Theology in the Raw - Understanding the Early Church Fathers and Why It Matters: Dr. Shawn Wilhite

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Dr. Shawn Wilhite is an Associate Professor of New Testament at California Baptist University. He has two earned Ph.D.s: one from Durham University (Theology and Religion), where he wrote his dissertation on Cyril of Alexandria and Scriptural Exegesis, and another from Southern Seminary (New Testament), where he wrote his dissertation on The Didache. Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology, Rob. My guest today is Dr. Sean Willite, who is an associate professor of New Testament at California Baptist University. He holds two PhDs, one from Durham University in the UK, where he did his work on Cyril of Alexandria and Scripture, like to Jesus. And he also has a PhD from a Southern Seminary, where he wrote his dissertation on the two ways tradition and the Didicate. This episode is all about the early church father. and patristics in the first 400 years post-Christianity. And Sean, he's the man. He's, this guy's done so much research on this area. So I was so excited to learn a ton from him about the early church. So please welcome to the show for the first time. The one or only Dr. Sean will I.

Sean, it's great to have you on the, in the raw. I'm really excited about this conversation. So I was just reading to your bio. Yeah. Greatful. Do you have two earned PhDs? I do have two PhDs. That's insane. Don't do it. I don't. I don't recommend it. But yes. So one from Southern Severnary, then one from Durham. Which one came first? Southern came first and did my work on the dedicate at Southern. And then ended up landing a job, gratefully, several, several years ago. And the opportunity. kind of gave rise to studying with Lewis Ayers. And I, it's just, I couldn't pass that up. And so I was able to study with Lewis at, at Durham for round two. But ultimately, like at the end of the day, it was meant to, like, try to round out my abilities in early church scholarship.

Okay. Early, early Christianity, New Testament stuff at Southern, fourth, fifth century stuff with Lewis and time at Durham, tried to round my my my abilities out in the in the field it's really big and it's really hard but that so i so i did a linger on this for just a second because people might not understand i mean you have people that have like lots of maybe honorary doctorates a deed lit or maybe they have a demon and and sometimes they do a demon and then a phdd even that's pretty rare but to earn phds is extremely rare what was the motive okay so you had this opportunity it was

the opportunity. But that's a big commitment for something you don't technically need, although the Durham PhD does give you. I mean, that is, you know, it's more widely. It's more widely known. Known. Yeah. Or maybe more reputable in the broader academic world. Yes. Yes. The honestly, the motivation behind it, like my family was supportive. I know that people struggle to write and research. It is just, it's fun for me. Like it's not. It's not. It's, It's not a chore. Allison, my wife, she gave me, like, one big stipulation. She's like, we don't want to feel it.

And so made that promise up front. She's like, we don't want to feel it. And I even asked her, like, at the end of it, like, did you feel it? And she's like, we didn't feel it once, which tells me, like, we did it okay and that, like, we balanced the household responsibilities and whatnot. But honestly, the motivation was, I can't master this field. It's so big. And not to say that New Testament's masterable.

Don't hear me say that. But it's like, you can read. I know, I know. But you can read Matthew to Revelation on a regular basis in terms of, and I'm thinking in terms of primary sources, not in terms of mastering scholarship. Sure. But like, I cannot read. everything in the early church.

It's like, it's just not going to happen. And what is the best way for me to just dive in as deep as I can, sharpen my research abilities, sharpen my language abilities? I'm involved with NAPS. It's the North American Petristic Society. I learn so much there. It's such a rich society. It's broad.

Methodologies are broad. and it's just like I just want to sit eating popcorn and listen to everybody's paper just so I can sit and learn and soak in and so when the opportunity arose to study with Lewis like that I could not pass that up that was too good to pass up and it was a gosh what's the phrase

go big go big or go home I don't remember I don't know what we were talking about before but it was like if I didn't get in with Lewis we weren't going to do this but if I got in with Lewis we're going to do it I I I'm going to tell my wife about this, because I would love, I miss it so much. I miss the PhD world so much. And I'm the exact same way.

I could just research all day long. And I love the environment, the academic environment. And, yeah. It's life-giving to me. It is. Yeah. How did you first get interested in petristics, early church violence? Yeah.

Yeah, goodness, I wrote a master's thesis on historical criticism, which I don't want to do. I never should have done. However, I misread the German higher critics when I was reading 18th century discussions of what they would refer to as, quote, the early church. I misunderstood it. I literally thought like it's the early church second through whatever century when what they meant was the charismatic kind of form communities behind like the critical communities behind these sources.

But I didn't know that at the time I was just so naive. And what it ended up making me do was I just jumped into early church writings. It like who like what is the apostolic fathers? Like, I had no concept of that as I was writing. And so it wasn't until after I finished that, you know, I'm reading, I don't know, several primary sources of from the early church. Didicate being among the first, dedicate being first century, maybe second century literature. But it, but it honestly was by an accident, by misunderstanding some of the research that I was. And I'm, yeah, so.

