Do you agree with the early “church fathers”?
Do you know who they are? Do you know what they believe?
The early church fathers are sometimes classified as the apostles and prophets but are more often classified as the writers that came after. And those church fathers are broken down further into two classifications, with some overlap.
One classification is the group that continued to hold to the teaching of the Biblical prophets and apostles and to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” Jude 3. This group continued to do what Jesus did and were called Christians.
The other classification, which formed several years after the original group, avoided the practices of Jesus and tended to classify His followers as “Jews”. Instead, this classification tended to follow the teachings of many that were later called heretics by those that originally believed in them. However, as was mentioned earlier, there was some overlap in that this group of people did accept some of the teachings of a few of the original followers of Christianity.
At the same time, it should be mentioned that the group that originally continued to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints never accepted the teachings of the latter group.
Which classification do you fall into? The original group that followed the “original church fathers” who contended for the faith once for all delivered to the saints? Or the group that followed the “later church fathers”, who became heretics?
Do you know which is which? Could you possibly be deceived?
Watch this video as Dr. Thiel shines the light of Biblical truth on the doctrines of the original church fathers and those that became heretics. Read the full article to this video titled “Church Fathers, Protestants, and Rome: Were the ‘Early Church Fathers’ Heretics?” at URL: Church Fathers, Protestants, and Rome: Were the ‘Early Church Fathers’ Heretics? - Church of God News
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Thiel as a follow-up to the conversation we were just having who were the early church fathers and were they heretics?
Well, those called early church fathers were people who professed Christianity, who were writers in, let's say, second, third, fourth, or whatever centuries.
Now, according to a Protestant evangelical by the name of David Cloud, they were heretics. He wrote an article called The Church Fathers: A Daughter of Rome. Many people have walked into the Roman Catholic church to the broad door of the church fathers. This is a loud warning today that there's widespread attraction to the church fathers within evangelicalism. And then he said that Catholic ministries use the term church fathers to prove that Rome's doctrines go back to the early centuries.
Is Rome able to prove their doctrines go back to the earliest centuries?
No. Actually, they prove that doctrines held by the continuing Church of God have been held since the beginning of the church age and after the death of the original apostles. We actually have a free e-book called Beliefs of the Original Catholic Church: Could a Remnant Group Have Epistolic Succession, which demonstrates and proves that?
Then why is David Cloud so concerned?
Well, he wrote that many have been led astray into Roman Catholicism through the evil communication of studying the church fathers, attending mass, practicing contemplative prayer and associating with Roman Catholics in ecumenical ventures. He then names a bunch of Protestant ministers who became Roman Catholic after reading those things called the writings of the church fathers.
And then he wrote, The fact is that early church fathers were mostly heretics. The term church fathers refers to various church leaders of the first few centuries after the apostles whose writings have been preserved.
Then he asserts, The only genuine church fathers are the apostles and prophets whose writings were given through divine inspiration and recorded in the holy scriptures. They gave us the faith once delivered to the saints, Jude 1:3, The faith they delivered is able to make us perfect. through furnished into all good works, 2 Timothy 3. We don't need anything beyond the Bible. The teaching of church fathers does not contain one jot or till of divine revelation.
Is David Cloud right or wrong about this?
Actually, he's both. Most called church fathers were heretics. And yes, we only accept the writings of the Bible as divinely inspired. And yes, As Jude wrote, we are content earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. However, if you know who the faithful were that are called church fathers, then you can see how those who knew the apostles or knew people who knew the apostles understood many doctrines in the New Testament.
Why is that helpful?
Because unlike later scholars, Those writers had a contemporaneous grasp of Koine Greek, which is a language that the New Testament was written in. By overlooking or dismissing the writings of the early faithful leaders, Protestants have often misunderstood the scriptures. Furthermore, if you look at the records of early church history, you won't find anything resembling 21st century evangelical Protestantism.
Why not?
Because Protestantism does not hold to the original faith or sola scriptura. despite that being the rallying cry of the Protestant movement. We actually also have a documented free ebook called Hope of Salvation: How the Continuing Church of God Differs from Protestantism.
Now, in his article, David Cloud lists various church fathers, and he points out why he thinks they're heretics, and he's basically correct about it. However, he only lists one that was a Church of God Christian, that was Ignatius of Antioch. And it turns out David Cloud's issue with Antioch was that he taught hierarchical governance. And then he further says that Ignatius made relatively innocent errors. So the only one that was a true Christian, that's what he said about him. Of course, teaching church governance is not heresy.
But he left out other Church of God leaders who were known as apostolic or church fathers, and they didn't teach heresy. And they did contend for the faith once for all delivered the saints, and they did not promote the teachings of Rome. For example, Melito of Sardis, he promoted the Passover, not Easter. Plus he laid out the canonical books of the Old Testament. Yet the Church of Rome has accepted books that are not on his list. Therefore, if you read him, you would never become Roman Catholic.
Plus, several of the early faithful helped confirm the original canon of the New Testament, which is what most modern scholars overlook. We actually have this documented in a free book called Who Gave the World the Bible? Therefore, those writers prove or demonstrate that the faith of Christians, we've had the canon of the Bible from the beginning. We did not have to wait for the councils and canons of the Greco-Roman churches before we could get to those such things.
So did David Cloud list any people that could legitimately be classified as heretics?
Oh, absolutely. For example, he mentions Justin Martyr. He said that Justin embraced Christianity but held to pagan philosophy and that he interpreted scriptures allegorically and he didn't believe in the millennium. And yeah, Justin Martyr, I shall also add, he's the first who claimed Christianity to advocate the sun god in writing, and he was apostate.
