Philip Schaff’s classic work colloquially known as The Early Church Fathers is an invaluable resource filled with the primary documents and early theological building blocks for the Christian church. Comprised of thirty-eight volumes, it is broken into three parts: the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First and Second Series.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Other Journal is a space for Christian interdisciplinary theological refection that tackles the cultural crises of our time with verve and peculiar slant, advancing a progressive, provocative, and charitable response in sync with the peacefully contrarian Christ. In this issue, we consider the theme of authority from the vantage point of pews and hospital rooms, of jail cells, low-lit dining rooms, and ancient coin collections. We learn to hear the cries of those who have suffered abuse from the powerful, to resist with the Apostle Paul, and to consent to grace from the source of love beyond all earthly powers. Our authority issue features prose by Andrew DeCort, Lyle Enright, Steven Félix-Jäger, Richard C. Goode, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, Vincent Lloyd, Mary McCampbell, Mary Lane Potter, Gavin Richardson, Hilary Jerome Scarsella, Rebecca Shirley, Heidi Turner, and Brandon Wrencher; poetry by Jill Bergkamp, Susan Carlson, Barbara Crooker, and Katie Manning; an exhibition by Douglas Coupland, mixed media by Sedrick Huckaby, and multimedia by Brent Everett Dickinson; and an interview with Devin Singh by Zachary Thomas Settle.

Cally Hammond looks at how words function as carriers of semantic content (communicating facts and doctrines; telling stories; articulating emotions and spiritual perceptions) and then contrasts this with words as they function as physical entities striking the ear, so as to evoke emotions, memories and spiritual perceptions. This basic antithesis between words as carriers of meaning and words as evokers of feeling, emotion, and memory leads to four chapters that explore in fascinating detail the four main aspects of liturgical speech: posture, repetition, rhythm and punctuation.