Wait, did it care? You said it most likely first. I thought it was already, I thought it was second century. And by the way, I'm going to sound very naive. I have a very rudimentary understanding of the search father. So I just thought it was second century. Is it actually as early as a late first century? Is that?

So in the work that I've done, I've tried to date it in terms of a window. Like, I don't know if we can date it securely. Some will actually put it before Matthew. I don't necessarily affirm that hypothesis, like in terms of dating. So if Matthew's a moderate date of 70 to 80, maybe a little bit before, maybe a little bit after, some will put the Didicate written before then. I'm going to put it after Matthew. But, yeah, some will go all the way up to the second century.

Here's the hard part. We only have one manuscript of the Didi-A. And it's an 11th century manuscript. So you're trying to. to reconstruct a first, second century world from an 11th century manuscript. And that's like, that's really hard to do because, like, it, it could have evolved. It could, it probably wasn't stagnant. The communities used it, um, could have been using it in different ways.

I'm, I just got done reviewing a, um, reviewing a work. I don't want to reveal too much because this, this will come out in the next year or two, not, not my work, but I was the reviewer of it. it. But this person argues for like maybe a third century evolution, a fourth century evolution of some of the things in the Didicate. And so, yeah, it's a hard work to navigate, one, because biblical studies have gotten a hold of it and trying to do the source criticism, reduction, criticism that's applied to the text, which then uncovers just evolution of the text. And that that in and of itself is difficult to navigate in scholarship, just to be fair. Yeah.

For somebody who doesn't even know what Didicate is, like what we're even talking about. Tell us what it is. Oh, yeah. Dedicate 101. Yeah. It's essentially the Greek term for the teaching. And so Didicate is going to be the title of the work. it's part of a collection of early Christian books that are known as the Apostolic Fathers.

This collection, it's not like a canon. It's not like all of these books traveled along. But actually, I think it was 17th century. I would need to go back and freshen up on that. But somebody put all of these in a collection and then gave it the title, Apostolic Fathers. But the notion of fathers is going to be really helpful because it looks to the apostles as, quote, unquote, their fathers. So it should tell you, like, it's first generation removed from the New Testament writers. And so, like, for example, Clement of Rome, who wrote First Clement, he most likely is in his bishop,

brick around 90 AD, which would be contemporaneous with the composition of revelation at some level. Like, so it's, it's parallel, it's the Christian world parallel to what we now know as canonical scripture. And they did. So what are some other apostolic father? Yeah, like what else is in this collection? Yeah, yeah.

So first climb up, I'm thinking polycarp, Ignatius, they're pretty. Ignatius is in there. Yeah. So Ignatius of Antioch, you have the Didicate, you have the Shepherd of Hermas, which is a long book, and it's really hard to understand. It's like this odd apocalyptic vision. Hermas, there's a person talking to an angel. It's really hard to navigate. Diagnitas is going to be there. So Diagnetus is such a beautiful, beautiful book. Like with, Christian Commitments reading it. It's a really beautiful book because it's the only work in the Apostolic Fathers that's written to a non-Christian confessing person. So it's actually trying to convince them that the Christian faith is good and right. And one of the things that I really appreciate about it is that it uses the analogy, for example, it uses the analogy of a human and a human soul for the good of Christian experience within the world. So, like, as the soul is good for the human, so is the Christian good for the world. But, like, it's high on virtue. Like, it's, it's trying to paint a quiet life that you obey its law, the law of the land. You pray for the emperor. We have particular ethics. There's one phrase, and then I'll stop after this,

But there's a phrase in there that says, we share our tables, but we don't share our wives. So, like, in other words, we will share a meal table, but, like, in order to distinguish ourselves from the Roman era or the Roman Empire, we actually don't share our spouses, right? And so, like, it's like early Christian ethics kind of engaging and trying to wrestle with what it means to be Christian in the Roman order. There's a famous quote from that book. I've quoted it in a couple of books I've written because it has a really interesting political theology. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, navigating the Christian identity in the face of the Roman Empire. Yes. Oh, yeah. It's very interesting. Who wrote the Didicate? Do we know authorship? Was it a group of people? No, no.

And what scholars have done is referred to the author as, quote, the didachist. like it's just like this loose name that's attributed to this person or persons. Like it's so like on all honesty, like it just in my mind there's a question mark about like how many hands actually touched this manuscript and added to it and and massaged it, so to speak, which would have been not absolutely abnormal in the ancient world. And you can maybe see different hands. But again, it's like it's speculative at that point. But for the most part, as scholars refer to the author, it's the Didikist. Yeah. Leave up the scholars to create a name that's just not catchy at all.

The Didikist. Not at all. Oh, not at all. How influential was to Didiqa? And at that time, Christianity had kind of spread into different pockets, right? like at Eastern Christianity, Christianity, Palestine, Asia Minor, North Africa and stuff,

was it circulated among different communities or do we know or? Goodness, yes. So the general position is that it's up in Antioch, Syria. So like right north of Israel, up just south of Asia, the Asia Minor era area, There's an interesting tradition in Eusebius of Cessaria. So Eusebius is kind of like the first church historian.

