It is such a beautiful thing to come to an understaning of the apologetic fathers of the first 6oo years after Christ. In a variety of concurrent classes, I have been learning more and more the ways in which early Christians discovered, revered, wrestled with, defended, and often died for their beliefs. It is interesting to understand the ways in which these men wrote and see that the apostle's were not unlike them in their writing. I think many people don't realize how much of the Biblical text in the New Testament is actually directed at secular thought of the time period. Much of the apostolic work was devoted to proving the validity of the gospel over the culture.
Truly, we should follow their leading and be culturally relevant and yet remain firm and outspoken in areas that clash with society. It seems that most of Christianity today either condemns society and has nothing to do with it or conforms so much that boundaries are never even created in a number of areas. Why are we not thinking through every single aspect of our lives and evaluating them through Scripture?