Refresh Your Christian Memory

Hebrews 12 tells us:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.

I just got a book in the mail that put me in mind of this passage because it's a series of biographical vignettes of Christian thinkers who have shaped the church and history, The History of Christian Thought by Jonathan Hill.  We are the benefactors of those in the faith who've contributed to our understanding of Christianity, yet we know little if anything about them.  "A society [or church] with no grasp of its history is like a person without a memory."  These are people whose examples and lives can inspire and instruct us.

Here's just the first paragraph about Justin Martyr who lived in the second century:

The life and work of Justin Martyr, the first true church father, heralds a new and immensely fruitful departure for Christian thought.  Virtually singlehandedly he kick-started the Christian dialogue with rival philosophies and set the church on the road to an intellectually coherent account of its faith.

Here's a Christian brother 1900 years removed from us who shaped the faith handed down to us.  Ultimately he paid with his life to defend Christianity, thus receiving the title "Martyr" as his name.

The book is full of these fascinating portraits.

Comments

[Aaron Snell]

Melinda,

I just finished this book and found it very helpful as a readable overview of some of the most influential thinkers in church history (even if it did perpetuate the false story of Luther throwing an inkwell at the devil). My only quibble (other than a slight bias perceptible in the epilogue and his section on Schleiermacher) is that Hill is not always very precise or even sometimes wholly accurate in his representations, but overall he treats theologians and their theologies fairly, and you do get a good sense of the general flow of Christian thought.

[handmaid mary-leah]

Not to be too prideful here, but this just isn't an issue for the Holy Orthodox Church, owing to the glorious calendar that is filled with a minimum of thrwo saints a day, plus the Feasts and Fasts of the Church and Gospel + Epistle readings. St Nikolai made things so nice when he published the Prolgue of Ochrid which is a compilation of saints lives that meshes with the Chruch calendar. Of course, this is what happens when holy tradition is kept and not thrown out the windo! Glad to see that you are starting to want it back.
Wishing my brothers and sisters in the Protestant church could know the same joy, as we ask Venerable Thomas and Eudoxia for their prayers this day!