"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Earlier this week, I gave a talk entitled “Worship In The Early Church”. In case you weren’t able to make it, the event organizer recorded my presentation and put it up on Vimeo:
It is also available here on YouTube:
I recently saw Mike Aquilina (happy birthday!) comment on Facebook that he was just returning from speaking at a conference on the Early Church Fathers. I had no idea that such things existed! How did I not know?!
Anyway, it turns out that there’s an annual Patristics seminar in October at St. Lambert’s Catholic Church near Chicago, Illinois:
Although I’ve missed the seminar for this year, fortunately the parish’s website has the audio from the talks, as well as from their 2013 seminar with Dr. John Bergsma:
2016: A Revolution of Hope (Mike Aquilina & Dr. Jim Papandrea)
The First Pro-Life Movement: A Revolution in Human Dignity
The Inevitable Counter-Revolution: How and Why the Church was Persecuted
Saving Bodies, Saving Souls: A Revolution in Health Care
The Revolution of Religious Liberty: Myth and Reality
2013: Origins of Jewish and Christian Worship (Mike Aquilina & Dr. John Bergsma)
A Rite Tun
Outdoing Solomon
Language of Angels
The Garden and the Temple
A few days ago I posted a Quick Apology in response to a reader’s question on the subject of “Soul Sleep”. In that same email, he described another objection he had heard, which I’d like to address today.
In the reader’s email, he wrote the following:
I have recently encountered a non-Catholic…who states that the Church Fathers never existed, i.e. all fake
Well…that’s quite the challenge! So, how might one respond when encountering this objection?
Sometimes I forget I’m a bit weird…
Do you have habits which have been part of you for years? Do you have personal traditions which you’ve been following for so long that you forget that they’re not universally shared by the rest of the world?
Well, last month I was chatting with a friend online and he highlighted for me one of my personal eccentricities. Our discussion prompted me to write this post so as to share my weirdness with the world, and in the faint hope of discovering others out there who have similar quirks…
Well this is rather cool… I recently came across an interactive timeline of the Early Church:
A while ago, during a discussion in the comment section of this blog, I made the assertion that the historic Church of Christianity was the Catholic Church. A non-Catholic disputed this claim, asserting that the Catholic Church only came into existence with the reign of the Emperor Constantine.
In response to this claim, I shared with her my post entitled Before 300: Pre-Constantinian Christianity, where I provide evidence for twenty-one doctrines which were believed by Christians prior to AD 300 and the rise of Constantine. The original purpose of that post was not only to show that the Catholic Church was in existence long before Constantine arrived on scene, but also to provide non-Catholics with a simple way to compare their own beliefs to that of the early Christians.
After reading that article, my internet friend appeared to concede that the Catholic Church did actually exist from the earliest of times. Wonderful! However, despite denying its existence only moments before, she now claimed that the Catholic Church had persecuted the “true” Christians in the early centuries! I’ve heard similar claims in the past made by other Protestants as well as Muslims, in an effort to explain why the belief system that we find in the Early Church is incompatible with their own.
Today I would like to examine the assertion that the Catholic Church suppressed “true” Christianity in the early centuries and I will attempt to dismantle it using an argument which may be referred to as “The dog who never barked”…
A while ago, I had a chap called Roscoe commenting on my blog, denying the Catholic claims concerning St. Peter and the See of Rome. In response, I quoted St. Irenaeus, one of the most important witnesses concerning the Church at Rome:
“…that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; …which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority…
…The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate [of Rome]. Of this Linus…Anacletus…Clement…[and] Eleutherius does now…hold the inheritance of the episcopate.
“In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth
– Against Heresies III.3.3 (c. AD 180)
In reply to my quotation of Irenaeus, Roscoe wrote the following:
There are no historical facts to support the idea that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome. Rome was over 1000 miles away from where they were. We can see what Peter was doing in Acts and he was not in Rome at this time. Most likely the faith was brought there by pilgrims who were converted in the early chapters of Acts.
Roscoe’s main argument seems to be:
1. Irenaeus says Peter and Paul “founded” the church at Rome.
2. Jews from Rome were present at Pentecost and converted to Christianity. It would have most likely been these Christians who would have brought the faith to Rome.
3. Irenaeus is proven demonstrably wrong and therefore his testimony concerning Rome should be regarded as extremely dubious.
I’ve heard this kind of argument a few times in the comment section of other blogs, so today I’d like to respond to it…