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40 results for “Church Fathers”
Clear searchA history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
How Supersessionism Took Root in the Early Church A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension Supersessionism did not appear in one moment through one theologian. It developed as the Church became increasingly Gentile…
Read article →Samuel G. Green · Historical survey · 1904
Of the several church histories I have read, A Handbook of Church History remains one of the best. Green handles an enormous sweep of people, events, doctrines, and institutions with unusual clarity, yet d…
View recommendation →Brian E. Daley · Historical theology · 1991
I recommend The Hope of the Early Church because it showed me how varied early Christian thinking about death and the world to come really was. Daley traces the development of the intermediate state, apokatastasis, resurrect…
View recommendation →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…but antiquity does not make every interpretation correct. When he speaks of the catholic Church, the word means the universal or whole Church confessing the apostolic faith; it must not be treated as proof that he would endorse every doctrine or institution of the later Church w…
View recommendation →Tertullian · Apologetic, doctrinal, and practical treatises · c. 197–220
…even his strongest arguments must be tested by Scripture. His references to the catholic Church belong to the language and disputes of the early Church and do not establish his agreement with every later Roman Catholic doctrine. Historical continuity must be demonstrated rather…
View recommendation →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
Are Abraham's Seed and the Israel of God the Church? Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing Galatians contains two of the strongest arguments for identifying the Church as Israel. First, Paul says that…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
Do All God's Promises Transfer to the Church? What "yea and Amen" in Christ means for Israel and the covenants Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements about the promises of God: "For all the promises of God in him ar…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
Israel and the Church: Why This Series Matters The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God Has the Church replaced Israel in the purpose of God? Some Christians answer yes, although the…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…and the fulfilment of Israel's story. Those who belong to Christ are Abraham's seed. The Church receives Israel's covenant titles, the kingdom is taken from unbelieving Israel and given to a fruit-bearing nation, and all God's promises are yea and amen in Christ. There is one go…
Read article →R. V. Sellers · Theological biography and history of doctrine · 1928
…of Antioch Council of Nicaea Christology Arian controversy Incarnation Divinity of Christ Church and empire
View recommendation →Hippolytus · Exposition, prophecy, and polemic · early third century
…ed merely because they are ancient. His use of catholic language describes the whole true Church as he understood it; it does not mean that every later claim of the modern Roman Catholic Church can be read back into him. Check both authorship and interpretation, and let Scripture…
View recommendation →Augustine of Hippo · Spiritual autobiography and prayer · c. 397–400
Augustine's searching account of restless desire, intellectual wandering, entrenched sin, conversion, memory, prayer, and the grace of God, written not merely as autobiography but as an extended confession addressed to God.
View recommendation →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…within it, and unbelieving Jewish branches have been removed. Surely the tree is now the Church, the Church is Israel, and the distinction has disappeared. That argument gives the metaphor real weight, but it moves too quickly. Paul does not say that Gentiles are grafted into Is…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…solve the problem by saying that Israel's name and promises now refer exclusively to the Church. Instead, the nation remains "beloved for the fathers' sakes", because "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Romans 11:28-29). The phrase does not excuse unbelief. It…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…ld remain impossible. God promises the very cleansing and obedience He requires. Does the Church receive the new covenant? Yes. Jesus identified the cup at the Last Supper as "the new testament in my blood" (Luke 22:20). Paul called himself and his fellow workers ministers of the…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…ospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel This series began with a question: has the Church permanently replaced Israel in the purpose of God? The answer cannot be reached by asking whether Christ fulfils the promises. He does. Nor can it be settled by asking whether Gentile…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…the children of promise: everyone who believes in Christ, whether Jewish or Gentile. The Church is therefore the Israel within Israel, while unbelieving ethnic Israel no longer possesses a distinct covenant identity or future. Paul certainly denies that physical descent guarante…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
