Rob Kashow tagged me in a note on the five most influential primary resources.
Here are the rules, according to Kevin Skull :
1.) List the 5 primary sources that have most affected your scholarship, thoughts about antiquity, and/or understanding of the NT/OT.
2.) Books from the Bible are off limits unless you really want to list one, I certainly will not chastise you for it.
3.) Finally, choose individual works if you can. This will be more interesting than listing the entire corpus of Cicero as one of your choices.
I must admit that this list was far more difficult than the Top Five Most Influential book list
But, here they are:
5. The Letters of Ignatius
Ignatius was one of the greatest theologians at articulating the Incarnation and defining what Jesus’s full humanity looked like; he emphasized his humanity in order to defend the faith from Docetists and Gnostics.
Favorite quote:
“Be ye deaf therefore, when any man speaketh to you apart from Jesus Christ,
who was of the race of David,
who was the Son of Mary, who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate,
was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the earth;who moreover was truly raised from the dead, His Father having raised Him,
who in the like fashion will so raise us also who believe on Him — His Father, I say, will raise us — in Christ Jesus, apart from whom we have not true life.”– Ignatius to the Trallians, Chapter 9:1-2
4. Clement of Alexandria’s Miscellanies:
Clement of Alexandria (along with the rest of the Alexandrian school) is my favorite Christian intellectual, because not only did he use Scripture (especially the prophets in the Hebrew Bible as well as the Gospel of Matthew and Johannine literature), but he also engaged tradition and the prevailing sciences of his day (far from the methodology used by many fundamentalists and evangelicals today).
Favorite quote:
My Princes shall come out of Egypt post from March of this year!
3. Augustine’s Confessions:
When I first read Augustine’s Confession in undergrad, it was the first time I was exposed to Roman Catholicism on its own terms, rather than have some protestant comment on it. Once I read this work (and understood Roman Catholicism in its own integrity), did I become open to Catholic theology, and therefore Patristic and Matristic thought. I do not remember my favorite quote from that book, however.
2. Tertullian (the entire corpus), but especially Ad Martyras:
Tertullian was the first Trinitarian theologian and he was from Africa and he defended Christian orthopraxis, which in my view, is Christian nonviolence and the Christian pacifist tradition.
“You are about to undergo a good contest (1 Tim. vi. 12; 2 Tim. ii. 4 f.; iv. 8) wherein the living God is the President,7 the Holy Spirit is the Trainer, the wreath is that of eternity, the prize (1 Cor. ix. 24; Phil. 14), angelic being, the citizenship in the heavens (Phil. iii. 20), the glory unto ages of ages. Therefore your Master, Christ Jesus, Who anointed you with the Spirit, and hath brought you forth to this wrestling-ground, hath willed before the day of contest to set you apart from a less restrained condition unto a sterner training, that your powers may be strengthened within you.” Ad Martyras
1. The Didache:
When I first read the Didache, I will be honest. I thought I was reading straight from the Bible. But no, it was not the canon, only the teachings of the apostles, as well as an interpretation of the Great Commandment.
Favorite quote:
“Do not hesitate to give, nor complain when you give; for you shall know who is the good repayer of the hire. Do not turn away from him who is in want; rather, share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own. For if you are partakers in that which is immortal, how much more in things which are mortal?” Didache, Chapter 4
nice list Rods. i’m not sure i understand what you mean about the “Catholic Church.” Really all of Christianity was Catholic until the Reformations, no?
The way I was introduced to Augustine, Rob was that he was a Catholic theologian, but in the original Confessions, he quotes a lot from the Vulgate, correct? So, I would have to assume the religious tradition that uses the Vulgate as an authority, the Roman Catholic Church, would be the tradition of Augustine. Remember, religion is language-games and practices, right, my post-liberal friend?
I’m not sure I follow that logic, but no matter. Go see harry potter.
Oh well.
But I am still not going to see Harry Potter. That series and the Twilight series are just lame psuedo-christian fiction.