Duvduv

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/index.html

It never ceases to amaze me how many writings existed against and about "heresies" in a world without mass literacy and without mass production of books.

Especially in an environment where such alleged "heresies" were either obscure, tiny and insignificant in relation to official religion of the empire, or had ceased to exist when the texts were written.

sotto voce

So very few.

As we have been told so very often, haven't we.

Duvduv

What is even more amazing is that except for homilies by John Chrysostom none of the titles of any of the writings of the "church fathers" on that list makes any mention of the name "Paul" in relation to any attributed epistles or the names of any of the alleged pauline epistles.
And virtually all of the names of the church fathers are from the period between the middle of the 4th to the middle of the 5th centuries -- just in time for the development of the religion at that........

sotto voce

Considering that they all hated him and his terrifying explanations of the gospels and the prophets, that's not so amazing.

MrMacSon

Who hated whom, sotto voce? The 4th (& 5th) C "church fathers" hated the Paul they don't mention?

stephan huller

But the question is - for whom were the syntagmata against the heresies written? They were not addressed to lay people. They were written for presbyters and bishops. Irenaeus's Against Heresies makes this plain at the beginning and end of Book One. This is also confirmed by Hippolytus's lengthening and editing of Irenaeus's original account against the Marcosians and his making reference to 'bishops' among the Marcosians who read the account and complained about its inaccuracies. The chain was (a) Irenaeus's establishing a syntagma (arrangement/constitution) of various heresies and sending it to the bishops of the churches (b) at least a few 'Marcosian bishops' complaining about its references to Mark and his followers and then (c) Hippolytus responding to those complaints and making the unusual acknowledgement that Irenaeus's original report was at times inaccurate. Bishops and presbyters were either educated or highly educated in the second century.

sotto voce

To try to convince Christians that the authors were Christians.

Some hope.

Duvduv

It sounds as if these men had a major role in developing Christian theology that did not exist earlier.
The early "Christian" origins of people such as Athanasius, Ambrose and Augustine are in something of a fog.

Athanasius became a "Christian" at barely 20 years old, and only 10 years later he was the bishop of Alexandria! And only a short time after becoming a Christian he was already a major player in Nicaea......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_of_Alexandria

Nothing is said of the "christianity" of his parents, etc. and yet Ambrose himself moved from a nobody to a bishop of the "church" within EIGHT DAYS.
http://www.st-ambrose.com/sta_life.html

Augustine first converted to Manichaeism and then to "Christianity" under the influence of Ambrose, and little is explained about who and what he understood Christianity to be, baptized at the age of 33 and a bishop eight years later. He soon acquired great fame for his writings starting just a few years after becoming a bishop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusti..._of_the_Saints

sotto voce

It sounds to any person who knows much history that a minuscule group of cowards wrote whatever suited emperors; provided easy answers for men whose immorality in any human dimension knew no limits. What they wrote was inversion of Christianity. If one cannot even be bothered to study theology, one will remain unaware of this, and be indeed unfit to comment.

Those cowards have of course been lauded, honoured as 'Fathers' by men whose immorality in any human dimension knew no limits, even in public, right up until democracy, communications and of course the open Bible curbed satisfaction of their base appetites. Though not entirely, as the experience of thousands of victims of closed Catholic institutions has revealed. Though not entirely, as the clandestine abuse of children, with telling their parents to put up with it, reveals even now.

Plus ça change....
.

Duvduv

Meaning that all those texts listed under "church fathers" on the Advent website were written on parchment or codices for who knows how many or how few individuals and recopied over and over for a relative handful of literate individuals.....which would amount to preaching to the converted (no pun intended).