Petrarch on the violation of copyright and the choice of authors

Of all the early Renaissance figures, Petrarch is the most interesting. A devotee of Cicero ["I loved Cicero" (Letters on Familiar Matters 22.10)], he also claimed to have read "Virgil, Horace, [and] Livy...a thousand times" (Letters on Familiar Matters 22.2). They became not only part of his memory, but the very marrow of his prose. He even regarded Cicero as his father and Virgil as his brother (Letters on Familiar Matters 22.10). But he wanted it to be known that he "refrained from intellectual thefts as from thefts of property" (ibid.). The modern concern with the violation of copyright has a noble pedigree!

It is also noteworthy that in his mid-forties he began to read "Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory" with passion--the four doctors of the Western Church (Letters on Familiar Matters 22.10). He would defend the Church Fathers from their detractors. One of the latter he quotes as saying "Augustine saw much, but he knew little" (Letters on Familiar Matters 5.2), a remark that says far more about the person uttering it than Augustine!

The Scriptural author Paul became his "philosopher" and David his "poet"--he would sleep with David's Psalms under his pillow at night and always at hand while awake so that he might the more easily consult it, and he hoped it would be by his side when he came to die (Letters on Familiar Matters 22.10).

Dr. Haykin Interviewed About PRTS Conference on John Calvin on Moody Radio

Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin was recently interviewed by Paul Butler on Moody Radio's Prime Time America about the “Calvin for the 21st Century Conference” sponsored by the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI, August 27th – 29th.  The part with Dr. Haykin begins at about the 1:50 mark.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Win a Free Set of Profiles in Reformed Spirituality at Challies.com

Dr. Haykin serves as co-editor, along with Joel Beeke, of the Reformation Heritage Book series "Profiles in Reformed Spirituality".  The newest volume in the series is by Thabiti Anyabwile and focuses on the piety of Lemuel Haynes.  To promote this volume and the series of which it is a part, Reformation Heritage Books is randomly giving away five free sets today to those who sign up at Challies.com.

This is a great set.  The volumes are multifunctional. That is, they are the perfect, non-intimidating introductions to people, doctrine, and practice of the reformed tradition. They make excellent short readings for stimulating thought and devotion. They are also good for class texts for giving students an affordable entry point into a given person and time period both primary and secondary treatments in one small book.

If you don't win the set, You can order the complete set or individual volumes at Reformation Heritage Books.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

One Day Conference on Calvin at SBTS Next Wednesday, April 15th

(Click image to enlarge.)

Location:  Legacy Center 303 on the campus of Southern Seminary

This mini-conference celebrating the 500 year anniversary of John Calvin’s birth will be held on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 from 9am - Noon.  There will be three lectures by Dr. Shawn Wright, Dr. David Puckett, and Dr. Michael Haykin focusing on various aspects of Calvin’s life and thought.  The lectures will be followed by a panel discussion with the participants.

  • Dr. Wright will speak on “John Calvin as Pastor.”
  • Dr. Puckett will speak on “John Calvin as Preacher and Teacher.”
  • Dr. Haykin will speak on “John Calvin as Missionary Advocate.”

No Registration Required!

FREE BOOKS!  The first 50 in attendance will receive complimentary copies of John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God by John Piper and The Soul of Life: The Piety of John Calvin edited by Joel Beeke.  We will also randomly give away several copies of Steven Lawson’s The Expository Genuis of John Calvin.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Remembering John Calvin Conference on April 15th

(Click image to enlarge.)

Location:  Legacy Center 303 on the campus of Southern Seminary

This mini-conference celebrating the 500 year anniversary of John Calvin’s birth will be held on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 from 9am - Noon.  There will be three lectures by Dr. Shawn Wright, Dr. David Puckett, and Dr. Michael Haykin focusing on various aspects of Calvin’s life and thought.

  • Dr. Wright will speak on “John Calvin: Pastor.”
  • Dr. Puckett will speak on “John Calvin:  Preacher and Teacher.”
  • Dr. Haykin will speak on “John Calvin:  Missionary Advocate.”