He's early 4th century, and he writes a church history that begins with the apostles and extends it all the way up to his time. So he covers about three centuries of events, and he actually mentions the didicate in relation to the shape of, like the shape of literature at the time that Christians can read. And he offers kind of a fourfold rubric, literature that's inspired, literature that I think is inspired, but there's a question mark around it. Like Revelation was put in that category for a while. And then category three was it's not inspired, but it's useful.

And then there's going to be a fourth category of what's called spurious. This is the type of literature that we ought not to be using. And Eusebius mentions the Didicate in Category 3. So in other words, alongside of canonical material, the Didicate ought to be read for Christian use. There's a testimony in Athanasius. Athanasius is another 4th century figure somewhat contemporaneous to Eusebius. He actually offers that the Didicate should be among the first books given to new Christians. So like here's like a quick modern example.

I'm sure at your spiritual community, when you have new members or new Christians, like the leadership of the church are like, read the gospel of John. or like here's like a here's like the intro level book which i wouldn't start with john john john is i don't know that mark or something i don't know john totally fine the greeks easy but it's complex oh man that was a guess like i don't i no but that's what people do here go read john i'm like john right i don't understand john no not at all oh but but athenacious would have done something similar, but he actually says, here's the Didicate. And so at some level, the Didicate could have been used for early Christian converts. What is the ethical life, the Christian way of life? What are we supposed to do with baptism? What are we supposed to do

with the Eucharist or the Lord's Prayer? And what are we supposed to do with just general prayers of the church? Kind of those are some basic contents in the Didicate. And so it's a, It's somewhat of a, it can be used by some as an instructional manual for new converts. Is that what, yeah, I was going to ask, what was the purpose or function of it? Is that the best guess? Is that this was or? Yeah. And as long as I can say that, like with a question mark by it, like, again, it's, and I hate, I hate saying that.

But, but again, it's like, I think that's what it was used for, is to help Christian converts. Yeah, Christian converts know what to do as they enter into the Christian community. Okay, okay. Yeah, that's my best guess. I've been doing a lot of recent work in first century, like ecclesiology, the first century house church structure. And so I've, I, you know, read bits and pieces of the dedicate. I might have read through it at one time just because I felt like I needed to. But so not familiar.

It's not very long. It's not hard to read through. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, for the audience, you wrote an academic commentary on Didicate, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. So you have combed through the Didicate in great detail. Yes. The ecclesiology in the Didicate does feel a bit more advanced for the first century in less. So I guess it depends where you date the pastoral or First Timothy in particular, because that, has just kind of highly developed,

schematized, structural leadership, and the Didicate seems to reflect that. So I could see people, if they date First Timothy to the second century, they would say, well, the Didicate is probably around that time.

But if First Timothy is Pauline and written in, you know, early 60s, first century, then I could see with the Didicate. Because it's still, it seems a little bit more highly advanced

or developed than First Timothy. Would that be correct? I mean, Yeah, I don't know if I made those connections, but yes, because we're going to have, we have, I think, five offices in the Didicate, because we still have the traveling teacher, we still have the traveling apostles that will kind of come in and out of the cities, or even the region. It's less developed, I think, than Ignatius of Antioch, which would be maybe a decade or two after the Didicate, where like Ignatius is like, like a clear three-fold structure. There's the bishop, there's the group of elders. Then we have the deacons, and you can't have a church without a bishop.

Right. So this language is there in the second century. But the didicate might be a bit under that, or like before that, less developed than Ignatius. I haven't asked the question in a while on what's its relation to the pastoral's and the development of ecclesiology there. My gut would be, it's regional, like, because I think, and this is, again, I think the early community of the Didicate is going to be out of the city. So out of an established city because you have running water. If there's no running water, we need to go find stagnant water. So, like, this commodity is hard to come by, it feels like.

And so traveling of apostles and profits still come in and out of the community. However, the bishops and deacons, the way that the community would establish them, I think it's Dida K-15, says by raising of your hand. So, like, you actually elected them through hand-raising. Yeah, so it's still community, not necessarily succession of a bishop. Yeah, so that's my quick hot take in. It sounds very Baptist. Like it's very, right? It totally does.

It totally does. It totally does. So even though there's like a hierarchy of leadership sort of, yeah, still congregational, the congregation plays a significant role. Yeah, still has a role in it. Yeah, and even the congregation plays a role in the, so like chapter 7 talks about baptism, which is so interesting. Like if there's living water or running water, that's our preference.

If there's no running water, then we use stagnant. water. If there's no stagnant water, we can pour three times over the head in the Trinitarian name. And then right after that, it talks about how the whole community is encouraged to fast, they watch the baptism, and then they break the fast together. So it's very community involved. There's no bishop doing the baptism, which I find very interesting. Um, and so, who does the baptism? Could anybody? It doesn't, it doesn't identify, right?

