Author Topic: The Fathers of the Church (Read 4786 times)

poche · « **on:** August 20, 2014, 04:44:30 AM »

The Didache

One of the most important sources from the age of the Apostolic Fathers is “The Lord’s Teaching through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations,” commonly referred to by its short name, the Didache (Greek for “teaching”). While the Didache was lost until the mid-19th century, it was known to and quoted by the Fathers Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Athanasius, the latter of whom recommended it for the instruction of catechumens. Indeed, the importance of the Didache is such that some of the Fathers considered it part of the New Testament, though ultimately it was not included in the canon.

The author of the Didache does not give his name; the title should not be seen as a claim to authorship by the Twelve themselves, but as an indication that it passes down what they taught.

Rather than teaching doctrine, the Didache focuses on prescribing ecclesiastical discipline and moral and liturgical practice. As such, it is considered the first of all Church Orders, and Johannes Quasten calls it the prototype of all ecclesiastical law [Patrology, Vol. 1, 1950, p. 30], a judgment vindicated by the other early sources that borrowed from it: these include, in 3rd-century Egypt, the Apostolic Church Ordinance, and in 4th-century Syria, the Apostolic Constitutions. Equally important, it gives us an idea of the life of the 2nd-century Christian community.

The Didache is divided into two parts, the first of which consists of liturgical instruction and the second of which sets forth ecclesiastical discipline. It concludes with a chapter on the parousia, the second coming of Christ.

The liturgical section begins with moral instruction for catechumens. This is organized in a two-part structure unfamiliar to modern Christians but which seems to have been used in Hellenistic ѕуηαgσgυєs: the Two Ways, that of Life and that of Death.

The Way of Life begins with the Two Great Commandments and the Golden Rule:

There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways. First, thou shalt love God who made thee; second, thy neighbor as thyself; and all things whatsoever thou wouldst should not occur to thee, thou also to another do not do.

It continues with loving one’s enemies and giving without expecting anything in return, and lays out numerous moral precepts, both positive and negative. Fornication, adultery, theft, murder, bearing false witness, hypocrisy, hatred, and covetousness are listed among the “gross sins” to be avoided, but also the practices of magic, abortion and infanticide, and pederasty.

The description of the Way of Death likewise includes many of these sins, but also such evils as “not pitying a poor man, not laboring for the afflicted, not knowing Him that made them, murderers of children, destroyers of the handiwork of God, turning away from him that is in want, afflicting him that is distressed, advocates of the rich, lawless judges of the poor.”

Liturgical Instruction

The liturgical section provides us with invaluable information about Baptism, the Eucharist and confession. The Trinitarian formula for baptism is given, along with the indication that baptism by immersion in running water is customary at this point, though if this is not possible, baptism by infusion (pouring water over the head) is permissible. Both the baptizer and the baptized are to fast prior to the administration of the sacrament. Here the early Christian practice of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays is explicitly set against the Jєωιѕн fast days on Mondays and Thursdays.

After an instruction that the Lord’s Prayer should be prayed three times a day, we have the oldest recorded Eucharistic prayers. Only the baptized are permitted to receive the Eucharist, which is referred to as “spiritual food and drink” in the thanksgiving prayer also included. Johannes Quasten writes that “these prescriptions were intended to regulate the First Communion of the newly baptized on Easter Eve” [Patrology, Vol. I, 1950, p. 33].

Later in the Didache, there are instructions for the normal celebration of the Eucharist on Sundays. Notable are the reference to the Eucharist as a sacrifice and the command to confess one’s sins before the breaking of the bread:

But every Lord's day do ye gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord: In every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great King, saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.

The earlier section on the Way of Life, too, refers to confession: “In church confess your sins, and do not come to your prayer with a guilty conscience.” Quasten suggests that this would have been a public, liturgical confession akin to the Confiteor [ibid].

Ecclesiastical Discipline

The second part of the Didache outlines the proper reception of teachers, apostles, prophets, bishops and deacons, as well as some more general rules for charity and hospitality. The hierarchy and relation between these various groups is not made entirely clear. The prophets seem to be of great importance. Guidelines for identifying true and false prophets and teachers are provided, based not only on their teaching but on their behavior and whether they take undue advantage of the hospitality and support of the community.

True prophets and teachers are to be supported by the community; the former in particular are entitled to tithes because “they are your high priests.” In accordance with that role, prophets should be permitted “to make Thanksgiving [Eucharist] as much as they desire.” Prophets who prove true are not to be tried or judged by any but God Himself.

In comparison to the prophets, not much detail is given about bishops and deacons (episcopoi and diakonoi). Christian communities are instructed to “appoint, therefore, for yourselves, bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord… for they also render to you the service of prophets and teachers.” The author says little about this local hierarchy except to emphasize that the bishops and deacons are no less worthy of respect: “Despise them not therefore, for they are your honored ones, together with the prophets and teachers.”

The final chapter of the Didache describes some of the signs to precede the parousia, exhorting the faithful to watchfulness since the time of this event is uncertain yet imminent.

Origins and Sources

Scholars have been able to come to no consensus about the Didache’s original date of composition. An argument can be made for placing it close to Apostolic times (perhaps even before 70 A.D.) due to the primitive state of the liturgy and Church hierarchy; at the latest it dates to the early 2nd century. It is believed to have been written in Syria.

It came to the modern age as part of the Jerusalem Codex, written in Greek in 1056 and discovered in 1873 by the Greek Metropolitan of Nicomedia, Philotheos Bryennios. Since its discovery, fragments of the Didache in Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Syriac have been found, as well as a complete translation in Georgian. The Jerusalem Codex also contains some of the other earliest Patristic writings: the Epistle of Barnabas, the First and Second Epistles of Clement, and the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, all of which were already extant.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=628

poche · « **Reply #1 on:** September 03, 2014, 10:37:39 PM »

The Epistle of Barnabas

While not approaching the importance of the Didache, the so-called Epistle of Barnabas is worth mentioning both because of its early date and because its final chapters consist of an exposition of the Two Ways very similar to that found in the Didache. Scholars have hypothesized that both docuмents drew from an earlier Jєωιѕн Two Ways tradition and perhaps even from an earlier docuмent, though there is no evidence that such a docuмent existed.

Occasionally jumbled and incoherent in structure, the Epistle of Barnabas is neither an epistle or written by Barnabas. To be precise, while it takes the literary form of an epistle, it is not addressed to any specific person or community, nor does it include any personal information about the author. In the early centuries of the Church it was traditionally ascribed to St. Barnabas, the missionary companion of St. Paul, but for both chronological and doctrinal reasons it is now clear that he was not the author. In Chapter XVI it is made clear that the text was written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., which Barnabas did not survive.

Allegorizing the Old Law

The author’s interpretation of the Old Testament and the Jєωιѕн Law is also far removed from that of St. Paul, whom St. Barnabas accompanied on his travels. In the Pauline view, the Old Law, while it had no salvific power in itself, was nonetheless divinely ordained and paved the way for Christ who fulfilled and replaced the old regulations with the New Covenant.

The author of the Epistle of Barnabas, on the other hand, claims that the literal interpretation of the Mosaic Law by the Jєωs was a complete misunderstanding; he goes so far as to compare Jєωιѕн worship with pagan worship and says that the Jєωs took the Law literally “because an evil angel deluded them.” He also claims that the Old Law was intended not for Jєωs, but for Christians from the beginning. Much of the Epistle is therefore dedicated to showing the true spiritual meaning of the Old Law by allegorical interpretation.

Some of these explanations will be familiar. The scapegoat is a type of Christ. Rather than material gifts and sacrifices, God desires the offering of a repentant heart. Rather than literal circuмcision, He wants us to circuмcise our hearing so that our minds will be set on the things of God. Somewhat more complex is the numerological interpretation of Abraham’s 318 circuмcised servants to mean the words “Jesus” and “cross.”

More outlandish, though, are the author’s interpretations of the dietary regulations. The Jєωs, the author claims, foolishly believed they were forbidden from eating swine, when really they were being forbidden from associating with men who behave like swine:

For when they live in pleasure, they forget their Lord; but when they come to want, they acknowledge the Lord. And [in like manner] the swine, when it has eaten, does not recognize its master; but when hungry it cries out, and on receiving food is quiet again.

The various unclean birds represent those who acquire food not through honest labor but by seizing it from others; the hare represents corrupters of boys, the hyena adulterers, the weasel those who sin with the mouth, “for this animal conceives by the mouth.” The author also has allegorical explanations for the clean animals: for example, the cloven-footed animal represents “That the righteous man also walks in this world, yet looks forward to the holy state (to come).”

