LESSON EIGHT

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LESSON EIGHT
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Apostolic Church
Post Apostolic Church
Reformation
Early Church
Medieval Church
1517
1648 AD (1688 in England
PRESENT
Approx 30 AD
Approx 100 AD
Approx 450 AD
Transition Points
MAJOR CHANGE
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APOSTOLIC FATHERS (95-140)
To Edify Christians
APOLOGISTS (125-195)
To Defend Christianity
POLEMICISTS (190250)
To Fight False Doctrine
PATRISTIC Latin pater father
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Writings of the Apologists (125-195)
Justin Martyr 100-160
A Dialogue with Trypho

• Personal testimony

• The Old Testament predicted the coming of Christ

How is Christianity to be presented to the
Greco/Roman world?
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Clements's reverence for the greatest and
noblest achievements of Greek humanism is never
unqualified. He loves Plato and Homer but he
does not read them on his knees.
SYNCRETISM
TERTULLIAN (OUINTAS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS) c.
155-c. 220
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What then has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What
has the academy to do with the church? What have
heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction
is from the porch of Solomon who himself handed
down that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity
of heart. Away with those who produce Stoic,
Platonic, and Dialectic Christianity. We have no
need of curiosity after we have Christianity, nor
of inquisitiveness after we have the Gospel.
Since we believe we desire nothing else
to believe. For the first thing we believe is
that there is nothing else we ought to believe.
Tertullian
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A Time of Productive Confusion
ORTHODOXY
Right Belief
HERESIES
Opposed to True Teaching
and giving thanks may praise, and praising
thank the Father and Son, Son and Father, the
Son, instructor and teacher, with the Holy
Spirit, all in one, in whom is all, for whom all
is one, for whom is eternity, whose members we
all are, whose glory the heavens are for the all
good, all lovely, all wise, all just one. To whom
be glory both now and for ever. Amen Clement
of Alexandria
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GNOSTICISM
Dualism
Docetic
Salvation by knowledge
MARCIONISM
MONTANISM
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A Dominican scholar once remarked to me in the
course of a conversation about Tertullian that
it was amazing that such an intelligent man as he
should have been led away by a movement
like Montanism. That is one point of view, but it
might equally well be said that there must have
been something of more solid worth in Montanism
than is generally supposed since it appealed to
such an intelligent man as Tertullian. F.F.
Bruce The Spreading Flame quoted by Dr. Calhoun,
Lec. 5, p. 6