Traditional Christian Ethics Volume Two: Affirmative or Positive Commandments A-K

What Christians Ought to Do,

Topics A-K

Traditional Christian Ethics features two exhaustive alphabetical lists of affirmative commandments and prohibitions from the earliest Christian ethics, as found in writers before the mass apostasy of 249-251 AD. The affirmatives, or positives, list consists of what Christians are/were commanded or encouraged to do. The other list is of negatives or prohibitions, i.e. what Christians are/were discouraged from doing, similarly arranged. The source material for the work encompasses far more than the ten-volume Ante-Nicene Fathers edited by Roberts and Donaldson. It also draws from all writings of the period: Christian, Jewish, and pagan, available in English or French translation, plus a few Latin translations. Some translations have been published only in scholarly journals, and some only in the twenty-first century.

Volumes Two and Three form a single exhaustive alphabetical list of affirmative commandments or precepts, including mental attitudes, i.e. what Christian ethics commanded or encouraged according to writers on Christian ethics before 250 AD.

Using earlier drafts of this set of books, Dr. Brattston’s articles and booklets synthesizing early and contemporary Christianity have been published by a wide variety of denominations and ministries in every major English-speaking country. He hopes readers will use them as a starting-point for writing articles, papers, and sermons of their own.

Sample: 

Confidence—Clement of Alexandria—Stromata—4.8 Confidence—Hebrews—10.35 Confidence before God—Origen—De Principiis—3.1.21 Confidence: boldness in confidence—Origen—Commentary on Ephesians—3.12 Confidence: exorcise confidently—Two Letters to Virgins—(pseudo-Clement)—1.12 Confidence, godly—1 Clement—2.3 Confidence: husbands are to have confidence in their wives—Clement of Alexandria—Paedagogus—3.11 Confidence: if you think you can stand, take heed lest you fall—1 Corinthians—10.12 Confidence: if you think you can stand, take heed lest you fall—Two Letters to Virgins—(pseudo-Clement)—2.13 Confidence in faith—Origen—Homilies on Judges—9.1 Confidence in God—Clement of Alexandria—Stromata—2.6 Confidence in God—Origen—De Principiis—3.1.21 Confidence in God—Theophilus—To Autolycus—1.8 Confidence in God rather than man—Hippolytus—Commentary on Daniel—3.29 Confidence in Jesus Christ—Origen—Homilies on Isaiah—7.2 Confidence in the Lord—1 Clement—34.5 Confidence in the Lord—Tertullian—Against Marcion—2.19 Confidence in the mind—Origen—Homilies on Judges—9.1 Confidence in the Word—Clement of Alexandria—Protrepticus—12 Confidence of uncreated liberty—Origen—Homilies on Leviticus—16.6.1