According to historian Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, we are living in an ahistorical age, marked by the loss of “meaningful engagement with, and connection to, history.” This “presentism,” as she calls it, has gripped most of Western culture, and much of the Western church. As modern Christians, we tend to focus solely on things that impact us directly and lose sight of our tradition, our rootedness, our brothers and sisters in the Lord who’ve gone before us.
In the minds of many believers, there’s a yawning historical gap, an undiscovered country, between the New Testament and the present. For some Protestants, the Reformation may represent a blip on the radar, but little more than that. It’s as if nothing theologically significant happened during almost 2,000 years of church history.
The truth, of course, is that the Christian faith has been shaped by prominent theologians in the centuries following the time of the Apostles, and beyond. These leaders were instrumental in the development of doctrine, and they articulated the faith in ways that have shaped Christian thought and practice right up to the present.
Coincidentally, the names of several of these figures begin with the letter “A,” perhaps making it easier to remember them as the A-list of theologians who shaped our faith.
Athanasius of Alexandria (c.298-373)
Athanasius was a leading theologian and bishop of Alexandria, the second-largest city in the Mediterranean and a main centre of early Christianity. As a young deacon, he was present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which formulated the Nicene Creed, a summary of the essentials of the faith still adhered to by most Christian traditions. Derisively called “the black dwarf” by his opponents due to his short stature and dark skin, Athanasius was instrumental in defending the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ against the Arian heresy ravaging the Early Church.
He was also a key figure in the history of the New Testament canon. His Festal Letter of 367 contains the earliest known list of all 27 New Testament books, and only those books. His important writings on apologetics include On the Incarnation, On the Council of Nicaea, and Defense of the Nicene Definition. As Arianism swept through the church and the empire, Athanasius faced repeated exile and persecution. Virtually alone in his stance against the widespread Arian heresy, he earned the epithet, Athanasius contra mundum, or “Athanasius against the world.” His courageous defense of biblical truth was upheld and confirmed at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, less than a decade after his death.
Ambrose of Milan (339-397)
Ambrose was born into a wealthy and powerful Roman Christian family, the son of the imperial prefect of Gaul. Like his father, Ambrose pursued a career in law and politics, rising to the position of imperial governor of northern Italy, based in Milan. His talent for mediation led to his appointment as bishop of Milan by popular acclaim. Ambrose subsequently threw himself into a deep study of Scripture and learned Greek so he could absorb the writings of theologians from the eastern part of the Empire.
He produced a massive body of writings, including the first known book on Christian ethics, On the Duties of the Church’s Servants. He also introduced the idea, radical at the time, that the church should not be subject to the political authorities. “The emperor is in the church, not above it,” he wrote. Ambrose was also a gifted composer who had a formative influence on church music, establishing the practice of congregational singing, and writing the earliest extant body of Latin hymns, now known as Ambrosian Chant. His most significant impact on church history, however, was his role in the conversion and mentoring of Augustine.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
One of the towering intellects in church history, Augustine was born in a town called Thagaste near the city of Hippo in what is now Algeria. The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, he was prodigiously gifted and ambitious, seeking a career as a public speaker and teacher of philosophy that might lead him to wealth and status. His journey of faith was long and twisting, as he accepted and rejected a series of philosophies, most notably Manichaeism. Augustine’s mother, Monica, travelled with him, challenged his beliefs, and never stopped praying for him. Her prayers were answered when her son moved to Milan and heard the preaching of Ambrose, who led him to faith, baptized and mentored him. The student soon surpassed the teacher, and Augustine returned to his roots in North Africa, becoming the bishop of Hippo.
Next to the Scriptures, Augustine’s writings have exerted the widest influence on both Protestant and Catholic theology. His Confessions are a series of prayers combining autobiography, devotion and development of core Christian doctrines. The much longer and more formal City of God discusses the nature and relationship of the earthly and heavenly kingdoms. In response to the Pelagian heresy, Augustine expounded and developed the doctrines of original sin, the bondage of the will, and God’s sovereignty in salvation. Like few before him, he recognized that faith and reason are not in conflict, and that God speaks through Scripture as well as nature. His writings about the mind, memory, and the nature of time and eternity have shaped the way modern people still think about these concepts. He is considered the most influential figure in the development of theology and Western thought between the apostle Paul and the Protestant Reformation.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
Despite what his name suggests, Anselm was not an Englishman. He was born in Italy and fled from an abusive father, finding his way to the abbey of Bec in Normandy, France. Thanks to his scholarly talent, he rose to the position of abbot at Bec. Under his leadership, Bec became a major centre of learning in Medieval Europe. As a result of the Norman conquest of England, Normandy was linked to the English throne, which led to Anselm becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Influenced by Augustine’s writings, Anselm was one of the most impactful philosophical and theological thinkers in the Medieval church. Like Augustine, he stressed the necessity and compatibility and of faith and reason, expressed in his dictum, “faith seeking understanding.” He was one of the first apologists to rely primarily on reason and logic to defend the Christian faith. As a philosopher, he developed several arguments for the existence of God that are still discussed today. The best known of these is his ontological argument, that the very concept of a supreme God necessitates his existence. As a theologian, his most important work was Cur Deus Homo, or Why God Became Man, which expounded the teaching that Christ’s death satisfied God’s judgment against sin, further refined as the doctrine of substitutionary atonement by the Protestant Reformers.
Concluding thoughts
The Christian leaders who lived in the centuries following the time of the Apostles weren’t infallible. Their work doesn’t bear the authority of Scripture, any more than the writings of modern Christians do. At the same time, they weren’t inventing their theology out of thin air. As Michelangelo once observed, sculpting isn’t a matter of creating something from a slab of marble; it’s discovering the sculpture that’s already in the marble.
Likewise, these early church leaders sought to extract the theological concepts already present in the Scriptures. They were finding new ways to articulate the truth in response to the challenges of their time. As a result of their efforts, generations of Christians have been able to see more clearly what we believe and why, a process that continues to the present day. Even a brief look at church history can show us how much we owe to those who came before us, who sought to expound and defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
To help us overcome our ahistorical tendencies, it’s essential that we recognize the contributions – and the very existence – of our brothers and sisters from long ago who’ve shaped so much of our church doctrines and traditions. Doing so can give us a more concrete sense of our own history and our rootedness in the Body of Christ, made up of members from every time and culture.
Sources and further reading
M. Atkinson and Archibald Robertson, translators, Athanasius of Alexandria: Collected Works, Delphi Classics, 2024.
Henry Bettenson, translator, St. Augustine: City of God, Penguin Classics, 2004.
Henry Chadwick, translator, Saint Augustine: Confessions, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, editors, Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Roy J. Deferarri, translator, Saint Ambrose of Milan: Theological and Dogmatic Works, Ex Fontibus Company, 2017.
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age, Zondervan, 2024.
