early church fathers catholic

There are even earlier witnesses to the Church’s apostolicity. The letters of Ignatius are clear about the role which the bishop, or “overseer,” held in the early Church; the modern reader may even be startled at the degree to which these letters exalt the role of the bishop. I’ve written before, in a tongue-and-cheek article, that a surefire way to avoid becoming a Catholic is to avoid, altogether, reading from the Church Fathers. Aphrahat (c. 270–c. He was a governor before becoming bishop. The seed of the woman is Jesus. . Cyprian (c. 200 – 258) was bishop of Carthage and an important early Christian writer. Henceforth these were the the terms for these offices in an “institutional” or “hierarchical” Church. Isaac of Antioch (451–452), one of the stars of Syriac literature, is the reputed author of a large number of metrical homilies (The fullest list, by Gustav Bickell, contains 191 which are extant in MSS), many of which are distinguished by an originality and acumen rare among Syriac writers. Hilary of Poitiers (c. 300 – c. 368) was Bishop of Poitiers and is a Doctor of the Church. Many Protestant seminaries provide courses on patristics as part of their curriculum, and many historic Protestant churches emphasize the importance of tradition and of the fathers in scriptural interpretation. This is important because Catholics and Eastern Orthodox both teach that the church fathers rejected faith alone and required either works or baptism to complete the saving work of God. The seven letters he left behind afford us a precious and remarkable picture of just what the Church was like not two full generations after issuing from the side of Jesus Christ on the cross (and then, of course, being initially described in the Acts of the Apostles). But he is also regarded by the early Fathers, such as Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and Tertullian as the recipient of the tradition of his predecessors in the see, and consequently as the witness and representative of the faith of his Church before Catholicity and … The fruit of all this, for Ignatius, was the personal holiness and uprightness of conduct that was supposed to mark the follower of Christ. They are, characteristically, self-established bodies or communities, while the true Church remains Christ-established. In the past, when this date was occupied by the Octave Day of the Epiphany, his feast day was moved to 14 January. What was the Church like around 107? If anyone is not inside the sanctuary, he lacks God’s bread” (5:1-2). His best-known book, Against Heresies (c.180) he enumerated heresies and attacked them. This is a remarkable scholarly consensus, considering the disputes that continue to rage about other early documents, even the Gospels. We must remember that, prior to the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, books of any kind had to be copied by hand and were prohibitively expensive; people simply did not have the same access to the printed word that we have had for the last five centuries. Extracts, however, appear in a number of other writings, some of which cite a book number. We see in the letters of Ignatius the whole Church system for carrying out the mission Jesus gave the apostles already firmly established and functioning by the end of the first century. “It is essential to act in no way without the bishop,” Ignatius wrote to the Trallians. . [6] He interpreted scripture allegorically and showed himself to be a stoic, a Neo-Pythagorean, and a Platonist. Of all popes, Gregory I had the most influence on the early medieval church.[38]. He took a concubine and became a Manichean. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. They argued that Christian faith, while it was against many of the ideas of Plato and Aristotle (and other Greek philosophers), was an almost scientific and distinctive movement with the healing of the soul of man and his union with God at its center. In our first instalment of the Early Church Fathers, we saw how their writings, while not possessing the inerrant, inspired nature of Sacred Scripture, clearly and historically testify to the fact that the early Church was stunningly Catholic in its structure — a church possessing the authority and office of the apostles, and founded by Jesus himself on Peter and his successors. Those of the First Council of Nicaea and continuing through the Second Council of Nicea (787) are collected in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. He held to this because he saw so clearly the need for Church unity, which was achieved and guaranteed by the bishop. Some time around the year A.D. 107, a short, sharp persecution of the Church of Christ resulted in the arrest of the bishop of Antioch in Syria. Augustine is also the patron saint of many institutions and a number have been named after him. In the New Testament the community of Christ’s disciples incorporated into him through baptism and the Eucharist was called simply “the Church.” From the time that any other adjective was applied to the noun “Church,” though, the term was derived not from the name of the divine Founder of this Church,but rather from one of its special characteristics: its catholicity. Just as Irenaeus stressed that the