Wisdom for Living

I am currently reading The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church by H. B. Swete.  This is a good summary paragraph on the ante-Nicene fathers.

The devotional language of the early Church was in fact on the whole in advance of its doctrinal system.  Men like Origen still had intellectual difficulties in reference to the relation of the Spirit to the other Persons of the Holy Trinity; but they could nevertheless associate His name in their prayers and praises with those of the Father and the Son.  The worship of the Trinity was a fact in the religious life of Christians before it was a dogma of the Church.  Dogmatic precision was forced upon the Church by heresy, but the confession and conglorification of the Three Persons arose out of the Christian consciousness, interpreting by its own experience the words of Christ and the Apostles and the primitive rule of faith.

In other words, they lived it before they could articulate it in systematic terms.  We do not need perfect knowledge of a matter before putting it into use.  Those men were taught well, being able to take sound doctrine and reason out the practical application.  I believe there is much discipleship work to be done to get the current and next generations of Christians living the faith as wisely as those past generations.