The Sense of the Mildness, of the Perseverance and the Simplicity at the Beginning of the Christianity

Cinzia Randazzo

• Editorial: Youcanprint
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9788892698529
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Religion

This study aims to address the issues of meekness, perseverance and simplicity in the works of the Apostolic Fathers. Starting from an analytical reading of the texts of these Fathers, the author illustrates the main features around which their thinking on the proposed themes revolves.

1. Mildness

1.1.Conditions

Ignatius of Antioch exhorts the community of Ephesus to stay myths in front of the men full of anger,⁵ while Polycarp invokes God Father and Jesus Christ because they edify the philippians “in every mildness".⁶ For Polycarp God Father and Jesus Christ are conditions of the edification of the community of Phillip in the mildness. According to Hermas God Father, welcomed in the heart of those who are "vain and light in the faith",⁷ allows to believe "that nothing is easier, more dessert and milder than these precepts”⁸ given by the angel of the penitence. These precepts are mild and condition because the men believe in these through their faith in Christ. Referring to the scriptural testimonium of Is 66,2 Clement of Rome admonishes the Corinthians to reinforce oneself in the commandment of the mercy

and in these precepts, to proceed humbles and obedient to his holy words. It says his holy word: 4 «to whom I will turn the look if not to the mild one, to the pacific one and to whom fears my words?» (Is 66,2).⁹

1.2.Effects

Ignatius of Antioch realizes that impatience fights him and that therefore he has "need of mildness in which it is won the prince of this world".¹⁰ With the mildness, according to Ignatius, it is won the evil. Parallelly God "in the mildness and in the goodness as a king sends his son, he sent him as God and as man for the men".¹¹ The effect of the mildness of God is, for the anonymous author, the sending of the Son for the salvation of the man: "he sent him as who saves, to persuade, for doing not violencing".¹² Again Clement of Rome makes observe to the Corinthians that

who will have practised in humility, with constant mildness and without regret the commandments and the precepts given by God he will be placed and included in the number of the saved by Jesus Christ.¹³

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5IGNATIUS, Letter to the Ephesians 10,2. Ed. crit. F. XAVER FUNK-K. BIHLMEYER-M. WHITTAKER, Die Apostolischen Väter. Griechisch-deutsche Parallelausgabe, Tübingen 1992, p. 184. Trad. di A. QUACQUARELLI, I Padri apostolici, Roma 1998, p. 103.

6POLYCARP, Letter to the Philippians 12,2. Ed. crit. F. XAVER FUNK-K. BIHLMEYER-M. WHITTAKER, Die Apostolischen Väter. Griechisch-deutsche Parallelausgabe, p. 254. Trad. di A. QUACQUARELLI, I Padri apostolici, p. 159.

7HERMAS, Shepherd. Precept 12,47,5. Ed. crit. F. XAVER FUNK-K. BIHLMEYER-M. WHITTAKER, Die Apostolischen Väter. Griechisch-deutsche Parallelausgabe, p.422. Trad. di A. QUACQUARELLI, I Padri apostolici, p. 288.

8Ibidem

9CLEMENT of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians 13,4. Ed. crit. F. XAVER FUNK-K. BIHLMEYER-M. WHITTAKER, Die Apostolischen Väter. Griechisch-deutsche Parallelausgabe. p. 94. Trad. di A. QUACQUARELLI, I Padri apostolici, p. 58....