Standing at the Door An Unrequited Love for the Historic Church I do not stand outside the historic Church because I despise her. I stand outside because I love much of what I find within her, yet cannot call every later development apostolic. The…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…doctrine. It tests how we understand the faithfulness of the God upon whose promises the Church itself depends. The opposing case deserves to be stated fairly Most thoughtful supersessionists do not believe God lied to Israel. They do not imagine Him tearing up His covenants or…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…h scattered thee." —Deuteronomy 30:3 The passage continues with return to the land of the fathers and an inward work of God: "the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart" so that Israel will love Him (Deuteronomy 30:5-6). Judgement and restoration therefore form one covenant seq…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…sed by slogans before it is defined. It allegedly began with John Nelson Darby, turns the Church into God's failed contingency plan, ignores the fulfilment of prophecy in AD 70, baptises modern politics, and restores animal sacrifices in competition with the cross. Some dispensat…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…secret there. The real question is whether Scripture distinguishes Christ coming for His Church from His later return with His saints. That question cannot be answered by attaching a loaded label to one side. It must be answered by comparing the passages themselves. What Paul ac…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…whole doctrine. Together they form a coherent movement: Christ completes and gathers His Church, resumes Daniel's unfinished programme concerning Israel and Jerusalem, judges the beast's world while saving a multitude within it, and later returns with His redeemed people to deli…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
Your Party Is Not Your Church How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal Political parties do not merely ask for our votes. Increasingly, they offer an entire identity.…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…heritance. When she is reconciled to Him, she is restored to it. The Land Promised to the Fathers Israel’s bond with the land begins with the promises made to Abraham. The first call of Abraham joins nationhood, territory, and worldwide blessing: “Get thee out of thy country, and…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…ext identifies that first covenant: “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.” —Hebrews 8:9 The obsolete covenant is the Mosaic covenant. Hebrews demonstrates the finality of Christ…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…o second comings? The objection is sometimes restated rhetorically: if Christ gathers the Church and later descends in judgement, pretribulationism has invented two second comings. That misdescribes the claim. Pretribulationism sees one future advent with distinguishable movement…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…t. Those facts should not be minimised. But he did not introduce the deity of Christ to a Church which had never believed it, he did not decide the outcome by himself, and the council did not choose the books of the Bible. Nicaea was an attempt by bishops, enjoying unprecedented…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…stablish the timing of the rapture alone. Persecution is not the same as divine wrath The Church is repeatedly promised trouble from the world. Jesus says, “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). Believers may be hated, imprisoned, and killed. Those promises make i…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…christ Must Come First, Is Christ's Coming Imminent? Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await Imminency does not mean that Christ was required to return within the apostles' lifetime. It means that no revealed prophetic event must first occur before the Church…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…e redemption (1:13–14). Paul then explains His relation to creation before turning to the church, resurrection and reconciliation. “Firstborn” translates prōtotokos (πρωτότοκος). Its ordinary use concerns the child born first. Chronological priority is a real part of its semantic…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…'s measured programme for Israel and Jerusalem awaits its final phase while God forms the Church from Jew and Gentile in one body. The length of the interval is not a defect in God's promise. Scripture repeatedly joins divine patience to the apparent delay of judgement (2 Peter 3…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…complete humanity united to the eternal Word without producing two personal subjects? The Church’s language was still developing because all the biblical truths had to be held together at once. Article five will take up that question directly. For now, the essential point is that…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…a brilliant, influential and sometimes troubling theologian whose writings show that the Church did not immediately possess a perfectly settled vocabulary for everything Scripture revealed about Christ. The truth was present in the apostolic writings. The language used to defend…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…hered as the kingdom approaches. These features do not make the passage irrelevant to the Church. All Scripture instructs the Church, and Christians living before the destruction of Jerusalem could heed Christ's warning. They do show that the discourse is operating within Israel'…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…nt.” The crowd then asks for another sign and invokes the manna given through Moses: “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” —John 6:31 Jesus corrects them. Moses was not the ultimate giver, and the manna was not the tru…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…lers of this world “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Acts speaks of “the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). The one who shed His blood is identified by who He is: the Lord of glory, the Son of God. We may therefore say that G…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…ds, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Ethiopia and regions connected with Arabia. Their churches disagreed sharply over Christology, councils, episcopal authority and imperial power. They used different liturgical languages. Some lived beyond Byzantine control. Yet the Gospel b…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…them. That is not said to mock the converts. Their confusion also belongs at the feet of churches which entertained but did not teach, gathered crowds but did not catechise, and told people to believe without preparing them to explain what they believed. If someone leaves Christ…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…rom the dead Paul immediately uses prōtotokos again: “And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.” — Colossians 1:18 Revelation 1:5 likewise calls Him “the first begotten of the d…
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