of Baptism. Do you sprinkle or D dunk?
Well variously enough the decay doesn't really seem to care at all in fact
It doesn't mention anything to do with sprinkling or dunking. It does seem to have a preference for
immersion some level
However, it makes the case that sometimes immersion is impossible because you don't have enough water
the one thing that the delica does care about though is that
There is at least some [pains] taken to try to find what it calls living water
Which is the mean a running river that if possible [that] baptism was to be done in living water that is to say a stream?
Now the [decay] does not cast the natha [mazon] those who are unable to do this it just says if you're able to do this
That's fine
He also says that those who do [the] baptizing and those who are to be baptized?
Should faster at least a day or two beforehand to prepare their hearts and minds for what they're about to undertake
He says if immersion is impossible in living water, that's fine
Just pour the water three times over the head
And I didn't believe once and for all that should put to rest the mode of Baptism
problem those who think that the practice is so clear one way or the other should take a little bit of the
Pragmatism of this document into their hearts and realize that if you're in an immersion, that's fine
But if you can't immerse pouring over the head three times, it's [just] a sufficient for the baptism
Secondly the dedicate is very clear on some of the language used in the eucharist [in] fact you might even say this is liturgical language
Now I don't mean that. It's formalistic
Liturgically, but just simply that just as we see in the book of corinthians
Where Paul is giving some comments about what is said during the eucharistic service?
the dedicate repeats many of these lines almost verbatim, though not entirely so
It says that concerning the cup
We say we thank thee our father?
For the Holy vine of David thy Servant which thou made us known to us through Jesus
thigh Servant to thee be the Glory for ever and
There is a similar refrain for the bread when it is offered as well
Clearly in other words the early church is eucharistic
So in other words if you are of the opinion that the Lord's supper is a lot of gobbledygook. That was sort of
Invented and a lot of liturgy [that] was sort of trumped up over three centuries of the early part of the church
You need to really wrestle with the dead, okay?
From the beginning it is saying that [the] eucharist matters and here is the form and the language and the vocabulary we use
during this part of the service
Another thing that the decay cites as part of the practice of the early church is the practice of fasting very instantly enough
This is one of the points when the early church does take a real sort of cultural stand against judaism [though], not in practice
It was the practice of the jews to fast two days a week and the Jewish practice was to fast on Monday and Thursday
That is to say from sunup to sundown on Monday and Thursday [jews] would abstain from food
They would perhaps give that money away that they would have bought food with maybe they'd give the food itself away to the poor
But on Mondays and on Thursdays the Jews would fast
Well the did [I] case as in no uncertain terms that the Christians do not fast quote with the hypocrites
But instead the Christians fast on Wednesdays and Fridays
And so the practice is still the same then it shows two alternative days in the week to have their fasts
he also says that the Christians pray the Lord's prayer three times a day and
He says very explicitly
That by this point Christians are increasingly choosing not to pray with their Jewish Brethren that at some point
their difference in their understanding of the Messiah
was causing them to be unable to pray together because they were praying to different ends and for different means and
Frankly to different gods at least in terms of different understandings of what God had wrought in the person of christ
And he says that at this point the Christians and the jews had begun to pray separately and that
The Christians prayed the Lord's prayer three times a day
In the end what we know about the apostolic Fathers is
Really only piecemeal we always wish we knew more
We always wish we had smoking guns about you know early church. Worship liberties [that] were still sort of left lying around
We wish that the practices [Via] church were more?
Obvious to us at times
Frankly one of the most important questions is how did this?
untethering of the Jewish [and] the Christian world go about
Because from the very beginning. We see some movements away from Judaism very self-Conscious movements away
not just
Animosity either not just simply Christian rejecting jews through anti-semitism
But real structural doctrinal liturgical problems when one is worshipping Messiah as lord and one is not in
The church having to reckon with that in deal with its own identity as the followers of Christ
We also wish we knew more [about] to simply Day-To-day life in the early church
[but] fortunately those pieces are hard to come by what we have though in the early church
right in the Dawn of the post [apostolic] age is
some real
Broad sketches of a faithful church that is following christ
that is attempting to distinguish itself from paganism on the one hand and
Having a bit of a difficult time [understanding] its relationship
Culturally in day and day out life with the Jewish synagogue that was on the other side of the Christian church
The Christians obviously knew where they stood Christ was Lord
but Christians also had to reckon with the fact that a number of them in the earliest decades were Jewish converts and
They were so wrapped up in the traditions and the rituals of things not all of which were bad in pharisaical
That they had to understand. How is the Christian going to find its own way in its own pattern of life in this world and
We see some of this in the dead, okay
Now the next thing to come up is
As the world begins to take its eye
and it looks at the church and it begins to say things about the church as the pagans look at the church and begin to
cast dispersions
and make fun of it for being sort of poor and weak in foolish and as the jews begin to attack Christianity as being a
Pourraient and a bastardization [of] the Jewish Faith
The next step in the apostolic [Fathers] age is a transition from simply
maintaining its own ethos and developing its own ministry internally to a new move of what we call apologetics [and]
apologetics is the explanation in the defence of the Christian Faith to the outside world and
that transition is a vital one because we begin to see with the rise of the apologists is a
full-scale defense of why the Christian faith is the truth in the life and why the scriptures are fulfilled in Christ and
When we get to that age we begin to see the real flourishing of Christian writings?
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