The Patient Ferment of the Early Church Quotes

“In between the two were the writers of the Apostolic Tradition, who forbade a catechumen or baptized believer from entering the legions, but permitted him, if he were attracted to the faith while in the legions, to stay there on one condition: “Let him not kill.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“the church’s growth; it is life in “the way of Christ,” distinctive and hopeful. Christians, as Cyprian knew well, were growing in numbers because they were distinct from the “unjust”—living patiently in relation to their neighbors and enemies, doing good to them, and waiting for them to come to faith.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Christians do what they can to share their faith and to bring people through baptism into the life of God’s people. But Christians are not impatient. They entrust all things, including their own lives and the salvation of all people, to the God who patiently is making all things new.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“In his peroration Cyprian shows his stature as a rhetorician: “It is this patience which strongly fortifies the foundations of our faith. It is this patience which sublimely promotes the growth of hope. It directs our action, so that we can keep to the way of Christ while we make progress because of His forbearance. It ensures our perseverance as sons of God while we imitate the patience of the Father.”94”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“As Cyprian puts it near the start of his treatise, “We know virtues by their practice rather than through boasting of them.”71 If patience is not good in the lived experience of humans, it isn’t worth talking about.72”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“So in 256 Cyprian wrote a treatise of encouragement for his people. “Beloved brethren,” he wrote, “[we] are philosophers not in words but in deeds; we exhibit our wisdom not by our dress, but by truth; we know virtues by their practice rather than through boasting of them; we do not speak great things but we live them.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Given their changed context it was also a challenge, one imagines, to keep their biblical exegesis sound and their theological thinking straight. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once observed, “It is wonderful what a simple White House invitation will do to dull the critical faculties.” 156”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“So, in our imaginative scenario, Constantine the Christian decided to adopt a policy of mission true to the early Christians’ tradition of patience: Regarding paganism: Constantine would abolish state subsidies for pagan temples and sacrifice. But he would not abolish sacrifice (let the aristocrats pay for it if they want to) or plunder the temples. The many forms of paganism would remain legal. Regarding Christianity: Constantine would abolish all legal impediments to Christianity, putting the Christians on the same grounds as all religions. The Christians could meet, worship, proselytize, and own property. Christianity was growing, and Constantine would not want to interfere with this patient process, so he would not grant imperial subsidies to Christians or confer privileges on their leaders. He would sense that Christianity’s growth is the work of God, and he would intuit that governmental instrumentality could mess this up. Regarding “heretical” Christians: Constantine would refuse to intervene against the rivals of the orthodox Catholic church that he favors. If the Novatians, Valentinians, Cataphrygians, and others were wrong, Constantine would be confident that their influence would recede.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Origen was most articulate about this struggle. “For you who are redeemed by Christ,” he challenged believers in Caesarea, “a physical sword has been removed from your hands.” But this did not mean they were powerless. “In its place the ‘sword of the Spirit’ has been given and you must seize it.” 131 Christians fight by means of “prayers and fasts, justice and piety, gentleness, chastity and all the virtues of self control.” And the result? “One saint who prays is much more powerful than countless sinners who wage war.” 132 So pray and live faithfully, Origen urged the Caesarean believers: “If you wish to prevail, lift up your hands and your deeds.” 133 Along with faithful action, prayer was the Christians’ means of being socially responsible.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“At the heart of early Christian worship was table fellowship. Throughout the first three centuries Christian communities gathered once a week for a meal. Across time these communities moved from an early model, which Tertullian called “our small feasts,” to a later model, which Origen called a “great feast.” 3 I call these models the “evening banquet” and the “morning service.” Both kinds of meals involved remembering Jesus as the communities ate bread and drank from the cup. Both were private: they took place in buildings that were often domestic and from which outsiders could be excluded. Both were accompanied by reading, teaching, and prayers. Each had a distinctive habitus that needed to be shaped and that formed the character of the worshipers.