Posted on 02/26/2010 6:24:33 AM PST by marshmallow
I have a pile of books in my study for review, and if people are kind enough to send me a book I try to read it and review it if I can. I also have a belief that I should read every book someone sends me rather than just the books I want to read because this is the way God cracks open my clam like closed mind and heart just a little bit more.
Thus the splendid commentary on Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna comes my way. Like most converts, I'm a fan of the fathers. I mean, their splendiferous names alone are rather admirable. These guys are not called Harry Jones or Bill Button. Ignatius of Antioch. Polycarp of Smyrna. There's a certain rolling sense of thunder about them. They are to be reckoned with. They demand bold type. Their icons are august and awesome. Bearded and serious they are...the are the Dumbledores, the Gandalfs, the wizened wise wizards of the gallery of saints. They are the patristical patriarchs.
Enough purple prose. You know their stories or if you don't you should. Ignatius comes along as bishop of Antioch just a few years after Peter himself was there. Some say he is the third bishop after Peter, and that Peter himself appointed him. He is one of the originals, and the story goes that he was one of the children Jesus took up and blessed. "Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not." If only he had recorded the story in his letters, "You know my dear children," he could have written, "I still remember to this day when our Lord Jesus Christ the king of glory took me in his arms and blessed me. Who can forget that tender voice? Who, once blessed, could forget the look of eternity in his eyes?"
Alas, no such record exists, but he did write six splendid letters to the churches while he was on his way to Rome to be devoured by the wild beasts during the terrible persecutions. These letters till exist, and give us a beautiful and simple insight into the early church. How I wish that all our Evangelical brethren who want their church to be 'just like the early church' would take the trouble to read these letters so they would learn just what the early church was really like. Here you find a clear and uncompromising insistence on the centrality of the episcopacy, an established priesthood and diaconate, a clear understanding of our Lord's divinity and the doctrine of the Real Presence.
Then we have a letter that Ignatius wrote to Polycarp of Smyrna, and Polycarp's letter to the Philippians. These letters from such holy men ooze the apostolic spirit. They are vivid accounts of the concerns of those early Christians, and as such they have been held as precious documents by all who love the church from the earliest times.
Now what about this book? It gathers all these letters together and gives us biographical goodies about both these patriarchs. Kenneth Howell is a well known convert from Presbyterianism. A great scholar, he offers these new translations of the Ignatian and Polycarpian letters along with introductory essays and a verse by verse commentary. The handsome book has been produced by Coming Home Resources and is available here .
What I liked about this book is that once more I was able to spend time with these two venerable and holy men. The beauty of letters (rather than theological tomes) is that they are written by real people to real people in real situations. An epistle is a very incarnational form of literature. It's immediate and it's amazing to me how vital and relevant and alive these letters are despite being 2000 years old. If you have a bookish sort of Evangelical friend, why not get him this book and challenge him to discover what the early church was like. Then get into a discussion about it. It's cool to think that these 2000 year old fathers might help in 2010 evangelization.
I'm not through with the book yet because I'm eating it like an apple: small bites and chewing long. I recommend you do the same.
Really?
And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." -- 1 John 5:19-20"And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.
Leave the thread.
Then read Ignatius and Polycarp!
No wait, you don't accept them do you?
Let me make a list.
There's the books of the Old Testament which are missing from your Bible. You tossed those. Then there's some books in the New Testament that Luther didn't like such as Revelation, Jude, James.......was Peter amongst them too? Then there's the Church fathers such as Ignatius and Polycarp which are waved off, similarly.
Do we see a pattern here...........LOL!!
"The unlearned and the unstable."
Pray to receive the faith of a child, Marshmallow.
"Be not afraid; only believe." -- Mark 5:36
Do not ping or mention a poster who has been instructed to leave the thread.
So is it or isn't it easy?
I said "children understand the Gospel." Do you deny this?
I love it when you start to dance around words.
"Children understand the Gospel" is like saying "string is long".
Here, let me try and help.
Are you saying all children understand all the Gospel?
Or are you saying "children can understand the Gospel"? Most certainly they can.
That is quite a different thing from saying that Jesus entrusted the deposit of faith to children, though, right? It's also quite different from saying that children are authorities on Scripture. I can understand Russian but I'm not the ultimate authority on Russian grammar. I'm not the infallible arbiter of the language.
They're two different things. You wouldn't want us confused now, would you?
"And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." -- Isaiah 58:11
My desire has nothing to do with your confusion.
Sorry. I didn’t see that post.
Convoluted logic
You can bet who the "some" are. Rome is the most self-authenticating gang of power mongers in the history of the world. Who else but these self-appointed cultists has claimed ascendancy to the throne of God on earth, and killed those who disagree? We call on Rome to repent...if it can.
So by all means we should listen to Polycarp and take his writings seriously to heart, as his writings breath the spirit of the Disciple whom Jesus Loved.
So what.
I don't believe any RC's claim that these early theologians writings were "God Breathed". Their commentaries may be insightful and interesting, but no more so than any theologians who have written on Scripture.
Proximity does not guarantee truth. Judas walked the earth with Jesus and he sure didn't get it right.
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