patristic literature

The Apostolic Fathers

According to conventional reckoning, the earliest examples of patristic literature are the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers; the name derives from their supposed contacts with the Apostles or the apostolic community. These writings include the church order called the Didachē, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (dealing with church practices and morals), the Letter of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas, all of which hovered at times on the fringe of the New Testament canon in that they were used as sacred scripture by some local churches; the First Letter of Clement, the seven letters that Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 110) wrote when being escorted to Rome for his martyrdom, the related Letter to the Philippians by Polycarp of Smyrna (died c. 156 or 168), and the narrative report of Polycarp’s martyrdom; some fragmentary accounts of the origins of the Gospels by Papias (flourished late 1st or early 2nd century), bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, Asia Minor; and an ancient homily (sermon) known as the Second Letter of Clement. They all belong to the late 1st or early 2nd century and were all to a greater or lesser extent influenced (sometimes by way of reaction) by the profoundly Jewish atmosphere that pervaded Christian thinking and practice at this primitive stage. For this reason alone, modern scholars tend to regard them as a somewhat arbitrarily selected group. A more scientific assessment would place them in the context of a much wider contemporary Jewish-Christian literature that has largely disappeared but whose character can be judged from pseudepigraphal (or noncanonical) works such as the Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes of Solomon, and certain extracanonical texts modeled on the New Testament.

Even with this qualification, the Apostolic Fathers, with their rich variety of provenance and genre (types), illustrate the difficult doctrinal and organizational problems with which the church grappled in those transitional generations. Important among these problems were the creation of a ministerial hierarchy and of an accepted structure of ecclesiastical authority. The Didachē, which is Syrian in background and possibly the oldest of these documents, suggests a phase when Apostles and prophets were still active but when the routine ministry of bishops and deacons was already winning recognition. The First Letter of Clement, an official letter from the Roman to the Corinthian church, reflects the more advanced state of a collegiate episcopate, with its shared authority among an assembly of bishops. This view of authority was supported by an emergent theory of apostolic succession in which bishops were regarded as jurisdictional heirs of the early Apostles. The First Letter of Clement is also instructive in showing that the Roman church, even in the late 1st century, was asserting its right to intervene in the affairs of other churches. The letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch at the beginning of the 2nd century, depict the position of the monarchical bishop, flanked by subordinate presbyters (priests) and deacons (personal assistants to the bishop), which had been securely established in Asia Minor.

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Almost more urgent was the question of the relation of Christianity to Judaism, and in particular of the Christian attitude toward the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). In the Didachē there is little sign of embarrassment; Jewish ethical material is taken over with suitable adaptations, and the Jewish basis of the liturgical elements is palpable. But with Barnabas the tension becomes acute; violently anti-Jewish, the Alexandrian author substitutes allegorism (use of symbolism) for Jewish literalism and thus enables himself to wrest a Christian meaning from the Old Testament. The same tension is underlined by Ignatius’s polemic against Judaizing tendencies in the church. At the same time, all these writings—especially those of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Papias—testify to the growing awareness of a specifically Christian tradition embodied in the teaching transmitted from the Apostles.

Almost all the Apostolic Fathers throw light on primitive doctrine and practice. The Didachē, for example, presents the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and I Clement incorporates contemporary prayers. II Clement invites its readers to think of Christ as of God and of the church as a preexistent reality. The Shepherd of Hermas seeks to modify the rigorist view that sin committed after baptism cannot be forgiven. But the real key to the theology of the Apostolic Fathers, which also explains its often curious imagery, is that it is Jewish-Christian through and through, expressing itself in categories derived from latter-day Judaism and apocalyptic literature (depicting the intervention of God in history in the last times), which were soon to become unfashionable and be discarded.

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The gnostic writers

Hardly had the church thrown off its early Jewish-Christian idiosyncrasies when it found itself confronted by the amorphous but pervasive philosophical-religious movement known as gnosticism. This movement made a strong bid to absorb Christianity in the 2nd century, and a number of Christian gnostic sects flourished and contributed richly to Christian literature. Although the church eventually maintained its identity intact, the confrontation forced it to clarify its ideas on vital issues on which it differed sharply from the gnostics. Chief among these were the gnostics’ distinction between the unknown supreme God and the Demiurge (identified with the God of the Old Testament) who created this world; their dualist disparagement of the material order and insistence that the Redeemer became incarnate in appearance only; their belief in salvation by esoteric knowledge; and their division of humanity into a spiritual elite able to achieve salvation and, below this elite, “psychics” capable of a modified form of salvation and “material” people cut off from salvation.