doctrine of the Church had been handed down from the apostles, so Justin emphasized that the power to administer the sacraments had similarly been handed down. It is obvious that the apostles appointed others besides themselves to offices in the Church. Conducted on to the Greek city of Troas on the Aegean Sea, Ignatius wrote yet another letter to the Church at Smyrna, through which he had passed, as well as to its bishop, Polycarp. He was a near contemporary to the slightly younger Ephrem the Syrian, but the latter lived within the sphere of the Roman Empire. If, toward the end of the second century, he believed that an unbroken succession of bishops was the guarantee of the authenticity of the Church, imagine what he might have thought about an unbroken succession of bishops that has lasted through the twenty centuries! The Early Church Fathers believed that the Catholic Church was the one true Church, that it taught infallibly and that the clergy was made up of three ranks; bishop, priest, and deacon. Augustine, a Latin Father and Doctor of the Church, is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. Ignatius was closer to Jesus’ crucifixion than we are to World War I. Ephrem the Syrian (ca. As we have noted, Irenaeus had a personal link with the generation of the apostles through his mentor Polycarp. . When Rome fell and the faith of many Christians was shaken, Augustine wrote The City of God, in which he defended Christianity from pagan critics and developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material City of Man. We are part of his fruit which grew out of his most blessed Passion . Steve and his wife Janet began a study of the Church Fathers in 1993. Shortly after writing these seven letters to Churches in Asia Minor, Ignatius was taken aboard ship; the remainder of his journey to Italy was by sea. Origen, or Origen Adamantius (c. 185 – c. 254) was a scholar and theologian. [32] He is said to have introduced the Latin term trinitas with regard to the Divine (Trinity) to the Christian vocabulary[33] (but Theophilus of Antioch already wrote of "the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom", which is similar but not identical to the Trinitarian wording),[34] and also probably the formula "three Persons, one Substance" as the Latin "tres Personae, una Substantia" (itself from the Koine Greek "τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, ὁμοούσιος; treis Hypostases, Homoousios"), and also the terms vetus testamentum (Old Testament) and novum testamentum (New Testament). [6], Copied and widely read in the Early Church,[7] First Clement had been considered by some as part of the New Testament canon, e.g., listed as canonical in Canon 85 of the Canons of the Apostles,[8] among other early canons of the New Testament, showing that it had canonical rank in at least some regions of early Christendom. . A careful reading of these witnesses from early Christian history shows us that the Church affirmed by the Fathers, articulated in the Creeds, and adhered to by those who called themselves Christians from the earliest days of Christianity, was indeed the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The patriarch of Alexandria at first supported Origen but later expelled him for being ordained without the patriarch's permission. At the First Council of Nicaea (325), Athanasius argued against the Arian doctrine that Christ is of a distinct substance from the Father.[6]. Since Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, sanctify us with his Spirit, and lead us to heaven, how can we imagine that he would saddle us with anything like a monarchical bishop, who, in what pertained to Christ’s truth and to our salvation, had to be obeyed? [5] Their writings, though popular in Early Christianity, were ultimately not included in the canon of the New Testament once it reached its final form. The Church of the early Fathers was nothing but the outgrowth of the Church founded by Jesus Christ upon the apostles, a Church which has neither ceased to exist nor been corrupted and which has lasted intact down to our own day. This kind of testimony, reflecting a period relatively early in the second century, provides sufficient corroboration of the usage of Ignatius and Irenaeus, for whom “the Catholic Church” was simply “the Church.”. Acts 6:1-6). [6] Irenaeus proposed that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all be accepted as canonical. Called the Persian Sage (Syriac: ܚܟܝܡܐ ܦܪܣܝܐ‎, ḥakkîmâ p̄ārsāyā), Aphrahat witnesses to the concerns of the early church beyond the eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire. Using his knowledge of Hebrew, he produced a corrected Septuagint. He wrote three books in Greek and was the first great writer of Latin Christianity, thus sometimes known as the "Father of the Latin Church". It seems incredible that eternal life should be won in this manner . He emphasized the necessity of the unity of Christians with their bishops, and also the authority of the Roman See, which he claimed was the source of "priestly unity"'. The languages of the world are different, but the meaning of the tradition is one and the same. Paul spoke of “bishops and deacons” (Phil. Let them learn from you at least by your