Who Knew?

Cleopatra had a special lipstick made for her, consisting of crushed ants and deep red carmine beetles.

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind

This new book by Tom Oden reaches back into the history of the early church and demonstrates how the Christianity in North Africa became the orthodoxy of today. During Lent I have been posting some of the readings from the early Church Fathers. Now it’s interesting to note how indebted we are to the African context for this clearer picture of Christ that has yielded so much fruit among us. We are talking about

Augustine
Athanasius
Clement of Alexandria
Cyprian of Carthage
Cyril of Alexandria
Desert Fathers
Didymus the Blind
Eusebius
Fulgentius of Ruspe
Lactantius
Origen
Tertullian
 

Go to www.earlyafricanchristianity.com for more info. Also go to http://ancientevangelicalfuture.blogspot.com/ for further insight.

Today is the sixteenth day of Lent and a poem by Donne

 Click here for today’s Lenten reading in the Church Fathers. Today’s reading is, once again, Justin Martyr. Many Christians today would have a deep suspicion of his high veneration of the powers of reason, and in particular his view that before Christ reason played such a high role in producing the good man in pagan cultures without knowledge of the Jewish prophets. That view, however, continues to be validated in the Roman Catholic Church and in many evangelical apologists. They would say, however, that it is not as if these men are being saved without Christ, for Christ is the Logos, Reason itself that lightens every man.

 A poem by John Donne for Lent (thank Ben Witherington)

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,

Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’ I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:

Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.