- Nov 26, 2019
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I would like to point out that the so called early church fathers were NOT the fathers of the Church of Jesus Christ, but wrote their opinions centuries AFTER He founded His Church on Himself as Chief cornerstone and His twelve Apostles as the twelve foundational stones, as Scripture shows.
That’s untrue: the first Patristic figures like St. Clement and St. Ignatius were the disciples of the Apostles. And we have their writings, and the writings of their disciples, and so on. We also have the writings of a rival group, which you may have heard of, like the Gospel of Thomas, the Pistis Sophia, The Gospel of Truth The Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Thomas,* the Manichaean literature, and so on, and they show a remarkable consistency over many years and rival groups beginning with the followers of Simon Magus, then Cerinthus, Marcion, Valentinus, Tatian, Mani who founded the particularly toxic Manichaean religion, and others. These sects were documented and tracked by the Church fathers, by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, by St. Epiphanius of Salamis, and by St. John of Damascus.
Meanwhile the same Church Fathers taught the doctrine I believe, that most Christians believe, that there is one God, the Father Almighty, that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, fully man and fully God, the on, who for our salvation was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried, rising on the third day according to the scriptures, and ascending into heaven, where he is seated on the right hand of the Father and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and whose Kingdom shall have no end, in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who spoke by the Prophets; I confess one baptism for the remission of sins, I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, I believe in the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to come. That is to say, the Nicene Creed; I also believe the Apostles Creed and the Athanasian Creed.
And St. Athanasius was the key prosecutor of Arius at the council of Nicea; Arius rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and taught Jesus Christ was a creature, created by God, and not God incarnate. The orthodox prevailed and Arianism was rejected, but Arian bishops got to Constantius, the heir of Constantine in the East, and so after the Emperor died, Christians were persecuted by Arians, and briefly Pagans, under Julian the Apostate, for 60 years. And the same Athanasius about 35 years later wrote his 39th Paschal Encyclical, as he did every year to provide the date of Easter to the bishops of the Church of Alexandria, of which he became Patriarch after Nicea, when his predecessor St. Alexander died, and in this encyclical he listed the 27 books we now universally agree are the canonical New Testament, being the originator of the modern canon (there had been earlier proposals by theologians like Eusebius of Caesarea, the noted church historian and Arian sympathizer, who would have included some apocrypha, and other proposals that were missing many of the Epistles and Revelations, but it was Athanasius who got it right).
It took about 150 years for this canon to propagate, but we should celebrate that it did, because if you ever tried to read some of the blasphemous apocrypha, like the Gospel According to Judas or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, you would be glad there was someone like Athanasius to say “Nope, that’s not going in there.” And if the Church that came up with the Nicene Creed and the canonical New Testament, from which the Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Assyrian churches all descended isn’t the Christian Church, then there is no Christian Church, because our beliefs about the Incarnation, the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our own salvation, Baptism, Holy Communion, and the meaning and interpretation of the Scriptures, and even what books are Scriptures, came from them. And their beliefs are naturally consistent with those expressed in the Scriptures, considering Irenaeus popularized the idea of there being only four Gospel, and considering Athanasius made the final cut, and was largely responsible for the Nicene Creed, I am extremely comfortable reading everything he wrote. Much more so than many more recent theologians. I would rather read Athanasius than John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas or even St. Augustine, who was almost a contemporary.
St. John Climacus was a 6th century monk about which we know nothing other than he wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent, immortalized by a famous icon. His name literally means “Of the Ladder.” I think the icon summarizes his book, and the methods of demons, very well:
St. Ignatius Brianchaninov was not an early church father, but a 19th century Russian monastic and bishop who I greatly admire, who wrote The Arena about spiritual warfare, and a book more for laity about the Jesus Prayer.
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