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Lent: Day 15 - Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 36-47

...uote from Tertullian onward (~200 AD), comes purely from the The Old Latin Version (Vetus Latina Bible) translation of the Psalm, which is the Latin Bible which predated the Vulgate. Prophecy and free will The rest of the chapters go through more examples of prophetic messages and the different types that can be found in the OT, such as explaining that sometimes the Spirit spoke prophecies in the past tense as though they had already happened. To avoid this being used as a reason to misrepresent the message, Justin goes on to explain that the “things which [God] absolutely knows will take place, He predicts as if already they had taken place”. There seeme...

Lent Day 28: Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 71-80

...more! As Tertullian is recorded as saying, which relates to this, “the blood of the martyrs are the seed of the Church”! These signs, Anthony argues, are the proof of our faith. Proof doesn’t lie in fancy, well-worded arguments, as the Greeks would have it or want, but rather in the manifestation of faith. To which, Anthony pointed out that in their midst were some who were “vexed with demons”; so they had them brought before him. He goes on to say that with all their wordy arguments, magic, arts or idols, they cannot cleanse such a person. So “put away your strife with us and you shall see the power of the Cross of Christ” he declares before pra...

American Gun Violence and the Early Church on War and Violence

....” — Tertullian 155-230 AD “God wished iron to be used for the cultivation of the earth, and therefore it should not be used to take human life.”  — Cyprian ~250 AD “The servants of God do not rely for their protection on material defenses but on the pine Providence.”  — Ambrose 338-397 AD I don't have an answer to this cultural problem, and I'm not sure we can ever fully solve the issues of gun violence in the States now; but one thing that I do know is this: the Church in America needs to repent of its idolatry of guns, turn back to God and focus on the love of Christ again, and not on the weapons of destruction. Even if the...

Spiritual Disciplines of the Early Church: Ancient Practices for the 21st Century

...cross” Tertullian (c. 250) “Let us then not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the cross our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink, in our comings and in our goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we awake; when we are traveling, and when we are at rest” Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 386) Later monks, such as Anthony the Great, would also teach and use the sign of the cross for protection from demons and as part of performing exorcisms. “Behold there are here some vexed with demons … [Anthony] called upon Christ, and signed the sufferers two or thre...

Should Christians get tattoos, and is it Biblical?

...I was in a discussion not so long ago about tattoos, and I was asked about the historical view on this practice. It wasn’t something I had looked into before from a Church Fathers point of view, so it was an interesting topic of study. In my searching, I found this article from a Catholic site which seems to give a pretty interesting overview of some of the views about tattoos in the earlier centuries. The following is a quote about a Church Council in the context of native Britons, who still practiced tattooing at that time for pagan ritual, something which Tertullian also gives a fleeting reference to around 213 AD in his On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 10....

The Relationship Between Jesus and Sophia

...Word?– Tertullian, Against Hermogenes, ch. 18 That Christ is the First-born, and that He is the Wisdom of God, by whom all things were made.– Cyprian, The Treatises of Cyprian But we don’t even have to look that far in history to see this link, as Paul says it explicitly in 1 Corinthians 1:24: “…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”. This “Sophia”/Wisdom, as seen in the Old Testament Scriptures, was well established in Jewish thought by the time of Christ, so obviously the earliest followers of Jesus made the connection, which also followed through into the Early Church exegesis and teaching about Christ as the Wisdom of God, as we...