What is the church? What does it mean to be a member of the church? This book examines how the earliest Christian theologians in the Latin West understood the nature, ends, and boundaries of the church. By analyzing the thought and practices of figures such as Tertullian of Carthage, Cyprian of Carthage, Augustine of Hippo, and Pope Leo the Great, James K. Lee shows how early Latin theologians forged distinctive views of the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Lee argues that according to the Latin fathers, the church was one complex reality with visible and invisible aspects that could be distinguished but not separated. God could work outside of the church's visible bounds, yet all who were saved were joined to the church's invisible bond of charity. The church's unity was found in charity, and for the early Latin fathers, there was no salvation outside of the church. In addition, Lee demonstrates the trajectory from an exclusivist ecclesiology to a more inclusive understanding of church membership in the development of Latin ecclesiology over the course of the first five centuries of Christianity.
James K. Lee is associate professor of the history of early Christianity in the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.
Introduction 1.Tertullian of Carthage 2.Cyprian of Carthage 3.Augustine of Hippo 4.Leo the Great Conclusion
Ecclesiology has become one of the central doctrinal loci for systematic and moral theology. Its historical origins and development, however, have been neglected. James K. Lee remedies that neglect in this beautifully written presentation of the "nature, ends, and boundaries of the church" in the early Latin theologians. He makes a persuasive case that they had a "discernible doctrine" of the church and traces its development through Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine of Hippo, and Leo the Great. He situates ecclesiology within its historical and theological context, relating it to soteriology, pneumatology, sacraments, ethics, and more. Everyone interested in ecclesiology is in his debt for this masterful work. -- D. Stephen Long, Southern Methodist University Theologians of the early church had profound things to say about the church and its nature. Too often, however, their insights go unnoticed because they are scattered in texts on many other topics. All the more need for a book like this by Lee that gathers together the wisdom of the most important fathers of the West on the nature of the church. -- Michael Root, The Catholic University of America James Lee drills down into an important aspect of early Christian thought, one that impacts our very identity, what it means to be a Christian and a member of the Body of Christ, and yet one that is surprisingly missing from many studies of the period. Through the lives and writings of four Latin fathers, Lee expertly lays out the trajectory of early western ecclesiology. The Church in the Latin Fathers is thorough enough for scholars, but accessible to the non-specialist as well. Any study of ecclesiology must begin with the early Church, and for that, this book will be an indispensible resource. -- Jim L. Papandrea, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
