The place to start
I’ve read quite a bit about the early Church. The works of the early Church Fathers have always been a delight to read. I’ve been thinking recently that if I would give a list of my favorite books to read of the Fathers, it would be an interesting list. However, recently I’ve been thinking that in terms of apologetics, there is a completely different list.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo and many other books. However, I read them once and haven’t picked them up since. It’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy them, but in terms of apologetics, I find myself going back to three Church Fathers.
We need to look at the apostolic Fathers first. Of this category, an apologist needs to read the Epistle to the Corinthians by St. Clement of Rome, and the seven epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch. The epistle written by Clement is dated to about the year 100 AD. The epistles of St. Ignatius date to around 107 AD. In other words, this is some of the first material after the lives of the apostles and the NT.
It’s also a good geographical balance. Clement is a western Father based out of Rome and Ignatius is an eastern Father from Antioch. While it may seem like a tragedy that we only have one letter from Clement, while we have seven from Ignatius, we need not fear since the letter from Clement is extremely long and detailed.
The other writing that is essential for apologetics is The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea. This work was written in the first half of the fourth century and is a history of the Church from the time of Christ to the Council of Nicaea. It’s written in ten books. I especially love the explanation of the genealogies of Jesus found in book one. Absolutely brilliant.
My primary purpose of suggesting this material is for historical apologetic purposes. Christianity is a religion rooted in history. When we look at the historical details provided by these works, we can see the nature of the Eucharist, Church structure, and the fact that core Christian doctrines such as the death, resurrection, and deity of Christ are firmly rooted in the history provided by these three writers.
Let’s look at an example here; probably the biggest group that I deal with on this blog are the Muslims. These historical works can be used to show that Jesus, His disciples, other early follows and the early Church were not Islamic in any way. There are no evidence of any Muslims in these works and if they existed, they would have surely been recorded by at least one of these three. There is also no evidence for the early Islamic document called the Injeel recorded in any of these texts.
These writings are also good for refuting those who believe in the Great Apostasy such as the LDS Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It shows that there was a simple continuity from the days of Jesus Christ and the apostles to the second century Church, then eventually the fourth century Church.
All of these works can be found online at newadvent.org or purchased on Amazon for a fairly reasonable price. I would say that once one is familiar with the Bible and Christian doctrine, the next best documents to read for apologetics are these ones. I find myself going back to them all the time. In fact, I think I’m going to go over them again. It certainly won’t take long.
Other patristic writings that are helpful in apologetics are Eusebius’ “Gospel Problems and Solutions” (a pastiche of several extant and lost works of Eusebius that deal with alleged discrepancies and difficulties in the Gospels), St.Augustine’s “Harmony of The Gospels” (dealing with the same matters), and, to a certain extend, Origen’s “Against Celsus”. Origen was condemned as a heretic, true, but he was a very clever man and some of his points are actually quite valuable. A good reading is also “Commentary on the Apocalypse” by St. Andrew of Caesarea, which is pretty much adopted as the official view of the Eastern Orthodox Church on the End Times and the meaning of the Book of the Apocalypse (would be good in polemics against Seven-day adventists, I guess). “Concerning Heresy” by St. John of Damascus is a good introduction to the Christian view of Islam (as a side note, St. John’s “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” is still considered one of the best works of systematic theology in Eastern Orthodox Christianity).
Hi Orangehunter,
Thanks for your input. I haven’t read that work by Eusebius. I’ll make sure to do it because he’s a great scholar. I only recently read St. Augustine’s Harmony of the Gospels but loved it! I can definitely see myself using it again, especially against Islamic apologists. I haven’t read much of Origen sadly. He certainly had some weird views but like you said, he probably wrote a lot of good stuff as well.
I have read all of the early Greek and Latin commentaries on Apocalypse. I did like St. Andrew’s work quite a bit. I’ve only ever debated one Seventh Day Adventist. He was from Bulgaria and I would assume a convert from the Orthodox Church. We didn’t debate anything from Apocalypse but I did debate him on Church history and shredded him.
As for St. John of Damascus, I agree. Everything that he wrote is golden. His defense of icons is brilliant and I recently used those arguments in a debate with an ex-Catholic turned Protestant. In my opinion, he’s the best theologian between 500 and 1000 AD. Both him and St. Germanus of Constantinople(who was a contemporary of St. John of Damascus) gave good homilies on the blessed Virgin Mary so that would help against those who deny the important role of the Mother of God.
Thanks for sharing those. Hopefully a few others will share their most read Fathers in terms of apologetics.
God Bless,
Allan
“There are no evidence of any Muslims in these works and if they existed, they would have surely been recorded by at least one of these three. There is also no evidence for the early Islamic document called the Injeel recorded in any of these texts.”- a bit of an update: I’ve just come across a little known passage in St.Irenaeus’ “Against Heresies”, where he actually mentions Muslims: “Now, about those who call themselves “Muslims”, they not only deny the death of our Lord on the cross for the salvation of mankind, but also preach the coming of another Prophet after the Messiah, whose name, they claim, will be Muhammad. They even created their own book, called “Injeel”, full of false and pernicious teachings. The Muslims even inserted certain prophecies of the aforementioned Muhammad in this book, but fortunately our bishops managed to steal all the copies of it and burned them. Loosing the foundation of their faith, most of the Muslims left Islam (the name of their faith), and those who chose to remain Muslims, fled to Arabia.”
On a serious note, I would like to add St. John Chrysostom’s commentary of the Gospel of St.Matthew to the patristic writings, helpful in apologetics. It is a brilliant work, containing very important insights into St. Matthew’s rich theological thought. St. Chrysostom also provides ingenious explanations of some of the seeming difficulties in the Gospel narrative.
Hi Orangehunter,
LOL, I haven’t read Against Heresies in a while but my interest is renewed! I actually haven’t read Chrysostom’s commentary on Matthew. I have read his commentary on Romans and his writings on marriage. All very good. Like the Cappadocians Fathers and St. Athanasius, there are so many gems in the Eastern Church.
God Bless,
Allan