On the early church fathers

• Pope Clement I (called CLEMENS ROMANUS), is the first of the successors of St. Peter of whom anything definite is known, and he is the first of the “Apostolic Fathers”. He has left one genuine writing, a letter to the Church of Corinth, and many others have been attributed to him.

• Ignatius of Antioch was the third patriarch of Antioch, after Saint Peter and Euodius, who died around AD 68. Peter himself appointed Ignatius to the see of Antioch.Ignatius, who also called himself Theophorus (”vessel of God”), was most likely a disciple of both Apostles Peter and John. He is generally considered to be one of the Apostolic Fathers, and a saint by both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Ignatius based his authority on living his life in imitation of Christ.
• Polycarp (69?-155?), Christian prelate, one of the Apostolic Fathers, bishop at Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey) during the first half of the 2nd century. He received a visit and an epistle from another of the Apostolic Fathers, Ignatius of Antioch, just prior to Ignatius’s martyrdom (perhaps in 116). Toward the end of his life he represented the churches of Asia Minor in meetings with Anicetus, bishop of Rome; one topic of the talks was the dating of Easter. Polycarp was martyred at Smyrna at the age of 86.

• Saint Justin Martyr (Justin the Martyr) (c. 100/114 - c. 162/168) was an early Christian apologist (defender of the faith). His works represent the earliest surviving Christian apologies of notable size.

• Saint Irenaeus (c. 130 - 202) was bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, which is now Lyons, France. He is recognized as a saint by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology. The Catholic Church considers him a Father of the Church. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of John the Evangelist.

• St. Clement was an early Greek theologian and head of the catechetical school of Alexandria. Athens is given as the starting-point of his journeyings, and was probably his birthplace. He became a convert to the Faith and traveled from place to place in search of higher instruction, attaching himself successively to different masters: to a Greek of Ionia, to another of Magna Graecia, to a third of Coele-Syria, after all of whom he addressed himself in turn to an Egyptian, an Assyrian, and a converted Palestinian Jew. At last he met Pantaenus in Alexandria, and in his teaching “found rest”.

• Tertullian, (b. ca. 150-160, d. ca. 220-240) was a church leader and highly prolific writer during the early years of Christianity. He was born, lived, wrote, and died in Carthage, in what is today Tunisia.Tertullian is a controversial individual within the history of the church. On one hand, he was the first great writer of Latin Christianity, often called the “Father of the Western Church.” On the other hand, he left the orthodox catholic Church late in his life and joined the heterodox Montanists, a movement considered by many to have been a cult, and was thus never declared a saint by any surviving Christian church.

• Origen was a Christian scholar and theologian and one of the most distinguished of the Fathers of the early Christian Church. He was born about 182, probably at Alexandria, and died at Caesarea not later than 251. His writings are important as the first serious intellectual attempt to describe Christianity.

On the heresies in the early church

• Ebionism is the view that Jesus was fully human, but not divine. Ebionites denied the deity of Christ. Ebionism viewed Jesus as a normal human being who was simply empowered by God. Ebionism is rejected by a multitude of Scriptures (John 1:1,14; 8:58; 10:30; 20:28; Philippians 2:6; Hebrews 1:8). Eutychianism is the view that Jesus was neither fully human or fully divine, but rather a mixture of humanity and divinity. Eutychianism is refuted by all of the Scriptures previously mentioned, both those affirming His deity and affirming His humanity. Yet another early church heresy relation to Christ’s nature is Nestorianism. Nestorianism held that Jesus had two nature, human and divine, and that the two natures were entirely separate. Jesus was God, and Jesus was man, but essentially in two separate persons. From what we have studied in relation to the other views, Nestorianism is to be strongly rejected as well.
• Gnosticism is the belief that one must have a “gnosis” (from Greek “Gnosko,” to know) or inner knowledge which is mystical knowledge obtained only after one has been properly initiated. Only a few can possess this mystical knowledge, limiting the number of those “in the know”. It is a heresy that Paul battled against in some of his letters to the churches and was soundly condemned as a heresy in the first century church (40-100 A.D.). It is resurrected today as the forerunner to the New Age Religion where virtually anything goes and “religion” takes on many forms, especially the mystic Eastern religions that are so prevalent today.

• Montanism is named after a man named Montanus who became a convert to Christianity around A.D. 170. He lived in Asia Minor and prior to his conversion, he was a priest in an Asiatic cult called Cybele. He claimed that he had the gift of prophecy, prophesying in an ecstatic state. Montanus was joined by two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, who also claimed to have the gift of prophecy and also prophesied in an ecstatic state.The early church rejected Montanus and the prophetesses and their prophecies. The rejection was based on the biblical examples of other prophets. While Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla were irrational when prophesying, prophets of the Bible were rational in their thinking and actions. Old Testament prophets spoke an understandable message; they were always in control; they always spoke with reason and understanding. The church expected New Testament prophets to follow the same pattern as Old Testament prophets. If they did not, they were rejected as false prophets.
• Manichæism is a religion founded by the Persian Mani in the latter half of the third century. It purported to be the true synthesis of all the religious systems then known, and actually consisted of Zoroastrian Dualism, Babylonian folklore, Buddhist ethics, and some small and superficial, additions of Christian elements. As the theory of two eternal principles, good and evil, is predominant in this fusion of ideas and gives color to the whole, Manichæism is classified as a form of religious Dualism. It spread with extraordinary rapidity in both East and West and maintained a sporadic and intermittent existence in the West (Africa, Spain, France, North Italy, the Balkans) for a thousand years, but it flourished mainly in the land of its birth, (Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Turkestan) and even further East in Northern India, Western China, and Tibet, where, c. A.D. 1000, the bulk of the population professed its tenets and where it died out at an uncertain date.