Several of the doctrines Christians confess today were worked out by pastors in North Africa. The person of Christ and his relation to the Father, the restoring of believers who fall away, and the relation between grace and the human will all took shape there, in Alexandria, Carthage and Hippo, long before the Reformation. This guide teaches those doctrines one at a time, in historical order, so that you can explain each one in plain words and name the African teacher who helped the church say it. Work through it alone over two or three sittings, or with a group in one longer session. Keep a Bible open the whole way. The goal is that you can explain the doctrines themselves, which is more than a list of names.
The guide draws on a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation between Lisa Fields and Dr. Joel Elowsky, who teaches historical theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. Fields opened by naming the gap behind the question of whether Christianity is a white man’s religion: believers learn the Reformers and stop digging. The guide fills that gap one doctrine at a time.
First, get the order straight
Doctrine makes more sense when you know who was answering whom. So begin with a short sequence, using Elowsky’s own placements.
- Tertullian of Carthage, who by Elowsky’s dating lived from about 160 to 220.
- Clement and then Origen of Alexandria, in a city Elowsky calls one of the centers of Christianity in the ancient world. “I would say it even rivaled Rome,” he says.
- Cyprian of Carthage, a bishop during persecution in the third century.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, in the fourth century, a key figure in the debate over the person of Christ.
- Augustine of Hippo, who by Elowsky’s count spent only about five of his 75 years outside Africa.
One honest limit before we go further. In this conversation Elowsky names Tertullian and places him in time, but he does not walk through Tertullian’s writings. So this guide does not put claims about Tertullian’s teaching in his mouth. Tertullian marks the start of the line. The practice near the end gives you a way to read him for yourself.
Observation task: Without looking, write the five names in order and one word beside each for its city. If you mixed up Carthage and Alexandria, fix it now. The doctrines below lean on that geography.
Doctrine one: who Jesus is, and how he relates to the Father
Start with the question as Elowsky states it: “how do you talk about the person of Jesus Christ and his relationship to the Father?” That is the prerequisite most readers skip. The Trinity is first an answer to a question about Jesus, and only after that a puzzle about numbers.
The question arises from the text itself. John opens his Gospel this way: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Read it slowly. The Word is with God, so he can be distinguished from the Father. The Word was God, so he is not a lesser being beside him. Then John 1:14 adds: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The same Word who is God becomes a man.
Hold those three claims together and you have the shape of the doctrine. Jesus is distinct from the Father, he is fully God, and he became fully human. Jude 3 teaches that Jesus is fully God and fully man, the eternal Son who took on flesh, and that God is one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, co-equal and co-eternal. When Jesus sends his disciples out, he tells them to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). The word is name, singular, and it is followed by three persons.
Elowsky places Athanasius at the center of this fight. He describes him as a very strong defender of Christ and notes that the Council of Nicaea did not meet in Africa, yet some of its key players were African, Athanasius among them. He lists the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity among Africa’s major contributions to the early church.
Now the predictable misconception. Many people explain the Trinity with water, ice and steam. That picture fails at exactly the point the doctrine guards. Water changes from one form to the next, so the picture has one God taking turns as Father, then Son, then Spirit. But in John 1:1 the Word is with God at the same moment he is God. At the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3:16-17, the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends, and the Father speaks, all at once. Any analogy that makes the persons into stages has lost the text. It is better to say less and stay with what Scripture says.
One more caution. The KJV of 1 John 5:7 contains a sentence about three that bear record in heaven. Its earliest manuscript support is debated. You do not need it. The doctrine rests on the wider witness of passages like the ones above, so no one should treat that single verse as the foundation.
Observation task: Read John 1:1-18. Mark every place where the Word is distinguished from the Father and every place where he is identified with God. Then write one sentence that keeps both.
Doctrine two: how the church restores those who fall
The second doctrine came from a crisis in Carthage. Under persecution, some believers denied Christ to save their lives. Afterward many wanted to come back. Elowsky explains that another theologian of the period, Novatian, held that they could not be readmitted at all. Cyprian disagreed, and Elowsky frames the bishop’s problem as a question: “How can we bring these people back in?”
Here the necessary distinction is between restoring someone and pretending nothing happened. Elowsky says Cyprian looked for a pastoral way to bring people back while also dealing with what had occurred. That is two commitments at once. A church that only welcomes treats denial as trivial. A church that only refuses treats denial as final. Cyprian refused both.
Scripture gives this balance its shape. Paul writes, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). Notice what the verse assumes. The fault is real, the restoring is the goal, and the restorer stays humble. Then read John 21:15-17, where the risen Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him. Peter had denied him three times. Jesus does not skip the denial, and he does not leave Peter outside.
Elowsky also gives the reason the issue was urgent: these were not scholars at a distance. “Because if you remember, first of all, they were pastors,” he says. Cyprian had lapsed members of his own congregation in front of him. The doctrine of penance, as Elowsky calls it, was a pastor’s answer to real people.
Observation task: In Galatians 6:1, circle the word that names the goal and underline the phrase that names the restorer’s posture. What would be lost if either were removed?
Doctrine three: the human will and the grace of God
This doctrine is harder, because faithful Christians still disagree about it. Learn it in two steps, because two African teachers took it up in two different settings.
Step one: Origen and the problem of fate
Origen faced opponents who, Elowsky says, held to fatalism. In his words, “a lot of them emphasized the idea of fatalism, that everything is determined by fate.” On that view, God could be blamed for evil. Origen answered by stressing human free will. Elowsky summarizes his point this way: “humanity is responsible for evil in the world by our choice in the garden.” So the emphasis on the will began as a defense of God’s goodness.
Moses sets the same choice before Israel: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The command assumes the people are responsible for how they answer.
Step two: Augustine and the problem of self-reliance
Augustine began, Elowsky says, by speaking a good deal about the will’s role in conversion. Then he met the teaching of Pelagius, whom Elowsky describes as a monk from Britain. Elowsky puts Augustine’s conclusion this way: “when we put too much emphasis on the will, what we end up doing is putting our salvation in our own hands rather than in God’s hands.” So Augustine stressed the bondage of the will, God’s election and his saving grace. Elowsky says it plainly: “Augustine’s real emphasis there was then on God doing his work in us rather than us doing the work.”
Paul speaks in that direction: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Jude 3 teaches that salvation is by grace through faith, not earned by works, and that genuine faith bears fruit.
Now the misconception to avoid. It is tempting to label Origen an Arminian and Augustine a Calvinist. When a listener asked Lisa Fields which way the African fathers leaned, she noted that the question reads Reformation categories back onto earlier people. Elowsky agreed that those names came much later, while adding that “you can indeed trace some of these disputes back to the early church.” So the debate is old, but the labels are not.
Also notice what this history does not settle. Faithful Christians read Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 in different ways, some in a Reformed direction and some not, and Jude 3 does not choose between them. Both readings take Scripture seriously. Paul himself holds both sides in one breath: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).
Observation task: Write the problem each teacher was answering in one line each. Origen was answering ______. Augustine was answering ______. Then explain why the same subject produced opposite emphases.
A note on the church itself
Elowsky adds the doctrine of the church to his list, and he points to councils as evidence. By his account, a council around 220 carried the signatures of about 70 bishops, and an early fifth-century council in Carthage drew more than 600. He says the African canons from one of those councils were distributed through the churches of the Roman Empire as a model. He notes the records appear in the fourteenth volume of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. These figures are his, and they can be checked there. The doctrinal point is simple. These churches made decisions together, in councils, and the practice they modeled spread.
A practice: teach one doctrine back
Choose one of the three doctrines above. Then write five sentences, no more:
- The question the doctrine answers.
- The African teacher who pressed it, and his city.
- The problem he faced in his own setting.
- One passage of Scripture the doctrine has to account for.
- One thing the doctrine does not claim.
Say your five sentences out loud to someone who has not read this guide. Ask them to repeat the main idea back to you. Wherever they get it wrong, your explanation needs work at that point, not theirs.
Then go to a primary source. Elowsky mentions Augustine’s works on the Trinity, his Confessions and The City of God. He also mentions the account of the Scillitan martyrs, which he dates to about 180 and calls probably the first written record of Christians in North Africa. Read a few pages of one of them, or of Tertullian, whom this conversation names but does not quote. As you read, mark one place where the author is answering a real problem for real people. Elowsky’s summary is a fair test: “It wasn’t just all about theology, but it was about how you put faith in action together.”
For groups: give each person a different doctrine for the five sentences, then have them teach one another. Resist the urge to correct quickly. Let the group find the gaps together. If the discussion of grace and the will turns into a contest, slow it down and ask each side to restate the other’s reading fairly before responding.
Questions for conversation
- John 1:1 says the Word was with God and was God. Which half do people tend to drop, and what goes wrong when they do?
- Why do you think an analogy that makes the persons of the Trinity into stages feels helpful, even though it fails? What would you say instead?
- Cyprian rejected both easy welcome and permanent exclusion. Where does your church, or your own instinct, tend to lean, and what does Galatians 6:1 ask of you?
- Origen and Augustine stressed different things because they faced different opponents. What opponent or pressure shapes the emphasis you bring to grace and the will?
- Restate the reading of Romans 9 you disagree with in a way its holders would accept. What did that take?
- Elowsky says Christianity has “not been about race or color. It’s been about Christ.” How does knowing these teachers were African change the way you explain the faith, and how does his sentence keep that knowledge in its place?
What to carry
After working through this guide you should be able to explain at least three doctrines in the order the church learned them. You should know the African teacher behind each one and the problem he was answering. Before your next conversation about where Christian belief came from, pick the doctrine you explain least well and work through its Scripture passage once more.