Life on Planet Earth on Patristics

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The Principle Crime of the Human Race

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Keywords

Scripture

Ezekiel 144:6, Colossians 3:5, 1 John 5:21, 1 Corinthians 10:14, Jeremiah 10:14-15, Matthew 22:34-40, Exodus 20:3

Tertullian was an early church leader (a bishop in Carthage) in North Africa. His voluminous writing and ministry have led many to acknowledge him as the father of Latin Theology/Western Theology. Ter...

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Author

Chuck DeGroat

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Scripture

Colossians 3:5, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, 1 John 2:16, James 1:14-15, Romans 8:1-2, Galatians 5:16-17

The early church fathers named the primary sin patterns “passions,” borrowing a Latin term that could also be translated “sufferings ” As we live out a unique pattern or “face” of sin, we begin to thi...

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Name a Day and Give me a Hearing

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Revelation 2:10, Psalm 71:20-21, Philippians 3:10-14, Luke 21:16-19, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Romans 8:17-18, James 1:12

One of the great leaders of the first generation after the apostles was a man named Polycarp. Polycarp, it is believed, was discipled by the apostle John and carried out a long and fruitful ministry i...

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Can it Be Called By Any Other Name?

Author

C. Douglas Weaver

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Scripture

Acts 5:41, Revelation 2:10, Galatians 2:20, Hebrews 11:35-38, Philippians 1:21

At the beginning of the third century in North Africa, persecution of Christians broke out in Carthage. One of the catechumens taken into custody was Perpetua, a noblewoman still nursing her son. Whe...

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These Impious Galileans

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Matthew 22:37-39, Matthew 25:35-40, Luke 3:11, Ephesians 5:2, Acts 2:42-47, James 2:14-17, Galatians 2:10, Psalm 72:12-14

A passage often referred to in order to describe the sacrificial, countercultural quality of the early church comes to us interestingly enough, from one of its strongest critics, known later to histor...

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Christian Persecution & The Real Power

Author

John Dickson

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:10-12, John 15:18-20, 2 Timothy 3:12, Acts 14:22, Romans 8:35-37, 1 Peter 4:12-14, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Acts 1:8, Romans 8:11, Isaiah 41:10

What is the witness of the church in times of persecution? The historical record demonstrates that persecutions of Christians were regular and prolific in the first centuries of the church, especially...

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Virtues and Vices Can Offer Fresh Perspective

Author

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung

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Reaching back to the tradition of virtues and vices can also give us fresh eyes and expose new layers of meaning in our reading of scripture. Before I read Aquinas on sloth, I would have associated it...

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The Courage of the First Disciples

Author

Charles Martin

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These disciples turned the world upside down because they saw a dead man come back to life by the power of God. And whatever that “knowing” and “seeing” did in them, it did it at a deep level because ...

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Give Me Chastity…Someday

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Augustine of Hippo's (63AD-114) Confessions is widely considered to be one of the most important books ever written, some consider it the world’s first biography. Augustine's early life was ch...

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St. Anthony and the Search for God Amidst Crisis

Author

Daniel Grothe

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 19:21, Philippians 3:8, Luke 9:23, Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Hebrews 12:11, Isaiah 58:6-7

Given life’s unpredictability and the inevitability of pain and hardship, what do we do when that pain and hardship show up on our doorsteps? In roughly AD 270, there was a man in Lower Egypt named An...

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Primitivism vs Catholicity

Author

James K. A. Smith

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Spiritual timekeeping is nourished by Jesus’s promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time… This stands in contrast to what I’ll call the “primitivism” of so much American Christia...

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A Saint Like Us

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 16:30-33, Romans 8:38-39, Hebrews 7:25, John 5:24, John 15:6-8, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Ephesians 6:18, Jeremiah 33:3, Psalm 86:3, John 15:1-10

For the most part, when we think of saints or heroes of the faith, we think of people who are altogether different than we are. They seem to embody a quality of communion with God that is impossible f...

