Patrick of Ireland: The Unlikely Hero of Church History
By Bradley Bell, TGC.
Patrick had a faith, not born or developed in the study, but forged on the anvil of hardship and disaster and tested by pain and disappointment.
“I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.” I can still hear those words in the voice of Tom Hanks, playing the beloved character Forrest Gump in the 1994 film that bears his name. After I watched it over and over with my dad as a kid, it’s a movie that’s coded into my brain. As Dad would say, “Forrest Gump is my hero.”
Yet anyone who’s seen the film will know that Gump’s mental and physical limitations made him the most unlikely candidate for an American hero. The same could be said of the much-lauded Patrick of Ireland. Many know him as the patron saint of that land. Others are aware of his remarkable missionary accomplishments. But no one would have predicted such an outcome for a man of his pedigree.
Unlikely Hero
Given my childhood, you should understand that calling Patrick of Ireland “the Forrest Gump of church history” is to give him a moniker of highest honor. Much has been written and published (including at The Gospel Coalition) about the Patrick of history, such as Timothy Paul Jones’s two-minute introduction. These reflections are of tremendous value. But I wish to offer my observations from what’s thus far a less common angle. My perspective is shaped with the help of Irishman John Holmes’s biography, Saint Patrick: The Man and His Mission.
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