Among the leading 2nd-century Christian gnostics were Saturninus and Basilides, reputedly pupils of Menander, a disciple of Simon Magus (late 1st century), the alleged founder of the movement; they worked at both Antioch and Alexandria. Most famous and influential was the Egyptian Valentinus, who acquired a great reputation at Rome (c. 150) and founded an influential school of thought. Basilides and Valentinus are reported to have written extensively, and their systems can be reconstructed from hostile accounts by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and other orthodox critics. The gnostics generally seem to have been prolific writers, and, as they needed their own distinctive scriptures, they soon created a body of apocryphal books patterned on the New Testament. It was a Syrian gnostic convert, Tatian, who compiled (late 2nd century) the first harmony of the four Gospels (the Diatessaron)—a single gospel using the material from the Gospels—and it was an Italian gnostic, Heracleon (2nd century), who prepared the earliest commentary on The Gospel According to John (extracts from it were preserved by Origen). Epiphanius (c. 315–403) preserved a Letter to Flora, by the Valentinian gnostic Ptolemaeus (late 2nd century), supplying rules for interpreting the Mosaic Law (the Torah) in a Christian sense, and another disciple of Valentinus, Theodotus (2nd century), published an account of his master’s system that was excerpted by Clement of Alexandria.

Almost the entire vast literature of gnosticism has perished, and until recently the only original documents available to scholars (apart from extracts such as those already mentioned, which were preserved by orthodox critics) were a handful of treatises in Coptic contained in three codices (manuscript books) that were discovered in the 18th and late 19th centuries. The most interesting of these are Pistis Sophia and the Apocryphon of John, the former consisting of conversations of the risen Jesus with his disciples about the fall and redemption of the aeon (emanation from the Godhead) called Pistis Sophia, the latter of revelations made by Jesus to St. John explaining the presence of evil in the cosmos and showing how humankind can be rescued from it.

Since 1945, however, this meager store has been richly supplemented by the discovery—near Najʿ Ḥammādī, Egypt, on the Nile about 78 miles northwest of Luxor—of 13 codices containing Christian gnostic treatises in Coptic translations. Among these, the Jung Codex (named in honor of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung by those who purchased it for his library) includes five important items: a Prayer of the Apostle Paul; an Apocryphon of James, recording revelations imparted by the risen Christ to the Apostles; the Gospel of Truth, perhaps to be identified with the work of this name attributed by Irenaeus to Valentinus; the Epistle to Rheginos, a Valentinian work, possibly by Valentinus himself, on the Resurrection; and a Tripartite Treatise, probably written by Heracleon, of the school of Valentinianism. The other documents from the Najʿ Ḥammādī library include the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings and parables that are ascribed to Jesus; the Apocryphon of John, which represents the first chapter of Genesis in mythological terms; and writings ascribed to Philip, Mary Magdalene, Adam, Peter, and Paul.

A figure of immense significance who is often, though perhaps mistakenly, counted among the gnostics was Marcion, who after breaking with the Roman church in 144 set up a successful organization of his own. Teaching that there is a radical opposition between the Law and the Gospel, he refused to identify the God of love revealed in the New Testament with the wrathful Creator God of the Old Testament. He set forth these contrasts in his Antitheses, and his adoption of a reduced New Testament consisting of The Gospel According to Luke and certain epistles by the Apostle Paul, all purged of presumed Jewish interpolations, had an important bearing on the church’s formation of its own fuller canon.

The Apologists

The orthodox literature of the 2nd and early 3rd centuries tends to have a distinctly defensive or polemical coloring. It was the age of Apologists, and these Apologists engaged in battle on two fronts. First, there was the hostility and criticism of pagan society. Because of its very aloofness, the church was popularly suspected of sheltering all sorts of immoralities and thus of threatening the established order. At a higher level, Christianity, as it became better known, was being increasingly exposed to intellectual attack. The physician Galen of Pergamum (129–c. 199) and the Middle Platonist thinker Celsus, who followed the religiously inclined form of Platonism that flourished from the 3rd century bce to the 3rd century ce (compare his devastating Alēthēs logos, or True Word, written c. 178), were only two among many “cultured despisers.” But, second, orthodoxy had to take issue with distorting tendencies within, whether these took the form of gnosticism or of other heresies, such as the so-called semi-gnostic Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament revelation or the claim of the ecstatic prophet from Phrygia, Montanus, to be the vehicle of a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Christianity had also to define exactly where it stood in relation to Hellenistic culture.

