My daughters belong to a club that meets at a local bookstore. While they do crafts and discuss the lives of girls in American history, I do what I do best: browse the shelves.

When I visit the religion section lately, I marvel at how secular publishers have found Jesus — Jesus the commodity, that is. The presses are rolling, it seems, with reams of new gospels, bold new looks at the “Jesus of history.”

It’s about fifteen years since I first noticed the trend. That’s when an Episcopalian bishop from New Jersey, John Shelby Spong, went public with his doubts about the virginal conception and the resurrection. Soon afterward, a lapsed Catholic novelist in England suddenly realized that Jesus was not divine. He discovered a different Jesus, who was, rather, a secular humanist — a good chap, conventionally anti-Catholic, who’d surely understand the author’s abandonment of his wife.

Some folks at Catholic colleges, too, would rather publish than perish. So they’re properly embarrassed by Mother Church’s claims to Jesus’ divinity and the inspiration of Scripture. Like teenagers, they just can’t believe Mom would say such things in public — in front of all their friends!

Some of the Jesus volumes are large books that look mighty on one’s shelf and stop the circulation in your legs if you leave them too long on your lap. So they’re best left on the shelf. In the bookstore.

Really, these claims are nothing new. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John faced the same (weak) competition in 170 A.D. Like Elvis biographies in the 1990s, Jesus biographies abounded in the centuries after the Lord’s ascension. Every hack in the East of the empire seemed to be saying (pseudonymously) “I knew the Messiah when.” But few could agree on who the Messiah was.

This created a problem for the Church, because she did know the Messiah when — and she knew that the hacks were making news rather than reporting it. The Apostles, and their successors, were careful to distinguish the Good News from the rest.

And not all of the rest was bad news. Many extrabiblical “gospels” have survived, and we can see that they vary in literary quality and theological orthodoxy. Some of the earliest apocryphal texts do offer more interesting, more substantial reading than certain canonical texts. The apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas seems weightier than the Bible’s Letter of Jude or Third Letter of John.

But who cares? The Church Fathers, who canonized the books of the Bible, were educated men of enormous literary talent and often remarkable critical faculties. They knew that 3 John was little more than a theological postcard. But when they compiled the canon of the Bible, they weren’t judging books merely on literary merits. They included 3 John because they were certain that an Apostle’s authority was at the other end of it. And they didn’t care if Barnabas was a better read; Jude was the real deal.

Today’s evangelists of doubt will say that they, too, are after authenticity. But the criteria vary widely according to the scholar. At one academic meeting a few years back, the profs could reach consensus on the authenticity of just one statement of Jesus: “Abba.” Another session was uneasy with everything but “Little girl, get up.”

Once we start slicing troublesome spots out of the New Testament, it’s awfully hard to stop. It’s all so troublesome.

But if an unauthorized biography of Christ won’t save souls, the publishers hope it’ll at least save their business. And what’s more important? (See Mk 8:36.)

There’s good precedent for what we do. The Fathers were really into the Fathers: “They held to what they found in the Church,” said St. Augustine in 421 A.D. “They taught what they had learned. What they had received from the Fathers, they passed on to the children.”

My daughter Rosemary (a bookish eleven-year-old) recommends a new title from Sophia Institute Press, The Book of Saints and Heroes, by Andrew and Lenora Lang. (I can’t find it on Amazon yet, but it’s available from the publisher.) I haven’t read the book, but I trust Rosemary’s judgment. I note that about a third of the volume is given to figures of the patristic era: St. Anthony of Egypt, St. Dorothea, St. Jerome, Synesius of Cyrene, St. Augustine, St. Germanus, St. Simeon Stylites, and many others. It’s a sturdy and attractive hardcover book, which I must now hand back to its rightful owner.

My co-author Chris Bailey has posted a helpful article on how to make a falsehood true. If you’ve always wanted to write a book like The Da Vinci Code, you need to read Chris’s posting.