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“We can hear the catechist intoning precept 26: “That it is of small account to be baptized and to receive the eucharist unless you profit both in deeds and works.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“As Tertullian put it, “We make the sign of the cross on our foreheads at every turn, at our going in or coming out of the house . . . and in all ordinary actions of daily life.” 120 The pagans saw Christians do this, mocked it, and could view it as suspicious activity. But Christians believed that it had the protective power of a spiritual breastplate. The apprentice Christians needed to learn how to make the sign of the cross, when to make it, when to be seen making it, and when to do it invisibly.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“In this chapter and the next, I will contend that the Christians’ habitus was formed patiently, unhurriedly, through careful catechesis as well as through the communities’ reflexive behavior, and that it was renewed in the regular worship of the Christian assemblies.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“As Tertullian put it around AD 200, “Christians are made, not born.” 4”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“This, the Christians believed, was God’s work and not theirs. So they did not engage in frantic action to save those who were not baptized; instead they entrusted the outsiders to God. The church, patiently, also entrusted itself to God, who would bring people into “the community of saints participating in truth” by the arduous means of catechesis and baptism.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“The Christians’ focus was not on “saving” people or recruiting them; it was on living faithfully—in the belief that when people’s lives are rehabituated in the way of Jesus, others will want to join them.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“By the early fifth century the problem had become so acute that some theologians updated the church’s theology of witness so that they no longer emphasized the Christians’ exemplary behavior.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“According to “Clement,” when the Christians talked about loving your enemies, their neighbors had been interested. But when they found that the Christians didn’t do what they said, they dismissed Christianity as “a myth and a delusion.” From Clement’s perspective, Christians had to embody the message if the churches were to grow.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Religion must be defended not by killing but by dying, not by violence but by patience.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Ancient writers, we have seen, more often mention exorcism than anything else as a cause of conversion to Christianity.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“They were convinced that many people were living in fear, sensing that they were in bondage to demons. “For many years Satan had bound us and held us captive,” preaches Origen. But, he says, Jesus came to set us free! And people were captive not simply to generalized demons but to specific ills that manifested demonic power. For example, people were captive to “greed, which is a more subtle worship of idols”; for such people “the word and proclamation” of Christ brings release. 81 Justin provided a list of four specific addictions by which, in his view, the demons especially enslaved people: sexual compulsions, the magic arts, the desire to increase wealth and property, and hatred and violence. 82 But when humans set out to “attack the demons,” Christ acted to free those who were enslaved. As we shall see in chapter 6, by the third century the church had well-developed processes of catechesis and baptism to liberate people for a life that is free in Christ. Exorcisms were integral to these processes.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“It appears that when women and men experienced God in affective worship, they were enabled to act with courage and passionate discipline. This was necessary for all Christians, who often lived in precarious situations they could not control. But it was especially necessary for Christian women. Women who were slaves found it excruciatingly difficult to cope with the demands of pagan masters for sexual liaisons; and women in mixed marriages with pagans were no doubt grieved and repelled when their husbands demanded to abort or expose unwanted offspring. So it would not be surprising if Christian women felt liberated—both sexually and as people who rejected killing—when their husbands became believers. 59 At last they could live the church’s teachings with the support of their husbands!”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“An unmixed marriage, Christian with Christian—this according to Tertullian enabled believers to live life in its fullness. This is not what we expect from the ascetic Tertullian, who said harsh things about marriage. 66 But here it is—Tertullian celebrating the knitting together of “two who are one,” who together serve the same Master. Nothing divides them. And together they are able to live the Christian habitus: “Unembarrassed they visit the sick and assist the needy. . . . They attend the Sacrifice without difficulty. . . . They need not be furtive about making the Sign of the Cross, nor timorous in greeting the brethren.” 