Doctrine

For all this, there are some points of doctrinal interest in the Epistle. The author enumerates places where baptism and the cross are prefigured in the Old Testament. He describes how baptism makes man into a spiritual temple, as opposed to the Jєωιѕн temple which was destroyed. He affirms the preexistence of Christ at the beginning of creation with God the Father. He clearly explains why Christians worship on the eighth day of the week (Sunday) rather than on the Sabbath, because Christ rose on a Sunday.

The author interprets God’s finishing creation in six days to mean that in six thousand years, world history will end and Christ will return, based on the Scriptural saying that for the Lord, a thousand years are like a day (Psalm 90:4). It is uncertain whether the author holds the view of the end times known as chiliasm, or millennialism, later to be declared heretical in the 4th century. This is because he does not make clear whether he believes that the seventh day represents a thousand-year-long reign of Christ on earth followed by the end of the world and the “beginning of another world” on the eighth day, or that the seventh and the eighth day will, in effect, begin together with the end of the world.

Origins and Sources

The Epistle appears in the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century Greek Bible, included (along with parts of the Shepherd of Hermas) as one of the books of the New Testament and placed after the Apocalypse. There is also a 3rd-century Latin translation. Because it relies heavily on allegorical interpretation of Scripture, it is considered to have originated in Alexandria where that style of exegesis was popular. Modern scholars tend to date the Epistle to the period 117-132, though it may possibly date to the earlier period 70-79. One argument for an early date is that the docuмent contains no quotations of the New Testament. As already mentioned, however, it is clear from the text itself that it was written, at the earliest, after 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was destroyed.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=628

poche · « **Reply #2 on:** October 29, 2014, 01:02:13 AM »

Sometime towards the end of the first century A.D., two men made a journey from Rome to Corinth. Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Vito, a pair of freed slaves from the household of the deceased Emperor Claudius, carried a letter to the Christian community in Corinth from Bishop Clement of Rome – Pope Clement I.

The Corinthian church had recently fallen into the sectarianism against which St. Paul had warned, and amidst the disputes, some of the community had revolted against the presbyters and deposed them from office. Hearing reports of this, Clement, who was facing his fair share of troubles in Rome, at last took action, writing a letter to restore order in Corinth.

The ecclesiastical importance of St. Clement’s epistle can hardly be overstated. Not only does it contain the first clear, explicit teaching of the doctrine of apostolic succession, but it is an irrefutable witness, in its content and in its reception, to the primacy of the Roman Church in the Apostolic Age.

Pope Clement I

St. Clement was probably the fourth bishop of Rome. St. Irenaeus places him after St. Peter, St. Linus and St. Anacletus, though some other ancient writers place him second after St. Peter. The exact time of his reign is uncertain – Eusebius places it from 92-101, but he may actually have died in 99.

He was likely of Jєωιѕн parentage and seems to have been a disciple of the Apostles in Rome; Origen and Eusebius believed him to be the same Clement mentioned as a co-worker of St. Paul in Philippians 4:3. According to Tertullian, he was consecrated as bishop of Rome by St. Peter himself. Dio Cassius, the Roman consul and historian, identified Clement as the martyred consul Titus Flavius Clemens, but his account is considered untrustworthy, and it is uncertain whether the tradition of Clement’s martyrdom is accurate.

Interestingly, Clement is the protagonist of an ancient work of didactic fiction, the Pseudo-Clementines, probably written in Syria in the early third century. In the story, Clement is a son of the imperial family who hopes to find truth in the various schools of philosophy, but is disappointed. He eventually seeks out St. Peter and is converted. This narrative, which follows Clement’s adventures as Peter’s missionary companion, leads up to what purports to be a collection of the missionary sermons of St. Peter, espousing a sort of heretical Judaist-Christian theology. In another fragment of the Pseudo-Clementines, Clement’s family is dispersed under strange circuмstances and after much searching is eventually reunited with the help of St. Peter.

Some writings have been ascribed to Clement which are now thought to be inauthentic. The second Epistle to the Corinthians some believe to be a letter of Pope Soter, though in fact it is not a letter at all but the oldest extant Christian sermon, possibly given in Corinth. Both Eusebius and St. Jerome doubted that it was written by Clement. The homily is fairly general, dealing with Christ as Judge of the living and the dead, the Church as the bride of Christ, and the need for repentance and good works.

There are also two letters addressed to virgins (the unmarried of both sexes). While they were attributed to Clement, they really originate from the first half of the third century. A Coptic fragment of the first letter refers to St. Athanasius as the author. The writer praises celibacy as a higher state of life, the practitioners of which will have a higher place in heaven; yet he also emphasizes that virginity is spiritually barren without works of charity, and that celibacy carries serious responsibilities. He opposes the practice of virgins of both sexes living communally under the same roof.

The First Epistle - Date and Reception

Legends and spurious attributions aside, Clement’s reputation as an Apostolic Father is based almost solely on his one authentic writing. This is his First Epistle to the Corinthians, “the earliest piece of Christian literature outside the New Testament for which the name, position and date of the author are historically attested” [Quasten, Patrology, Vol. I, 1950, p. 43]. It comes down to us in the original Greek as well as in Latin and Syriac.

A common opinion holds that the letter was written during a persecution of Christians by the emperor Domitian, because Clement explains his tardiness in writing as “owing… to the sudden and successive calamitous events which have happened to ourselves.” Following a description of the persecutions under Nero, he writes: “For we are struggling on the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us.”

However, Jurgens dates both the letter and Clement’s papacy earlier, around the year 80. Given that there is apparently little evidence for a persecution under Domitian, he suggests that the calamity mentioned by Clement may have been not a persecution but the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79. As further support for the earlier date he uses the probable ages of Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Vito, the men Clement names as legates [Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 1, 1970, p. 7].

The letter does not use Clement’s name, but is addressed from “the Church of God which sojourns at Rome.” It does not seem that the Corinthians had asked Rome to intervene. For this reason it is compelling that Clement does not apologize for meddling, as would be appropriate were his letter motivated merely by the brotherly solicitude of an equal. Rather, he apologizes for not writing sooner, as though intervening to restore order were his duty. On the other hand, if the Corinthians did ask Rome to intervene – rather than the still-living Apostle John – that in itself would be a powerful testament to the authority accorded Rome at the close of the 1st century.

Clement’s clearest claim to special authority comes towards the end of the letter, when he says that if the recipients of his letter disobey him they will be guilty of sin:

Receive our counsel, and ye shall have no occasion of regret…. But if certain persons should be disobedient unto the words spoken by Him through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger, but we shall be guiltless of this sin.

And again: “For ye will give us great joy and gladness, if ye render obedience unto the things written by us through the Holy Spirit.”

[Note that a passage just before the letter’s end, including the above two quotes and a lengthy concluding prayer believed to have been a formal liturgical prayer of the Church of Rome, is missing from our 19th-century edition of the text, but can be found in most other editions, including this one.]

Clement seems to have intended the letter to be read publicly, and we know that decades later it was still read to the congregation during worship. St. Dionysius, bishop of Corinth around 170, wrote in a letter to Pope Soter:

Today we observed the holy day of the Lord and read out your letter, which we shall continue to read from time to time for our admonition, as we do with that formerly sent to us through Clement.

That the Corinthians gave the letter such a welcome tells us that they could hardly have thought Rome was exceeding its authority. Indeed, Clement’s letter was held in such high regard that in the early fourth century, Eusebius could write that it was read publicly not only in Corinth but “in many churches both in the days of old and in our time.”

The First Epistle - Doctrinal Content

From the beginning of the letter, Clement singles out jealousy and envy as the cause of persecutions as well as of internal discord. He recounts the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul, and reminds the Corinthians of many others who “received a noble reward” for their endurance amidst torments. He makes special mention of the many women who faced martyrdom bravely. Of historical interest, St. Paul is referred to as having “gone to the extremity of the West,” which supports the tradition of his having journeyed to Spain, according to his intention stated in Romans 15.

Clement urges the Corinthians to faith and good works. While we are justified not by our own virtues and works, “but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men,” this is not an excuse to refrain from good works:

What shall we do, then, brethren? Shall we become slothful in well-doing, and cease from the practice of love? God forbid that any such course should be followed by us! But rather let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work.

One of the good works most prized by Clement is hospitality; he offers reflections on how this virtue was practiced by Lot and Rahab. He reminds his audience of the eternal reward Christians will receive for their perseverance in good works, which they are enabled to do by the grace of Jesus Christ. One of Clement’s more interesting rhetorical devices is his reference to the ancient phoenix myth, the earliest use of this popular symbol of the general resurrection in early Christian art and literature.

