Early Church
All categories › Church History
The Church Fathers
Short sketches of the major church fathers from Clement of Rome to Leo the Great, and their contributions to Roman Catholic and Reformation theology.
The Word “Catholic”
The origin and meaning of the word catholic, its association with the universal church, and its changing use under the Roman imperial church.
Church Fathers
Ambrose of Milan
The governor turned bishop whose preaching drew Augustine to Christ, who humbled an emperor, and who taught the West to sing.
Athanasius
The bishop of Alexandria, exiled five times, who stood against the world for the full deity of Christ.
Augustine of Hippo
The most influential theologian of the early church, whose doctrine of grace was claimed by both Rome and the Reformers.
Basil the Great
The leader of the Cappadocian Fathers, defender of the Trinity, “theologian of the Holy Spirit,” and father of Eastern monasticism.
Clement of Alexandria
The Alexandrian teacher who called philosophy the handmaiden of theology and taught the young Origen.
Clement of Rome
The Roman pastor whose letter to the Corinthians is the earliest Christian writing after the New Testament.
Cyprian of Carthage
The bishop of Carthage who taught that there is no salvation outside the church and made the bishop the center of its unity.
Eusebius of Caesarea
The father of church history, whose Ecclesiastical History is the chief source for the church from the apostles to Constantine.
Gregory of Nazianzus
The Cappadocian “theologian” who defended the Trinity and taught that what Christ did not assume he did not heal.
Gregory of Nyssa
The philosophical Cappadocian, brother of Basil, who made Scripture the umpire against the Arians and helped shape the ransom theory of the atonement.
Ignatius of Antioch
The bishop of Antioch who wrote seven letters on his way to martyrdom in Rome and first spoke of the “catholic church.”
Irenaeus of Lyons
The bishop of Lyons whose Against Heresies overthrew Gnosticism and grounded the faith in the apostolic Scriptures.
Jerome
The most learned man of the Latin church, whose Vulgate was the Bible of the West for a thousand years.
John Cassian
The monk of Marseilles regarded as the founder of Semi-Pelagianism, the middle way that shaped medieval teaching on grace.
John Chrysostom
The “golden-mouthed” preacher of Antioch and Constantinople, the greatest expositor of the early church.
Justin Martyr
The greatest apologist of the second century, who defended the faith to the emperors and died for “the true philosophy.”
Leo the Great
The bishop of Rome whose Tome defined the two natures of Christ at Chalcedon and who claimed Peter’s authority for his see.
Origen
The most prolific writer of the early church, whose allegorical method shaped a thousand years of biblical interpretation.
Papias of Hierapolis
The early bishop whose fragments preserve the oldest testimony to how the Gospels of Mark and Matthew were written.
Polycarp of Smyrna
The aged pastor of Smyrna, a disciple of the apostle John, whose martyrdom is one of the earliest written accounts of Christian martyrdom.
Tertullian
The North African apologist who first used the word “Trinity” and gave the doctrine its Latin vocabulary.