If, however, you’ve always wanted to know the (real) truth about the Holy Grail, King Arthur, Merlin, and the rest, you need to read our book, The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence. (If you’d rather read it in Canadian French, click here.)

Today’s the feast of St. Ephrem of Syria, Father and Doctor of the Church — and perhaps the poet laureate of the patristic era.

Ephraem was instructed in the Christian mysteries by St. James, the famous Bishop of Nisibis, and was baptized in young adulthood. Ephrem took an active role in the local church, and was at some point ordained a deacon. The bishop relied on Ephrem to renew the moral life of the city, especially during the sieges of 338, 346, and 350. One of his biographers tells us how Ephrem’s prayer caused a cloud of flies and mosquitoes to settle upon the vast Persian army of Sapor II, driving the men away. But it was only a temporary relief. And when the Roman Empire, finally, did lose its Eastern provinces, Persia subjected the Church of Nisibis to cruel persecution. The Christians left en masse, settling eventually at Edessa. There Ephrem spent his remaining ten years as a hermit. Even the exile had a happy ending, however. Thanks to the great exodus from Nisibis, Edessa became a great Christian intellectual center for centuries afterward.

Ephrem wrote voluminous commentaries on the Bible. He also wrote reams of verse on biblical themes. Some scholars divide individual Fathers’ biblical interpretation up into one of two camps: the literal or the allegorical. But Ephrem is not so easily categorized. He was a master of both types of exegesis. In his poems he pursued allegory. In his prose, he presented history. His hymns have remained popular in the Eastern churches for well over a millennium, in their original Syriac and in Greek translation. Here’s one that made it into modern hymnals in English.

Many of Ephrem’s works are on the Web. At Christian Classics Ethereal Library you’ll find various and sundry from the Edinburgh edition of the Fathers. The Tertullian Project offers still other works in translation. And you might also enjoy some more recent postings — one with the enticing title “The Cave of Treasures,” and another that’s slightly more intimidating: “The Hymns on Fasting.” (You go that way, and I’ll go this way.)

Meditating on the the wonder of the incarnation, on the feast of the Nativity, Ephrem wrote of Jesus:

He is the Breast of Life and the Breath of Life. . . .
When He sucked the breast of Mary,
He was suckling all with His life.
While He was lying on His Mother’s bosom,
in His bosom were all creatures lying

You’ll find his poems in accessible modern translations here and here. Sebastian Brock has written a profound study of the Sweet Singer of Nisibis, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem.

Father Bob McCreary, the great retreat master and scholar of St. Bonaventure, draws our attention to the line “Prefer nothing to Christ,” which is well known from the Rule of St. Benedict. Father Bob points out, however, that Benedict was quoting the third-century bishop St. Cyprian of Carthage. Surely Benedict assumed that his readers would know the other half of Cyprian’s exhortation — the why of it all.

“Prefer nothing to Christ, because He preferred nothing to us, and on our account preferred evil things to good, poverty to riches, servitude to rule, death to immortality.”

A good thought to keep while turning in for the night, or rising in the morning.

It’s just a brief response to a comment, but Kevin gave a very nice, hyperlinked critical revue of various patristic series that are currently in print.

If you’re not already in the habit of visiting Biblicalia, put it in your favorites.

I just had the great pleasure and privilege of spending several days as moderator for the annual convocation of the Capuchin Franciscans of St. Augustine Province. These guys have preserved a healthy family spirit and a vigorous and manly piety through a trying time — a time when many communities let these things slip through their fingers. I came to know the Caps through one of my dearest friends, the great ethicist and theologian Father Ronald Lawler. You probably know this Province through one or more of its “celebrity” members: Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Archbishop Charles Chaput, Father Angelus Shaughnessy of EWTN, or the U.S. bishops’ main doctrine man, Father Thomas Weinandy. But celebrity status counts for nothing when these men are gathered as a family, and you come to see that the “least” little brothers are often the most esteemed and loved in the family. I was blown away by my days with the Capuchins of St. Augustine Province — who are right now experiencing a sustained vocations boom. If you know men who are discerning a vocation to religious life, point them to a community rich in fraternity, holiness, and service, the Capuchins of St. Augustine Province.