Humility is seen as the antidote to envy and jealousy and the key to Christian unity. Christians are urged to “act the part of soldiers” under the leadership of Christ, and to behave humbly according to one’s position: “The great cannot subsist without the small, nor the small without the great. There is a kind of mixture in all things, and thence arises mutual advantage.” As the feet and head depend on one another, so should Christians “work harmoniously together… under one common rule for the preservation of the whole body.”

If some are great and some small, some strong and some weak, the great are not to lord it over the small, nor are the weak to resent the strong, but all are to give the glory to God in the knowledge of “who and what manner of beings we came into the world, as it were out of a sepulchre, and from utter darkness.”

This leads into Clement’s discussion of church hierarchy and the prerogatives of ministers, whose most important function is the celebration of the liturgy. Urging the Christian community to respect the order set down by God, Clement makes the first use of the word “layman” in Christian literature:

To the high priest, indeed, proper ministrations are allotted, to the priests a proper place is appointed, and upon the Levites their proper services are imposed. The layman is bound by the ordinances for the laity.

Clement lays out clearly the grounds for a hierarchy of Christian ministers based on apostolic succession. Chapter 42 is worth quoting at length:

The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God’s will.… Through countryside and city they preached; and they appointed their earliest converts [literally first-fruits], testing them by the spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers.

He continues in Chapter 44:

Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties.

Clement points out that not only does the uprising in the Corinthian church harm Christians but, because word of it has reached non-Christians, those who foment discord give scandal to them and “heap blasphemies on the name of the Lord.” Those responsible are urged not to harden their hearts but rather to repent, seek the forgiveness that comes through Jesus Christ and “submit to the presbyters…bending your knees in spirit of humility [literally bending the knees of your hearts].”

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=636

poche · « **Reply #3 on:** December 08, 2014, 04:41:42 AM »

Tradition has it that the church at Antioch was founded by St. Peter himself, who served as its bishop for seven years before moving on to found the church at Rome. (Robert Spencer writes that “Gregory III Laham, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, has joked that if the Apostle Peter had just stayed put, he himself would be the earthly head of the Catholic Church today.”)

Only decades later, during the reign of Trajan (98-117), another bishop of Antioch would also make the journey to Rome. This was St. Ignatius, who had succeeded St. Evodius as Antioch’s third bishop. Sometime around 107 or 110, by order of Trajan, ten soldiers brought Ignatius to Rome, where he was exposed to wild beasts.

The Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch

There were multiple stops on the journey to Rome. At Smyrna, Ignatius met with the bishop there, St. Polycarp, and with representatives of several Christian communities of Asia Minor. He gave those representatives letters to bring to Ephesus, Magnesia and Tralles. Also sent from Smyrna was his letter to the Church in Rome, in which he reflected at length on his impending martyrdom.

Later, stopping at Troas, Ignatius sent letters to Philadelphia and Smyrna, as well as a personal letter to Polycarp. There seems to have been a persecution in Antioch which ended during Ignatius’s journey, for in the letters from Troas, he asked the recipients to send envoys to congratulate and rejoice with the Christians in Antioch.

These seven Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch are rich in theological and mystical content, and are significant for their consistent depiction of a monarchical episcopate. Their authenticity is attested by Eusebius, who lists them in the above order and describes the content of each, and by Origen and St. Irenaeus, who quote from them. St. Polycarp, the recipient of the seventh letter, mentions them in his own letter to the Philippians:

The Epistles of Ignatius which were sent to us by him, and others which we had by us, we send you as requested. They are enclosed herewith. You will be able to benefit greatly from them. For they are conducive to faith and patience and to every kind of edification pertaining to our Lord. [Quoted in Quasten, Patrology, Vol. I, 1950, p. 73]

Ignatius’s writing is passionate and energetic. The letters to the Romans and to Polycarp contain particularly striking imagery and fresh modes of expression. In addition, we find here the first appearance of the term “Catholic church,” meaning the whole body of the faithful (Smyrn. 8).

Mysticism and evangelization

According to Quasten, the mysticism of St. Ignatius draws from both St. Paul’s mysticism of union with Christ and St. John’s mysticism of life in Christ, leading to Ignatius’s ideal of “imitation of Christ” [Quasten, p. 70]. Imitation of Christ involves a transformation as much as an abandonment of the earthly way of life:

They that are carnal cannot do those things which are spiritual, nor they that are spiritual the things which are carnal; even as faith cannot do the works of unbelief, nor the unbelief the works of faith. But even those things which ye do according to the flesh are spiritual; for ye do all things in Jesus Christ. (Eph. 8)

spiritual; for ye do all things in Jesus Christ. (Eph. 8)

If we do all things in Christ, it is because Christ does all things in us. Ignatius emphasizes Christ’s immanence in the soul, describing Christians as “God-bearers and temple-bearers, Christ-bearers” (Eph. 9). In all his letters, in fact, he introduces himself as “Ignatius, also called Theophorus [God-bearer].”

Christians bring others to Christ by prayer, love and good example. We ought to “pray without ceasing” for others, for there is always hope that they might repent. Teaching by example and love is paramount:

See, then, that they be instructed by your works, if in no other way. Be ye meek in response to their wrath, humble in opposition to their boasting, [etc.]… While we take care not to imitate their conduct, let us be found their brethren in all true kindness. (Eph. 10)

Actions are preferable to words, and the efficacy of the latter depends on the former:

It is better for a man to be silent and be a Christian, than to talk and not to be one. It is good to teach, if he who speaks also acts…. He who possesses the word of Jesus, is truly able to hear even His very silence, that he may be perfect, and may both act as he speaks, and be recognized by his silence. (Eph. 15)

Indeed, faith is more than just a verbal profession. Faith cannot be separated from love: “Those that profess themselves to be Christians shall be recognized by their conduct. For there is not now a demand for mere profession, but that a man be found continuing in the power of faith to the end” (Eph. 14).

Martyrdom

We are called to imitate Christ not just in His virtue but in His passion and death. For Ignatius, willingness to die for Christ is requisite for discipleship. Indeed, he frequently calls himself one who is “now but being initiated into discipleship” (Eph. 3), by means of his captivity and imminent death.

He considers himself inferior to those to whom he is writing, because he is a convict and cannot speak to them as though he were an Apostle. He calls his own church in Syria that “from which also I am not worthy to receive my appellation, being the last of them” (Trall. 13), which is all the more striking given that one of the major themes of his letters is the dignity of the episcopate and the importance of submission to and unity with the bishop. He refers to his own need for humility, and begs his addressees to pray that he may be found worthy of martyrdom.

For all his apprehension because of his own unworthiness, Ignatius shows great eagerness for martyrdom. He considers his bonds to be “spiritual Jєωels” (Eph. 11), and begs the Romans not to try to rescue him: “Suffer me to obtain pure light: once arrived there, I shall be a man” (Rom. 6).

One of the most famous passages of Ignatius describes in vivid terms the spiritual consummation of martyrdom:

I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep [in death], I may be no trouble to any one. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. (Rom. 4)

Christian unity and the episcopate

The most pervasive theme in all of Ignatius’s letters is Christian unity. Union with Christ is not just a personal (in the sense of private and individual) matter, rather it is “the bond which encircles all Christians.” This union cannot exist without unity with one’s bishop “through faith, obedience and particularly through participation in divine worship” [Quasten, p. 73]. There can be no independence in the spiritual life; rather, there is only one union with Christ in which all Christians participate, in community and liturgy.

Ignatius constantly exhorts his addressees to respect their bishop. He urges them to “defer to him, or, rather, not to him, but to the Father of Jesus Christ, the bishop of all men” (Magn. 3). This comparison of the bishop with God the Father is found throughout the Epistles. Christians are to follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father, to follow the presbyters as though they were the Apostles, and to honor the deacons (Eph. 6, Trall. 3, Magn. 6-7, and elsewhere). “Apart from these, there is no Church” (Trall. 3).

The exhortation to “run together in accordance with the will of your bishop” (Eph. 4) indicates in a general sense the importance of respect and obedience towards ecclesiastical authority. But Ignatius seems to have the liturgy particularly in mind, since it is in common worship that unity with Christ, under the bishop and with the whole community, is expressed and effected. He writes:

Let no man deceive himself: if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself.… Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God. (Eph. 5)

The bishop is high priest of the liturgy, and in practical terms, this means that baptism, the agape meal and the Eucharist may not be held without authorization of the bishop, which renders such things “valid” (Smyrn. 8). Those who wish to get married must also have the bishop’s approval, so that “their marriage may be according to God, and not after their own lust” (Poly. 5).

