Continuing the not-necessarily-for-everyone exercise of reading through the Schaff set of Church Fathers (if my count is right, I should be done with this in only one more decade, give or take). My latest conquest here is Volume 3 of Series 2, containing the writings of Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, and Rufinus (mostly Theodoret, Rufinius, and Jerome). Frankly, it was excellent. 
Oh, don’t get me wrong. It had all the challenges of reading the 19th century translations of the church fathers. Some parts of it definitely dragged more than others. And yet, there were also several excellent stand-outs that were well worth the price of admission. The real theme of this volume is conflict, whether it’s Theodoret’s “History “or Rufinus’ and Jerome’s broken friendship. In each case, we have a model of how to and how not to deal with conflict between Christians.
In the case of Theodoret, the conflict is with Cyril of Jerusalem (we’ll get to him in a few volumes) over Nestorianism and whether the person and teachings of Nestorius are heretical. Cyril said “yes”, Theodoret said “maybe, but the Trinity is a complex topic.” For the record, I agree with Theodoret that the Trinity is complex and that we are finite, with Cyril that Nestorius was probably wrong, and with Theodoret that Cyril’s response of “excommunicate and then use the government to persecute” was wrong as well. The reality is that when we push any part of the doctrine of the Trinity to far, we fall into error. Far better to confess the truth of the Triune God leave it at that.
In the case of Jerome and Rufinus, their conflict is with other over the by-then ancient writings of Origen. Was Origen a heretic? Jerome said “yes” and Rufinus said “no, but we need to sharpen and modify his language anyway.” Unfortunately this dispute fell into rancor and broke the friendship between the two men, which we get to see happen in ancient real-time as we read through their writings first to and then against each other.
This book doesn’t have a happy ending. Jerome and Rufinus are, so far as we know, never reconciled. But it does have a lesson: in both cases we see Christians disagree and should be cautioned against pushing our disagreements too far ourselves.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO
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