CHURCH FATHERS RESEARCH

 

THEOLOGIANS

Athanasius – Five-time exile for fighting “orthodoxy”

On the Incarnation

Life of St. Antony

– Original 27 New Testament books suggested and accepted

Augustine of Hippo – Architect of the Middle Ages

The City of God

John of Damascus – Image-conscious Arab

Veneration of icons

Byzantine Empire

Iconoclasts

The Fount of Wisdom

Orthodox

Anselm – Reluctant bishop with a remarkable mind

Studied under Lanfranc

Ontological

Proslogion – that which nothing greater can be thought

Faith is the precondition of knowledge – “credo ut intelligam” – I believe in order to understand

Knowledge cannot lead to faith, and knowledge gained outside of faith is untrustworthy.

Why Did God Become Man?

Satisfaction theory – “No one but one who is God-man can make the satisfaction by which man is saved.”

Ransom theory – Humankind was held captive to sin and death by Satan, at least until Christ paid the ransom through his death, and in the Resurrection, broke the power of Satan’s chains.  Anselm argued instead that it wasn’t Satan who was owed something but God.

On his deathbed, Palm Sunday, 1107, Anselm told his monks he was ready to die, but before he did, he wanted to settle Augustine’s question of the origin of the soul.  “I do not know of anyone who will be able to do the work if I do not,” he told them.  But by Tuesday morning of the Holy Week, he was dead.

Steve Kellar’s idea of the origin of the soul –

Genesis 2:7  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Muhommad’s hegira – bith of Islam – 622AD

Magna Carta – 1215

Dominican Order established – 1220

Thomas Aquinas – The brilliant “dumb ox”

“the dumb ox”

“the doctor of angels”

Albert the Great

Aristotle

Averroes the Muslim

Maimonides the Jew

Summa Theologica -a summation of theological knowledge

“In sacred theology, all things are treated from the standpoint of God.”

Reason and revelation come from God

Reason is based on sensory data – what we can see, feel, hear, smell, and touch.  Revelation is based on more.  While reason can lead us to believe in God – something that theologians had already proposed – only revelation can show us God as he really is, the triune God of the Bible.

“In order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it was necessary for divine truth to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them as it were, by God himself who cannot lie.”

A person apart from Christianity can practice certain “natural virtues,” only a believer can practice faith, hope, and love, the truly Christian virtues.

Summa Contra Gentiles – a manual for missionaries to the Muslims, which also contains several hymns

Council of Trent

Aeterni Patris – papal bull – endorsed Thomism (Aquinas’s theology)

“I cannot.  Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw.”

His Summa Theologica, one of the most influential writings of the Christian church, was left unfinished when he died three months later.

Soren Kierkegaard

“Faith is a risk (the “leap of faith” ), an adventure that requires the denial of oneself.  To choose faith is what brings authentic human existence.”

Kierkegaard became increasingly convinced that his calling was in “making Christianity difficult.”   He was to remind people of his day that to be truly Christian, one must become aware of the cost of faith and pay the price.

Martin Luther – Passionate reformer

John Calvin – Father of the Reformed Church

Jacob Arminius – Irenic anti-Calvinist

Jonathan Edwards – America’s greatest theologian

Karl Barth – Courageous theologian

EVANGELISTS AND APOLOGISTS

Justin Martyr – Defender of the “true philosophy”

Clement of Alexandria – Theologian for the intelligentsia

Gregory Thaumaturgus – “The Wonder Worker”

Anthony of Padua – “The hammer of heretics”

Blaise Pascal – Scientific and spiritual prodigy

George Whitefield – Sensational evangelist of Britain and America

Charles Finney – Father of American revivalism

Dwight L. Moody – Revivalist with a common touch

Billy Sunday – Salty evangelist

Billy Graham – Evangelist to millions

PASTORS AND PREACHERS

Ambrose of Milan

John Chrysostom

Richard Baxter

John Newton

Charles Simeon

Lyman Beecher

Thomas Chalmers

John Nelson Darby

Charles Spurgeon

Harry Emerson Fosdick

MUSICIANS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS

Rembrandt Harmensz Van Rijn

Johann Sebastian Bach

George Frideric Handel

John Bunyan

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

George MacDonald

G.K. Chesterton

Dorothy Sayers

C.S. Lewis

POETS

Dante Alighieri

Geoffrey Chaucer

John Donne

George Herbert

John Milton

Anne Bradstreet

Isaac Watts

Charles Wesley

Fanny Crosby

T.S. Eliot

DENOMINATIONAL FOUNDERS

Menno Simons

John Knox

John Smyth

George Fox

Nikolaus von Zinzendorf

John Wesley

Francis Ashbury

Richard Allen

William Miller

Alexander Campbell

Aimee Semple McPherson

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

Benedict of Nursia

Bernard of Clairvaux

Dominic

Francis of Assisi

John Wycliffe

Joan of Arc

Ulrich Zwingli

Ignatius of Loyola

Phoebe Palmer

Soren Kieregaard

MISSIONARIES

Columbanus

Cyril and Methodius

Francis Xavier

Mathew Ricci

John Eliot

William Carey

David Livingstone

Hudson Taylor

INNER TRAVELERS

Antony of Egypt

Hildegard of Bingen

Catherine of Siena

Thomas a Kempis

Teresa of Avila

John of the Cross

Brother Lawrence

William Law

Andrew Murray

Oswald Chambers

ACTIVISTS

John Woodman

William Wilberforce

Elizabeth Fry

Sojourner Truth

Lord Shaftesbury (Antony Ashley Cooper)

William Gladstone

Harriet Tubman

Catherine Booth

William Booth

Walter Rauschenbusch

RULERS

Constantine

Theodosius I

Justinian I and Theodora I

Leo I

Gregory the Great

Charlemagne

Innocent III

Louis IX

Henry VIII

SCHOLARS AND SCIENTISTS

Origen

Eusebius of Caesarea

Jerome

The Venerable Bede

Erasmus

Nicholas Copernicus

William Tyndale

John Foxe

Francis Bacon

Galileo Galilei

MARTYRS

Ignatius of Antioch

Polycarp

Perpetua

Boniface

Thomas Becket

John Huss

Thomas Cranmer

Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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• A TWO-FOLD EFFECT – 2008
• FACE THE FACTS – 2008
• GOOD GROUND HEARER – 2008
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