Patristics: The Church Fathers, from Justin and Origen to Tertullian and the Cappadocians
Patristics (from the Latin patres, “fathers”) is the name given to the thought of the early Christian writers, the Fathers of the Church, who between the second century and the early Middle Ages set out to explain, defend, and deepen the Christian faith within a culture saturated with Greek philosophy. The challenge was twofold. Outwardly, they had to answer the charge that Christianity was an irrational superstition. Inwardly, they had to fix what was to be believed about God, Christ, the world, and the soul in the face of rival interpretations. In both cases the Fathers had to choose among the conceptual tools at hand (Platonism, Stoicism, Aristotelianism) the ones that seemed to serve the faith, and to decide what to do with those that did not. ...