actions. The work of Papias is dated by most modern scholars to about A.D. 95–120. Those who wrote in Greek are called the Greek (Church) Fathers. In addition to his letter to Rome, Ignatius wrote letters to the Christians in each of the cities following its delegation’s visit to the shackled bishop-prisoner as he passed through. The Catholic Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, often referred to as the Doctor of the Assumption because of his writings on the Assumption of Mary. His name was Ignatius. It is amazing that some Christians have been able to imagine that a Savior who never wrote anything down at all would found a religion based entirely on a book! Ignatius-who, as we have noted, was appointed to head the local church at Antioch while some of the original apostles were still alive-did not know of any such thing as a “church” which was merely an assemblage of like-minded people who had come together believing themselves to have been moved by the Spirit. . The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. So it was that the second bishop of Antioch was sent off to Rome as a condemned prisoner. He has been called the most significant of all of the fathers of the Syriac-speaking church tradition.[43]. The apostolic church fathers were the ones like Clement of Rome who were contemporaries of the apostles and were probably taught by them, carrying on the tradition and teaching of the apostles themselves. Another early Father, one of the first Christian apologists, was Justin Martyr (100-165). The Psogos, along with the encomium, were both rhetorical techniques used in the ancient world in a polemical context. They later added a codicil to the effect that, should these die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry” (42:4, 2). 1:6). Answer: The Fathers of the Church are so called because of their leadership in the early Church, especially in defending, expounding, and developing Catholic doctrines. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series II. Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 636) was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien" ("the last scholar of the ancient world"). His many works—including The Confessions, which is often called the first Western autobiography—have been read continuously since his lifetime. Volume IV. No denominational pluralism here! 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In his early life, he was a civil servant and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. Thereafter the use of the word “priest” for those ordained in Christ became more and more common. The words of the later Nicene Creed apply perfectly to this earlier period. Volume I. Eusebius: Church History from A.D. 1-324, Life of Constantine the Great, Oration in Praise of Constantine. .. The phrase which Ignatius employed in his letter to the Smyrnaeans was the name by which the Church of Christ had already become known: the “Catholic Church.” Ignatius wrote: “When the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church” (8:2). Peter and the other apostles at Jerusalem quickly decided to appoint deacons to assist them (cf. Such principles are explicit in the handbooks of the rhetors, but an interesting passage from the church historian Socrates, writing in the mid-fifth century, shows that the rules for invective were simply taken for granted by men and women of the late Roman world"[26], Chrysostom's sermons along with Basil the Great's have greatly influenced the Christian Church's understanding of economic and distributive justice for the poor, being cited extensively by the Catechism of the Catholic Church[27] as well as Pope Francis in his own sermons critiquing modern-day forms of capitalism[28][29]. Irenaeus was a respected presbyter in the Church of Lyons at the time of the great persecution of Christians there in 177. He is described as "an ancient man who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp" by Polycarp's disciple Irenaeus (c. 180). Reading the Apostolic Fathers and the second-century apologists forced me to come to grips with the thoroughly "Catholic" elements of early Christianity. “Presbyter,” from the Greek presbyteros, meaning “elder,” and “deacon,” from the Greekdiakonos, meaning “servant” or “minister,” were applied to lesser officers. Committing them into the hands of living men, divinely guided and protected, charged with faithfully handing them down in the community, was a better means of preserving and perpetuating them, and that is what Jesus did. The process is still going on today. In his letter to the Smyrnaeans Ignatius went on to employ a phrase whose first surviving use in Christian writings occurs here, a phrase that marks this letter as one of the most significant documents of the early Church. That Ignatius was met by “official” delegations indicates that these local churches were in close touch with one another. His Life of the Virgin is thought to be the earliest complete biography of Mary, the mother of Jesus. He also wrote in defense of the Roman See's authority, and inaugurated use of Latin in the Mass, instead of the Koine Greek that was still being used throughout the Church in the west in the liturgy. Clement of Alexandria was the first member of the