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What did the early church fathers do?
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.
What is used to determine who is considered a church father?
Church Father, any of the great bishops and other eminent Christian teachers of the early centuries whose writings remained as a court of appeal for their successors, especially in reference to controverted points of faith or practice. See patristic literature.
What is Tertullian theology?
Under the influence of Stoic philosophy, Tertullian believes that all real things are material. God is a spirit, but a spirit is a material thing made out of a finer sort of matter. At the beginning, God is alone, though he has his own reason within him.
Who is the father of Latin theology?
Tertullian
He was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called “the father of Latin Christianity” and “the founder of Western theology”.
Why did Tertullian leave the church?
Sometime before 210 Tertullian left the orthodox church to join a new prophetic sectarian movement known as Montanism (founded by the 2nd-century Phrygian prophet Montanus), which had spread from Asia Minor to Africa.
What are the false doctrines of the early church?
Acts 15:1 describes one of the major false doctrines that plagued the early church. “Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.””
What was the study of the Church Fathers called?
The study of the Church Fathers is known as patristics. Works of fathers in early Christianity, prior to Nicene Christianity, were translated into English in a 19th-century collection Ante-Nicene Fathers.
When did the age of the Church Fathers end?
It is significant that the age of the Early Church Fathers, commonly regarded as closing with St. John Damascene (d. 749), is roughly co-terminus with the period of the first seven great Ecumenical Councils which defined these two central mysteries of the faith and drew out their most important implications.
What was the influence of the Fathers on the church?
Under the influence of the Fathers of this period, the biblical canon and the Nicene Creed assumed their final shape and the various liturgical rites of the Church (e.g., Roman and Byzantine) took on many of their distinctive characteristics. For these reasons, scholars often refer to this era as the Golden Age of Patristic Literature.