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The following is a list of Christian Church Fathers. Roman Catholics generally regard the Patristic period to have closed with the death of John of Damascus, a Doctor of the Church, in 749.[ citation needed ] However, Orthodox Christians believe that the Patristic period is ongoing.[ citation needed ] Therefore, the list is split into two tables.
| Church Father | Date of death | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Athanasius the Athonite [3] | 1003 | |
| Gregory Palamas [13] | 1359 | Pillar of Orthodoxy and defender of Hesychasm |
| Ishodad of Merv | 9th century | commented on the Book of Job |
| Innocent of Alaska | 1879 | his The Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven is often used as an Orthodox catechism [3] |
| Mark of Ephesus [9] | 1444 | Pillar of Orthodoxy |
| Martin Luther | 1546 | Pillar of Lutheranism and Protestantism, writer of Book of Concord, and consider saint and reformer by Protestants |
| Nicholas Cabasilas [9] | 1391 | |
| Photius the Great [9] [13] | 893 | Pillar of Orthodoxy and author of Bibliotheca |
| Symeon Metaphrastes [11] | 10th century | |
| Symeon the New Theologian [13] | 1022 | one of three Orthodox saints honored with the title "The Theologian" |
| Theodore the Studite | 826 | |
| Theophan the Recluse [11] | 1894 |
Eusebius of Caesarea, also known as Eusebius Pamphilus, was a Greek Palestinian historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the biblical canon and is regarded as one of the most learned Christians during late antiquity. He wrote Demonstrations of the Gospel, Preparations for the Gospel and On Discrepancies between the Gospels, studies of the biblical text. As "Father of Church History", he produced the Ecclesiastical History, On the Life of Pamphilus, the Chronicle and On the Martyrs. He also produced a biographical work on Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, who was Augustus between AD 306 and AD 337.
Irenaeus was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by combating heterodox or Gnostic interpretations of Scripture as heresy and defining proto-orthodoxy. Originating from Smyrna, he had seen and heard the preaching of Polycarp, who in turn was said to have heard John the Evangelist, and thus was the last-known living connection with the Apostles.
Jerome, also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian priest, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome.
Polycarp was a Christian bishop of Smyrna. According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, he died a martyr, bound and burned at the stake, then stabbed when the fire failed to consume his body. Polycarp is regarded as a saint and Church Father in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.
Hippolytus of Rome was a Bishop of Rome and one of the most important second-third century Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communities include Rome, Palestine, Egypt, Anatolia and other regions of the Middle East. The best historians of literature in the ancient church, including Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome, openly confess they cannot name where Hippolytus the biblical commentator and theologian served in leadership. They had read his works but did not possess evidence of his community. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus so styled himself. This assertion is doubtful. One older theory asserts he came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival to the bishop of Rome, thus becoming an antipope. In this view, he opposed the Roman Popes who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts. However, he was reconciled to the Church before he died as a martyr.
The Epistle of Barnabas is a Greek epistle written between AD 70 and 132. The complete text is preserved in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, where it appears immediately after the New Testament and before the Shepherd of Hermas. For several centuries it was one of the "antilegomena" ("disputed") writings that some Christians looked on as sacred scripture, while others excluded them. Eusebius of Caesarea classified it with excluded texts. It is mentioned in a perhaps third-century list in the sixth-century Codex Claromontanus and in the later Stichometry of Nicephorus appended to the ninth-century Chronography of Nikephoros I of Constantinople. Some early Fathers of the Church ascribed it to the Barnabas who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, but it is now generally attributed to an otherwise unknown early Christian teacher, although some scholars do defend the traditional attribution. It is distinct from the Gospel of Barnabas.
The Apostolic Fathers, also known as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, were core Christian theologians among the Church Fathers who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD who are believed to have personally known some of the Twelve Apostles or to have been significantly influenced by them. Their writings, though widely circulated in early Christianity, were not included in the canon of the New Testament. Many of the writings derive from the same time period and geographical location as other works of early Christian literature which came to be part of the New Testament.
Patristics or patrology is the study of the early Christian writers who are designated Church Fathers. The names derive from the combined forms of Latin pater and Greek patḗr (father). The period of the Church Fathers, commonly called the Patristic era, is generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times or end of the Apostolic Age to either AD 451 or to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
The Councils of Carthage were church synods held during the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries in the city of Carthage in Africa. The most important of these are described below.
The biblical apocrypha denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BC and AD 100. The Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches include some or all of the same texts within the body of their version of the Old Testament, with Catholics terming them deuterocanonical books. Traditional 80-book Protestant Bibles include fourteen books in an intertestamental section between the Old Testament and New Testament called the Apocrypha, deeming these useful for instruction, but non-canonical. To this date, the Apocrypha are "included in the lectionaries of Anglican and Lutheran Churches". Anabaptists use the Luther Bible, which contains the Apocrypha as intertestamental books; Amish wedding ceremonies include "the retelling of the marriage of Tobias and Sarah in the Apocrypha". Moreover, the Revised Common Lectionary, in use by most mainline Protestants including Methodists and Moravians, lists readings from the Apocrypha in the liturgical calendar, although alternate Old Testament scripture lessons are provided.
Against Heresies, sometimes referred to by its Latin title Adversus Haereses, is a work of Christian theology written in Greek about the year 180 by Irenaeus, the bishop of Lugdunum.
The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.
A catena is a form of biblical commentary, verse by verse, made up entirely of excerpts from earlier Biblical commentators, each introduced with the name of the author, and with such minor adjustments of words to allow the whole to form a continuous commentary.
Luther's canon is the biblical canon attributed to Martin Luther, which has influenced Protestants since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. While the Lutheran Confessions specifically did not define a biblical canon, it is widely regarded as the canon of the Lutheran Church. It differs from the 1546 Roman Catholic canon of the Council of Trent in that it rejects the deuterocanonical books and questions the seven New Testament books, called "Luther's Antilegomena", four of which are still ordered last in German-language Luther Bibles to this day.
Euthymius Zigabenus or Zigadenus or Zygadenus was a 12th-century monk and commentator on the Bible. He was a friend of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, for whom he wrote a lengthy work on heresies, Panoplia Dogmatica or Panoply of Doctrine. This began in the apostolic era and continued down to the Bogomils, some of whom he personally examined. The entry on the Bogomils is our main source of information about them. Nothing is known about his life.
A biblical canon is a set of texts which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible.
Craig Alan Blaising is the former executive vice president and provost of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Blaising earned a Doctor of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, a Master of Theology Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a recognized authority in patristic studies and eschatology and is one of the primary proponents of "progressive dispensationalism."
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical period in which they worked became known as the Patristic Era and spans approximately from the late 1st to mid-8th centuries, flourishing in particular during the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself as the state church of the Roman Empire.
The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) is a twenty-nine volume set of commentaries on the Bible published by InterVarsity Press. The ACCS is a confessionally collaborative project as individual editors have included scholars from Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism as well as Jewish participation. Notable scholars who contributed to the series’ publication include Andrew Louth, Peter W. Ochs, Benedicta Ward, Frances Young, Christopher A. Hall, Gerald L. Bray, and Manlio Simonetti. The ACCS was first conceived of in 1993 and inspired by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The Methodist scholar Thomas C. Oden, one of the leading paleo-orthodox theologians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, serves as the overall ACCS series editor and the ACCS uses the ecumenically-minded Revised Standard Version of the Bible for its biblical translation.