Getting To Know The Church Fathers Summary

Getting to Know the Church Fathers – An Evangelical Introduction

Litfin, Bryan M. Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2007. Bryan M. Litfin an associate professor of theology at Moody Bible Institute, wrote Getting to Know the Church Fathers. Bryan has great passion towards history and specifically the history of the church fathers, the one’s who were there in the beginning of Christianity and the one’s who sat and learned at the feet of the best; the apostles. Throughout his book, Bryan sheds light on the significance of church fathers and their roles throughout church history. He encourages his readers and reminds them the importance of the church fathers, and the importance to study the forerunners and protectors of the orthodoxy. This book is rich with history and contains ten chapters.
The year for Origen of Alexandria is from AD 186 – AD 251. When Origen was a teenager, his father was beheaded for believing in Jesus. In the zeal and passion to follow his father and die as a teenager, he was willing to go to prison for the same reasons, however, his mother hid all his clothes and spared him from martyrdom as a teenager. “Origen is the greatest scholar of the early church.” In order to find Christ on every page of scriptures, he would interpret the Bible allegorically. His most famous work was the book he wrote called First Principles. The most important piece of information about Origen is that he was willing to do everything in order to please God. Chapter seven is about Athanasius. The year for Athanasius is from AD 299 - AD 373. “For several decades Athanasius was a lonely defender of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity against the Arian view.” Athanasius is recognized as the man who was not afraid to stand up for his belief, which was the doctrine of Trinity. As well as, he had great understanding of the theology on the incarnation of Jesus