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Author

C. F. D. Moule

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St. Paul rejoices that his sufferings help to complete what is lacking of afflictions of Christ. This seems to mean two things. First that the Christian’s suffering (in this case the Apostle’s) are a ...

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The Hardest Fruit of the Spirit

Author

Christopher H. J. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 34:6, Genesis 50:19–21, Proverbs 19:11, Colossians 3:12–13, James 5:7–10, Psalm 37:7–9

The first three items in Paul’s fruit basket sound very spiritual. Heavenly almost. Very nice for Sundays, at least. But his next one, patience, brings us back down to earth on a Monday. What are we l...

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Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

Pilgrim (parepidēmos) tells us we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ.

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Author

Mark Buchanan

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:6, Matthew 7:13-14, Acts 24:14, Luke 9:23, Psalm 1:1-2, Psalm 25:4-5

[The] earliest name for Christianity was the Way, suggesting that it was not a set of doctrines to master but a path to travel. Suggesting that each step was a deepening of the familiar and a discover...

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Author

Susannah Black

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It’s perfectly possible to have an orthodox Christianity that understands itself to be at the center of making human culture, while interacting with non-Christians and their cultural products who are ...

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Martin’s Cloak Dream

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Martin of Tours became a great leader of the monastic movement in the West. In his early life, Martin was conscripted as a soldier in the Roman army. During this time, he became a catechumen (that is,...

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Let Him Rest

Author

Benedicta Ward

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The following story comes from the collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt, teaching that would have first been transmitted orally (around 350-450 A.D.) and later written down...

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Never Give up

Author

James Boice

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 13:, Exodus 14:21-31, Daniel 3:13-30 , 1 Kings 18:20-40, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 23:

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

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Prayer of St. Patrick

Author

Saint Patrick

Keywords

May the strength of God pilot us; May the wisdom of God instruct us, May the hand of God protect us, May the word of God direct us. Be always ours this day and for evermore.

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Imitating the Master

Author

John Koessler

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 5:1-2, Philippians 2:12-13, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 Corinthians 11:1, 1 Peter 2:21-23, John 13:15

My father was an artist. He had a black leather sketchbook filled with cartoons and doodles. As a boy I was enthralled by his drawings and wondered how I could learn to draw like him. I began by traci...

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Getting to the Image

Author

Brian Zahnd

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, Galatians 6:1, Proverbs 9:10, James 1:4, Isaiah 61:3

Think of an ancient icon of Christ. Imagine that a thousand-year-old Christ Pantocrator painted on a wooden panel is discovered in some forgotten monastery. The image of Christ is there, but it’s cove...

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The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Author

James Bryan Smith

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One of the gifts John Wesley left the church is the Quadrilateral. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral refers to the four ways we come to know something as true: Scripture (what the Bible teaches), tradition (...

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Author

Mark Lutz

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 4:18, Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10

Jesus showed his solidarity with the poor through his teaching, parables and lifestyle. It is no coincidence that in his very first recorded message he referenced the poor… Imagine God incarnate makin...

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Author

Augustine of Hippo

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 103:8, 1 John 4:16, Proverbs 3:5-6, Lamentations 3:22-23, Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:28

Trust the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s love and the future to God’s providence.

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Don’t Look Down But Up

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 10:24-25, Philippians 2:3-4, Ephesians 4:2, Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 5:5

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

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The First Diciples: Real Heroes

Author

Philip J. Rhinelander

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 15:22-41, John 19:16-30, 1 Corinthians 1:18

If ever mortal men found a real hero on this earth, those men were the disciples. They, indeed, were hero-worshippers. Then think of the horrid shock and shame which overwhelmed them at the Cross. It ...

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Kenōsis and Perichōrēsis

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:6-7, Galatians 2:20, John 10:30, Ephesians 5:21, Colossians 1:19-20, John 15:13, Matthew 20:28

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

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Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is ti...

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