The advent of Jesus Christ was absolutely central to the faith of the early Church Fathers. This is not to say that they celebrated a season of Advent like us (we don’t have information surviving on that). Regardless, Jesus Christ’s arrival (advent) was valued immensely for a variety of reasons.
In fact, as we consider the impact of Jesus’ advent on the early Church, we might be better off referring to his advents (plural): his incarnation and his second coming. Consider this summary of the Christian faith by Irenaeus (c. 180 AD):
“The Church… has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty… and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin… and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father ‘to gather all things in one,’ and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race…”1
Irenaeus and other early Church Fathers would regularly summarize the Christian faith in statements like these. In these summaries, the incarnation―or first advent―is one of the main points, while the return of Christ―or second advent―is just as important.
So, what was so important about advent to these early Church Fathers?
First, the advent of Christ fulfilled prophecy. This truth was central to early Christian teaching. Some of our earliest works that summarize the teaching of the apostles are largely collections of Old Testament passages that were seen as prophecies of the advent of Christ. These collections were the basic content that Christians were to pass on to one another. In one sense, this was “the gospel” that they handed down.
This emphasis on the fulfillment of prophecy was also used to battle against false teachings. Early Christians defended the faith against disbelieving Jews on one hand, and heretical false teachers on the other. The actual―flesh and blood―first advent of Christ was central to this defense. Listen to Ignatius (c. 110 AD) warn the early Church by directing them back to the flesh-and-blood advent of Jesus:
“Therefore be deaf whenever anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, the one of the family of David, the one of Mary, he who truly was born, both ate and drank, truly was persecuted by Pontius Pilate, truly was crucified and died, being seen by those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, who also truly was raised from the dead, his Father having raised him.”2
Second, the incarnation went beyond fulfillment of prophecy; it also fulfilled humanity! The early Church proclaimed that Christ not only needed to fulfill prophecy, but that Christ needed to complete what was lacking in humanity, and it required him to take on flesh to do this. Hear Irenaeus again as he proclaims:
“For ‘all men come short of the glory of God,’ and are not justified of themselves, but by the advent of the Lord.”3
He also goes on, “but when He became incarnate, and was made man, He commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief, comprehensive manner, with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam―namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God―that we might recover in Christ Jesus.”4
Much like our preaching today, these Church Fathers proclaimed that humanity had a need that went back to the first man, and because all men descended from that first man, Christ himself needed to take on flesh to bring humanity―including us―back to God.
Finally, the advent of Christ was the point of all Christian hope. As was mentioned above, the early Church understood itself as existing between the two advents of Christ―thankful for the past but looking forward to the future. Hear Justin Martyr (c. 160 AD) on this:
“For the prophets have proclaimed two advents of His: the one, that which is already past, when He came as a dishonoured and suffering Man; but the second, when, according to prophecy, He shall come from heaven with glory, accompanied by His angelic host, when also He shall raise the bodies of all men who have lived, and shall clothe those of the worthy with immortality, and shall send those of the wicked, endued with eternal sensibility, into everlasting fire with the wicked devils.”5
The second advent of Christ and the resurrection of the dead was the focus of the hope of the Church, and the central promise the Church proclaimed to a dying world that needed true hope. These Fathers proclaimed that at Christ’s second advent, our bodies and souls would be reunited just as Christ―both God and man―would reunite us with the immortality of God himself.
Looking back to these early Church Fathers can do a few things for us today.
First, it can be a guide for our theology, to confirm that we are believing in the same preaching that has stood the test of time.
Second, these Fathers can inspire us to remain faithful to our Lord, as we see them fighting to preserve the Word of the Lord even though they regularly faced suffering for doing so!
Finally, these early Church Fathers can build us up. They wrote many of these works for the Church, and that is us. They weren’t just writing to impress anyone, they were writing to guide the Church into greater faith and hope in the advent of our Lord.
Dr. Daniel Berge is the Professor of New Testament at Lutheran Brethren Seminary in Fergus Falls, MN.
1 Against Heresies 1.10.1 in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 330.
2 Ignatius, to the Trallians, 9.1-2. Rick Brannan, trans., The Apostolic Fathers in English (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).
3 Against Heresies, 4.27.2, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 499–501.
4 Against Heresies, 3.18.1, ibid, 446.
5 Dialogue with Trypho, 49, ibid, 180–202.
6 Image of St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Public domain image available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.