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‘The faith of our fathers’: the making of the early Christian past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Rachel Moriarty
Rachel Moriarty*
Affiliation:
La Sainte Union College, Southampton
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Extract

A hundred years ago, in 1895, London theatre audiences were treated to an interesting exchange on what we would now call the reception of early Church history. The play was Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and in it the Reverend Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism are discussing marriage, not entirely hypothetically. Dr Chasuble ‘(with a scholar’s shudder)’ observes, ‘The precept as well as the practice of the Primitive Church was distinctly against matrimony’, and Miss Prism replies ‘(sententiously), That is obviously the reason why the Primitive Church has not lasted up to the present day’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 33: The Church Retrospective , 1997 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997

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References

1 The Importance of Being Earnest, in Oscar Wilde, Plays (London, 1970), p. 279.

2 See the Prefaces to the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552, reprinted in, for example, The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, Everyman Library (London and New York, 1910), pp. 3, 321; and ‘Concerning the Services of the Church’, section 2 in The Book of Common Prayer, 1662.

3 For comprehensive discussion of this subject, see Sanders, E. P., ed., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 3 vols (London, 1981-3)Google Scholar [hereafter Sanders].

4 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, I, i [hereafter HE] in Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine, ed. H. J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton, 2 vols (London, 1954) [hereafter Lawlor and Oulton], 1, p. 4. For Eusebius’ contribution to Church history, see also Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon (London, 1983), pp. 1–21.

5 Acts 2.14-26.

6 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, III, iii, 4, in Stevenson, J., ed., A New Eusebius, new edn, revised Frend, W. H. C. (London, 1989) [hereafter NE], p. 114 Google Scholar.

7 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, IV, viii, 8, in Bettenson, Henry, ed., The Early Christian Fathers (Oxford, 1969), p. 89 Google Scholar.

8 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, 1, in Musurillo, H., ed., Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar [hereafter Musurillo], p. 107, and introduction, pp. xxv-vi; see Stuart G. Hall, ‘Women among the early martyrs’, SCH, 30 (1993), pp. 1–21 and Frend, W. H. C., Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965) [hereafter Frend], pp. 376–7 Google Scholar. It seems possible that the presentation of this account, and perhaps others, was shaped to some extent by discussion on the whole question of the status of recent events in relation to the ‘ancestral’ past: see Rachel Moriarty, ‘The claims of the past’, to be published in a forthcoming vol. of Elizabeth A. Livingstone, ed., Studia Patristica (Papers presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford, 1995). See also n. 33 below.

9 Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, II, 6, quoted in J. Stevenson, ed., Creeds, Councils and Controversies, new edn, rev. W. H. C. Frend (London, 1989), p. 322.

10 Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, x, 89, in NE, p. 180. For Clement’s view of history, see Raoul Mortley, ‘The past in Clement of Alexandria’, in Sanders, 1, pp.186-200.

11 Minucius Felix, Octavius, vi, 1, in NE, p. 177.

12 Origen, Contra Celsum, viii, 67–9, in NE, pp. 135–6. For discussion of Celsus’ attitudes see Wilken, Robert L., The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, 1984)Google Scholar [hereafter Wilken], pp. 94–125, and Grant, Robert M., Creek Apologists of the Second Century (London, 1988), pp. 133–9 Google Scholar; this book also covers other apologists cited in this paper.

13 Origen, Contra Celsum, iii, 55, in NE, p. 116.

14 Tertullian, Apology, xl, 2, in NE, p. 158; for Tertullian see T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford, 1971).

15 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, i, 2, in NE, p. 181 (note).

16 Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, 34, in NE, p. 280; and see Eusebius, HE, viii, 17, 6–7, in Lawlor and Oulton, 1, p. 276, and discussion, 2, pp. 285–6.

17 For discussion of these classical issues, see Ogilvie, R. M., The Romans and their Gods (London, 1979), especially pp. 112–25 Google Scholar; ,Jones, A. H. M., Augustus (London, 1977), pp. 144–52 Google ScholarPubMed; and especially Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (London, 1986). Lane Fox argues that ancestral tradition was not static, and that there was interest in change and development; see pp. 29, 258–60.

18 Acts 17.21.

19 See, for instance, Wilken, pp. 112–17, on Celsus, and Markus, Robert, Christianity in the Roman World (London, 1974), pp. 1–26 Google Scholar, on Tertullian and others.

20 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, i, 13; see Frend, p. 237.

21 Ignatius, To the Magnesians, x, 3, in NE, p. 14.

22 Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 1, in NE, pp. 66–7.

23 Letter to Diognetus, v, 6, in NE, p. 55.

24 Tertullian, Apology, xxxii, 1; in NE, p. 162; and sec Frend, pp. 365–80.

25 Clement of Rome, Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians, lxi, in Lightfoot, J. B., The Apostolic Fathers, ed. Harmer, J. R. (London, 1926), p. 83 Google Scholar.

26 Eusebius, HE, iv, 26, 8; in NE, pp. 65–6, and note.

27 Justin, Apology, i, 46 and ii, 13, and NE, pp. 61–2.

28 Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, x, 89, in NE, p. 181 (see n. 10 above).

29 This theme appears especially in City of God: see Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo (London, 1967), pp. 299–312 Google Scholar.

30 Augustine, City of Cod, i, 24, translated in St Augustine, City of Cod, trans. Henry Bettenson (London, 1972), p. 35.

31 Hermas, The Shepherd, Vis. II, 1–4, in NE, pp. 51–2.

32 Exod. 12.35-6. See discussion in Pelikan, Jaroslav, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York, 1993), pp. 171, 187–8 Google Scholar; and Nyssa, Gregory of, The Life of Moses, trans. Malberbe, Abraham J. and Ferguson, Everett (New York, 1978), 2, 112–16 Google Scholar, pp. 80–1, and 170–1, nn. 128–9; they also cite Origen, Ep. ad Greg. Thaum. (PG 11.88-9) and Augustine, De Doct. Christ. 2.40.61.

33 The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, in Musurillo, pp. xvi and 115. Perpetua’s story illustrates the painful need for all Christians sometimes to renounce ordinary family ties, but it may have a special significance for a female martyr, perhaps different from that of a male one. See Brent D. Shaw, ‘The passion of Perpetua’, in P&P, 139 (May, 1993), pp. 1–45, and Cloke, Gillian, This Female Man of Cod (London, 1995), p. 35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see n. 8 above.

34 The Martyrdom of Polycarp, ix, 3, in NE, pp. 25–30.

35 The Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in Musurillo, p. 69, and in NE, pp. 34–44.

36 Aristeides, Apology, xv, l, in NE, p. 52.