So it's, it's kind of just left open. Um, it refers to them as the one who baptizes. Um, and so it's the baptizer. Um, and so it's not necessarily tied to the office of bishop at this point, which, like, if, if we're going to make the comparison to the pastoral's in, in canon, um, yeah, I don't know. I, I, I would need to sit on that. So there's, it's, it's fuzzy in my mind.

to admit. Okay, so Didiquay, the Didiquay, am I right that it actually almost made it into the canon? Like some early writers did view it as canonical? Maybe not canonical, but like at the end of, oh, goodness, I think it's Codex Sinaiticus. Goodness, some text critic is going to email you and be like, what in the world? And so I'm, I think it's that codex. But so at the end of Revelation, at the end of Revelation, you have a couple

apostolic fathers that were amended to the actual codex. Goodness. John Mead and Edmund, gosh, is it, Ed Gallagher? I think it's Ed Gallagher. Did a, wrote a book with OUP on the, the canon of the New Testament. They essentially try to make this argument that there's a difference between like what makes the codex and what is quantified as scripture. And so just because it makes the book doesn't necessarily make it scripture. And so that distinction has been helpful to understand why is then a recognizable, useful book that is not necessarily inspired part of this codex. So I don't know if I would use the language of canon but it is like it is part of yeah it comes at the end of revelation like if this if this manuscript was given to the church they would have read it probably read it in the service wow wow i know

shepherd shepherd of her you pronounced it hermos hermes yeah that's fine okay yeah yeah uh i think that was considered canonical or or maybe i don't know did they make a distinction between scripture and canon or no are those two yeah and but that's That's Gallagher's and Meade's argument. There's this distinction, but it's hard to distinguish how that process was navigated. I forget their book, but it's through OUP not too long ago. Would you recommend the average Christian read the dedicate? Oh, yeah.

It's beautiful. I mean, you're kind of biased, but I'm totally biased. What would be the benefit? Like, why should someone pick up the dedicate? It's beautiful. It's, so like, chapter one is, like, like rehearsing Matthew 5. Jesus's teachings on the sermon on the Mount. And it opens up saying, this is the way of life. And what is the way of life? It's the sayings of Jesus. Like that's a

beautiful statement. Like what a what a life to be marked by. Did a K chapter two, it's like somebody took the Ten Commandments and then like double clicked on all of them and started to expand them. So, so, like, what does it mean not to, not to murder? Well, the Dida actually provides like four to five examples of what that means, but within a, like a framework of trying to be a Christian, in Christian confessing community, the, the language of a way of life, way of death, I, I'm, I'm drawn to that type of language. I find it, I find it beautiful. in the sense of what is the ethic that gives life and not just like everlasting life. I'm talking about like life in the soul, life.

And it's it's the teachings of Jesus. What is the, what's the way that actually just destroys the inner life, the way of death? Well, it's several vicious activities. It's several vices. And so like you get a, you get a glimpse on what is, what are, Christian ethics, even at a very minimal level and maybe not developed, not necessarily developed. So that's number one, beautiful.

And then, like, there's prayers. So, like, the Lord's prayer appears verbatim in chapter eight of the didicate. And at the end of it, it says, pray this three times a day. And, like, I don't know how a Christian would be able to look at that and be like, yeah, we probably shouldn't pray that more than once a day. Like, just imagine the spiritual, I don't know, the spiritual care that that could, would undertake our souls to just actually pray the words of Jesus. And yeah, so that would be kind of just two quick examples.

That's funny. You had that, and I know you've done work on this, like the two ways theology, the way of death, the way of life. And you see it already, right, in Proverbs, but in the Coomron Scroll. The Dead Sea Scrolls, they had a lot of this two-ways kind of way of thinking, way of life, way of death. You see it Matthew, and even like Romans 7 to 8, you have kind of the law that leads to death and the spirit that leads to life. So this is kind of a pervasive Judeo-Christian theme. Did you ever engage the two-ways material?

Yeah. Yeah. And I did a lot of work in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so there's a scroll called the Community Rural. rule it's almost like a it's almost like the did okay for the the kumran community that's right that's right um it's very very from the little i know about the didaq and the much more i know about the community rule very very similar very similar oh yeah community role is one qs right one qs yes oh yes yeah um and so what's interesting about the one that you mentioned is like

it involves angels and cosmology so like the the the angels influence the ways of life or the angels influence the ways of death. Yeah, that's such an interesting scroll. Is there anything in the Didiquet that would be considered unorthodox or like, oh, that's why this isn't in the canon, like a really clear conflict with something that's something in the Bible. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure we could find something.

It depends on your interpretation, too, because somebody would. might say, well, this is wrong. It's like, well, yeah, but that's your theological tradition, not necessarily the New Testament. Yeah, nothing comes off of mind right now, but I don't want that to be interpreted as if, like, nothing is. It just nothing's coming to mind right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you also, it is, so you did a ton of work in the DidaK, is the next church father that you did the most work in, is Cyril of Alexandria? Would that be number? Cyril of Alexandria. That would be number two.

