The Early Church Fathers (100 AD - 325 AD)

Moore's Corner Church

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The next era is known as the time of the early church fathers.

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Now, I don't really care for that title. That's just the way people refer to it.

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When I think of the early church fathers, I think of Peter and Paul and James and John.

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So some of the men who are called early church fathers, that's just what history calls them.

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But this time period extends from the death of the apostles, so by the year 100, all the way to the

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Council of Nicaea, which was in the year 325. Now, who's heard of the Council of Nicaea?

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All right, so about half of you. This period is where you get into the

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Catholicity of the Christian church. I'm always a little hesitant to use the word

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Catholic because when most people hear the word Catholic, what do they think of? Roman Catholics.

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Right, they think of Roman Catholic. But when we're talking about the Catholic church in this time period, it's not the same thing.

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I would say the Roman Catholic church was a development that happened over time, which we're gonna get into in the next section.

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But the word Catholic, what does it mean? The true church. Okay, the word Catholic itself means universal.

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So remember, the church started in Jerusalem, but it started spreading out, and after a century or so, the

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Christian church was just everywhere. They were popping up all over the place. So the church could rightly be called universal because it was everywhere.

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So the first time the term Catholic is used was in the second century. And this era, it really faced many of the same problems as the

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Apostolic Age. There was persecution. There were plenty of false teachers who rose up.

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Here's the new problem. There are no apostles to deal with it. So in the previous age, an apostle could write a letter, and if an apostle said it,

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I mean, it should have been a settled issue, but now there are no apostles, so what do you do? Well, now you can look back at what the apostles wrote because now there's a new generation of men teaching, and some of the things they're teaching are not right.

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So how do you deal with that? Well, you look back to the apostles' writings, but because they're not present, now you're starting to get into the interpretation of what they said, right?

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Someone new comes along. They say something that's sort of based on what the Bible says, but they don't agree, and then you gotta go back.

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Well, Paul said this, Peter said this. Well, that's not what he meant, and now you get into the issue of interpretation because the apostles aren't there to explain it.

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So this is a challenging time, and also by the first and second century, now you have some new things that are forming.

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So you think of scripture, and then there's another word. There's scripture, and it begins with a T, tradition.

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So new traditions or traditions are already starting to form. Now, are traditions bad?

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No, not necessarily. Some traditions are fine as long as they're not, you know, contradicting the scripture or undoing the scripture.

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So some of the important figures, the early church fathers, let's see if you recognize any of these names.

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They include Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and a man named

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Polycarp. Now, that's just not a name that really caught on. Not too many kids name their kids

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Polycarp, although I'm sure there's some out there. But this period saw a new rise, the rise of a new ministry called the apologist, okay?

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The apologetic ministry. So the most well -known Christian apologist of this era was a man named

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Justin Martyr. Now, I'm just gonna read this. This is something I found, an article about this.

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It says, in the second century, conventionally educated converts began to produce two kinds of writings that help us understand the developing shapes of Christianity.

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Works aimed at a broad audience of educated non -Christians and works aimed at those who considered themselves inside the church.

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The writing for non -Christians is usually called apologetic, in the same sense that the speech given by Socrates in his defense before the

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Athenian assembly is called his apology. And I think most of you know this, that apologetics is not somebody who apologizes for their faith.

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You know, I'm really sorry I'm a Christian. You'll have to excuse me. That's not what apologetics is.

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It is what? Defending the faith, right? So now you had men who were, this was their whole ministry, defending the faith.

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So the apologists, these same authors, these men, made a presentation for the educated classes of the beliefs of Christians, often coupled with an attack on the beliefs and practices of the pagans.

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Other writings have the purpose of instructing and admonishing fellow Christians. And I think you see that even today, that there are some

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Christian authors who write and they're addressing unbelievers, right? And they're arguing why you should be a

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Christian and at the same time, they're attacking kind of unbelieving, atheistic ideas.

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So there's authors that write for an unbelieving audience and then there's some Christian authors that write to a

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Christian audience. And I think we need to do both. What would be the purpose of writing to a

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Christian audience? To teach, to encourage, right? To strengthen them, build them up and to write to an unbelieving audience, what are you trying to do?

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Yeah, you want to convert them, but then there's some people that are just, they're not going to convert.