Strictly speaking, the term Apologists denotes the 2nd-century writers who defended Christianity against external critics, pagan and Jewish. The earliest of this group was Quadratus, who about 124 addressed an apology for the faith to the emperor Hadrian; apart from a single fragment, it is now lost. Other early Apologists who are mere names known to scholars are Aristo of Pella, the first to prepare an apology to counter Jewish objections, and Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, said to be the author of numerous apologetic works and also of a critique of Montanism. An early apology that has survived intact is that of Aristides, addressed about 140 to the emperor Antoninus Pius; after being completely lost, the text was rediscovered in the 19th century. The most famous Apologist, however, was Justin Martyr, who was converted to Christianity after trying various philosophical schools, paid lengthy visits to Rome, and was martyred there (c. 165). Justin’s two Apologies are skillful presentations of the Christian case to the pagan critics, and his Dialogue with Trypho is an elaborate defense of Christianity against Judaism.

Justin’s attitude to pagan philosophy was positive, but his pupil Tatian could see nothing but evil in the Greco-Roman civilization. Indeed, Tatian’s Discourse to the Greeks is less a positive vindication of Christianity than a sharp attack on paganism. His contemporary Athenagoras of Athens, author of the apologetic work Embassy for the Christians and a treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead, is as friendly as Justin to Greek culture and philosophy. Two others who deserve mention are Theophilus of Antioch, a prolific publicist whose only surviving work is To Autolycus, prepared for his pagan friend Autolycus; and the anonymous author of the Letter to Diognetus, an attractive and persuasive exposition of the Christian way of life that is often included among the Apostolic Fathers.

As stylists, the Apologists reach only a passable level; even Athenagoras scarcely achieves the elegance at which he obviously aimed. But they had little difficulty in refuting the spurious charges popularly brought against Christians, including atheism, cannibalism, and promiscuity, or in mounting a counterattack against the debasements of paganism. More positively, they strove to vindicate the Christian understanding of God and specific doctrines such as the divinity of Christ and the resurrection of the body. In so doing, most of them exploited current philosophical conceptions, in particular that of the Logos (Word), or rational principle underlying and permeating reality, which they regarded as the divine reason, become incarnate in Jesus. They have been accused of Hellenizing Christianity (making it Greek in form and method), but they were in fact attempting to formulate it in intellectual categories congenial to their age. In a real sense, they were the first Christian theologians. But the same tension between the Gospel and philosophy was to persist throughout the patristic period, with results that were sometimes positive, as in Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa, and sometimes negative, as in the radical Arians Aëtius and Eunomius.

As the 2nd century advanced, a more confident, aggressive spirit came over Christian Apologists, and their intellectual and literary stature increased greatly. Clement of Alexandria, for example, while insisting on the supremacy of faith, freely drew on Platonism and Stoicism to clarify Christian teaching. In his Protreptikos (“Exhortation”) and Paidagōgos (“Instructor”), he urged pagans to abandon their futile beliefs, accept the Logos as guide, and allow their souls to be trained by him. In interpreting scripture, he used an allegorizing method derived from the Jewish philosopher Philo, and against gnosticism he argued that the baptized believer who studies the scriptures is the true gnostic, faith being at once superior to knowledge and the beginning of knowledge.

The critique of gnosticism was much more systematically developed by Clement’s older contemporary, Irenaeus of Lyon, in his voluminous Against Heresies. While countering the Valentinian dualism that asserted that spirit was good and matter evil, this treatise makes clear the church’s growing reliance on its creed or “rule of faith,” on the New Testament canon, and on the succession of bishops as guarantors of the true apostolic tradition. Irenaeus was also a constructive theologian, expounding ideas about God as Creator, about the Son and the Spirit as his “two hands,” about Christ as the New Adam who reconciles fallen humanity with God, and about the worldwide church with its apostolic faith and ministry, a concept that theology was later to take up eagerly.

More brilliant as a stylist and controversialist, the North African lawyer Tertullian was also the first Latin theologian of considerable importance. Unlike Clement, he reacted with hostility to pagan culture, scornfully asking, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” His Apology remains a classic of ancient Christian literature, and his numerous moral and practical works reveal an uncompromisingly rigid moral view. Although later becoming a Montanist himself (a follower of the morally rigorous and prophetic sect founded by Montanus), he wrote several antiheretical tracts, full of abuse and biting sarcasm. Yet, in castigating heresy, he was able to formulate the terminology, and to some extent the theory, of later Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy; his teaching on the Fall of Man, aimed against gnostic dualism, in part anticipates Augustine.

