The Early Church Fathers

Last year, I put together a comprehensive reading plan of the three programs that I've been following in my collective Catholic study: The Bible in a Year, the Catechism in a Year, and the Rosary in a Year. It's a very handy spreadsheet, but I added something of my own: the writings of the Early Church Fathers, starting with the Didache, the first-century catechism of the faith. I finished three volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and read through Clement of Rome, Mathetes, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, The Shepherd of Hermas, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and the majority of Tertullian's works. All the aforementioned writers (except Tertullian) are now recognized as saints by the Catholic Church. Yes, it's a lot. But I learned a whole lot about the beliefs and teachings of the early Church in the process. I'm now working on Volume 4, which will conclude the writings of Tertullian along with Minucius Felix, Commodian, and the first and second parts of Origen's works; that should take me through to April.

So, what have I learned from these men? Well, first of all, they were Catholic. They taught the hierarchical structure of the Church, the real presence of the Eucharist, the primacy of the See of Peter, salvific baptism, the importance of Mary, the Trinity, the importance of relics and honoring the saints...it's all there. It's been said that 'to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant', and Cardinal Newman was correct. There simply is no distinctly Protestant doctrine anywhere to be found in the early centuries of Christianity.

The second thing is that these men were committed to the faith; many of them (most of them, in fact) were martyred for the faith. Ignatius of Antioch wrote his seven letters on his way to Rome to be killed in the arena by wild animals; Polycarp's martyrdom is recounted in one of these oldest documents (he was burned at the stake). But they refused to compromise what they had been taught; Ignatius, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp were immediate successors and students of the Apostles themselves, so their words have a lot of weight when it comes to understanding what the early Church believed.

Third, the doctrines they taught, while not formally codified as dogma, still show how the Church developed and understood those dogmas. For example, while the Trinity was not formally defined and codified until the Nicene Council in 325, it was still clearly taught earlier than that:

Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove.” Justin Martyr, First Apology, 13 (A.D. 155).

“[T]he ever-truthful God, hast fore-ordained, hast revealed beforehand to me, and now hast fulfilled. Wherefore also I praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee, and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and to all coming ages. Amen.” Martyrdom of Polycarp 14 (A.D. 157).

“For God did not stand in need of these [beings], in order to the accomplishing of what He had Himself determined with Himself beforehand should be done, as if He did not possess His own hands. For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, ‘Let Us make man after Our image and likeness;’ He taking from Himself the substance of the creatures [formed], and the pattern of things made, and the type of all the adornments in the world.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4,20:1 (A.D. 180).

“Bear always in mind that this is the rule of faith which I profess; by it I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and so will you know in what sense this is said. Now, observe, my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other. This statement is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated a diversity, in such a sense as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit…Happily the Lord Himself employs this expression of the person of the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a disposition (of mutual relations in the Godhead); for He says, ‘I will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter. … even the Spirit of truth,’ thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from the Father; so that He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by reason of the order observed in the Economy.” Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 9 (A.D. 213).

As a Catholic online, I do get into a lot of discussions about the faith on different sites, and it's good to know that I'm not alone in standing up for these truths; I'm standing on the shoulders of giants who literally gave their lives in the pursuit of the truth. And that's why I am, and always will remain, Catholic.