No Registration Required!

FREE BOOKS!  The first 50 in attendance will receive complimentary copies of John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God by John Piper and The Soul of Life: The Piety of John Calvin edited by Joel Beeke.  We will also randomly give away several copies of Steven Lawson’s The Expository Genuis of John Calvin.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

A research topic in Baptist piety worth pursuing

Here is a possible research topic: What was it like to sit in a Baptist church in the days of Spurgeon and Broadus, Boyce and Wayland? What would you see? What would you hear? How would it feel? How did these dynamics relate to the message being preached and how truth was received? What was it like to sing in their chapels and to experience the Lord's Supper?

Some readers might think these questions trite and silly. They aren't at all!

Reception of truth always takes place in a certain ambience and space. How was truth experienced in that space? The answers to these questions and others like them would help enormously towards crafting the way spiritual life occurs and is experienced.

This would take a lot of digging but it relates to new historical studies based around our senses of sight, smell, feel, hearing and even taste. As yet, no one that I know of has been working on the history of such matters as it relates to Baptist piety.

Maybe, there are some scholars out there who would be interested in doing a concerted team research on this idea and produce together a history of Baptist sensory experience.

Comments and thoughts welcome!

Reading Church History: 1. Latin Christianity

Tertullian Timothy Barnes, Tertullian. A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

Gerald L. Bray, Holiness and the Will of God: Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian (Atlanta: John knox/London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1979).

Gerald L. Bray, “Tertullian and Western Theology” in John D. Woodbridge, ed., Great Leaders of the Christian Church (Chicago: Moody Press, 1988), 49-54.

Perpetua

The Martyrdom of Perpetua, introd. Sara Maitland (Evesham, Worcestershire: Arthur James Ltd., 1996).

Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (London/New York: Routledge, 1997).

Joseph J. Walsh, ed., What Would You Die For? Perpetua’s Passion (Baltimore, Maryland: Apprentice House, 2006).

W.C. Weinrich, Spirit and Martyrdom. A Study of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Contexts of Persecution and Martyrdom in the New Testament and Early Christian Literature (Washington, D.C., 1981).

Cyprian

William S. Babcock, “Christian Culture and Christian Tradition in Roman North Africa” in Patrick Henry, ed., Schools of Thought in the Christian Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 31-48.

J. Patout Burns, “The Holiness of the Churches” in William Caferro and Duncan G. Fisher, eds., The Unbounded Community: Papers in Christian Ecumenism in Honor of Jaroslav Pelikan (New York/London: Garland Publ., Inc., 1996), 3-15.

J. Patout Burns, Cyprian the Bishop (London/New York: Routledge, 2002).

Michael A. Smith, “Cyprian of Carthage and the North African Church” in John D. Woodbridge, ed., Great Leaders of the Christian Church (Chicago: Moody Press, 1988), 59-62.

Jerome

Everett Ferguson, “Jerome: Biblical Scholar” in John D. Woodbridge, ed., Great Leaders of the Christian Church (Chicago: Moody Press, 1988), 77-80.

J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper & Row, Publ., 1975).

Augustine

Gerald S. Bonner, St. Augustine of Hippo, Life and Controversies (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963).

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).

Donald X. Burt, Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine’s Practical Philosophy (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1999).

Elizabeth A. Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996).

Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, eds., Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner (London/New York: Routledge, 2000).

Thomas A. Hand, Augustine on Prayer (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co.,1986).

Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

N. R. Needham, The Triumph of Grace: Augustine’s writings on Salvation (London: Grace Publications Trust, 2000).

John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient thought baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Gary Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Viking Penguin, 1999).

Patrick

Máire B. de Paor, Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland (New York: HarperCollins, 1998).

David N. Dumville, Saint Patrick, A.D. 493-1993 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1993).

R.P.C. Hanson, Saint Patrick: His Origins and Career (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).

R.P.C. Hanson, The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick (New York: The Seabury Press, 1983).

E.A. Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick? (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1985).