To the Capuchins who asked for a paper copy of my Wednesday talk: I’ve sent my notes to Father Don Lippert, who will make them available to you. Those who want more detail on the topics I discussed can visit these posts on this blog:

The Stark Truth.

More Stark Raving.

Youth When the Church Was Young.

Roman Cruelty, Christian Purity.

Diognetus, Don’t Ya Get Us?

A Culture Exposed.

You’ll also find some related audio files here.

Father Z is musing on the emergence of coadjutor bishops in the age of the Fathers. He’s fascinating and amusing, as usual. I often hear the word mispronounced as “co-agitator,” which has some funny historical truth to it.

The Church Fathers had a distinctive approach to youth ministry.

Now, don’t jump to conclusions. I haven’t uncovered any evidence that St. Ambrose led teens on ski trips in the nearby Alps. Nor is there anything to suggest that St. Basil sponsored junior-high dances in Pontus. (There’s not even a hint of a pizza party.) In fact, if you check all the documentary evidence from all the ancient patriarchates of the East and the West, you won’t find a single bulletin announcement for a single parish youth group.

Yet the Fathers had enormous success in youth and young-adult ministry. Many of the early martyrs were teens, as were many of the Christians who took to the desert for the solitary life. There’s ample evidence that a disproportionate number of conversions, too, came from the young and youngish age groups.

How did the Fathers do it?

They made wild promises.

They promised young people great things, like persecution, lower social status, public ridicule, severely limited employment opportunities, frequent fasting, a high risk of jail and torture, and maybe, just maybe, an early, violent death at the hands of their pagan rulers.

The Fathers looked young people in the eye and called them to live purely in the midst of a pornographic culture. They looked at some young men and women and boldly told them they had a calling to virginity. And it worked. Even the pagans noticed how well it worked.

The brightest young man in the empire’s brightest city — a teenager named Origen of Alexandria — promised himself entirely to God in virginity. And, as he watched his father taken away to be killed, Origen would have gone along himself, turned himself in, if his mother hadn’t hidden all his clothes …

Search all the volumes on the ancient liturgies, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a scrap of a Mass we’d call “relevant” today. We know of no special Youth Masses. Yet there was an overwhelming eucharistic faith among the young people of the Church.

Tarcisius was a boy of third-century Rome. His virtue and devotion were so strong that the clergy trusted him to bring the Blessed Sacrament to the sick. Once, while carrying a pyx, he was recognized and set upon by a pagan mob. They flung themselves upon him, trying to pry the pyx from his hands. They wanted more than anything to profane the Sacrament. Tarcisius’ biographer, the fourth-century Pope Damasus, compared them to a pack of rabid dogs. Tarcisius “preferred to give up his life rather than yield up the Body of Christ.”

Even at such an early age, Tarcisius was aware of the stakes. Jesus had died for love of Tarcisius. Tarcisius did not hesitate to die for love of Jesus.

What made the Church attractive in the third century can make it just as attractive in the twenty-first. In the ancient world and in ours, young people want a challenge. They want to love with their whole being. They’re willing to do things the hard way — if people they respect look them in the eye and make the big demands. These are distinguishing marks of youth. You don’t find too many middle-aged men petitioning the Marines for a long stay at Parris Island. It’s young men who beg for that kind of rigor.

No young man or woman really wants to give his life away cheaply. Tarcisius knew better. So do the kids in our parishes.

If you’re interested in tracing the footsteps of St. Tarcisius and visiting the tomb of Damasus, consider joining me and my colleagues from the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology as we lead a pilgrimage to Rome in May of 2007. I’ll be there with Scott and Kimberly Hahn and others. We’ll have guided tours, classes and talks, daily Mass, and lots of slack-jawed, awestruck moments in the city of the martyrs and popes — a city of eternal youth. If you’re interested in joining us, drop me a note with your contact information, and I’ll inform you as soon as our plans firm up.

