[a.d. 130.] The anonymous author of this Epistle gives himself the title (Mathetes) “a disciple of the Apostles,” and I venture to adopt it as his name. It is about all we know of him, and it serves a useful end. I place his letter here, as a sequel to the Clementine Epistle, for several reasons, which I think scholars will approve: (1) It is full of the Pauline spirit, and exhales the same pure and primitive fragrance which is characteristic of Clement. (2) No theory as to its da...

The Complete Works of the First Fathers of the Church gathers a formative body of early Christian writing: pastoral epistles, martyrial exhortations, apologies, theological treatises, biblical interpretation, ecclesiastical histories, and visionary instruction. Spanning the generations from the apostolic age to late antiquity, it records Christianity's emergence within Jewish, Greek, and Roman intellectual worlds. Particularly compelling are its defenses of Christian belief before pagan cr...

Ante-Nicene Church Fathers gathers the formative writings of Christianity before the Council of Nicaea into a capacious nine-volume archive of doctrine, pastoral counsel, apology, biblical interpretation, martyrial witness, and ecclesial debate. Its range extends from terse epistles and visionary allegory to philosophical dialogue and sustained theological treatise. Standout texts include early defenses of Christian belief, reflections on apostolic succession, and imaginative accounts of r...

St. John Chrysostom was born in the year 349 AD in Antioch. His father died soon after his birth and he was raised by his deeply pious mother. Under her influence St. John became devout as well, and took to studying scripture under the guidance of the bishop of Antioch who would later be the one to baptize him.St. John was drawn to become a monk, and when he mother died he withdrew to the wilderness. There he wrote a number of works on the ascetic life. After a number of years he w...

Athanasius was born in Egypt to a Christian family sometime around 295 AD. He was given a good education by his parents, and in his youth, the local bishop, recognizing his talents, took him on as his aide. As a result he would get the chance to be present at Nicaea for the first Ecumenical council of the church.These works cover the full span of his life, beginning before 319 AD, when he wrote his famous, 'On the Incarnation of the Word'. At the time there were a number of differe...

The Ante-Nicene Period (literally meaning "before Nicaea") in the history of early Christianity was the era following the Apostolic Age of the first century to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. During this period the orthodoxy (right belief) of the faith developed. The authors of the faith are known as the church fathers. They not only defined the faith but wrote against various heresies.Some of the unorthodox beliefs were:Gnosticism (2nd to 4th centuries) – reliance on r...

The Philokalia is a collection of texts written between the fourth and the fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition.First published in Greek in 1782, then translated into Slavonic and later into Russian, The Philokalia has exercised an influence in the recent history of the Orthodox Church far greater than that of any book apart from the Bible. It is concerned with themes of universal importance: how man may develop his...

The Didache was possibly written around 65 - 80 A.D. and is supposed to be what the twelve apostles taught to the Gentiles concerning life and death, church order, fasting, baptism, prayer, etc. There is debate as to its authenticity.In the Babel of conflicting opinions, it is best to notice first the obvious internal phenomena. The first part of the Teaching (now distinguished as chaps. i.-vi.) sets forth the duty of the Christian; in chaps. vii.-x., xiv., we find a directory for ...

Regarded by some as the greatest genius of the early Christian church, Origen of Alexandria was a third century scholar, ascetic and theologian. He was a prolific writer of approximately 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics and spirituality. His treatise ‘On the First Principles’ systematically lays out the principles of Christian theology and became the foundation for later theological writings; while the treatis...

The Orthodox Prayer Book has the most extensive database of Orthodox Prayers available in one book.

The psychic phenomena of today are symptoms of the emergence of a new spirituality that is molding the world religion of the future—phenomena such as Yoga, Zen, Tantra, Transcendental Meditation, Guru Maharaj-ji, Hare Krishna, UFO’s, the Charismatic Movement, and Jonestown.“None of these by itself … has a crucial significance in the spiritual makeup of contemporary man; but each one in its own way typifies the striving of men today to find a new spiritual path, distinct from the Ch...

A second century theologian from Carthage, Tertullian was an important early Christian writer, who produced an extensive corpus of literature. As the initiator of ecclesiastical Latin, he was instrumental in shaping the vocabulary and thought of Western Christianity. Tertullian has been described by some as the father of Latin Christianity and the founder of Western theology. Delphi’s Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both Englis...