The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles

The Didachē is a short catechism, probably written in Syria during the second half of the 1st century. The Didachē is concerned with practical discipline and does not deliberately teach doctrine, but from the writer’s assumptions we learn a great deal about the development of the early Church in his generation.

Deacons and bishops at the end of the first century

By the time St Paul wrote his New Testament advice to elders and overseers, the Church had been growing explosively for several decades. By the end of the first century, St John’s disciple Ignatius wrote about how the orders of clergy interacted in his experience…

The River of God

There’s a river flowing through the Scriptures. Ezekiel saw it welling up under the temple of God. Zechariah saw the river flowing on earth at Christ’s coming. John saw the same river at the end of time flowing from the throne of God…

Cry Jesus

Try to attain the full measure of this Name [of Jesus], and you will find it on your mouth and in the mouths of your children. When you make high festival and when you rejoice, cry Jesus. When anxious and in pain, cry Jesus. When little boys and girls are laughing, let them cry Jesus. [...]

Consent

A brother overcome by lust went to see a great old man and besought him, saying, ‘Be so good as to pray for me, for I am overcome by lust.’ And the old man prayed to God for him. A second time he went to the old man and said the same thing, and once [...]

A safe journey

An Athonite hermit said:  What guarantees a safe journey to eternity is effort, dignity, the sense of being unworthy before God, and hope: the spiritual oxygen, consolation, and certainty.  Not misery and compelled obedience and forced prayer; not tears and sadness – these all come from Satan. Yes, I ought to weep for my sins, [...]

Worse than ignorance

Spurious knowledge, or ‘knowledge falsely so called’ (1 Timothy 6:20), is that which a man possesses when he thinks he knows what he has never known. It is worse than complete ignorance, says St. John Chrysostom, in that its victim will not accept correction from any teacher because he thinks that this worst kind of [...]

Vincent of Lerins: Finding the true faith (434 AD)

Vincent attempted, as did St John Cassian, to find a way that avoided the extremes both of Pelagius and of Augustine. His Commonitories [reminders] offer a guide to distinguish Orthodox teaching from innovation, the maxim now known as the Vincentian Canon: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (i.e. only “what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all” is the catholic Faith of Christianity). Vincent taught that the ultimate source of Christian truth was Holy Scripture and that the tradition of the Church was to be invoked to guarantee the correct interpretation of Scripture…

Cyprian of Carthage: What unites the Church? (250 AD)

Related:
The Martyrdom of Cyprian of Carthage

Since the Lord warns us, saying, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” and since He bids us to be simple to harmlessness, and yet with our simplicity to be prudent, then what else, beloved brethren, befits us than to use foresight and watching with an anxious heart, both to [...]

Justin Martyr describes Christian worship (c.150 AD)

I will relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them…

John’s disciple Ignatius writes to Christians in Asia Minor (107 AD)

The significance of these seven letters lies in their being intimate, familiar, and popular. They do not, in the first instance, reveal a set of ideas though they are not lacking in thoughtfulness. Rather they reveal a man. So much of early Christian literature is impersonal that it is refreshing to stumble upon letters reminiscent [...]

An Early Creed

The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith…

Why did Christ become Man? (Athanasius, 318AD)

On the Incarnation
by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria
Introduction by C.S. Lewis
1. Creation and the Fall

(1) In our former book [i.e. the Contra Gentes] we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief points about the heathen worship of idols, and how those false fears originally arose. We also, by God’s grace, briefly indicated that the [...]