ChristianityToday: The Habits of Highly Effective Bible Readers

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The Habits of Highly Effective Bible Readers

** What we can learn from the church fathers that will enrich our own Bible study.**
A conversation with Christopher A. Hall, author of *Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers
  • In recent years, more and more evangelical Protestants have been looking at the early church fathers—that group of Christian teachers stretching from just after the apostles through approximately the first five centuries of the church—to see how they read their Bibles and did their theology.
Why should Christians today care what the church fathers—Athanasius, Irenaeus, Augustine, and others—had to say about the Bible? Shouldn’t we just interpret the Bible for our own times?
The phrase Tom Oden taught me is “The Holy Spirit has a history.” The church does not thrive in the first century, fail in the second, then revive in the sixteenth. The Spirit never deserts the church as it reads the Bible.

He is present in every century, guiding bishops and pastors of the church, particularly as they encountered readings of the Scripture that at first glance might have seemed plausible, but in light of the larger tradition—the Rule of Faith, the liturgical tradition, and so on—didn’t make sense. It is the Fathers who provided the framework to protect that apostolic tradition down through the years.

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I think the mainly protestant readership of this excellent publication are going to be in trouble if they start seriously following the advice in this article, and that we in RCIA ministry should gear up for a boom in conversions from those folks down the road.
 
puzzleannie said:
I think the mainly protestant readership of this excellent publication are going to be in trouble if they start seriously following the advice in this article, and that we in RCIA ministry should gear up for a boom in conversions from those folks down the road.
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Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

This publication was popular in my old evangelical church, but the Church fathers were not. As far as the leaders of that congregation are concerned, church history started in the 16th century.
 
I am so glad you posted this article. Unfortunately, I have met others who seem afraid to look deeper into Church history when I mention how much these early Christians meant in my conversion to Catholicism. I am still working through the writings of Augustine and I am just blown away by his understanding of the Faith.
 
Christianity Today seems to be publishing some very good articles! I posted this one on Mary a while back also…
 
That was a good article. Did anyone notice how they avoided some areas of discussion? :rolleyes:
djrakowski said:
Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

This publication was popular in my old evangelical church, but the Church fathers were not. As far as the leaders of that congregation are concerned, church history started in the 16th century.
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Then why do they read the Bible? It (in its entirety) predates the 16th centuries by…Well, more than 16 centuries. 😃
 
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