Last month we said we would take a pause over the summer months and re-engage in the Autumn. However, we have a surprise event – Friday June 26 – Peter Boswick (left) will lead us in a discussion of:
The letter of Clement to the Corinthians.
St Clement of Rome was an early bishop, perhaps even appointed as Bishop of Rome by St Peter himself. This written work attributed to him is the earliest of Christian works preserved (Probably between 70-100 AD), and counted among the works written by those who are called the Apostolic Fathers, i.e. those who knew the Apostles. In many churches at the time this letter was used as scripture in the church.
The Letter, which is actually from the Church in Rome, draws a beautiful picture of early Christian church life. Just as today, being church together wasn’t always easy. The Church in Corinth was divided. And Clement tried to show them the way back to unity. Clement speaks about:
(a) the key threat to church unity,
(b) the essence and expression of this unity in the church,
(c) and he commends a way to restoration to church unity.
Definitely something we can learn from.
Here is the letter to Clement in a modern translation with Peter Boswijk’s own divisions of the text to help in understanding the arguments of the letter:
1 Clement (in Word) 1 Clement (in PDF)
However, there are other good translations in English or in Dutch.
Here are some additional links suggested by David Dod (thanks!):
- Bishop Lightfoot’s classic work on the Epistle is scanned in the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/stream/p1apostolicfathe01clemuoft#page/n17/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/p1apostolicfathe02clemuoft - Also possibly useful: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/1clement.html
We begin with dinner at 6:30pm, discussion from 8 to 9:30, and concluding with a time of fellowship. All are most welcome.
Please let Hanna know if you’re coming so we can plan the dinner.