Posting Reading Lists in Church History

A number of brothers have enquired about reading lists on various eras in Church history. I have decided to post these in a series. Not sure how many there will be. But I shall number them consecutively so interested readers can keep track. And while I hope to work through the whole of western church history, I will not be posting every day, but as I have time. And I am sure many of you find will omissions of favourite things. Two things to note in this regard: I would love to hear of possible additions. But remember these are lists that I feel are necessary reading and because I am limited, the lists are also limited. In each of the areas I shall post on the reading could be multiplied many times over.

So here goes. The first reading list, on the Latin Fathers, follows immediately.

Pursuing the Study of History with Chastity?

Here is a fascinating quote from the Puritan historian Patrick Collinson: “History fails to impress or inspire me. I refer you to a quotation from Lord Acton, used as a motto prefacing The Elizabethan Puritan Movement: ‘I think our studies ought to be all but purposeless. They want to be pursued with chastity, like mathematics.’ ”

It is taken from an interview on The Conventicle website. Fascinating that there were no comments on the interview or this particular statement. It surely cuts against the grain of much of my own thinking about history! To be sure, there must be a deadly seriousness with regard to accuracy--but to admit no inspiration from the past or purpose in studying it strikes me as ultimately self-defeating as an historian.

Eberhard Bethge on Remembering the past

These words of Eberhard Bethge, the biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, are an important reminder of the need to remember the past: “Commemoration renders life human; forgetfulness makes it inhuman. …even when remembrance carries grief and shame, it fills the future with perspectives. And the denial of the past furthers the affairs of death, precisely because it focuses exclusively on the present."[1]

[1] Friendship and Resistance. Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Geneva: WCC Publications/Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), 105.

The Young Pierre Trudeau & T.T. Shields

On a trip from the Maritimes, after attending the International Conference on Baptist Studies IV in the summer, I happened to pick up a Saturday Globe and Mail, and not surprisingly found myself gravitating to the editorial page and book reviews. A fascinating book review that appeared on one of the editorial pages was on the then-new book on Pierre Trudeau: Young Trudeau, Son of Quebec, Father of Canada by Max and Monique Nemni. Apparently it is a quite a revealing work, depicting a far different young Trudeau than the one many of us remember, namely the committed federalist and foe of narrow Quebec nationalism. Here is an ardent right-winger, deeply antagonistic to the Canadian war effort and a believer in “every French-Canadian nationalist myth about the evils of les anglais.” Jeffrey Simpson, who wrote the review, notes that Trudeau’s views “were utterly consistent with those of the Catholic Church in Quebec until the war’s later years.” [“Pierre Trudeau was no Talbot Papineau”, The Globe and Mail (July 15, 2006), A13]. Earlier that week, at the conference I had been at, I had listened to a paper that had mentioned the fiery anti-Catholicism of the Toronto Baptist pastor T.T. Shields. But, after reading the review of this book, it struck me that Shields’ anti-Catholicism was quite understandable in the time period given the large numbers who would have shared the views of the young Trudeau.

It was an excellent reminder that one of the ways to avoid anachronism in the study of an area of history is to read widely in the time period under study.

John Gill’s Grave in Bunhill Fields

As some of you know, who have been to Bunhill Fields, London, that great campus sanctorum, it contains the grave of many Baptist, and other Nonconformist, worthies of the past: John Owen, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, Susannah Wesley (a Nonconformist till her early teens, and the daughter of the great Samuel Annesley), John Rippon, etc.… A number of the graves are suffering the ravages of time typical of stone and mortar in an urban setting like London. Among the graves in the latter category is the table tomb of John Gill (1697-1771), the most prominent English Baptist of his day. Jeff Straub, professor of Church History at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minneapolis, e-mailed me recently about the state of Gill’s grave and that the grave can no longer be easily identified. He rightly suggested seeking to do something about it. He has just written to an official in the City of London to see if a bronze marker with details about Gill can be possibly erected to mark the grave.

