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Issue 64 : Anthony & the Desert Fathers: Extreme Faith

Originally published in 1999

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Table of Contents

Antony and the Desert Fathers: Did You Know?

Spiritual Wisdom of the Desert Fathers

Editors
Antony and the Desert Fathers: From the Editors - Models or Kooks?

The questions that hover in the background of this issue are as pressing as ever.

Mark Galli
The Best There Ever Was

Modern Christian hermits still look to him for inspiration, as did the entire Middle Ages, but today we hardly know him. What did the illiterate recluse, known as Antony of the Desert, do to earn such adulation?

Mark Galli
The Life Changing "Life of Antony"

Athanasius's biography was not only a bestseller in its day, but a book that made people stop and think—and act.

David Wright
Exorcizing the Desert

The stories of desert fathers' skirmishes with demons pointed to a larger struggle—and victory.

Diana Severance
Alone in the Desert?

Why thousands of early Christians took up the monastic way.

James E. Goehring
Diet For a Large Soul

What monks meant by fasting, and what they ate when they didn't.

Benedicta Ward
Antony and the Desert Fathers: Christian History Timeline

A Christian History Timeline
Ascetic Agitators

The early monks not only prayed in the desert but sometimes rioted in the cities.

Kenneth Calvert
Wordly Monk

Jerome was a disciplined ascetic who was on top of current affairs.

Kelvin Crow and Mark Galli
Holy Land

Sabas just wanted to pray where Christ had lived and died but ended up establishing the most famous monastery in the Judean Desert.

John Binns
Antony and the Desert Fathers: The Gallery - Getting Their Act Together

Monasticism was more or less a solitary affair until these four came along and taught monks how to live in community.

Columba Stewart; John Cassian; Frederica Mathews-Green; Macrina Basil; Marci Rae Johnson
Spiritual Pragmatists

For the desert fathers, theology was not the study of God but the study of how to become like God.

Dennis D. Martin
Antony and the Desert Fathers: Christian History Interview - Discovering the Desert Paradox

What many found when they sought God in a seemingly God-forsaken landscape.

Belden Lane
Antony and the Desert Fathers: Recommended Resources

Antony and the Desert Fathers

Mark Galli

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Today in Christian History

July 16, 1519: The Disputation of Leipzig, in which Martin Luther argued that church councils had been wrong and that the church did not have ultimate doctrinal authority, ends (see issue 34: Luther's Early Years).

July 16, 1769: Spanish Franciscan friar Father Junipero Serra founds the San Diego de Alcala mission in California, the first permanent Spanish settlement on the west coast of America (see issue 35: Christopher Columbus).

July 16, 1931: Missionary C.T. Studd, one of the famous "Cambridge ...

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Issue 64 : Anthony & the Desert Fathers: Extreme Faith

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