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Lent: Day 7 - Ignatius to the Trallians

Day Seven: St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Trallians (full text) Who: Ignatius converted at a young age and later became Bishop of Antioch. A friend of Polycarp and fellow disciple of John, there is a long standing tradition that Ignatius was the child that Jesus held in his arms and blessed in Mark 10:13-16 What: Ignatius urges the church to continue in unity and to honour their leadership. This letter also gives a defence against certain heresies. Why: Ignatius wrote a series of letters to the churches in Asia Minor whilst en route to Rome to face martyrdom by wild beasts in the Colosseum around 108 AD. When: Around 107-108 AD The letter to the Tr...

Lent: Day 12 - Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 1-11

Day Twelve: St. Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 1-11 Who: Justin Martyr was a Philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a tireless evangelist and apologist. Justin wrote more Christianity than any other person prior to his time. He is classified herein as Eastern, since he a native of Samaria and his thought patterns were Eastern. However, he spent the last years of his life in Rome, where he was executed as a martyr (c. 165). What: An apologetic (defence) essay to explain what Christians believe and do. Why: Justin is demanding the Emperor to investigate accusations and unjust persecution against Christians so that they at least may face a f...

Creedal Christians: The Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed — what is it and why is it called that? This creed gets its name from a time and place: the first ecumenical Church council held at Nicaea, which is now known as İznik in northwestern Turkey, in 325 AD. Now that may raise another question for you: what is an ecumenical council? Well, to explain more about the Nicene Creed, we are going to have to take a look at The First Council of Nicaea in order to better understand why this creed was written. First things first though; an “ecumenical council” is ideally a Church-wide meeting where all the Bishops from all across the Church come together to hold a very large and very important meetin...

The Temptations of Jesus: Complacency

So now we are at the end of the temptations that Jesus endured in the desert, and I wanted to look at what happens at the end. So often I think this aspect is overlooked when we read of this time in Scripture. Let’s take a look at the text: Matthew 4:11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Luke 4:13When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. The two Gospel accounts both give us a varying perspective with different details. Afterwards, the devil leaves and angels “suddenly” come. This is almost a temptation in itself; one to think we are all good and safe now we've won the battl...

Losing a Loved One: A Few Ways to Find Solace

This is a guest post by Lucille Rosetti from thebereaved.org. The views are that of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of That Ancient Faith. This week I have a guest post by Lucille Rosetti from thebereaved.org looking at the hard topic of death. As Christians we shouldn't fear death, and ought to look on it with a paradoxical hope, since we know that through Christ death has lost its "sting" (1 Cor 15:55-57) and that we look forward to the Resurrection and life to come. But even with that in mind, the physical and earthly loss is still hard and something we need to process and deal with, and the following guest post aims to help with the...

The Gospel of Jeffrey Dahmer

There’s a new Netflix documentary out at the moment which has hit the news recently about the infamous serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. I haven’t watched it, but I knew of him as a serial killer though I didn’t realise just how horrific his crimes were until I read the Wikipedia article about him! Not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. But this post isn’t really about Dahmer, not entirely, but rather the reactions to some recent social media posts about him and the (often vitriol) responses they’ve got. Here’s one example: Dahmer is probably in heaven and experiencing eternal joy. If this bothers you, you don’t know the depths of your o...