We’re learning about church history in VLI right now. Fascinating stuff! I find it amazing to see the historicity of the faith, to see just how early that orthodoxy crystalized and how it has endured since that time. It gives me a warm feeling (perhaps that’s the Indian food I ate, I dunno) to read Irenaeus of Lyons [who died in about AD 200] refering to an almost fully formed canon of scripture. It throws interesting light on the process of deciding the canon - if Irenaeus (and others) were already using the canon virtually as we have it today, it says to me that the process wasnt an arbitrary decision or the result of politics / military might as some might have us believe. No, the process of creating the canon was merely ratifying something that was already in widespread agreement. The fact that this agreement goes all the way back to the second century is striking.
In a mirror, dimly
A blog at the intersection of geek, faith and creative writing.