So he's not, I mean, people probably know, you know, Ironaeus, Athanasius, maybe even Polycarp, but of course, Augustine, most people might not know about Cyril. Tell us about, I don't even know, I think third, fourth century, four century, is that? Or born, late, late fourth century dies in the mid fifth century. Okay. So who is Cyril and why? why pray tell would you spend your PhD research at this guy? Goodness, why him?

Oh, my goodness, that's so good. Yeah, and so let's put some quick anchors down, right? You have Council of Nicaea, 325, you then have the Council of Constantinople, 381. You have early, Augustine's early career is around that time in the 380s. You have Gregory of Nanzianzen, you have Gregory of Nisa, Basil of Cessaria, excuse me, all at the end of the fourth century, 380s, right? 380s. And this is around the time that Cyril, at least the earlier traditions of his childhood, begin to emerge.

It's kind of neat to see this. He's down in Alexandria. So he's part of the, what some would call this Alexandrian tradition, where you have origin, Athanasius, didomis, the blind, and several others. Cyril then kind of pops up into the scene as a bishop at the first decade in the 5th century. So 410. That's a Saccharome, right? Yeah, like we're right around, we're right around that time. And his entrance into the bishopric, it's couched in controversy.

So he's also known, or at least associated with the murder of Hypatia, which would be a Greek philosopher down in Egypt. And she was quite influential. Goodness, there's a movie about this. A female Greek philosopher. Yeah. Hypatia is her name. Yeah. And so, goodness, I'm blinking on the movie. I don't like how they depict Cyril. They depict him as an anti-intellectual. I don't think he's an anti-intellectual. But nonetheless, Cyril is probably most known for his Christology or his Christological controversies, what's known as the Nestorian controversy, the Council of Ephesus at 431. And it's essentially his, is Christology that that is an influence to there's several influences but he is one of those good the positive influences to the Council of Calcedon in 451 and so he's he's been recognized by the Western Church as the doctor of the incarnation and and so he's he's quite recognized and

valued within the realm of early development of Christology. Oh, wait, so he wasn't Nestorian. He was refuting. He was refuting Nestorius. But him with Nestorius is what is known as the Nestorian controversy. He is the main corrector. If you're viewing it from Cyril's side, he's the main corrector trying to correct Nestorius. And Nestorius, Todd, I still remember this in seminary.

Is it God and Abod? Oh, yes, that is so good. That's Apollinaris. Yeah, so God, right, right. Yeah, so the Apollinarian controversy is, that's such a good expression, God and Abod. Where it's like his flesh is separate from his deity or something like that. Yeah. So Nestorius would offer, according to Cyril's understanding of it, a two-sun Christology.

So you have the sun eternal and then the sun incarnate, and they're two different. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Two different persons? Two different persons, yeah. Really? It's a very fascinating controversy. Goodness, I have a friend or a friend in the field, right? It's kind of a loose colleague.

He just did his work at Notre Dame. He looks at it from the opposite side and actually criticizes Cyril for not necessarily understanding Nestorius as stuff. So he's a Nestorian specialist. It's just very fascinating to talk with him about this. What's what's his connection with the murder of this female philosopher? The murder of hypatia, yes. Hypatia. And so it's possibly one of the reasons.

Let me back up real quick. There's like free access to several translations of the fathers, but they're like dated translations from the 1850 onward. It's like reading the King James version. It's all free. However, these translators left out Cyril's material. They didn't translate a thing of cereal. So in this extensive work of what's called the NPNF, the Nicene, oh my goodness, I referred to them as the NPNF. I'm blanking on that right now.

It's fine. But completely left out. And one of the reasons why that some have suggested is because of his tie to the murder of hypatia, As he enters into the bishopric, it was involved or surrounded by a couple of riots down in Alexandria as the Socrates is one of the historians and Sossaman, one of the other historians of this period, tried to articulate two to three years into his bishopric. there are followers of Cyril that end up coming to her doorstep and and and murdering her. And so, why? I don't remember why. I don't remember why.

But the new bishop is in town. The new dogma is coming along with with the bishop. It's a silencing of other competing philosophies. Like there's religion, politics is just so messy. That is a messy topic for me. antiquity. Was Hypatia a Christian or secular? No, no, no.

Yeah, secular philosopher that's coming from a Christian vantage point. But yeah, like she's, she's non-Christian and therefore potential threat to the Christian theology. Matt Crawford, probably the leading serial scholar, maybe second. There's a French scholar that could be leading as well. But these two in particular. So Matt Crawford has just written a paper that's trying to clear up a little bit of this and actually looks at Cyril's early writings as an anti-violence, like seeing the anti-violent themes in Cyril, which would actually undo several of the kind of the caricatures that have been offered for or offered of Cyril in terms of his association with the murder. He's not necessarily known as the direct assailant, but he's at least involved in the posse. That's sort of how the tail goes.

What attracted you to Cyril then? Of all the early church fathers to do a PhD on, why him? To be honest with you, is Matt. Matt Crawford's work, Trinitarian, gosh, what was it? A trinitarian theology of scripture in Cyril. And I wanted to see what is the generation. after all of these fourth-century controversies, I just wanted to read, like, give me a good theologian.

There's a little bit of a resurgence of Cyril literature. So, like, as I mentioned a moment ago, his literature is not translated. So there's several, no. So in the NPNF, right, that free translation. Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so several then have been translating it. So, like, there's a little bit of movement with Cyril, and I thought, I would love to just kind of peek my head.

into this a bit more and then ended up looking at his dialogues on the Trinity. And that had never been translated before. And I did a loose translation of it, did my thesis on that work. It's one of his early, probably his second book on the Trinity. And it was just so fascinating, fascinating to read, trying to articulate what is a pro-nicine, maybe third, second generation removed from those controversies, and how is it being articulated in the early 5th century? Did he write in Greek or Latin? Greek. Yeah, I wrote in Greek.

Yeah, I wrote in Greek. And it is so hard. Really? No, it's so hard. It's probably the hard. Is it like classical, like, philo kind of Greek? It's not like coin A or. No, because it's also part of like the quote unquote revival of like trying to, you know,

trying to move Coyne into maybe a more intellectual world. He's already an intellectual himself. We're at the tail end of goodness, yeah, you even mentioned it, the fall of Rome and Fortin. Right. So this is like around the world that we're in. And it's just really hard Greek. It's a pain. Give us a window into Christianity.

in early 5th century Alexandria? Like is it, is the overwhelming majority Christians? Is it not? Are they, are they entangled with imperial theology to whether Christianity is kind of muffled? It's hard to separate the role of the bishops apart from the emperor. Like, because there's, this is such a political position.

There's a, uh, there's a, uh, A book, Oxford, what is it, Oxford, Early Christian Studies, just came out with the book in the past couple years on Cyril, but looking at his political involvements. And one of the arguments that it makes is in the Council of Ephesus, he essentially made the argument that the one with the money, that theology won. And so, yeah, it's like it put a, it put a different spin on Cyril than I've had. in a while. And it was, it was really helpful to read because it uncovered how much money that Cyril took out of the treasury to actually pay those in charge at this council to have his voice heard. And so, like, there's political involvement, political maneuvering. Like, the early church is not, like, roses and flowers. No, it is so messy. And it's, and like, I like, I like

the word that you used and tangled. And that's like, that's a good image. So like, for example, Theodosius is the emperor around 381 Council of Constantinople. And Theodosius has Trinitarian theology that he wants to put forward. And so, like, imagine the most powerful person in the empire and wielding his office with religion at the forefront. Like it's it's it's coercive at some level. It's going to be intimidating at some level. Yeah, I'll stop there, only to say it's so no, no, okay, this opens up a whole new. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. I mean, that that has been my very vague general impression is post-constantine. You have a lot more of this entanglement between political leaders, religious leaders, to kind of then mesh together, which leads to kind of

corruption, misuse of power. You didn't, is that, that's probably oversimplified, but is that, I mean, prior to Constantine, prior to the edict of Milan, what, 313, where Christianity no longer is being persecuted. Prior to that, did you have any of that kind of like wheeling into power and money? I mean, no, no, no, no. because the appeals to the emperor, so like apologetics. Modern apologetics is not like ancient apologetics. Ancient apologetics is you appealing to the emperor and offering goods to society. So like one of the arguments that Theophilus says, he's a second century apologist in kind of the frame that you're in the temporal range that you're offering, he essentially states like, it's good for Christians to be living.

Why? We follow laws and we pray for you. Like, let us exist within the Roman sphere. After Constantine, Christianity, like, takes a front row seat. It's actually seated alongside the emperor at many levels. This notion of, like, Christianity and empire, that theme, I would love to see more work in that area. Not to say that work hasn't been done. I'm vague in that area, but I just like, I want to pursue that, honestly, because of, like, we're in a hot, like, our current environment. It's just the mixing of politics and religion. It's just, it was then as well.

So I have Anabaptist sympathies in my political theology. And so we, if I could say we, I'm sort of an adopted stepchild from the Mennonite Church. I've never stepped foot inside of Mennonite Church. But because of my political theology, they're like, come all the way. But so I can say we, I'll say we look to kind of Constantine, the post-Constantine church is kind of like, here's where all the corruption kind of started. Not that there wasn't corruption before, but what were there reformation? movements early on protesting that were there people who spoke out against the kind of blending of political power and religious leadership or was it pretty pervasive?

Yeah, like I'll provide two quick examples. You have Jerome and Augustine who are roughly around the same era and both of them witnessed the fall of Rome. What did Jerome do? Jerome wept because with the fall of Rome is going to have impending the fall of Christianity. So like it was so tied together where with Augustine, you essentially have the Charles Dickens a tale of two cities, right? You have your heavenly city, you have your earthly city. The earthly city just fell, but with the falling of the earthly city doesn't affect the falling of the heavenly city. So, like, that type of political theologies is split, right? Those are at least two examples. I'm even thinking before Constantine, I think it's before Constantine, you actually

have several, like, anti-violent tendencies within Christian ethics. So, like, Christians, I'm thinking of Tertolian in particular, who may be like an ethical rigorous at some level. Like, they can't go to the theater. They also can't join the army, right? So being part of like the civil sword, so to speak, Christians can't be involved in that. And so you have several, like, anti-violent, I think, motifs that then come up in these in this environment that's i so the little i've researched early church fathers was specifically on the pre-constantine view of violence and killing

oh fantastic i didn't know that no no it's fine is so i wrote a book on nonviolence and the my last chapter is on the early church oh and i like i was relying on scholars who have done sure uh george callances that's that was going to be the name that i was going to bring out yeah Yep. It's been over 10 years. Crater, there's like two or three scholars who have done extensive work. So I basically just followed their work and looked up sources and, you know, did some more, a lot, you know, a bit of reading and stuff. And from what I found, it was one of the few things that the early, the pre-Constantine church leaders agreed upon.

Oh, okay. was, you know, they're still working through their Trinidad and stuff. There's Christology, all this stuff. They can't agree on what books belong in the Bible quite yet, you know. Right. But the one thing they were, from what I could see is they were all consistently opposed to violence, in particular killing under any circumstances. Obviously, post-Constantine, that starts to get, you know, Bessie and Augustine wrestles with that. Yep.

Oh, yeah. But. What, do you remember what figure you engage the most? like I would I would love to just learn and and hear your experience in that here give me a yeah please please please yeah can I see the cover of it it'll it'll stretch my memory oh yeah this is the yes yes oh yep yep yep this the old cover that's great I recognize that cover that's fantastic okay yeah the early church in a violent world so um let me just see because there was a few and there was a few in particular that I remember reading I mean origin

talks about it yeah Clement for sure there was another guy, let's see, Tertolian, Cyprian, Athenagoras. Oh, yeah, Athenagoras. Yep, so he's going to be a second century apologist. Lactantius. Lactantius. That's so good. He's a Latin, he's a Latin theologian right around the time of Tertolian.

Arnobius of Sissa, Sica. I don't know. That's going to be. That's so good. Look at this. Okay, you're going to love this. The widely red treat is called the Didi-Kae. dated 80 to 120.

I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. In Syria begins with a series of moral instructions, the newcomers in the faith. Yes. And the emphasis is clearly on Jesus's sermon on the mouth. Look, there we go. You're totally, you're good. I knew more than I thought I did.

Look at that. Justin Martyr talks about it. Yeah, Tertolian. Lactantius was a big one, though. I remember reading his stuff. You know, and the question is, are the opposing military involvement because of its pagan idolatry or is it the morality of killing? And I said it's a combination of both. It's not simply of, oh, this is idolatrous.

If it wasn't idolatrous, it would be awesome. Go serving the military and kill people and stuff. It was like, no, it was both on because of the idolatry. It's hard to separate. It was hard to separate. Yeah. Yeah. It was probably my favorite part.

research in that book because it was it was all brand new and I was like I was in like Starbucks spending hours reading origin I'm like this is so fun you know like oh you're speaking my language that's so good oh man all right okay okay so okay so dedicate to Cyril that spans a good chunk it does what are some others with within there that early church fathers writings that stand out that if you could say oh man if you have two or three you should read what would be your recommendation Yeah. Yeah.

There's that to read. Like, I'm thinking, so, like, the context that I teach in, I work with, like, ministry training, right? That's going to be, like, some of my university teaching. And so I actually tried to give Gregory the Great on pastoral rule to several people. And so that's a little bit later. He's still part of the early Christian patristic world. So Gregory the Great on pastoral rule, one that I'm. currently like in in gosh somewhat engaged in right now is didomis did not on the trinity on the spirit and so he was he was he really blind he really was blind yeah he really was blind yeah and went blind as the tradition goes I think like at five or six years old he went blind yeah and so he's an Alexandrian um but but doing a little bit of work in his his his

ideas on on the spirit has been like just really life-giving like as a as a as a as a Christian but then in terms of my scholarship it's it's been pretty pretty interesting um another classic is goodness i i can't but help myself and say augustin on the confessions oh so good yeah that one is i try to keep that one in my regular reading repertoire like every other year is i'd It's not perfect, but yeah, that one, I'm drawn to his story. He's wayward in so many ways in his spiritual life, wayward in his, like, his ethical commitments. He's like, you can just see his inner struggle.

And I read it just to be reminded like, oh, our inner life is pretty complex and so complex that, like, you can't control it. We can't put our hands around it all the way. and what Augustine does is that he uses the language of prayer to understand the inner life. And just as a person, I'm drawn to that, drawn to that type of stuff. Yeah. That's the only book of an early church father that I read cover to cover. I've only read it once.