The Docetist heresy

Even in this early stage of Christianity, there was already a need for bishops to protect the faithful from false doctrine. In his letter to St. Polycarp, Ignatius exhorts the bishop of Smyrna to perseverance and watchfulness in protecting his flock from heresy, and prudence in preserving unity: “Every kind of wound is not healed with the same plaster” (Poly. 2).

Ignatius attacks the heresy of Docetism, which denied Christ’s humanity and said that “he only seemed to suffer” (Trall. 10-11, Smyrn. 2 and 7). Docetists also abstained from the Eucharist because they did not believe it was the flesh of Christ (Smyrn. 7).

In combating Docetism, Ignatius sets forth a clear Christology and doctrine of the Eucharist. Christ is both fully divine and fully human, and truly suffered and died (Smyrn. 1-2): “There is one Physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and not born, who is God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first able to suffer and then unable to suffer, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Eph. 7).

As for the Eucharist, it is “the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death, and everlasting life in Jesus Christ” (Eph. 20). The following passage cannot be mistaken to say anything but that the Eucharist is literally the flesh of Jesus:

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. (Smyrn. 7, cf. Phil. 4)

In Eph. 5, Trall. 7 and Phil. 4, the Church is called the “altar,” which can also be translated as “the place of sacrifice,” meaning that the Eucharist is the sacrifice of the Church [Quasten, p. 66].

"Presiding in love"

Finally, the salutation in the letter to Rome is highly significant. It is much longer and loftier than the greetings found in the other letters; it is clear that Ignatius accords the Roman Church more respect than the others:

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which has obtained mercy, through the majesty of the Mast High Father, and Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son; the Church which is beloved and enlightened by the will of Him that willeth all things which are according to the love of Jesus Christ our God, which also presides in the place of the report of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honour, worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of obtaining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy, and which presides over love, is named from Christ, and from the Father, which I also salute in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father: to those who are united, both according to the flesh and spirit, to every one of His commandments; who are filled inseparably with the grace of God, and are purified from every strange taint, [I wish] abundance of happiness unblameably, in Jesus Christ our God.

Quasten calls this “the earliest avowal of the Primacy of Rome that we possess from the pen of a non-Roman ecclesiastic” (p. 68).

The phrase “presiding in love” has attracted much scholarly attention. It could simply mean that the Roman Church was the most charitable of all churches, but the word “preside” is used twice in the same sentence, the first time with a clear connotation of ecclesiastical authority (“Which also presides in the chief place of the Roman territory”). This Greek idiom appears only once elsewhere in Ignatius (Magn. 6), where it explicitly refers to the authority of bishops, priests and deacons.

“You have envied no one; but others you have taught. I desire only that what you have enjoined in your instructions may remain in force” (Rom. 3). “Remember in your prayers the Church in Syria which now, in place of me, has God for its shepherd. Jesus Christ, along with your love, shall be its only bishop” (Rom. 8).

Sources

Collections of Ignatius’s epistles have come down to us in three basic forms, called recensions. The collection containing only the seven authentic letters listed by Eusebius is called the short recension. In the fourth or fifth century, a forger, possibly a follower of the Apollinarist heresy, added six spurious letters and also added spurious passages to the original seven, creating what we call the long recension. Finally, there is the mixed recension, which we have in Greek and Latin, containing the seven letters in what seems to be their original form along with the six spurious letters. There is also an Armenian version of the mixed recension, translated from the original Syriac.

The first version of any of Ignatius’s writings to become known was the long recension, which was printed in Latin and Greek in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, respectively. The authenticity of this collection was doubted, but in the seventeenth century, the primitive Greek texts of the original seven letters were discovered and published. Because the letters so clearly show a hierarchical Church and a monarchical episcopate, Protestants argued that they could not be genuine, but in the nineteenth century prominent non-Catholic scholars such as Zahn, Harnack and Lightfoot demonstrated their authenticity. Also in the nineteenth century, three of the letters were discovered in Syriac – the “Syriac abridgement” of the short recension.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=638

poche · « **Reply #4 on:** January 27, 2015, 01:09:20 AM »

St. Polycarp, Apostolic Father

The earliest extant detailed account of the arrest and martyrdom of a single individual is that of St. Polycarp (70-156), Bishop of Smyrna.

According to St. Irenaeus, who had listened to Polycarp as a child, Polycarp himself had learned from the Apostle John and others who had seen Jesus, and was appointed to the see of Smyrna by the Apostles themselves. It was as Bishop of Smyrna that Polycarp received a letter from St. Ignatius of Antioch, who had met him there on the way to his own martyrdom. Polycarp was a noted opponent of heresies, particularly those of Valentinus and Marcion, some of whose followers he converted.

In 154 or 155 he visited Rome and met with Pope Anicetus in an attempt to resolve the dispute over the date of Easter. While no agreement could be reached, it is a sign of the esteem in which the aged Polycarp was held that Anicetus allowed the Church of Smyrna to keep its own celebration date, different from that of the Roman Church.

The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp

St. Polycarp was martyred at the age of eighty-six, on February 23rd in 155 or 156 A.D. His arrest and martyrdom are described in detail in a letter written within a year of his death, addressed from the Church in Smyrna to the Church in Philomelium in Greater Phrygia. Marcion, the individual who wrote the letter, should be distinguished from the aforementioned heretic leader Marcion of Sinope.

Martyrdom is presented as an imitation of Christ. The account of Polycarp’s steadfast faith and refusal to deny the Lord is moving:

Then, the proconsul urging him, and saying, “Swear [by Caesar], and I will set thee at liberty, reproach Christ”; Polycarp declared, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”

So he was sentenced to be burnt to death:

But when they were about also to fix him with nails, he said, “Leave me as I am; for He that giveth me strength to endure the fire, will also enable me, without your securing me by nails, to remain without moving in the pile.”

This letter also contains our earliest evidence of the cult of martyrs, including the keeping and veneration of relics. The writer beautifully exhibits the praise and reverence due to martyrs, and makes a point of clearly distinguishing it from the worship due to Christ, in order to show that to honor martyrs is not to set up idols in place of Him:

But when the adversary of the race of the righteous, the envious, malicious, and wicked one, perceived the impressive nature of his martyrdom, and [considered] the blameless life he had led from the beginning, and how he was now crowned with the wreath of immortality, having beyond dispute received his reward, he did his utmost that not the least memorial of him should be taken away by us, although many desired to do this, and to become possessors of his holy flesh. For this end he suggested it to Nicetes, the father of Herod and brother of Alce, to go and entreat the governor not to give up his body to be buried, “lest,” said he, “forsaking Him that was crucified, they begin to worship this one.” This he said at the suggestion and urgent persuasion of the Jєωs, who also watched us, as we sought to take him out of the fire, being ignorant of this, that it is neither possible for us ever to forsake Christ, who suffered for the salvation of such as shall be saved throughout the whole world (the blameless one for sinners), nor to worship any other. For Him indeed, as being the Son of God, we adore; but the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love on account of their extraordinary affection towards their own King and Master, of whom may we also be made companions and fellow-disciples!

The feasts of the martyrs are celebrated not only to honor their sacrifice but to prepare Christians to imitate their heroism:

Accordingly, we afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite Jєωels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together, as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=640

poche · « **Reply #5 on:** January 27, 2015, 11:18:16 PM »

The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians

Only one letter written by St. Polycarp himself is extant; this is a response to a letter from the Philippians after the visit of St. Ignatius. Actually, the epistle as it comes down to us is probably a combination of two letters. The first (Chapter XIII) is a short note attached to a collection of the Epistles of Ignatius, which the Philippians had requested that he send. This was probably written around or immediately after the time of Ignatius’s martyrdom (110), since Polycarp here asks for news of Ignatius.

The second letter, comprising the first twelve chapters and the conclusion, is a general, edifying exhortation to Christian virtue. It also contains a denunciation of the Docetist heresy (possibly the form of Docetism espoused by Marcion).

Like the letter of Pope St. Clement to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Polycarp was still read at Mass in some places as late as the fourth century. Its greatest significance, however, is that it guarantees the authenticity of the Epistles of Ignatius.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=640

poche · « **Reply #6 on:** January 30, 2015, 11:07:45 PM »

St. Papias

A contemporary of St. Polycarp, St. Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor. Irenaeus tells us he was a friend of Polycarp and a hearer of St. John. Papias’s reputation as an Apostolic Father rests on this latter claim of Irenaeus; however, Papias himself writes that he heard not directly from John but secondhand from those who had heard the Apostles. For this reason, Jurgens suggests that Papias ought not be called an Apostolic Father [Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 1, 1970, p. 38].

