Rediscovering the Church Fathers by Michael A. G. Haykin

Author:Michael A. G. Haykin [Feedbooks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2357-1
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

BEING KISSED

The Eucharistic Piety of Cyprian and Ambrose

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.

SONG OF SONGS 1:2

In what is the earliest pagan Roman description of Christianity, the imperial governor Pliny the Younger (61/62–ca. 113) mentions, in a letter to the emperor Trajan (r. 98–117), that Christians in Bithynia and Pontus whom he had placed on trial for their beliefs were in the habit of meeting on a weekly basis “to partake of food—but common and harmless food.”1 Pliny’s evident surprise that the food consumed by these Christians was both “ordinary and harmless” seems to reveal that he expected to find something quite different, namely, “deviate and sinister meals.”2 Such meals as were supposedly consumed by Christians were luridly described in a midsecond-century speech that some scholars attribute to the Roman grammarian and rhetorician Marcus Cornelius Fronto (ca. 100–166/176) and that was cited by the Christian apologist Minucius Felix (fl. 200–235) in his rebuttal of attacks on the Christian faith:

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