Wisdom from the Ancients: 30 Forgotten Lessons from the Early Church by Bryan M. Litfin (Harvest House, 2022). Consider also Chapter 6 which reminds us that Christians have always been misfits. The early believers knew that they were strangers in a strange land. While they always sought to have a positive impact on the world around them, they also knew that their real home still awaited them. But because most Western countries have been so thoroughly Christianised – at least until recently – many believers today have forgotten that we are only visiting this planet, to cite a Larry Norman song. We have grown too comfortable here. While Christianity lasts forever, cultures do not.

Sadly far too many believers in the West today tend to think and act as if the Christian church has only been around for the past half century or so. They tend to think that what we do and what we believe as Christians has come about just in recent times, and they are basically oblivious to all that has gone before.

They really seem to not understand that the Christian church today in places like Melbourne or London or Los Angeles may or may not be anything like what the church has been over the past two millennia. And when we ignore or are unaware of the past 2000 years of church history, we will have a very skewed view of things.

A church in 2024 in New Zealand or France or America only exists because of all that has preceded it. If we want to be faithful Christians who serve the Lord to the best of our ability, we must know something about our very long history.

Being aware of the early church and the church fathers is an important part of all this. While not everything done in the first few centuries of the church is meant to be a template for us, we still have so much to learn from them. So discernment is needed.

For example, some believers today might claim that the early Christians were not involved in things like politics. Well, when you are a persecuted minority simply trying to stay alive, you have neither the time nor the ability to enter into politics or engage in great works of art or so many other things.

Learning more about the early church will help us all. Three years ago I listed a number of key volumes on early Christianity: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/01/09/early-christianity-persecution-and-lessons-for-today/

Here I want to look at just one book on this matter, one that appeared after I wrote that article. I refer to Wisdom from the Ancients: 30 Forgotten Lessons from the Early Church by Bryan M. Litfin (Harvest House, 2022). I list his two previous books on the early church in my 2021 article.

I want to simply highlight a few of his chapters. Speaking of what is and is not to be normative for all believers for all times, consider his discussion of Christian art, as well as church buildings, in Chapter 26. Again, the new believers living in a hostile environment could not spend a lot of time and effort on artistic endeavours, nor could they construct elaborate houses of worship.

As to Christian buildings, the early church met wherever they could – in homes, in shops, in forests, and so on. But by the end of the third century, these smaller casual meeting places no longer sufficed, with so many converts coming into the churches. Wealthier bishops began purchasing buildings for larger public worship gatherings.

And in Constantine’s rise to power, he helped in church-building programs. Even old pagan temples were converted into Christian churches. Most Greek and Roman towns had a royal hall (a basilica), and soon many of these were used for Christian worship. So over the centuries things certainly changed.

As to art, we think of so much great artwork today made by Christians, such as the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. But earlier on – by the late second century – Christian art was just developing in places like the catacombs. Themes such as the resurrection were commonly featured (Christians were burying their dead in the catacombs).

And I for one cannot pass over what he says about the need for believers to have a good library! As we read in Chapter 11:

Christians have always recognized the importance of books. Our faith has a longstanding relationship with words on a page. Not every religion is like this, nor every culture. When European colonists first landed in the New World, the native people had no written language. They communicated solely through speech and folklore. Even today, many cultures in Africa are characterized more by orality than literacy. Usually, when Christianity comes to such lands, it fosters the invention of a script and the dissemination of written communication. This has been true from the beginning of church history.

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