But yeah, I was shocked. I was shocked at how contemporary felt. Yes. Because you read some of this old stuff and you're like, I just feel I'm reading English, but it's just so, it was. it was a powerful book. Yeah, this speaks my soul. He talks about Oh, Carthage as a

if I remember the phrase, a hissing cauldron of lust. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, really. And his honesty, wrestling with his sexual temptation, I mean, this guy

battled some serious lust. I mean, he really wrestled and wasn't perfect at all. Yeah. powerful book. Okay. Yeah, last question. I've enjoyed my time, Preston. This has been fantastic. I could keep you for an hour. I just, I love diving into areas that I have minimal knowledge just because I'm just so, so fascinated with it. Okay, so if you had one book to recommend, it would be confessions. If somebody had one early church book above the Didicay?

Oh, yeah, well enough to Didicate. Really? Notably. Okay. Yeah. What do you currently work on? on, oh, you said, are you working on didymus right now? Yeah. So I'm, I'm working on like four, uh, uh, fourth century trinitarian controversies. And so it's like a little bit of a precursor to Cyril. Like, what was the world that he knew? And what was like the, the controversies and developments that preceded Cyril? Um, so that's kind of, uh, absorbing a lot of my time right now. Oh, here's my question. This comes up a lot often in like critics of Christianity. Yes.

that the canon of scripture, what we call orthodoxy, who's orthodox, who's not, the Gnostics, they're bad, you know, all these other people, they're good. All of this was a big power play with people with a lot of power and money. And the reason why we call Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, is because people at the top made it that way. Right. How would you respond to that? Is there some truth to that? or goodness the regular fee day um the rule of faith would have spanned uh geography and spanned uh into several different figures and what one of the things that i'm continually drawn to uh the fathers is that

it helpfully realigns primary doctrine from secondary doctrine and and right all doctrine is important, but, like, primary doctrine we need to get right. But, like, I wonder in the modern era, if we've put too many things in the primary category, right? And so, like, we're divisive in places we don't need to be divisive on. We were emphasizing the wrong, like, another time, another place. The Trinitarian confession of the church spanned across geography and time zone. And so, like, even before the rise of, even buying into that argument a little bit, like, the rise of corruption, the rise of money, like, let's go back into the era where Christianity was on the lower end in terms of social class, this trinitarian rule of faith was the governing idea that would unify. And so we could differ on a whole lot, but we got to come in on what is the rule of faith. Confession of the Father, confession of the Son, confession of the Spirit.

So, yeah, so now Gnostics are expelled, not necessarily for these reasons over here, but primarily because of they're moving away from the Regula Fide. So, like, for example, Ironaeus offers what we now know is this notion of regular Fide. The Roman creed, or what we now probably know today as the Apostles' Creed, finds its origin in about 150, 170 AD, and it was Trinitarian in scope. Even origin of Alexandria's regular feed A, sounds a lot like Irenaeus' regular feeday. And so what it showed is that, yes, there is theological diversity in the church, but it was pretty in lockstep on Trinitarian confessors.

we confess God the Trinity as the unifying element. And so to your point, it may be overplayed. There's a little bit of truth in it, but I don't know if it rules the day. So if my, okay, so what I hear you saying? Yes, some of the fourth century nailing down orthodoxy, there might have been some powers. Oh, for sure. Money, whatever. But the core of that predates all that.

Oh, predates. This goes all the way back to. I mean, yeah, second century stuff. I mean, we could say the new decimate, but I mean, let's not, you know, yeah, yeah, like there were seeds of, well, yeah, Clement of Alexandria had a kind of a real basic Trinitarian. It wasn't as spelled out as Nicaea, right? But it was, it was pretty one, God, three persons. That's right.

And so this notion of, and that right there, and so what the fathers would use, several of them would use the language of the Fide or the regular. what is the guiding faith that we ascribe to, and it's the Trinitarian confession? That was the unifying notion. Yeah, and it predates several of the things that we've talked about in the 4th century. And I mean, Gnosticism, I mean, there's so many statements in the New Testament, and 1 John, 1 Timothy, that seems to be even focused on some kind of proto-nostic belief. I know it wasn't fully around until the 2nd century, but some of it. of these ideas, you know, are pretty platonic just in, you know, and those are already being

rejected in the New Testament. So, yeah, first John, first John is interesting, that which we have seen, that which we have touched. So like, even like if we're going to use the proto language, even like proto-docitism, like, did he really appear? No, yes, we saw him. We felt him. We touched him.

We have gazed upon him. Yeah. Well, Sean, thanks for being a guest on Theology. Where can people find your work? You get a website? No, I live so conspicuously. Twitter. I don't refer to it as X.

I don't either. It's Twitter. But like, I don't have, I'm not active on my website. Twitter is where I'm where I hang out, like 20 minutes a day. That's it. Email me. What's your handle? I think it's, is it Sean J. Wilhite is what I think it might be.

So it's my full name. And so, but Preston, this has been a delight. Just grateful for it. And, yeah, best wishes to you. Hey, podcast listeners, if you're looking for another podcast besides Theology Raw, of course, that features fascinating conversations with theologians, philosophers, and best-selling authors, then I highly, highly recommend the Signal Award-winning show No Small Endeavor. Produced by Great Feeling Studios in PRX, No Small Endeavor explores what it means to live a good life.

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