An Introduction to the Patristics
Early Christian Literature
This brief introduction is adapted from material in Johannes Quasten’s Patrology: The Beginnings of Patristic literature from the Apostles creed to Irenaeus, and Patrick Hamell’s Handbook of Patrology. These volumes are highly recommended for a more detailed and thorough introduction to this subject.
In the formative years of early Christianity, in the 1st to 3rd centuries CE, a number of influential thinkers and writers emerged whose work helped establish core Christian theology and doctrine. Known as the church fathers or patristics, these early Christian authors wrote extensively to defend this new faith, debate the boundaries of orthodoxy, and articulate Christian beliefs and practices. Their writings guided the young religion through a crucial stage of development, laying theological foundations that continue to shape and influence Christianity today.
Scholars typically divine patristic literature into several categories:
By language: Patristic authors wrote in many different languages: Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac being notable.
By geography: Patristic authors are generally divided into east and west. The eastern patristics generally came from the eastern half of the Roman Empire, from regions like Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Constantinople. The western patristics came from areas including North Africa, Italy, Gaul (modern France), and elsewhere around the Mediterranean.
By subject: The patristics wrote epistles and letters covering a broad range of subjects, but those considered important enough to preserve for future generations usually discussed subjects such as developing and unique Christian perspectives on theology, Christology (discussing the person and nature of Jesus), ecclesiology (church organization and government), apologetics (defense of the faith), the exegesis of scripture, and polemical issues surrounding the definitions of heresy and orthodoxy.
While the list of patristic authors is extensive, a handful are considered especially notable by scholars and rise above their contemporaries either in the volume of work they produced or how they influenced those that came after them. A few of these examples include:
Clement of Rome (c. 35–99) was bishop of Rome in the late first century CE. He is considered to be the first patristic, one of the three often grouped together with Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch. He is notable for writing an early epistle to the Christian communities in Corinth that itself was debated to be scripture as late as the 3rd and 4th centuries.
Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-108) was another early patristic. Writing around 100-110 CE, Ignatius penned seven influential letters to local churches while being escorted as a prisoner to martyrdom in Rome under Emperor Trajan.
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-202), a late second century CE bishop of Lyons in Gaul, wrote his monumental Against Heresies, a detailed refutation of early Gnostic ideas and defense of what was deemed to be orthodox Christianity.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) was a Greek theologian who headed the catechetical school of Alexandria and authored the major work Stromata synthesizing Greek philosophy and Christian faith. Among his students were later notable authors such as Origen.
Tertullian (c. 155-240) was a prolific but highly controversial early Christian author from Carthage, who wrote influential theological and apologetic works in Latin.
As Christianity grew from small beginnings into a popular movement in the ancient Greco-Roman world, the religion required more defined structure, organization, and doctrine. The writings of these early patristics played an important role in guiding the rapidly expanding church during this critical formative period.
In the early years of Christianity, the faith still operated in many places as a loose network of local congregations without a centralized hierarchy. As Christianity gained adherents from diverse cultures and backgrounds, variation in belief and custom proliferated. To help maintain unity and order, patristic authors like Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons emphasized the authority of bishops and tradition handed down from the apostles. Other writers like Tertullian formulated systematic statements of faith and doctrine while combatting heretical movements. Anonymous writings like the Didache provided moral instruction and liturgy. Works by Cyprian of Carthage helped shape ecclesiology. The writings of these authors made an effort to explain the Christian faith to the pagan world while defending its reasonableness and even its similarity to notable Greek philosophers. By outlining proper belief and practice, church structure and governance, and providing apologetics, the early patristics enabled the fledgling Christian religion to mature into a unified faith that could support large-scale growth and acceptance in the ancient world. Their collective work guided Christianity through a critical developmental phase.
These authors frequently displayed literary interconnection or intertextuality between their writings and other inherited texts through direct references, allusions, and quotation. This interweaving helped establish continuity between the developing Christian tradition and inherited Jewish theology and tradition. While their emphasis on the usage of texts centered primarily on both the Hebrew Bible (usually in the form of the Greek Septuagint) and the New Testament, the influence of deuterocanonical books from the Septuagint is especially noteworthy.1
Writers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria cite deuterocanonical books like Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch and the first two books of the Maccabees as scripture and authoritative sources to support their theological and related arguments. Their often-seamless integration of these writings that would later be deemed apocryphal or secondary illumines evolving early Christian views of canonicity before firm boundaries were drawn.
Complicating this even further, pseudepigraphal (and sometimes anonymous) Jewish texts such as 1 Enoch, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs were also treated as scripture by many patristic writers2, even though by the 4th and 5th centuries CE they were nearly universally excluded from canonical lists. Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, among others either explicitly quote 1 Enoch authoritatively or make strong allusions to details found uniquely within it. This literary interconnectivity again demonstrates that in these formative years Christian tradition did not solely encompass the texts many Christian communities of later centuries would consider normative.
By borrowing and quoting texts outside of what would become the canonical Old and New Testaments, the patristics dispel an anachronistic notion of “the Bible” as a concretely defined collection of texts from the beginning and display more creativity in the use of writings available to them. This intertextuality reflects and demonstrates the continuance of early Judaism’s vibrant exegetical and haggadic traditions. This literary phenomenon helps capture the living development of Christianity in continuity with the texts and traditions that came centuries before.
While diverse in theology and geographical location, collectively the patristics established foundations in doctrine, ecclesiology, texts and interpretation, and apologetics that proved essential for Christianity’s expansion. These figures worked to counter what they considered to be heresies and schisms, articulated orthodox belief, outlined church governance under bishops, and defended Christianity philosophically to the surrounding culture. Their writings bridged the New Testament era and the developing tradition of the wider church into antiquity and beyond.