Eusebius remarks that, “as is clear from his books, [Papias] was a man of very little intelligence.” He made this judgment for two reasons: first, Papias was a chiliast or millenialist, believing that “there will be a thousand years after the resurrection of the dead when the kingdom of Christ will be set up in a material form in this earth.” Eusebius blames Papias for the subsequent adoption of chiliasm among many other Christian writers, among them Irenaeus. Secondly, Papias seems to have lacked discrimination in passing along certain “fabulous accounts” as part of the oral tradition.

It is in Eusebius that we find the surviving fragments of Papias’s sole work, a five-book Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord (“oracles” = sayings), written around 130 AD. It is a commentary on the Scriptures combined with oral tradition. The fragments contain nothing of doctrinal importance, but have some historical value, particularly regarding the canonicity of St. Mark’s Gospel:

And the presbyter said this. Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.

It also gives evidence that St. Matthew’s Gospel had already been translated by the early second century: “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.”

Finally, it is in Papias that one of the more grisly legends about the death of Judas has its origins:

Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=640

poche · « **Reply #7 on:** February 13, 2015, 03:54:41 AM »

The Shepherd of Hermas is categorized as an apocryphal apocalypse; it consists of a series of visions urging repentance and penance in preparation for the end times. It consists of three books containing five Visions, twelve Commandments, and ten Similitudes.

At the beginning of the work Hermas introduces himself to us. He is a Greek who was sold in Rome as a slave and later freed. Walking on the road from Rome to cuмae, he falls asleep and has a vision calling him to repentance. In the first several visions he is spoken to by a matron who represents the Church. A young man explains to Hermas that the Church appears as an old woman because she was created first of all things, and “for her sake the world was made.”

However, each times she appears the matron looks younger and more joyful until finally she takes the form of a beautiful bride. It is later revealed to Hermas that this transformation symbolizes the progress of his own soul. The implication is that the appearance of the Church reflects the spiritual life of her members.

In the fifth vision, the titular shepherd appears; it is he who gives Hermas the Commandments and Similitudes in the second and third books. These are essentially a series of sermons on moral principles delivered by the shepherd, who reveals himself as the angel in charge of repentance.

Hermas is given these visions both for his own repentance and so he can share the teachings with others. God is angry with him because he has not warned his sons against sin, but Hermas is being given an opportunity to cooperate with God in healing the evils of his house. Among these evils is that his wife (whom he is now to treat as a sister) has an undisciplined tongue and his sons are lustful. Hermas himself admits that he has been a habitual liar in the past.

He is urged to forgive his family for the wrongs they have done him, so that their sins may be cleansed, “For the remembrance of wrongs worketh death.” Many times the angel warns against the recollection of offenses, whether one’s own or those of others: “Do not trample [the Lord’s] mercy under foot, He says, but rather honour Him, because he is so patient with your sins, and is not as ye are.”

Hermas presents himself as a man of relatively small intelligence, yet one who is conscientious and intent on understanding every last detail of the visions. He is often rebuked for asking too many questions; the shepherd tells him, "You ought not to ask any questions at all; for if it is needful to explain anything, it will be made known to you." All his questions are answered in due time.

The Tower Built upon the Waters

Of the visions shown to Hermas by the matron, the most important is that of a tower being built upon the waters. The tower represents the Church which is built upon the waters of baptism. It is being built by six young men (angels) and other men (lesser angels) are carrying stones out of the water and from the land to be put into the tower.

Stones dragged from the depths of the water are placed in the building as they are, because they are already polished and fit perfectly, so that the building appears to be made of one stone. These stones are those who have suffered for the Lord’s sake. There are white square stones which also fit perfectly; these are apostles, bishops, teachers and deacons who have served God with purity and lived at peace with one another.

Of the stones taken from the earth, some are rejected while others are fitted into the building; some stones are even cut down from the building itself and cast away. Other stones lie around the building unused, because they are rough, have cracks, or are the wrong shape or size. Those which go into the tower without being polished are those who have kept God’s commandments.

The stones which are rejected but not cast far away are sinners who may yet become part of the tower if they repent; however, they must repent before the building is finished and there is no longer any room. The stones cut down and thrown far away are evil people, while the many stones lying around unused because of various defects are those who know the truth and do not remain in it, or have other sins.

There are still more types of stones symbolizing different kinds of people. For example, the stones that are white and round and do not fit are rich men who have true faith but deny the Lord when tribulation comes because of their riches; their riches will need to be shorn away before they can be useful to God.

Hermas asks the matron if repentance is possible for those who have been cast away. The answer is that it is possible, but they will not have a place in this tower. Instead, they will dwell in an inferior place, and only after suffering and having “completed the days of their sins.”

This vision contains another image which became important in Christian art: that of seven women surrounding the tower, representing Faith, Self-Restraint, Simplicity, Knowledge, Innocence, Reverence and Love.

Doctrine

The main doctrinal content of the Shepherd has to do with repentance and penance. According to Hermas there is only one remission of sins; penance is still possible but only within a certain fixed period set by the angel. However, this applies specifically to those who have already been baptized: “The repentance of the righteous has limits”; “But to the heathen, repentance will be possible even to the last day.”

While a second repentance is still possible for those who sin after the initial remission of baptism, the great difficulty of attaining salvation for those who have fallen back into their old sins is repeatedly emphasized. As Quasten notes, this is a psychological and pastoral rather than a dogmatic point. Penance is efficacious for anyone willing to repent, even apostates and fornicators. It involves fasting, self-denial and prayer not only for one’s own sins but for those of others. Bearing the name of Christ is not sufficient for salvation; one must avoid evil deeds and put on virtue.

At one point, Hermas asks the shepherd why he is being afflicted by an angel of punishment, despite his and his family’s repentance for their sins. The sheperd explains that suffering is both essential to make reparation and profitable to heal one’s soul of the effects of sin:

…do you think, however, that the sins of those who repent are remitted? Not altogether, but he who repents must torture his own soul, and be exceedingly humble in all his conduct, and be afflicted with many kinds of affliction; and if he endure the afflictions that come upon him, He who created all things, and endued them with power, will assuredly have compassion, and will heal him; and this will He do when He sees the heart of every penitent pure from every evil thing: and it is profitable for you and for your house to suffer affliction now.

Hermas’s Christology is confused. He identifies the Holy Spirit with the Son of God, so there are seemingly only two divine Persons, the Father and the Holy Spirit, plus a Saviour who is elevated to join them as a reward for his service on earth.

Ethics

The Shepherd is full of rich ethical teaching. There is an early distinction between obligatory and supererogatory works: for example, unlike some early Christian writers, the angel permits remarriage after the death of a spouse, though he says it is more meritorious to remain single.

On adultery, Hermas teaches that if a man’s wife commits this sin and does not repent he must put her away; however, he cannot remarry. (This precept applies equally to men and women.) The prohibition of remarriage in such cases is not merely negative but serves a positive purpose, that of making it easier for the unfaithful spouse to repent. For if she repents, the husband is obliged to take her back and forgive her, or he himself will have sinned greatly. The beauty of this teaching is that even in cases of infidelity, the faithful spouse remains committed to the salvation of the unfaithful one.

The faithful are exhorted to make “noble and sacred expenditures”; that is, it is better to spend your time and resources “buying” souls, which will come with you to the heavenly city, rather than stocking up on worldly goods which you cannot keep.

The rich and the poor are compared to a vine and an elm. The vine bears fruit and the elm does not, but the vine needs to be suspended on the elm to bear its own fruit, since it cannot do so lying on the ground. And so the vine bears fruit both for itself and for the elm, with the elm’s assistance. The shepherd explains the meaning of this similitude:

The rich man has much wealth, but is poor in matters relating to the Lord, because he is distracted about his riches; and he offers very few confessions and intercessions to the Lord, and those which he does offer are small and weak, and have no power above. But when the rich man refreshes the poor, and assists him in his necessities, believing that what he does to the poor man will be able to find its reward with God—because the poor man is rich in intercession and confession, and his intercession has great power with God—then the rich man helps the poor in all things without hesitation; and the poor man, being helped by the rich, intercedes for him, giving thanks to God for him who bestows gifts upon him…. Both, therefore, are partners in the righteous work.… Blessed are they who have riches, and who understand that they are from the Lord.

The Shepherd gives us a picture not only of those who lived up to the ideal of the early Church by suffering martyrdom, but of those who suffered less perfectly, or even denied the Lord. Those who considered denying their faith but still suffered have less merit than those who were perfectly faithful in their hearts. The angel advises those who are tempted to give in under persecution to keep in mind the spiritual purpose and profit of suffering:

Have a care, therefore, ye who are planning such things, lest that suggestion remain in your hearts, and ye perish unto God. And ye who suffer for His name ought to glorify God, because He deemed you worthy to bear His name, that all your sins might be healed. [Therefore, rather deem yourselves happy], and think that ye have done a great thing, if any of you suffer on account of God. The Lord bestows upon you life, and ye do not understand, for your sins were heavy; but if you had not suffered for the name of the Lord, ye would have died to God on account of your sins.

Faith, Prayer, Discernment

Hermas wonders whether he is strong enough to keep the commandments; he is assured that this is rather a matter of belief and trust:

If you lay it down as certain that they can be kept, then you will easily keep them, and they will not be hard. But if you come to imagine that they cannot be kept by man, then you will not keep them. Now I say to you, If you do not keep them, but neglect them, you will not be saved, nor your children, nor your house, since you have already determined for yourself that these commandments cannot be kept by man.

Similarly, we are urged to confidence in praying to God, and warned of the dangers of doubt, which makes men “double-souled”:

Wherefore do not cease to make the request of your soul, and you will obtain it. But if you grow weary and waver in your request, blame yourself, and not Him who does not give to you.

Faith is not merely a matter of complacent belief, for we are meant to continually seek greater understanding. Those who believe, yet are too involved with business, do not understand the things of God because their minds are set on worldly matters:

Those who have never searched for the truth, nor investigated the nature of the Divinity, but have simply believed, when they devote themselves to and become mixed up with business, and wealth, and heathen friendships, and many other actions of this world, do not perceive the parables of Divinity…. …[They] go astray in their minds, and lose all understanding in regard to righteousness; for if they hear of righteousness, their minds are occupied with their business, and they give no heed at all.

The Shepherd contains a very valuable passage on an aspect of what is now called discernment of spirits. How can we tell whether a movement of the soul is of holy or demonic origin?

There are two angels with a man—one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity.… The angel of righteousness is gentle and modest, meek and peaceful. When, therefore, he ascends into your heart, forthwith he talks to you of righteousness, purity, chastity, contentment, and of every righteous deed and glorious virtue. When all these ascend into your heart, know that the angel of righteousness is with you. These are the deeds of the angel of righteousness. Trust him, then, and his works. Look now at the works of the angel of iniquity. First, he is wrathful, and bitter, and foolish, and his works are evil, and ruin the servants of God. When, then, he ascends into your heart, know him by his works.

The shepherd notes that it is impossible for the good angel and the bad angel to be in a man’s soul at the same time. When a man is (for example) overcome by anger,

[the tender Spirit] withdraws from the man in whom he dwelt, the man is emptied of the righteous Spirit; and being henceforward filled with evil spirits, he is in a state of anarchy in every action, being dragged hither and thither by the evil spirits, and there is a complete darkness in his mind as to everything good.

Origin

The Shepherd was written in Greek; no single manuscript containing the complete text in its original tongue survives, but the entire work can be collated from extant Greek fragments.

The Muratorian Fragment (c.200) says: “And very recently in our own times, in the city of Rome, Hermas wrote the Pastor, when his brother Pius, the bishop, sat upon the chair of the city of Rome.” This seems to conflict with the matron’s command in the second vision for Hermas to send one copy of the book to Clement in Rome (surely this is Pope Clement I). St. Pius I was Pope from 140-155, while St. Clement reigned sometime around the last decade of the first century, or possibly earlier. For this reason, Hermas’s reference to Clement has been regarded by some as fictional.

Another theory has it that different parts of the work were composed at different times, the older parts during Clement’s reign and the final additions and changes in Pius’s – yet this spreads the composition over a period of 40-60 years or perhaps more, depending on how early we date Clement’s reign.

Origen’s identification of Hermas with the Hermas mentioned by St. Paul in the letter to the Romans is generally dismissed.

The Shepherd was well-regarded by several of the Fathers, though there was little interest in it by St. Jerome’s time. St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen considered the Shepherd inspired, while Eusebius and St. Athanasius approved of its use for catechumens.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=643

poche · « **Reply #8 on:** March 06, 2015, 12:22:17 AM »

Parallel with the increasing influence of Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism, the second century saw, along with sporadic State persecutions and anti-Christian riots, the publication of numerous works of anti-Christian literature. While Christianity would in subsequent centuries be plagued by conflicts caused by various heresies, attacks on the Faith in the second century came more often from pagans, Gnostics, Jєωs and Judaizing Christians (Christians who insisted on observance of the Mosaic Law).

These attacks took the form of both intellectual criticism and slander of Christian morals. Common rumors had Christians committing incest, ritual infanticide, engaging in orgies at their worship gatherings, and (because of the Eucharist) cannibalism. In addition to this, Christianity was often considered a threat to the State.

Much of the anti-Christian literature of the period is lost, so that most of what we know of it is from references and quotations in early Christian writings.

Foremost among the anti-Christian intellectuals of the second century were the satirist Lucian of Samosata and the philosopher Fronto of Cirta, who taught the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. By far the greatest, however, was Celsus, a distinguished Platonist philosopher who studied the Old and New Testament in order to attack them. His lengthy work The True Discourse was a formidable assault on Christianity from both Jєωιѕн and pagan perspectives, most of which has been reconstructed from excerpts in a refutation by the Church Father Origen.

There was great need, then, for Christian men of letters to defend the Faith against outside attacks. The earliest such writers are known as the Greek Apologists. They not only defended against the negative charges but sought to prove Christianity as the one true faith and all other religions as false (or in the case of Judaism, to show the temporary nature of the Mosaic Law and its fulfillment in Christianity).

While the earlier Christian writers had written chiefly for the benefit of the faithful, “with the Greek Apologists the literature of the Church addresses itself for the first time to the outside world and enters the domain of culture and science” [Quasten, Patrology Vol. I, p. 186].

These writers were typically more educated than the writers of the Apostolic era, and many were schooled in classic Greek literature and philosophy (Latin had not yet become a philosophical language). Indeed, among the Greek Apologists were the earliest Christian philosophers, who not only strove to show that Christian beliefs were philosophically rational, but asserted that Christianity was “divine philosophy” far above any other.

Yet in their engagement with pagan thought, they affirmed the seeds of truth they saw there, and their discoveries of common ground between Christianity and Platonism would have enormous consequences for the development of Christian theology and philosophy alike. Christian thinkers would not only adapt pagan philosophy for their own purposes, but would soon develop unique philosophical insights in the course of explaining and defending Christian doctrine. Special attention would be given to issues of causation (because of the Trinity), free will, and language. (I borrow this last observation from Dr. Peter Adamson’s discussion of early Christian philosophy on his superlative podcast, the History of Philosophy without Any Gaps.)

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=644

poche · « **Reply #9 on:** March 07, 2015, 11:30:57 PM »

Quadratus

Quadratus, a native of Asia Minor, was the first Christian apologist, and may have been a disciple of the Apostles. He presented an apology to the Emperor Hadrian (117-138) on the occasion of his visit to Athens (c. 124), the goal of which was to convince him to outlaw persecution of Christians. Only a fragment of this work survives, quoted by Eusebius:

Our Saviour's works, moreover, were always present: for they were real, consisting of those who had been healed of their diseases, those who had been raised from the dead; who were not only seen whilst they were being healed and raised up, but were afterwards constantly present. Nor did they remain only during the sojourn of the Saviour on earth, but also a considerable time after His departure; and, indeed, some of them have survived even down to our own times.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=644

poche · « **Reply #10 on:** March 10, 2015, 10:55:05 PM »

Aristides of Athens

Nothing is known of Aristides save that he seems to have been a philosopher in Athens. Like Quadratus, Aristides wrote an apology dedicated to a Roman Emperor – some ancient sources say Hadrian, but most scholars have concluded from internal evidence that it was Antoninus Pius (138-161), who took the nickname “Hadrianus.” Thus the work is typically dated at the beginning of Anoninus Pius’s reign, c. 140.

The Apology was at first only known from a fragment of an Armenian translation in a 10th-century manuscript. But when a full Syriac translation was discovered in 1889, scholars realized that the Greek text was extant after all, as chapters 26 and 27 Barlaam and Josaphat, a religious novel spuriously attributed to the last of the Church Fathers, St. John Damascene. Since Quadratus’s Apology is not extant, Aristides’s work is the earliest extant Christian apology.

Aristides is more of a philosopher than any Christian writer we have encountered thus far. Through meditation on the created world he has discovered some characteristics of God. He admits that God is “unsearchable in his nature” and that it is not possible for men to comprehend Him fully; accordingly, his statements about God are mostly negative – for example, when he says God is perfect, he explains that this means God is without defect and needs nothing. God is the one who moves all of nature, and logically, that which moves is greater to that which is moved. Therefore God must not be of the world: he is “not born, not made, an ever-abiding nature without beginning and without end, immortal, perfect, and incomprehensible.”

