Church fathers

Augustine of Canterbury – A Reluctant Missionary

Simonetta Carr
Feb 28, 2023
Augustine of Canterbury – A Reluctant Missionary Augustine of Canterbury, often known as “the apostle of the English,” would have never made it across the Channel if it hadn’t been for the insistent prompting of Pope Gregory I. The eighth century historian Bede tells us in fact that Augustine and...

Lactantius – An Original Writer

Simonetta Carr
Jan 3, 2023
Lactantius – An Original Writer Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius was born around the year 255 in North Africa. Quickly earning a reputation for his intellectual prowess, in 290 he was invited by Emperor Diocletian to serve as professor of Latin and rhetoric in Nicomedia of Bithynia (today’s...

Perpetua and Felicitas – Two Martyred Mothers

Simonetta Carr
Oct 11, 2022
Perpetua and Felicitas – Two Martyred Mothers In A.D. 202, Emperor Septimius Severus tightened his measures against Christians who refused to pay homage to the imperial genius, the spirit of the emperor. Compliance required a minimal effort: a simple sprinkling of a few grains of incense on a...

Boniface and Leoba

Simonetta Carr
Jun 7, 2022
Boniface and Leoba Some have the impression that, after Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313, everyone in the Roman Empire became Christian (and lived happily ever after). At least, this is what we might get from a cursor reading of church history. In reality, as late as the ninth or tenth century,...

Sovereignty and Government

Stephen Unthank
Dec 29, 2021
From the very opening pages of Scripture we see God’s sovereign rule over mankind in an authoritative and governmental way. He gives his law to Adam that he is not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Adam and Eve do eat of that tree they are depicted as being in...

John Hus’s Company of Women

Simonetta Carr
Jun 15, 2021
John Hus’s Company of Women John Hus, the Bohemian Reformer who was condemned as heretic at the Council of Constance, was supported by a large number of women. This was, in some ways, unusual. The same couldn’t be said, for example, in the case of John Wycliffe, in England. One possible reason was...

John Chrysostom and Olympias – Finding Comfort in Troubled Times

Simonetta Carr
May 19, 2020
John Chrysostom and Olympias – Finding Comfort in Troubled Times John Chrysostom was a favorite church father in the Protestant Reformation for many reasons: for his departure from the allegorical interpretation of Scriptures that was popular in his day, for his understanding of law and grace, and...

Protestantism, Scripture and the Judgment of the Church

Aaron Denlinger
Mar 28, 2017
A few weeks ago, I participated in a conference which explored the promise that careful attention to Protestantism's past holds for Protestantism's future. It was exciting to see scholars, students, and interested laypersons gathered around a common concern for the future of our various Reformation...

God's Presence

Gerald Bray
Jan 21, 2014
Frances Young, God's Presence: A contemporary recapitulation of early Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xiv + 474 pp., pb $29.99/£16.99 In 2011 Frances Young delivered a series of eight Bampton Lectures in the University of Oxford which, by all accounts, were well-received...