What is "patristic"

Usage examples of "patristic".

His professors remember the vigor, if not always the accuracy, with which he translated some of the ancient classics--Xenophon, Thucydides, patristic literature.

The collection of scriptural, patristic, and historical arguments justified Henry taking into his own hands his matrimonial affairs.

He is past president of the Society of Biblical Literature, the International Society for New Testament Studies, and the North American Patristic Society.

No doubt it was difficult for one of immense patristic and theological learning, who was well versed in the historical aspect of the affair as well as profoundly conscious of the reality of his own episcopal commission, to enter the lists with a son of his old friend.

Nevertheless, from circa N500 on, a patristic ideology was aggressively argued by successive Bards.

That officer, walking in the military fashion which, as patristic literature teaches, was adopted by the early Christians, and turning square corners, as was the habit of St.

Augustine for the Cambridge Patristic Series and writing a study on the life and thought of the African father.

The lessons read at the third nocturn are patristic homilies on the Gospels, and together form a rough summary of theological instruction.

Monastic influence accounts for the practice of adding to the reading of a biblical passage some patristic commentary or exposition.

This is the theological theory: for it arose from an exigency in the dogmatic system generally held by the patristic Church.

If the leading theologians of Christendom, such as Anselm, Calvin, and Grotius, have so thoroughly repudiated the original Christian and patristic doctrine of the atonement, and built another doctrine upon their own uninspired speculations, why should our modern sects defer so slavishly to them, and, instead of freely investigating the subject for themselves from the first sources of Scripture and spiritual philosophy, timidly cling to the results reached by these biassed, morbid, and over sharp thinkers?

In this way the patristic mind became familiar with many processes of thought, with many special details, and with some general principles, quite foreign to the apostolic mind.

Meanwhile, defining and systematizing went on, loose notions hardened into rigid dogmas, free thought was hampered by authority, the scheme generally received assumed the title of orthodox, anathematizing all who dared to dissent, and the fundamental outlines of the patristic eschatology were firmly established.

The extensive, various learning, massive, penetrating mind, and remorseless logical consistency, of Augustine, enabled him to gather up the loose, floating theological elements and notions of the time, and generalize them into a complete system, in striking harmony, indeed, with the general character and drift of patristic thought, but carried out more fully in its details and applied more unflinchingly in its principles than had been done before, and therefore in some of its dogmas outstripping the current convictions of his contemporaries.

With these hints, we are ready to advance to the general patristic scheme of eschatology.