67 They are a small community, a microcosm of the Christian assembly in which believers are formed into the body of Christ, and a part of the ferment of God’s work in the world.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“He especially gave voice to the words of Jesus, whose “advice and encouragement” in the Sermon on the Mount spoke to them in their desperate crisis. Drawing on these resources, he urged his people to respond to this time of danger and suffering by imitating God. “It [is] not at all remarkable if we cherish only our own brethren with a proper observance of love.” Instead, Christians should do “more than the publican or the pagan.” They should overcome evil with good and exercise “a divine-like clemency, loving even their enemies . . . and praying for the salvation of their persecutors.” For doesn’t God make the sun to rise and rain to fall upon all people, not merely on his own friends? And shouldn’t “one who professes to be a son of God imitate the example of his Father”? Cyprian’s flock were deeply schooled in Jesus’s teaching that they should love their enemies. And Cyprian extended this teaching by applying it to the provision of crisis nursing for our brothers but “not only our brothers.” Let us imagine the rhetorician Cyprian as he warmed to his point: You Christians, you are my people and flock, you know the mercy of God, and you demonstrate this by providing visits, bread, and water for other believers who are suffering. I praise God for your faithfulness. Now I am calling you to broaden your view, to exercise “a divine-like clemency” by loving your pagan neighbors. Visit them, too; encourage them; provide bread and water for them. I know that in recent months some pagans have been involved in persecuting you. Pray for them; “pray for their salvation,” and help them. You are God’s children: the descendants of a good Father should “prove the imitation of his goodness.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Tertullian presents the Christian assemblies in terms that non-Christian readers would recognize; he attempts to establish common ground. But Tertullian is also interested in differentiating the Christian assemblies from the collegia. He does this especially by looking, not at the written constitutions of the groups, but at the configuration of activities, customs, and reflexes that constitutes the groups’ habitus. The ways Christians behave, Tertullian is convinced, are their most articulate statements. As he puts it on the last page of his Apology, Christians “teach by deeds.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“I must warn you,” he says. Whatever persecutions the Christians have experienced, and whether it has been Jews or pagans or heretics who have mistreated them, Christians must not avenge themselves. Cyprian places himself among them: “We should not hasten to revenge their pain with an angry speed.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“According to Tertullian, impatient actions do not produce what they promise. Instead, impatient actions make things worse, bringing about massive misfortunes. “Now, nothing undertaken through impatience can be transacted without violence, and everything done with violence has either met with no success or has collapsed or has plunged to its own destruction.” 57 Patience, on the other hand, brings new possibilities. Patience is the source of the “practices of peace,” which bring reconciliation week by week in the Christian worship services (Matt. 5: 24).”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“Tertullian recounts the narrative of Jesus, whose labors (unlike Hercules’s) did not include killing, capturing, and stealing43 but who instead kept a low profile, who bore reproaches, who would not hear of forcing people, who ate at anyone’s table, who declined to call for massive angelic intervention, who rejected the avenging sword, who healed the servant of his enemy, and thereby “cursed for all time the works of the sword.”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“When people seek to follow Christ, according to Origen, God forms them into people who embody this patience. Christ’s followers are not in a hurry; they listen carefully when the word is read and preached, and they patiently call to account straying Christians who attend worship services irregularly. 27 Patient believers trust God. When they are subjected to penitential discipline, they “patiently bear the judgment made about them, whether they have been rightly or wrongly deposed.” 28 Their reflexes are nonviolent—when others treat them violently, they never exact an eye for an eye but respond in silence and patience, and even offer words of blessing. 29”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

“In all their activities Christians are “filled with joy uttering and doing the precepts of the Lord,” teaching their children never to lose hold of God’s commandments and hope. 18 Christians have God’s laws inscribed on their hearts: “You shall not kill . . . you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and “to him that smites you on the one cheek, offer also the other. . . . You [must] patiently endure [hypomenein] the severity of the way of salvation.” 19 At times this approach may lead to martyrdom; if it does so, the martyrs will confirm the truth of their words by their deeds, demonstrate patience to their executioners, and express love to the Lord. 20”
― Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire