Summary of Marcellino D'Ambrosio's When the Church Was Young

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 There is no official list of Fathers of the Church. The term Father of the Church is a family term, informally coined by somebody in the early Church to refer to other people in an even earlier era of the Church. When I think about the Fathers of the Church, I think about St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–107), and his letters. In them, he writes: Do you wish to be perfect. Then be like Philip, who took his master Paul the Apostle as his pattern (to resemble), and guard Jesus as the apple of your eye. And when he who is your head and the apple of your eye sees that you have given attention to the apple, he will straightway part with you; but if you persist in keeping him with you, he will not depart from you. For this cause I have desired you to take me as an example; behold I also am a man; thou seest how greatly I am pressed upon by old age, nevertheless I do not consider it a misery, for as my master said, Thou shalt call thy old man father; for so it is. #2 The Church Fathers are those great Christian writers who passed on and clarified the teaching of the apostles from approximately the second through the eighth centuries. #3 The Church Fathers are those great Christian writers who passed on and clarified the teaching of the apostles from approximately the second through the eighth centuries. #4 The Church Fathers are those great Christian writers who passed on and clarified the teaching of the apostles from approximately the second through the eighth centuries.