He and I hope that the cost of this project could be borne by raising funds among interested British and American Baptists who hold John Gill in high esteem. It is hoped to announce specifics at the large Baptist gathering next August in Charleston, South Carolina (see “Baptist History Celebration”, http://www.baptisthistorycelebration.org), where some 450 Baptists—both historians& history buffs—will gather to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Philadelphia Confession. Those of you are interested in helping in this worthy commemoration, please make a note to check back here or at the “Baptist History Celebration” site then.

The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome and God’s Common Grace

Roman technology in the Ancient world was second to none. Think of the aqueduct system that fed the heart of the Empire, Rome itself. There were eleven aqueducts that daily delivered 1.2 million cubic metres of water (nearly 300 million gallons)—yes daily!—to the city. One of the superintendents of the aqueduct system for the city, Sextus Julius Frontinus, the curator aquarum, penned a fabulous treatise De aquaeductu (97ad) at the close of the first century during the reign of Nerva. Comparing the system of aqueducts to other architectural marvels of the ancient world, he asked:

“I ask you! Just compare those useless pyramids, or the good-for-nothing tourist attractions of the Greeks with the vast monuments of this vital aqueduct network.”

When the Apostle Paul arrived in Rome for the first time (Acts 28), he would have seen these architectural marvels, and when he stayed in the city for those two years under house arrest, the water he drank and bathed in would have come through this remarkable system of aqueducts. How thankful we should be for the common grace that surrounds us.

Here, in the West, I am deeply grateful for the architectural web of institutions that grace our world—the freedoms of speech and movement that we enjoy because of them—and the freedom to preach the gospel and plant churches. These should never be taken for granted. There are others in this world—the old remnants of leftist ideological persuasion, radical Muslims, for instance—who would deprive us of such.

Daniel Johnson, in a disturbing article [“Allah’s England?”, Commentary, 122, no.4 (November 2006), 41-46] quotes a self-styled spokesperson for Islam in England, a certain Abu Izzadeen, a convert to Islam, dismissing free speech and our democratic way of life and saying over the British airwaves: Britain “doesn’t belong to you [the British], or to the Queen, or to the government, but to Allah. He has put us on earth to implement shari’a law” [page 46].

I, for one, am deeply thankful for the web of the Western culture—no, it is not Christian—but oh the freedoms it gives. In this we see the goodness of God designed to lead sinners to repentance!

Like the water the ancient Apostle drank in the city of Rome.

The Tombstone of Sarah Judson

Nick Clevely (see previous post) has also informed me that the tombstone of Sarah Judson, the third wife of Adoniram Judson, who died and was buried on the island of St Helena, has been moved from the de-consecrated cemetery in Jamestown to the courtyard of the Jamestown Baptist Chapel. While in the cemetery in Jamestown, it was damaged, probably by vandalism, and as a result, the top section of the tombstone is completely missing. At present Nick does not have a description of how it used to look, so he is looking for information in order that he can begin the process of restoring it.

This tombstone is not merely a tombstone; it is in fact a monument erected by the Baptists of Philadelphia. It is a wonderful part of Baptist Missions history and should not be neglected.

Nick is looking for information about the description of the tombstone, so if you have such information or if you would like to contribute to the restoration of it, your help would be most welcome and appreciated. His e-mail is as follows: clevely@helanta.sh.

The Baptists on St. Helena

Over the past year I have been communicating with a Reformed Baptist brother by the name of Nick Clevely, who is ministering on the island of St. Helena. Nick recently passed on to me this potted history of the Baptist work on the island. The Baptist work on the island was begun by an American Baptist Missionary named James McGregor Bertram in 1845. On July 14, 1845, Bertram arrived at St. Helena. Upon arriving he was met by a Mr. James Morris, who asked, “Have you come here, Mr. Bertram, to preach Christ’s gospel?” Mr. Morris then informed the Rev. Bertram “there are only four or five people on the island who know anything about a work of grace in their hearts.”

The next day, Rev. Bertram held his first service and preached from Acts 16:14-15. By Sunday, July 20, they had to move to a much larger place for worship, and met in someone’s home. It was determined to call a meeting on July 30 (only 14 days after Rev Bertram’s arrival) for the purpose of raising funds for a mission house. Thus the foundations of the Baptist Church were laid.

It was at a meeting held on August 20, 1845 (37 days after Rev Bertram’s arrival) that it was unanimously decided “to procure the largest stone edifice in the town that could be purchased. A large stone dwelling house in the central part of town was purchased for £550.” At a meeting held on the September 30, 1845, the following minute was recorded: “Mr. Carroll proposed that a public notice should be posted to notify that Divine Services will commence in the Mission House on the 28th October, 1845 at 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock in the afternoon.”

Not long after Rev. Bertram’s arrival, he was waited upon by Captain Mapleton, the principal magistrate of the island. He invited Rev Bertram to Sandy Bay where the Gospel had never been preached! It was early January, 1846, that they went by horseback to Sandy Bay. It was at the dwelling of Mr. and Mrs. Lambe that Bertram preached his first service in Sandy Bay. The first baptism took place on the April 2, 1848, where some 45 people followed the Lord, and within a year 149 were baptized, and by 1884, 440 were baptized members of the church! Sounds like revival!

Most regrettably Bertram committed suicide in 1868, throwing himself off a ship on a return voyage to America.

The Jamestown Chapel, where the Baptist work started, is the flagship of what are now four chapels on the island and was built in 1854. The three other chapels on the island are: the Head o’Wain Chapel (1918), the Knollcombe Chapel (1893) which has on its grounds an historical monument, the Boer War graveyard where prisoners who died in an epidemic were buried, and the Sandy Bay Chapel, which experienced another revival in the early twentieth century.

John Gill & Jonathan Edwards

“To see Him, the King, in his beauty, is a ravishing sight, and which fills [the soul] with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Sounds like Jonathan Edwards, right? Or another one of the divines from his affective stream of piety? No. It is from the much-maligned John Gill (d.1771). See his Body of Divinity, p.777.

There is much more in Gill than dry-as-dust theology—there is life and power and joy in Christ. While I do not deny there are some theological problems with his Calvinism, at its heart it was drawn from the same well as Edwards’.

Someone needs to compare the theology of Edwards and Gill. I am amazed that no one ever has.

What to Read of the Fathers?

In the comment section on the previous post on the Fathers, I was asked about what to read of the Fathers. Everyone who has studied the Fathers will have his or her favourites. Here are some of mine. I would say Jaroslav Pelikan’s first volume in his history of Christian doctrine, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, is an excellent place to start. JND Kelly on Early Christian Doctrine is another excellent starter. Other secondary sources that provide a good introduction include the works by Christopher Hall (Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers and Doing Theology with the Church Fathers) and Robert Wilken’s The Spirit of Early Thought. Gerald Bray’s Creeds, Councils and Christ is also very good. I also like Henry Chadwick’s two works on the early church: The Early Church (Penguin) and The Church in Ancient Society (OUP).

For primary sources, see Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers and his The Later Christian Fathers give good overviews. Augustine’s Confessions is a natural place to start. You may not agree with all you read, but it is a gem. Also the second-century The Letter to Diognetus is a gem—the cream of second-century Apologetics. I would also strongly recommend Basil’s On the Holy Spirit.

Why Study the Fathers?

Our generation is afflicted with a kind of historical amnesia, which, unfortunately, has not left the Church untouched. For instance, Malcolm Muggeridge, who became a professing Christian after a lifetime of skepticism, in remarks made in the account of his conversion, stated that in the final analysis “history is phony.” As he went on to say: “…in the case of the greatest happenings such as Christ’s life and death, historicity is completely without importance. It is very important to know the history of Socrates because Socrates is dead, but the history of Christ doesn’t matter because he is alive.” [Jesus Rediscovered (London: Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., 1972), 204]. In such an intellectual ambience—which is nonsensical to anyone who values the historicity of Christian origins—the question, “Why study the Fathers?” must be asked again and answered afresh. Listed below are a number of reasons that can be considered an initial step in this direction.

First, study of the Fathers, like any historical study, liberates us from the present [C.S. Lewis, “De descriptione temporum” in Walter Hooper, ed., Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1969), 12]. Every age has a certain outlook, presuppositions which remain unquestioned even by opponents. The examination of another period of thought forces us to confront our innate prejudices which would go unnoticed otherwise.

For instance, Gustaf Aulén, in his classic study of the atonement, Christus Victor, argues that an objective study of the Patristic concept of Atonement will reveal a motif which has received little attention in post-Reformation Christianity: the idea of the Atonement as a divine conflict and victory, in which Christ fights and overcomes the evil powers of this world, under whom man has been held in bondage. According to Aulén, what is commonly accepted as the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement, the forensic theory of satisfaction, may in fact be a concept quite foreign to the New Testament. As to whether he is right or not—and I think he is quite wrong—can only come by a fresh examination of the sources, both New Testament and Patristic.

Then, the Fathers can provide us with a map for the Christian life. It is indeed exhilarating to stand on the east coast and watch the Atlantic surf and hear the pound of the waves. But this experience will be of little benefit in sailing to England. For this a map is needed. A map based upon the accumulated experience of thousands of voyagers. Similarly, we need such a map for the Christian life. Experiences are fine and good, but they will not serve as a suitable foundation for our lives in Christ. To be sure, we have the divine Scriptures, an ultimately sufficient foundation for all of our needs (2 Timothy 3:16-17). But the thought of the Fathers can help us enormously in building on this foundation.

A fine example is provided by Athanasius’ doctrine of the Spirit in his letters to Serapion, bishop of Thmuis. The present day has seen a resurgence of interest in the Person of the Holy Spirit. This is admirable, but also fraught with danger if the Spirit is conceived of apart from Christ. Yet, Athanasius’ key insight was that “from our knowledge of the Son we may be able to have true knowledge of the Spirit” (Letter to Serapion 3.1). The Spirit cannot be divorced from the Son: not only does the Son send and give the Spirit, but the Spirit is the principle of the Christ-life within us. Many have fallen into fanatical enthusiasm because they failed to realize this basic truth: the Spirit cannot be separated from the Son.

Third, the Fathers may also, in some cases, help us to understand the New Testament. We have had too disparaging a view of Patristic exegesis, and have come close to considering the exposition of the Fathers as a consistent failure to understand the New Testament. For instance Cyril of Jerusalem in his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:5, which concerns temporary abstinence of sexual relations between married couples for the sake of prayer, assumes without question that the prayer is liturgical and communal prayer (Catechesis 4.25).

Cyril may be guilty of an anachronism, for he was a leader in “the hallowing of the time,” that is, the observance of holy seasons. Nonetheless, there is good evidence that such communal observances, in some form or other, are quite early. The liturgical life of the Church of Jerusalem in the fourth century was not that of Corinth in the first, but nevertheless there were links. Possibly it is the Protestant commentators who are guilty of anachronism when they assume that Paul meant private prayer; such religious individualism is more conceivable in the Protestant West than in first-century Corinth.

As T.F. Torrance writes, “[There is a] fundamental coherence between the faith of the New Testament and that of the early Church… The failure to discern this coherence in some quarters evidently has its roots in the strange gulf, imposed by analytical methods, between the faith of the primitive Church and the historical Jesus. In any case I have always found it difficult to believe that we modern scholars understand the Greek of the New Testament better than the early Greek Fathers themselves! [Space, Time and Resurrection (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1976), xii].

These three reasons are only a start towards giving a full answer to the question, “Why study the Fathers?” There are certainly other reasons for studying these ancient authors which may be more obvious or even more important. But these three reasons sufficiently indicate the need for Patristic studies in the ongoing life of the Church: to aid in her liberation for the Zeitgeist of the twenty-first century; to provide a guide in her walk with Christ; to help her understand the basic witness to her faith, the New Testament.