Now see Biblicalia on “The Mind of the Fathers.” (It’s a guest appearance from Father Georges Florovsky again.)

Kevin at Biblicalia has posted his complete, fresh translation of St. Clement of Rome’s Letter to the Corinthians. It’s magnificent, it’s free, it’s the most readable rendering I can imagine. In a concluding note, Kevin advocates an early dating for the letter, pre-70 A.D. (as I did in these pages), echoing the argument of Robinson, Ratzinger, and Herron. But don’t just sit there reading my words. As the angelic children said to Augustine: Tolle, lege — take up and read!

The great Roman archeologist Margherita Guarducci wrote a book some years back titled The Primacy of the Church of Rome: Documents, Reflections, Proofs. In it she details Rome’s many primacies. The most famous, of course, is its status as first among the Christian patriarchates. She goes on to note many lesser “primacies”: the Eternal City possesses the oldest portrait of Jesus, the oldest portrait of Mary, the oldest Christian basilica, the oldest Christian statue.

She describes Rome as “the ancient destination of Christian travelers.” Who made the arduous pilgrimage to the first city? From Asia and Africa came Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Abercius, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Origen. Even the heretics felt for Rome what Frank Sinatra would one day sing about New York, New York: “If I make it there, I’m gonna make it anywhere.” So they took their perverted message to the capital — Marcion, Valentinus, and a gaggle of others.

Those Christians who couldn’t make the trip to Rome at least sent letters, many of which have survived: Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis …

One and all, these pre-Nicene Christians drew their ecclesiastical maps based on the New Testament, and all roads led to one city. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see the center of Christian activity shifting from Jerusalem to Rome. The capital of the empire was the ultimate earthly destination of the two great apostles, Peter and Paul. Ancient traditions are unanimous in recording that both Peter and Paul died there. The earliest Christians made pilgrimages to the apostles’ tombs and left pious graffiti along the way. Visitors to Rome can still view these scrawled messages today.

Simon Peter had received authority when Jesus pronounced him the “Rock” on which the Church would be built. In the years after Pentecost, Peter served as the chief spokesman, supreme judge, authoritative teacher, principal preacher, and most powerful healer in the community. This authority remained with him until his death, and it transferred to the men who succeeded him as Bishop of Rome.

Before the end of the first century, we see Pope St. Clement of Rome writing fatherly letters of reproval and instruction to the Christians in distant Corinth. The letter was read in the liturgy at Corinth for at least a century afterward, treated like canonical Scripture.

Just a few years after Clement’s passing, we find St. Ignatius, who succeeded Peter as Bishop of Antioch, writing letters of instruction to many churches, but deferring only to one church: the Church of Rome.

At the end of the 100s, St. Irenaeus confirmed the primacy of Rome and the papacy. The Bishop of Lyons cited “that tradition derived from the Apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul … which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority — that is, the faithful everywhere inasmuch as the apostolic tradition has been preserved continuously by faithful men everywhere.” Irenaeus also supplied a complete list of popes, from Peter to his own day.

Saints Peter and Paul have always shared a single feast day. On that feast day in 441, Pope St. Leo the Great preached a homily rejoicing that he could trace his own lineage in an unbroken line to the greatest of the apostles. Modern Popes can make the same claim.

“These are the men,” said Leo, “through whom the light of Christ’s gospel shone on you, O Rome, and through whom you, who were the teacher of error, were made the disciple of Truth. These are your holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave you claim to be numbered among the heavenly kingdoms … They promoted you to such glory … the head of the world through St. Peter’s Holy See.”

Rome remains “the ancient destination of Christian travelers” even in our own day. For it is ever ancient and ever new. With my colleagues at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology — Scott and Kimberly Hahn and others — I’ll be leading a pilgrimage there in May of 2007. We’ll have guided tours, classes and talks, daily Mass, and lots of slack-jawed, awestruck moments in the city of so many great Fathers. If you’re interested in joining us, drop me a note with your contact information, and I’ll inform you as soon as our plans firm up.

