IS THERE A BETTER WAY TO START A NEW YEAR THAN WITH THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS? (PART 1 OF 14)

 

Statue of Junipero Sera, Mission San Juan Capristrano, by Bernard Gagnon, Wikipedia Commons

 Let me start the New Year out with a look at the Church Fathers. I am writing this blog series as I'm preparing to facilitate a men's Bible study group going through the book Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction by Bryan Litfin. If you've been reading this blog, the name will ring some bells. I had done a book review on this volume, and before that did another review comparing this with another book dealing with Church leaders from history.

First, before you read on, make a list of twelve church fathers. Don't scroll down until you finish your list. Finished? Okay, how many were able to come up with twelve names? Oh, you struggled after half a dozen? Don't give yourself a hard time - a lot of Christians aren't aware of history. Here's a list that you can compare with:

1. Martin Luther
2. John Calvin
3. John Wesley
4. Charles Spurgeon
5. Jonathan Edwards
6. Billy Graham
7. St. Francis of Assissi
8. Dwight L. Moody
9. C. S. Lewis
10. Dr. J. Vernon McGee
11. James Dobson
12. Fanny Crosby

How many of you had any of these names on your list? If you did, mark those answers wrong. If I gave the correct list, my guess is that most of you would recognize one name and some more theologically informed may recognize a second. If you know more than that, I'm impressed. Having church history in college and reading the text-book cover to cover, I recognized 9 of the 12 names, and could give a complete sentence answer about who they were to seven of them. But I'm not giving the list now, so you'll either have to read Litfin's book or continue the next two weeks to get the names.

But what is a church father? Of course, different people may have different theories. In my opinion, ten of the twelve people listed deserve the title, while the other two do  not. That is because there are people in church history (as well as contemporary people) are inspirational ans some are influential. The former is admired as a hero/heroine, while the latter has an impact on how you think and what you believe. I would consider a church father to the the influencer. Most of these were active writers and their writings have impacted the direction the church went.

As we have different definitions for what a Church Father is, some of those definitions may be based on misconceptions. Litfin gives three of those misconceptions:

1. The church fathers are not biblical. Actually, if you collected the church fathers writings and cut out their quotations from the New Testament, you might be a few verses short of a complete manuscript. The church fathers were very familiar with Scripture.
2. The church fathers were Roman Catholic. Well, since the modern Roman Catholic Church didn't exist in their days, not really. The creeds talk about a catholic church, but what does the word "catholic" mean? If you guessed "Universal", you're right on the money; if you think it's a person who is addicted to sharing photos of felines on Facebook... sorry. You may notice I talked about a "catholic" church with a small "c" - we all belong to the small c catholic church of true believers.
3. The church fathers represent the fall of Christianity. When I started Bible College, the professor for "Baptist History and Distinctives" held that view, that there were Christians who were never a part of the Catholic church or its offspring (the Orthodox Church or the Reformation Protestant Churches). Later, the school hired a history teacher (the former one was focused on Pastoral studies) who disagreed. The reality is there is no clear point to say the church went astray. My belief is that every denomination/group/theology has both wheat and tares, both sheep and goats. Also, the tendency of mankind is to drift from the truth, so we need people at least every generation calling for reformation.

But why study the early church fathers? Shouldn't our focus be on following Jesus? Yes, but how do we follow Jesus? Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:1 "Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ." Dr. Mark Bailey in a Bible College class on Biblical Discipleship taught you can learn how to follow Christ by observing how others follow Him. 

I'd like to close today's installment a pair of questions (influenced by Litfin):

1. What role do the cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1) have in our lives as believers? Would the church fathers be in that cloud?
2. Can one claim to follow Christ and not hold to historical/orthodox Christianity? Can you think of someone like that? Are there any ways your views differ from typical Christian belief?