Then David Cloud wrote about Arenaeus from 125 to 202. He said he was a pastor in Lyons, France. He defended church tradition beyond what scripture allows. For this reason, he's claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as one of their own. Now, David Cloud is right about this. And I want to read something that the late Pope Benedict XVI wrote about him about 11 years ago. He said that Arenaeus was a true founder of Catholic theology, and he called him St. Arenaeus of Lyon. So Claude is right. Through compromise, Arenaeus was a dangerous heretic. And we have at the COGwriter.com website, we've got articles about a lot of these people.
Anyway, then David Cloud mentioned a guy named Clement of Alexandria, who died in around 230 AD. And Cloud mentioned that until 202, Clement headed a heretical school in Alexandria, Egypt, which integrated the Greek philosophy of Plato with Christianity. And that's correct.
Yet, he forgets that partially to counter such teaching these allegorists, In Stanford doctrines like the Millennium, there's an early church father called Nepos of Arsinoe. He's one of our people. And he wrote a book called The Refutation of the Allegorazers. So he stood up against them. But Cloud seems to overlook that.
Then he wrote about another guy from Alexandria, Egypt, Origen, who died in 254. And he wrote that even though Origen defended Christianity against certain heretics, he rejected the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and he taught many gross heresies. And he pushed things in his allegorical school. And he basically took over, by the way, the school that Clement was at.
But another early church father, Macarius of Edessa, founded a literalist school to counter what was coming out of Alexandria, Egypt. So there was one of our people, again, who went against them. But David Cloud skips all that.
Then he wrote about John Chrysostom. Now Chrysostom died in 407. He was the patriarch, if you will, of Antioch. He wasn't our kind of patriarch. And he taught that church tradition can be equal to authority of scripture, recorded David Cloud. Well, let me add, John Chrysostom railed against the Jews, he strongly taught against the biblical holy days, Plus, he is the one to get the Greek Orthodox to accept the Roman Catholic tradition of Christmas on December 25th. And we have an article about him where we denounce him.
Now, David Cloud also wrote about a guy named Augustine or Augustine who died in 430. And he wrote that Augustine was polluted with many false doctrines and helped lay the foundation of the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, Rome was honored Augustine as one of the doctors of the church. He was a persecutor and one of the fathers of Rome's Inquisition. He was against the millennium. He believed in allegorizing Bible prophecy and that the Catholic Church was a new Israel, the kingdom of God.
Right. He was an apostate. We don't count him. He incorporated pagan philosophy like others who were supporters of the Greco-Roman Catholic Church from, like I say, Plato. He was not a faithful Christian or even a decent man. Among other issues, he abandoned his common-law wife and didn't provide his support luncheon for his family. Now, that said, he's praised by the Church of Rome and many Protestant leaders. We have an article about him, by the way, at Cogwriter.com.
Now, David Cloud also read about Cyril, who died in 444. Says Cyril was a patriarch of Alexandria and supported many eras of Catholic Church. He promoted the veneration of Mary, called her the Theotokos or bearer of God. Okay. Well, it was actually a century or two earlier, various ones considered to be church fathers warned against the wrong and excessive promotion of Mary. We've got an article about that, yet that actually became adopted by many apostates, and Cyril was one of them.
Anyway, well, David Cloud is correct that others called church fathers were heretical apostates. He, to use an American expression, has thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
What do you mean by that?
Well, faithful early Church of God writers showed that they were faithful to the Word of God. I've read all the known translated writings of those known as apostolic fathers, as well as many so-called church fathers, and not all the early writers were apostates, but David Cloud left Many of the faithful off the list in the articles that I referred to.
But technically speaking, those faithful writers should not have been included in his list of heretical apostolic fathers, should they?
No, they were faithful witnesses. But please understand that first second century leaders like Papias and Polycarp or Smyrna, they knew the apostles. Papias taught the millennium, whereas Polycarp also taught the original faith and opposed heretics that begin to rise up. The same is also basically true for other leaders, such as Thrasius of Eumania, Sigirus of Laodicea, Paprias of Smyrna, Mileito of Sardis. And these are people who knew people who were the apostles. These leaders pointed to scripture and held doctrines like the Millennium, keeping Passover on the biblical date and in the biblical manner, as well as the truth about the Godhead.
There were also various relatives of Jesus. such as Judith Kyriakos, who kept and promoted the original Christian faith. However, because their writings do not support modern Protestantism, this is one reason why people like David Cloud want their writings condemned. The faithful called early church fathers did not promote what is known as Roman or Greek Catholicism or Protestantism.
Furthermore, early Christians taught against the type of idols and icons that the Greco-Roman Catholic church are filled with. If those who actually read the church fathers actually paid attention to the faithful post-New Testament writers never would become Roman Catholic, is that church does not hold the teachings of early faithful writings on many points, including, for example, understanding that the command against idolatry was understood to be the second commandment, not part of the first commandment like the Church of Rome now teaches.
However, because Protestants have tended to follow the Church of Rome on many wrong doctrines like Easter, Christmas, Sunday, and the Godhead, they don't seem to understand how knowledge of early church history, which includes writings of so-called apostolic or church fathers, can avoid them being pulled in by heresies. Once you realize which the early leaders were faithful to Scripture and which were not, it's easier to see how they can be helpful to better understand the true Christian faith.
Most people, Roman Catholic or otherwise, simply don't know enough about the real truth about church history, but they can if they're willing to look into what really happened. And I mentioned some free books that help prove that, you know, such as Beliefs of the Original Catholic Church and Hope of Salvation How the Continuing Church of God differs from Protestantism. While many called church fathers are not real Christians, are things we can learn about the original faith from those that were true Church of God Christians, such as, again, knowing what the actual books of the Bible were and had been accepted.
Thank you, Dr. Thiel.
LATEST BIBLE BASED & PROPHETIC INTERVIEWS