Roughly contemporary with Tertullian, and like him an intellectual and a rigorist, was Hippolytus, a Greek-speaking Roman theologian and antipope. He, too, had a vast literary output, and, although some of the surviving works attributed to him are disputed, it is probable that he wrote the comprehensive Refutation of All Heresies, attacking gnosticism, as well as treatises denouncing specifically Christian heresies. He was also the author both of numerous commentaries on scripture and (probably) of the Apostolic Tradition, an invaluable source of knowledge about the primitive Roman liturgy. His Commentary on Daniel (c. 204) is the oldest Christian biblical commentary to survive in its entirety. His exegesis (interpretive method) is primarily typological—i.e., treating the Old Testament figures, events, and other aspects as “types” of the new order that was inaugurated by Christ.

Late 2nd to early 4th century

Meanwhile, a brilliant and distinctive phase of Christian literature was opening at Alexandria, the chief cultural center of the empire and the meeting ground of the best in Hellenistic Judaism, gnosticism, and Neoplatonism. Marked by the desire to present Christianity in intellectually satisfying terms, this literature has usually been connected with the catechetical school, which, according to tradition, flourished at Alexandria from the end of the 2nd through the 4th century. Except for the brief period, however, when Origen was in charge of it, it may be doubted whether the school was ever itself a focus of higher Christian studies. When speaking of the school of Alexandria, some scholars claim that it is better to think of a distinguished succession of like-minded thinkers and teachers who worked there and whose highly sophisticated interpretation of Christianity exercised for generations a formative impact on large sectors of eastern Christendom.

The real founder of this theology, with its Platonist leaning, its readiness to exploit the metaphysical implications of revelation, and its allegorical understanding of scripture, was Clement (c. 150–c. 215), the Christian humanist whose welcoming attitude to Hellenism and critique of gnosticism were noted above. His major work, the Strōmateis (“Miscellanies”), untidy and deliberately unsystematic, brings together the inheritance of Jewish Christianity and Middle Platonism in what aspires to be a summary of Christian gnosis (knowledge). All his reasoning is dominated by the idea of the Logos who created the universe and who manifests the ineffable Father alike in the Old Testament Law, the philosophy of the Greeks, and finally the Incarnation of Christ. Clement was also a mystic for whom the higher life of the soul is a continuous moral and spiritual ascent.

But it is Origen (c. 185–c. 254) whose achievement stamps the Alexandrian school. First and foremost, he was an exegete (critical interpreter), as determined to establish the text of scripture scientifically (compare his Hexapla) as to wrest its spiritual import from it. In homilies, scholia (annotated works), and continuous commentaries he covered the whole Bible, deploying a subtle, strongly allegorical exegesis designed to bring out several levels of significance. As an apologist, in his Contra Celsum, he refuted the pagan philosopher Celsus’s damaging onslaught on Christianity. In all his writings, but especially his On First Principles, Origen shows himself to be one of the most original and profound of speculative theologians. Neoplatonist in background, he constructed a system that embraces both the notion of the preexistence of souls, with their fall and final restoration, and a deeply subordinationist doctrine of the Trinity—i.e., one in which the Son is subordinate to the Father. For his spiritual teaching, with its emphasis on the battle against sin, on freedom from passions, and on the soul’s mystical marriage with the Logos, his Commentary on Canticles provides an attractive introduction.

Origen’s influence on Christian doctrine and spirituality was to be immense and many-sided; the orthodox Fathers and the leading heretics of the 4th century alike reflect it. Meanwhile, the Alexandrian tradition was maintained by several remarkable disciples. Two of these whose works have been entirely lost but who are reported to have been polished writers were Theognostus (flourished 250–280) and Pierius (flourished 280–300), both heads of the catechetical school and apparently propagators of Origen’s ideas. But there are two others of note, Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 200–c. 265) and Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213–c. 270), of whose works some fragments have survived. Dionysius of Alexandria wrote on natural philosophy and the Christian doctrine of creation but is chiefly remembered for his dispute with Pope Dionysius (reigned 259–268) of Rome on the correct understanding of the Trinity. In this Dionysius of Alexandria is revealed as a faithful exponent of Origen’s pluralism and subordinationism. Gregory Thaumaturgus left a fascinating Panegyric to Origen, giving a graphic description of Origen’s method of instruction, as well as a dogmatically important Symbol and a Canonical Epistle that is in effect one of the most ancient treatises of casuistry (i.e., the application of moral principles to practical questions).