church of Alexandria to be more than a name, and one of its most distinguished teachers. Other ancient testimony about the Church of the early Fathers confirms Ignatius’s evidence. “A band of twelve men went forth from Jerusalem,” Justin wrote. He is also regarded as a saint in the Church of the East, the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and among the Oriental Orthodox Churches, making him the last saint chronologically to be recognised by every apostolic Church. In his letter to the Smyrnaeans, he even provided a remarkable yet concise summary of the fundamentals of the faith. Polycarp tried and failed to persuade Pope Anicetus to have the West celebrate Passover on the 14th of Nisan, as in the Eastern calendar. It is possible to show that Irenaeus understood the Church to be holy, catholic, and apostolic from one single passage in Against Heresies. The Cappadocian Fathers are Basil the Great (330–379), who was bishop of Caesarea; Basil's younger brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 332 – 395), who was bishop of Nyssa; and a close friend, Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389), who became Patriarch of Constantinople. The bread, which comes from the earth, receives the invocation of God, and then it is no longer common bread but the Eucharist . One of the most important Apostolic Fathers is St. Clement of Rome (c. 30 A.D.-c. 100 A.d.). Pope Damasus I (305–384) was active in defending the Catholic Church against the threat of schisms. Of these designations, “bishop,” from the Greek episkopos, was applied to the highest officer in each local church. 12:29). This is the first surviving mention in Christian literature of the name, “the Catholic Church,” the name which the Council of Constantinople (381) would later employ in the Nicene Creed to designate the entity for which that Council was speaking. . . Born and raised in Damascus, he died at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. . There was no escaping the fact that already in the first generations, Christians believed, for example, in a sacramental theology, a hierarchy led by bishops who were appointed by the first apostles, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. "Ante-Nicene Fathers" redirects here. Despite indications that the work of Papias was still extant in the Late Middle Ages, the full text is now lost. One of the things Ignatius was most insistent on was the position of the monarchical bishop. The Early Church Fathers were the disciples of the 12 apostles, the disciples of the disciples of the 12 apostles, the disciples of the disciples of the disciples of the 12 apostles, etc. They did not see themselves as independent, self-governing “congregations” of like-minded people; they saw themselves as linked together in the one Body of Christ according to a firmly established and well-understood system, even though they were geographically separated. Writings from the church fathers at www.goarch.com. Besides these eight Fathers, there are many other influential spiritual figures of the early Church. More than just being “named,” however, these appointees were dedicated by means of a religious rite-the laying on of hands-either by those who already had authority conferred on them by Christ (the apostles) or by those on whom they had conferred authority in turn by the laying on of hands. In the letters of Ignatius it is clear that leadership in the Christian community is exercised by an order of “bishops, presbyters, and deacons” (Trallians 3:2, Polycarp 6:1). He is counted as one of the four original doctors of the Church. 1:1), though he also mentions other offices such as “apostles,” “prophets,” and “teachers” (1 Cor. According to a well-documented tradition, Clement had been taught directly by the Apostles. He warned Christians in Rome not to interfere or try to save him. Early Church Fathers, eh? These “protesting” splinter groups are usually offshoots from the true Church. Volume III. Without them, Ignatius might have remained as obscure as many another ancient bishop, no more than a name. For Irenaeus, the Church was necessarily one, as she was catholic, because she was apostolic: She was based on “that tradition which has come down from the apostles and is guarded by the successions of elders” (III:2:2). Irenaeus was especially insistent that this holy Church was also one. Do some of the early church fathers teach the doctrine of faith alone?Yes, some did. [24][25] Patristic scholars such as Robert L Wilken point out that applying modern understandings of antisemitism back to Chrysostom is anachronistic due to his use of the Psogos. We call sacramental ordinations these ordained officers or ministers rites were what today we sacramental... Development of Western Christianity demonstrate that Christians could hold their own in conversations with learned Greek-speaking intellectuals abuse... For Origen, he gave them the power given to them to successors ; many of being..., bishop of Smyrna ( c. 30 A.D.-c. 100 A.D. ). ” Vatican goes. Resisted his mother 's pleas to become Christian was pope from 3 September 590 until his death scholar. 270, but of the Church following the death of the others vindicated. 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