Yesterday, June 4, was the memorial of St. Optatus, a man whose life and writing deeply influenced St. Augustine. Optatus’s memorial this year was eclipsed by the great feast of Pentecost. But we shouldn’t let him slip by unnoticed. He’s an important voice and intercessor for some of our current vexations.

Optatus was the advance guard in the apologetic battle against the Donatist schism, which claimed great successes in North Africa throughout the fourth century. Donatism first emerged in 311, when some Christians refused to recognize the new bishop of Carthage. Why? Because he had been consecrated by another bishop who had once, during a purge, handed over the Scriptures to pagan Roman officials. According to the Donatists, this sin nullified Felix’s sacramental powers. So the disaffected Christians elected their own bishop and set in motion their own succession. They maintained that their sect was the only true and pure church, and that all the sacraments of others were invalid.

We don’t know much about the life of Optatus, though he is praised by many contemporaries, including Augustine and Jerome. Augustine says that Optatus was a convert from paganism. He was, at mid-century, the bishop of Milevis in Numidia, North Africa (now the eastern part of Algeria’s coast). Optatus opposed Donatism — firmly, but irenically — writing six treatises against the heresy and arguing persuasively that the validity of the sacraments did not depend upon the worthiness of the minister. Optatus’s favorite themes would re-emerge fully developed, in the next generation, in the writings of Augustine, who would end the Donatist schism once and for all. Augustine would sum up the argument in a memorable slogan: When Peter baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes. When Judas baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes.

Donatists and Catholics agreed as to the necessary unity of the Church. The question was: where is this One Church?

Optatus argues that it cannot be only in a corner of Africa; it must be “The Catholic” — in Latin, “Catholica,” used as a noun — for “The Catholic” is throughout the world. A Donatist theologian had listed six properties of the true Church, of which Optatus accepted five. Optatus argued, however, that the first property, the episcopal chair, belonged to the Catholics, who therefore possessed all the others.

The Donatist schism had first arisen from the quarrel about episcopal succession at Carthage. So we might expect Optatus to claim that first property, the episcopal chair, by pointing out the legitimacy of Catholic succession in Carthage. But he doesn’t. Instead, he replies: “We must examine who sat first in the chair, and where … You cannot deny knowing that in the city of Rome the bishop’s chair was conferred first upon Peter, the head of all the Apostles … In that one chair unity should be preserved by all, lest the other Apostles should each stand up for his own chair. Anyone who sets up another chair against this one chair is, then, a schismatic and a sinner. For in that one chair … Peter first sat, to whom succeeded Linus …”

Then Optatus traced the papal lineage, in unbroken succession, up to his own day.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia praises Optatus for his rhetorical style, calling it “vigorous and animated. He aims as terseness and effect … and this in spite of the gentleness and charity which is so admirable in his polemics against his ‘brethren,’ as he insists on calling the Donatist bishops.”

You’ll find Optatus’s work online at The Tertullian Project. The same works are still in print.

The life of St. Optatus should inspire us to prayer, today most especially! St. Optatus, pray for us who live in another time of scandal and division. Help us to draw together in unity and charity and hope, confident that the gates of hell won’t prevail against the one true Church, the Catholica, her ministers (even those who sin grievously), or her sacraments, for behind them stands Christ as their surety — and ours!

Some weeks back, I posted a link to some great, FREE materials for learning Greek. I’d like to add a link to that: Teknia, the site of Bill Mounce, an evangelical seminary professor who’s really a master teacher. I used his book, tape series, and workbook to teach myself the basics of biblical (and patristic) Greek. I ran the tapes while I was driving the kids to and from swim lessons and while I was walking on the treadmill. Mounce’s system works for people like me — people who are busy and who operate at relatively low wattage. Now I see that he’s posted much of the foundational material — including some awesome software and fonts — for FREE on his website. This will get you through the basics: alphabet, pronunciation, some minimal vocabulary. Check it out.