According to this understanding of God, he sets out to appraise the religions of men, which he divides into four categories – that of the barbarians, that of the Greeks, that of the Jєωs, and that of the Christians. As for the barbarians, their religion is base because they worship idols, the work of men’s hands, which even need to be guarded lest they be stolen away – yet that which guards is surely greater than that which needs to be guarded. It is likewise irrational to worship the elements or the sun, all of which are changeable and do not rule themselves; and for the same reason, men themselves should not be worshipped as gods.

Aristides goes through the entire Greek pantheon and, examining the stories and characteristics of the Greek deities, showing how absurd it is to think that such immoral and otherwise imperfect beings could be divine. He cleverly argues that the Greeks have themselves condemned their gods by their laws, for if their laws are good, then their gods, who break the laws, are evil. He chides even the greatest of the Greek philosophers, who had some idea of a spiritual, ineffable God, yet were so foolish as to defend sacrifice to idols. He is even less lenient in a digression about the Egyptian religion, which is so “base and stupid” as to incorporate animals and plants into its pantheon.

Aristides commends the Jєωs for their higher understanding of God and praises many of their virtuous customs. Yet he says their worship pays more homage to angels than to God and is too focused on externals.

Alone among the peoples, it is the Christians who have searched and found the truth. Aristides describes and praises Christian morality, charity, humility and prayer. In conclusion, the Emperor is urged not to believe slanders against them, to cease persecuting them, and to read the Christian writings with the aim of becoming a Christian himself.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=644

poche · « **Reply #11 on:** March 12, 2015, 10:38:30 PM »

Aristo of Pella

Sometime between 135 and 175, the Jєωιѕн Christian Aristo of Pella (a town in Palestine) wrote the first apology for Christianity against the Jєωs – a Discussion between Jason and Papiscus Concerning Christ.

In this dialogue, Jason, a Jєωιѕн Christian, argues that the Jєωιѕн Messianic prophecies apply to Jesus. His interlocutor, the Alexandrian Jєω Papiscus, attempts to refute him “with no common ability” (to use Origen’s description), but in the end acknowledges Christ as the Son of God and begs to be baptized.

The work is, unfortunately, lost. Jerome quotes it as evidence of the Jєωιѕн objection to the idea of God dying on a cross – St. Paul’s scandalum crucis (Gal. 5:11). Celsus, in his True Discourse, attacks it for its allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, and this has led some to conclude that the work is of Alexandrian origin (allegorical interpretations were used frequently by both Jєωs and Christians in that city).

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=644

poche · « **Reply #12 on:** March 16, 2015, 10:51:51 PM »

The Epistle to Diognetus

The author of the Epistle to Diognetus is unknown. It used to be ascribed to St. Justin Martyr, but its style makes this unlikely. There have been too many theories about its authorship to list here; one such attributes it to St. Hippolytus of Rome, which would date the work to the beginning of the third century. Another attributes it to Aristides. A more recent theory is that this work is in fact the lost Apology of Quadratus, which would fit what little we know about him, especially since the author of Diognetus calls himself a “disciple of the Apostles.” However, the fragment of Quadratus quoted by Eusebius does not appear in this work.

Whoever the author was, he must have been classically trained. The great patrologist Johannes Quasten pays tribute to his literary prowess:

The epistle deserves to rank among the most brilliant and beautiful works of Christian Greek literature. The writer is a master of rhetoric, his sentence structure is full of charm and subtly balanced, his style limpid. The content reveals a man of fervent faith and wide knowledge, a mind thoroughly imbued with the principles of Christianity. The diction sparkles with fire and vitality. [Patrology Vol. I, p. 251-252].

The work is an apology in the form of a letter to a pagan of high rank, Diognetus (probably a pseudonym). The letter is a response to Diognetus’s questions about the Christians, which the author enumerates at the beginning:

‘Who is the God in whom they trust’, you wonder, ‘and what kind of cult is theirs, to enable them, one and all, to disdain the world and despise death, and neither to recognize the gods believed in by the Greeks nor to practice the superstition of the Jєωs? And what is the secret of that strong affection they have for one another? And why has this new blood or spirit come into the world we live in now, and not before?’ [Quasten’s translation, Patrology Vol. I, p. 249-250]

In explaining why Christian worship differs from both pagan and Jєωιѕн practices, the author shows that the pagan idols, made of senseless and perishable matter, are not worthy of worship. He criticizes what he sees as the Jєωιѕн tendency to offer God sacrifices and burnt-offerings as though He could need such things; he also attacks some Jєωιѕн customs, such as their “scrupulosity” concerning food and their “superstition” about the Sabbath, which falsely accuses God of forbidding good deeds on the day of rest.

The most wonderful part of the epistle is an eloquent description of how Christians live in the world (chapters V and VI):

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jєωs as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

To sum up all in one word—what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world. The invisible soul is guarded by the visible body, and Christians are known indeed to be in the world, but their godliness remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul, and wars against it, though itself suffering no injury, because it is prevented from enjoying pleasures; the world also hates the Christians, though in nowise injured, because they abjure pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and [loves also] the members; Christians likewise love those that hate them. The soul is imprisoned in the body, yet preserves that very body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they are the preservers of the world. The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tabernacle; and Christians dwell as sojourners in corruptible [bodies], looking for an incorruptible dwelling in the heavens. The soul, when but ill-provided with food and drink, becomes better; in like manner, the Christians, though subjected day by day to punishment, increase the more in number. God has assigned them this illustrious position, which it were unlawful for them to forsake.

The author shows how God came not (as might be expected) to dominate and compel men, “for violence has no place in the character of God,” but lovingly to persuade them and reveal to them His true essence, of which the pagan philosophers were ignorant. The Son came late in human history so that human beings would first come to realize their utter inability to save themselves, and therefore accept His salvation when He came. The author finally exhorts Diognetus himself to accept the Christian faith and so become an “imitator of God.”

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=644

poche · « **Reply #13 on:** April 01, 2015, 01:17:56 AM »

St. Justin Martyr
St. Justin Martyr, generally considered the most important of the Greek apologists, was born between 100 and 110, the son of a pagan Priscus in Flavia Neapolis, Palestine.

Justin tells us in his own writings that as a young man, he dallied with a few different schools of philosophy, yet found most of them unsatisfying. He passed quickly on from the Stoics because they had no interest in talking about God. He considered studying with a Peripatetic (Aristotelian), but the teacher demanded tuition up front, so Justin moved along to a Pythagorean master. Justin was attracted to the Pythagorean doctrine, but the teacher told him that before he could study philosophy he must first learn astronomy, music and geometry.

Too impatient for this, Justin at last decided to study Platonism. He was pleased with the Platonist notion of God until he met an old man (probably in Ephesus, c. 130-135) who showed him its insufficiency, and convinced him to investigate the prophets and Christianity. Soon Justin converted, being convinced that this faith was “more lofty than all human philosophy,” and “that this Christian philosophy alone was sure and profitable.”

One thing Justin tells us had already impressed him about the Christians, even while he was still a Platonist, was their utter fearlessness of death. By this he concluded, contrary to the slanders against them, that they must not be wicked men or pleasure-seekers:

For I myself, when I discovered the wicked disguise which the evil spirits had thrown around the divine doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from joining them, laughed both at those who framed these falsehoods, and at the disguise itself, and at popular opinion; and I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian.

Justin continued to wear the philosopher’s mantle or pallium, and gave a philosopher’s defense of the faith. He opened a school of Christian philosophy in Rome, in which one of his students was the apologist Tatian the Syrian. There, around 155, he wrote his first apology, directed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (132-161) and his son, the soon-to-be philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Soon afterward he wrote a second, shorter apology, addressed to the Roman Senate in protest of the execution of Ptolemy, a Christian catechist. In this work, he also attacked the Cynic philosopher Crescens, accusing him of being an ignorant anti-Christian bigot, as well as “base and thoroughly depraved.” It is likely that this Crescens was the one who later denounced Justin, resulting in his martyrdom (c. 165) under the prefect Rusticus along with several other Christians, of which event we have a genuine account based on an official court report.

Justin was a prolific writer, yet only three of his works are extant, all preserved in the 14th-century Paris Codex. These are his two Apologies and his Dialogue with the Jєω Trypho. Many other non-extant works by St. Justin are mentioned by Eusebius and other writers: the Liber contra Omnes Haereses, Against Marcion, Discourse Against the Greeks, Refutation (also against the Greeks), On the Unity of God (based on both Scripture and Greek philosophy), On the Soul, and Psalter. In addition, four fragments of a treatise On the Resurrection are reproduced and ascribed to St. Justin by St. John Damascene in his Sacra parallela.

Justin’s style is convoluted and he wanders frequently from topic to topic, but his good faith comes through clearly. He is earnest and forthright in trying to persuade others of the truth; if they will not listen, at least he will not be held accountable for keeping silent.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=645

poche · « **Reply #14 on:** July 25, 2015, 01:18:47 AM »

As we have seen, the problem of heresy became an increasingly pressing issue for Christians towards the end of the second century. Popes and bishops excommunicated the inventors and adherents of heresies and wrote pastoral letters warning the faithful. Among these protectors of the flock were the last four popes of the century—Soter (166-174), Eleutherius (174-189), Victor I (189-198), and Zephyrinus (198-217)—as well as bishops like Dionysius of Corinth, Pinytus of Gnossus, and Serapion of Antioch.

Meanwhile, theologians wrote works refuting the heresies while proving and expounding the true Apostolic teaching. Most of these works are lost, with only small fragments or descriptions surviving in Eusebius. Among these writers were Apollonius, bishop of Ephesus; Caius, a Roman priest under Pope Zephyrinus; and Rhodon, the disciple of Tatian mentioned in the installment on early heresies.

We have a few more substantial fragments by Hegesippus, a convert from Judaism born in Syria or Palestine. Because of the spread of Gnosticism, he made a journey to gather information about the true doctrine from the most important (Apostolic) Churches, particularly the Church of Rome, where he came during the reign of Pope Anicetus (155-166). Somewhere during or just after the reign of Pope Eleutherius, he returned home and compiled his memoirs in five books, known as his Commentaries on the Acts of the Church. In the surviving fragments, he focuses on the early history of the Church of Jerusalem, comments on the uninterrupted succession of popes which guarantees authentic apostolic doctrine, and lists the Jєωιѕн and early Gnostic sects.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons

By far the greatest anti-heretical writer—indeed, the greatest second-century theologian—was St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus is sometimes called the father of Catholic theology because of the comprehensive detail in which he explained and defended the articles of the true faith. He did this in the course of his other main achievement: dealing a mortal blow to Gnosticism.

Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor, probably in Smyrna, where as a lad he heard St. Polycarp preach. At some point he made his way to Lyons in Gaul. He is first mentioned in 177 as a priest in Lyons, at which time he was probably about 37 years old. That same year, he was sent to Rome with a letter from the Christians of Lyons to Pope Eleutherius concerning the Montanists in Lyons. Away on this mission, Irenaeus escaped Marcus Aurelius’s persecution, one casualty of which was the 90-year-old bishop of Lyons, St. Pothinus, who died of mistreatment in prison. Upon his return, Irenaeus was appointed as Pothinus’s replacement.

The name Irenaeus means “peacemaker”; Eusebius remarks that this is appropriate, since around 190 Irenaeus tried to make peace between Pope Victor I and Polycrates of Ephesus during the Quartodeciman controversy over the date of Easter. After that event the record is silent about Irenaeus. He may have died around 202. There is a tradition of his martyrdom which is generally considered unreliable, as it is not mentioned until St. Gregory of Tours’s sixth-century History of the Franks.

Only two works by Irenaeus have survived fully. The more important, on which his reputation rests, is the five-volume Detection and Overthrow of the Gnosis Falsely So-Called, more commonly referred to as Adversus haereses (Against Heresies). It is the earliest work that can be called a catechism of Christian doctrine, and as the title indicates, it was composed to refute current heresies falling under the umbrella of Gnosticism.

The five books were written in Greek between 180 and 199. While most of the original Greek text can be pieced together from various fragments, the complete work is only extant in a highly literal Latin translation, likely made as early as 200. An Armenian translation of books IV and V is also extant, as well as fragments of Syriac translations.

Pope St. John Paul II remarked that Irenaeus understood "that one cannot respond to a religious ideology without knowing it well. That is why, before refuting such an ideology, he must gather information and understand it." Thus, in Book I, Irenaeus gives an extremely detailed description of the teachings of the various Gnostic sects, which he learned from their treatises and from personal conversations with them, as well as the works of earlier anti-heretical writers. Since most of the Gnostic writings are lost, even after the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1946, this work is still one of our primary sources on the various Gnostic sects.

Irenaeus rightly comments that simply to state the Gnostic doctrines is to show their absurdity, but proceeds in Book II to refute Gnosticism using reason. In books III, IV and V, he continues to refute the Gnostics on various points, particularly their misuse of Scripture, while setting out positively the true apostolic doctrine.

By his own admission, Irenaeus possessed little rhetorical or literary skill, and the work as a whole is somewhat disorganized and repetitive. But he sets out the teachings of the Church simply, clearly and in the spirit of truth, and more than adequately exposes the fraudulence of Gnosticism.

In 1904, a full Armenian translation of Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching was discovered. This work, only the name of which had been known up to that point, is an apologetic treatise which establishes the fundamental tenets of Christianity. The author limits himself here to a positive exposition, referring the reader to Against Heresies for his refutation of Gnosticism.

Some fragments of Irenaeus’s other writings—treatises, sermons, letters—are preserved in quotation by other authors. Among these are part of a letter to the Roman priest Florinus in which Irenaeus recounts how he heard St. Polycarp’s preaching as a boy, and a passage from his letter to Pope Victor I in which he pleads with him not to excommunicate Polycrates of Ephesus.

The Rule of Faith

The “gnosis falsely so-called” against which Irenaeus directed his main treatise was a product of intellectual speculation unbounded by humility. The heretics wanted to create a version of Christianity suitable to their own intellects; they pretended to have discovered a new and higher doctrine which superseded the revelation of the New Testament, which they considered full of “symbols for the symbol-minded” (to borrow a pun from the atheist comedian George Carlin). So they embellished doctrines to please their finite and puffed-up intellects, inventing convoluted systems of divine beings beyond the God of revelation.

For Irenaeus, though, everything comes down to the one rule of faith which all Christians hold in common. This is the universal teaching handed down unaltered from the Apostles, the canon of faith stated in the baptismal creed. While the Gnostics have no unity and each sect puts forward its own contradictory doctrines, the teaching of the Church is the same throughout the world:

For the same faith is held and handed down by the Churches established in the Germanies, the Spains, among the Celtic tribes, in the East, in Lybia, and in the central portions of the world. (1, 10, 2)

The authenticity of this doctrine is guaranteed by the uninterrupted succession of bishops down from the Apostles. The heretics are not successors of the Apostles and so do not possess “the certain gift of truth” (4, 26, 2).

Irenaeus writes that he is able to list the complete Apostolic succession down to his own time, but since to do this for all the churches would take up too much space, he limits himself to "pointing out the apostolic tradition and creed which has been brought down to us by a succession of bishops in the greatest, most ancient, and well known Church, founded by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul at Rome" (3, 3, 2). Then he makes his clearest statement of the primacy of Rome:

For with this Church, because of its more efficient leadership [an alternate translation is "higher rank"], all Churches must agree, that is to say, the faithful of all places, because in it the apostolic tradition has been always preserved by the (faithful) of all places. (3, 3, 2)

Irenaeus follows up with a list of Roman bishops up to the present time (the reign of Eleutherius), saying that “this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith which the Church has received from the Apostles, preserved until now, and handed down in truth” (3, 3, 3).

If the apostolic tradition preserves the same faith for all, then intellectuals cannot improve upon it nor can the simple-minded take away from it. Pope Benedict XVI said in an address on St. Irenaeus:

The true teaching, therefore, is not that invented by intellectuals which goes beyond the Church's simple faith. The true Gospel is the one imparted by the Bishops who received it in an uninterrupted line from the Apostles. They taught nothing except this simple faith, which is also the true depth of God's revelation. Thus, Irenaeus tells us, there is no secret doctrine concealed in the Church's common Creed. There is no superior Christianity for intellectuals. The faith publicly confessed by the Church is the common faith of all.

While Irenaeus emphasized tradition and was not one for speculative theology, neither was his faith static and formalized. Benedict again illuminates his thought for us:

For Irenaeus, Church and Spirit were inseparable: "This faith", we read again in the third book of Adversus Haereses, "which, having been received from the Church, we do preserve, and which always, by the Spirit of God, renewing its youth as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself containing it to renew its youth also.... For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and every kind of grace" (3, 24, 1). As can be seen, Irenaeus did not stop at defining the concept of Tradition. His tradition, uninterrupted Tradition, is not traditionalism, because this Tradition is always enlivened from within by the Holy Spirit, who makes it live anew, causes it to be interpreted and understood in the vitality of the Church.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=650