If Origen inspired admiration, his daring speculations also provoked criticism. At Alexandria itself, Peter, who became bishop about 300 and composed theological essays of which only fragments remain, attacked Origen’s doctrines of the preexistence of souls and their return into the condition of pure spirits. But the acutest of his critics was Methodius of Olympus (died 311), of whose treatises The Banquet, exalting virginity, survives in Greek and others mainly in Old Church Slavonic translations. Although indebted to Alexandrian allegorism, Methodius remained faithful to the Asiatic tradition (literal and historical) of Irenaeus—who had come to France from Asia Minor—and his realism and castigated Origen’s ideas on the preexistence of souls, the flesh as the spirit’s prison, and the spiritual nature of the resurrected body. As a writer, he strove after literary effect, and Jerome, writing a century later, praised the excellence of his style.

Latin Christian literature was slow in getting started, and North Africa has often been claimed as its birthplace. Tertullian, admittedly, was the first Christian Latinist of genius, but he evidently had humbler predecessors. Latin versions of the Bible, recoverable in part from manuscripts, were appearing in Africa, Gaul, and Italy during the 2nd century. In that century, too, admired works such as the First Letter of Clement, the Letter to Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas were translated into Latin. The oldest original Latin texts are probably the Muratorian Canon—a late 2nd-century Roman canon, or list of works accepted as scripture—and the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs (180) of Africa.

The first noteworthy Roman Christian to use Latin was Novatian, the leader of a rigorist schismatic group. His surviving works reveal him as an elegant stylist, trained in rhetoric and philosophy, and a competent theologian. His doctrinally influential De trinitate (“Concerning the Trinity”) is basically apologetic: against gnostics it defends the oneness and creative role of Almighty God, against Marcion it argues that Christ is the Son of God the Creator, against Docetism (the heresy claiming that Jesus only seemed the Christ) that Christ is truly man, and against Sabellianism (the denial of real distinctions in the Godhead, viewing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three successive modes of revelation) that, in spite of Christ’s being fully divine, there is but one God. His rigorous moralism comes out in his On Public Shows and On the Excellence of Chastity (both once attributed to Cyprian); in On Jewish Foods he maintains that the Old Testament food laws no longer apply to Christians, the animals that were classified as unclean having been intended to symbolize vices.

A much greater writer than Novatian was his contemporary and correspondent, Cyprian, the statesmanlike bishop of Carthage. A highly educated convert to Christianity, Cyprian left a large corpus of writings, including 65 letters and a number of moral, practical, and theological treatises. As an admirer of Tertullian, he continued some of his fellow North African’s tendencies, but his style is more classical, though much less brilliant and individual. Cyprian’s letters are a mine of information about a fascinating juncture in church history. His collections of Three Books of Testimonies to Quirinus, or authoritative scripture texts, illustrate the church’s reliance on these in defending its theological and ethical positions. A work that has been of exceptional importance historically is On the Unity of the Catholic Church, in which Cyprian contends that there is no salvation outside the church and defines the role of the Roman see. His To Demetrianus is an original, powerful essay refuting the allegation of pagans that Christianity was responsible for the calamities afflicting society.

Three writers from the later portion of this period deserve mention. Victorinus of Pettau was the first known Latin biblical exegete; of his numerous commentaries the only one that remains is the commentary on Revelation, which maintained a millenarian outlook—predicting the 1,000-year reign of Christ at the end of history—and was clumsy in style. Arnobius the Elder (converted by 300) sought in his Adversus nationes (“Against the Pagans”), like Tertullian and Cyprian before him, to free Christianity from the charge of having caused all the evils plaguing the empire, but ended up by launching a violent attack on the contemporary pagan cults. A surprising feature of this ill-constructed, verbose apology is Arnobius’s apparent ignorance concerning several cardinal points of Christian doctrine, combined with his great enthusiasm for his new-found faith.

By contrast, his much abler pupil Lactantius (c. 240–c. 320), like him a native of North Africa, was a polished writer and the leading Latin rhetorician of the day. His most ambitious work, the Divine Institutes, attempted, against increasingly formidable pagan attacks, to portray Christianity as the true form of religion and life and is in effect the first systematic presentation of Christian teaching in Latin. The later On the Death of Persecutors, now generally recognized as his, describes the grim fates of persecuting emperors; it is a primary source for the history of the early 4th century and also represents a crude attempt at a Christian philosophy of history.