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So You Think You’re Smarter than the Church Fathers?

So You Think You’re Smarter than the Church Fathers?

Last updated on: August 8, 2015 at 11:04 am by K. Albert Little

So You Think You’re Smarter than the Church Fathers? 2015-08-08T11:04:08-04:00 K. Albert Little

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There are lots of reasons why I decided, as an otherwise happy Evangelical Protestant, to become a Roman Catholic. Among these reasons were aesthetic and spiritual appeals—the beauty of the liturgy and the plethora of centuries old spiritual practices—and these were, indeed, powerful motivators.

But alongside the sometimes esoteric motivations were some fundamentally, concretely intellectual reasons to join the ranks of the ancient Catholic Church.

Chief among the intellectual appeals stand the towering figures of the Early Church Fathers.

Christians who lived, and wrote, some of them contemporary with the writings of the New Testament.

Many of them, in the earliest Fathers known as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, were taught themselves by the apostles.

It was the strong appeal and clear theology of these, some of the earliest and most foundational Christians, that contributed strongly to my intellectual conversion to Catholicism. To do anything otherwise, I’ll argue, would be utterly foolish.

The Clarity of the Church Fathers

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.

The reason is simple. If you do venture a risk at reading the ancient Church Fathers something becomes alarmingly apparent fairly quickly in the history of the Church: the clarity of some very, particularly Catholic doctrine.

Take two examples: the Eucharist and Baptism.

The Church Fathers on Baptism

In the Catholic Church, along with the Anglicans and the Orthodox, these practices are Sacramental. That is, they hold the most special graces possible within the Church. In these acts, God does something specifically important.

In Catholicism, fundamentally, baptism saves.

This is, of course, contrary to my Evangelical upbringing. As an Evangelical baptism was merely an outward sign that I’ve accepted Christ. I was baptized years after becoming a Christian. My wife sometimes jokes that she was baptized—in a Baptist church—so she could get a job at the Church bookstore. Regardless, for the both of us baptism was an outward sign—that’s what we would’ve called it, “an outward sign,” symbolizing our acceptance of the mission and message of Christ.

While baptism is seen, nearly universally amongst Evangelicals, as a mere “outward sign” this is in complete and absolute contrast to the teaching of the Early Church Fathers.

Irenaeus, for example, writing in the 2nd century, is unequivocal,

For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean, by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord, from our old transgressions, being spiritually regenerated as newborn babes, even as the Lord has declared: ‘Except a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’.

Along with a myriad of other Early Church Fathers, Irenaeus speaks about the important saving power of baptism—and its necessity.

And, alongside the witness of the other Early Church Fathers, Irenaeus’s teaching on the necessity of baptism is in stark contrast to what was taught in the Evangelical communities I “grew up” in.

The Church Fathers on the Eucharist

Likewise, the Eucharist.

I’ve written several times before about the convincing and unambiguous witness of the Early Church Fathers about the Eucharist. In the mind of all of these Church Fathers, themselves disciples of the very first disciples of Christ, the Eucharist was the actual blood and body of Christ.

This doctrine, a true mystery and miracle, is referred to as transubstantiation in the Catholic Church and is held, in similar ways, by the Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran communities.

In these communities, the belief is that the elements of wine and bread, during Communion, actually become Jesus’ flesh and blood through a miraculous transformation. Something akin to the feeding of the five thousand (which interestingly enough precedes Jesus’ famous Eucharistic Discourse in John 6).

This idea, in contrast, is fundamentally opposed by the whole of Evangelical Christendom.

Some denominations, like the Pentecostal church I was baptized in as a teen, would go so far as to hold Catholics as idolators for their worship of the Communion elements.

But back up that truck—belief in the real presence was a cornerstone of Christian worship in the time of the Early Church; it was so widely held and well known that early Christians were accused of being cannibals.

So You Think You’re Smarter than the Church Fathers?

I think, ultimately, there are two elements at play here.

First, for those that read the Church Fathers—those outside of the Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican faiths—it becomes a difficult balancing act. If we give the Church Fathers the full weight they deserve, as apostles of the apostles and the early founders of a Church which has maintained its identity and doctrine to today, then we need to do some serious thinking.

If baptism saved, if the bread and wine were believed to actually be Jesus in the time of the Early Church, why, and when, did we cease to maintain that belief?

The question to me, as an evangelical, was too great of an intellectual stumbling block to simply ignore.

Second, however, is that fact that so few of us read the Early Church Fathers to begin with—and that’s really the crux of the thing, isn’t it?

Would Protestantism proliferate 30,000 different denominations if we returned to the sources and, as a Christian people, read what the earliest Christians had to say?

The challenge of our times is one of rising above the status quo.

In the end, I suspect there are very few of us proposing to be smarter than the giants of the Early Christian Church. That would be a fool’s game. Instead, and sadly, I suspect the vast majority who cling to beliefs adopted in much more recent times don’t even know it—and haven’t read the ancient Christian sources or heard the incredible things they have to say.

No, I don’t think many of us think we’re smarter than the Church Fathers. I think most of us, sadly, haven’t bothered to read them, and find out.

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