Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
He showed that the crucial test of orthodoxy, the one single term at which Arians and semi-Arians scrupled that is, the Homoousion or Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father was actually in use before the Nicene Council, and that it was thoroughly in accordance with the teaching of the ante-Nicene Fathers.
Again, when attempts have been made to show that certain words are contained in the Canons before us which were not in use in the Ante-Nicene times, they have in every case failed in the result, which surely may be considered as a positive evidence in favour of their genuineness.
What principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene period was the great Church of Alexandria, the historical centre of teaching in those times. Of Rome for some centuries comparatively little is known.
The Fathers may be divided into two groups, the ante-Nicene and the post-Nicene writers, and also into the Greek and Latin Fathers. But as I am not writing for theological students, I will not attempt any further analysis of the various patristic schools. Those who wrote previous to 325 A.D. belong to the ante-Nicene group; those who wrote after that date, to the post-Nicene group.
After Calvin has twisted us one way, and Arminius has twisted us another, and we get our head full of the old Andover and New Haven theological fights, and the difference between Ante-Nicene Trinitarianism and Post-Nicene Trinitarianism, it is a luxury to meet some evangelist who can tell us in our common mother-tongue of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
That the vision was traced to supernatural origin, especially after the happy success, is quite natural and in perfect keeping with the prevailing ideas of the age. Tertullian and other ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers attributed many conversions to nocturnal dreams and visions.
The apologetic work of the patristic writers was chiefly done in the ante-Nicene age; after that discussion turned more upon questions within the scope of the Christian Faith. The function of the age of the Councils was the formulation and definition of Christian dogma upon the admitted basis of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Origen in a passage sometimes quoted, appeals to the order and harmony of the world, but it is to prove the unity of God rather than His existence. Perhaps the best and most elaborate example of the use of the Cosmological argument by the Ante-Nicene authors, is that made of it by "Athenagoras the Athenian; Philosopher and Christian," as he styled himself.
When we read in the New Testament concerning the simple act of baptizing believers, and compare it with the customs and practises that had grown up in the Ante-Nicene church, we do not wonder that evangelical faith was soon afterwards almost entirely lost in ritualistic forms; that, like the Pharisees of old, men made the faith of God of none effect by their traditions.
But when we consider the frequency with which we meet with the theistic argument, and with reference to its use in other writers, in the pages of Cicero, for example, these scanty instances afforded us by the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, whose works occupy, say, 4,500 large, closely-printed pages in the translation, and who were, let us remember, dealing exclusively with religious thought, indicate plainly a fundamental change in position, the influence of which was operative for centuries in this department of thought, and which, even to-day, governs the attitude of the greater part of the Western world.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking