Church Fathers Bring Order to the Early

¶ … church fathers bring order to the early church?

The early Church fathers were able to bring a greater amount of order to the early church by the fact that they had such a command of the written word and such educated backgrounds that they were able to fine-tune and shed greater light upon the belief systems which shaped the Church in a more profound and aggravated manner. Many of the Church Fathers disagreed about the role that Greek philosophy should play within the church: some of them felt is detracted and distracted from the truths of the church and from the divine revelation that Christians needed to find.

Other church fathers found a certain amount of importance in studying classical literature and philosophy: "The classical Greeks could aid in the moral development of children because the Greeks, though pagan, still embraced a virtuous life. Knowledge of Greek thought helped Christians to explain their beliefs logically and enabled them to argue intelligently with critics of Christianity… Using the language and techniques of Greek philosophy, Christian intellectuals changed Christianity from a simple ethical creed into a theoretical system. From this 'Hellenization of Christianity,' theology was born. Christ was depicted as the divine Logos (reason) in human form. Roman Stoicism was incorporated into the belief that all are equal and united in Christ" (Kreis, 2006). These achievements are nothing which should be dismissed or minimized; these were tremendous ways in which the Church fathers were able to instill and develop a greater level of organization and uniformity of thought onto the early Church. This greater level of organization was able to powerfully inform the values and actions of the Church for years to come. For instance, leaders of the early church like Jerome engaged in such developmental activities like writing about the lives of the saints and pushing for the spread of monasticism; more than that Jerome was responsible for creating the Latin version of the bible, which was used for the next ten centuries -- up until the Protestant reformation (Kreis, 2006).

One of the most important of all the Church faterhs was Augustine, who had a specific and distinct way in which he was able to bring a strong sense of order to the church as a whole. Augustine spent decades refining the most appropriate interpretations of Christian theology, and was one who was able to craft the first autobiography in western history (Kreis, 2006). More than that, Augustine was able to refine the ideas, values and beliefs that continued to shape Christianity through his writing. For example, the book "City of God" is one which was written by Augustine and which had a massive impact on the development of the church. "The City of God was written to show that it was God's plan that Rome would fall and that Christianity was the salvation of mankind. In other words, according to St. Augustine, history has direction, history has meaning -- the unfolding of God's grand plan" (Kreis, 2006).