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And I think sometimes just to silence them. They're creating all of these, sometimes straw man arguments against Christianity and we're giving a reply.

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We're giving a response that, hey, this is what you're saying. Here's why that's ridiculous. So I think there's a reason for all these different methods of writing and ministry.

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Other well -known writers during this time period include Irenaeus, Marcian and Clement of Alexandria along with Origen and Cyprian.

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How many of you, these names sound familiar? Okay, less and less.

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It's important to point out that just because someone is considered an early church father, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should look to them as fathers in the faith.

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This is something that you'll find the Catholic church doing. They'll say, well, yeah, you know, because let's be honest, we're giving the

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Protestant version of church history. Okay, I know that that's kind of assumed, right? The Catholic church would have a different version of history.

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Now, obviously some of the things are the same. I mean, something either happened or it didn't, but the way we understand it, they claim that they're the true church from day one and we obviously don't believe that.

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Otherwise we would be Roman Catholic if we believe that. But the

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Catholic church will oftentimes say, you should read the early church fathers. And they do that because some of the early church fathers will mention, use words like Eucharist.

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So when people read someone in the second or third century talking about the Eucharist, you know, in their mind,

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Eucharist, oh, that's a Catholic thing. Look, someone believed that in the second, third century, that must mean the

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Catholic church is the truth. So they'll use that type of argumentation. But here's the thing about the early church fathers.

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They believed all sorts of different things. Some of their views would line up with the Catholic church. Some of their views wouldn't.

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It was really a mixed bag. You can find people in this era that believed all sorts of stuff.

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And actually there were, some of these men were, we would call them heretics, but even the

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Catholic church would call some of these men heretics. Did any stand out?

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Any of these men that you know that, okay, that guy I know is bad. There's one in particular that stands out.

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Marcion. So this is one guy that you should remember because there's newer guys who kind of go back to these old ideas, these bad ideas.

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So Marcion, actually Justin Martyr fought against Marcion, but Marcion, what was his error?

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He wanted to do away with the Old Testament. I bet you've probably met a

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Christian or two who wants to do away with the Old Testament. Now I would argue, if somebody thought that, that they're either taught really poorly or they're just not a

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Christian. Why would someone want to do away with the Old Testament? Because of legalism or people keep trying to have

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God's, or seek salvation through obedience to the law.

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And the only purpose of the law is to point out that we're all lawbreakers. Okay. May I just add something here?

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Sure. I'm thinking of like in police work, we had continuity of evidence.

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And as you were talking about the shift from the apostles to these men, then you start to worry about mistakes and so forth.

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But the Lord said, the comforter whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and he will bring all things to your remembrance.

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Whatsoever I have taught you. So the common denominator is the

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Holy Spirit himself. And that promises for us as individuals. Okay. So, and you know, we have the same problem.

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Because I watch all these guys, David Jeremiah, John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham.

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And I keep running into, you know, I keep running into things that go, I'm gonna go right back to the gospel of John or the scriptures themselves.

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Right. And I think that's what you should always do. Going back to the way

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I closed the apostolic era. There was unity around the ministry of the apostles.

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And how did you know what the apostles taught? Because of what they wrote. You had the New Testament scriptures. So as long as we base our beliefs off the

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New Testament scriptures, we can have unity in that. So Marcy, I'm going back to that.

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He wanted to do away with the Old Testament. He didn't think that it was authoritative for Christians.

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How many of you have heard somebody say something that, well, I don't really like the God of the Old Testament. The God of the

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New Testament is much more loving. So, yeah, we've all heard that, right? And what's the problem with that?

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It's the same God. There's not a God of the Old Testament and a God of the

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New Testament. It's the same God. Jesus referred to the God of the

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Old Testament as his father. And he said, I and my father are one.

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So Marcion, here's what he said. He said that the God of the Old Testament was in fact a different deity.

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And that Jesus came to show us the true God. So as far as Marcion was concerned, just to kind of get rid of the

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Old Testament, all we need is the New Testament. So that is definitely an error.

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I mean, that is just, well, it would be considered a heresy.

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So this era of the early church fathers, it really was a mixed bag. You can find somebody who is teaching one thing and some guy teaching the exact opposite.

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And there's really no consistency like there was with the apostles. So things are already becoming a little more complicated.