Teachings of the Church Fathers

By John Willis

The Fathers of the Church have been a vital source of wisdom and inspiration for countless saints, popes, peasants, and converts throughout the history of the Church. In this powerful one-volume library, Father Willis presents more than 250 selected doctrinal topics in an exhaustive selection of writings from the major sources of the Fathers. He lets the Fathers speak for themselves on a wide variety of spiritual themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781681495590

John Willis

John Willis is one of Britain's best known television executives. He is a former Director of Programmes at Channel 4 and Director of Factual and Learning at the BBC. He was Vice-president of National Programs at WGBH Boston. In 2012 he was elected as Chair of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).He was educated at Eltham College and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge where he read history. He started his career as a documentary maker and won a string of awards for his films, including Johnny Go Home, Alice - A Fight For Life, Rampton: The Secret Hospital, and First Tuesday: Return To Nagasaki.He was Chief Executive of Mentorn Media - producer of Question Time for the BBC - and he now chairs the Board of Governors at the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama. He divides his time between London and Norfolk.

Book preview

Foreword

By Karl Keating

I was in Detroit to debate a well-known and intemperate Fundamentalist writer. Many of his books and most of his public talks were directed against the Catholic Church. I had debated him previously on radio and learned that he freely misrepresented Catholic teachings and history and did not shrink from the low blow. How can you believe a Church that counted Mussolini and Hitler as members in good standing? he asked crowds. That sort of thing.

The school auditorium was packed, and most of the people in the audience were sympathetic to my opponent. Some were more than sympathetic and did not hesitate to jeer when I was at the microphone. Receiving catcalls was a little discomfiting, and I had no illusions about being able to effect any conversions. It would be enough to have a few listeners leave thinking that maybe the Catholic Church was worth a second look. As it turned out, that is what happened, at least in one case.

A few years later I was a speaker in a much more pleasant setting, a conference at an orthodox Catholic college. During a break I ran into apologist Steve Ray, who introduced me to Alex Jones. You’re responsible for Alex’s conversion, said Ray. I must have looked puzzled, so Jones told the story.

He had been at that debate in Detroit. Although he did not participate in the jeering, his sympathies were with my opponent. At the time Jones was a minister at a small inner-city church, and he thought that the Catholic Church not only was wrong in its teachings but also was injurious to authentic Christianity. He told me that none of the arguments I made during the debate convinced him that the Catholic position, on any particular issue, was right (a humbling comment!). Then, at the very end of the debate, I said something that made him think, and that turned out to be the remote impetus to his conversion.

During his remarks, my opponent insisted that the first Christians did not believe as Catholics believe today. Instead, the first Christians were proto-Fundamentalists. They believed in sola scriptura and the assurance of salvation, and they disbelieved in the sacraments and the papacy. If a belief can be identified as distinctively Catholic, he said, then we know that early Christians did not hold it. Catholic beliefs were foisted on nascent Christianity through corrupt Churchmen and pagan emperors.

Since most of his anti-Catholic charges were based on the premise that early Christians believed what modern Fundamentalists believe, I thought it instructive, at the end of my remarks, to ask the audience how one might best determine what those early Christians really believed: Would we more likely find the answer in the writings of the early Christians themselves or in the writings of the Protestant Reformers, who came along fifteen hundred years later? Is it more likely that someone reporting shortly after or long after an event would get the facts right, all else being equal?

It was this line of thought that gave Alex Jones pause. He thought it was the one sensible thing said by the Catholic debater. What was recorded in the New Testament would have been understood best by those who lived as its books were produced, since some of them were eyewitnesses to the events and others of them knew eyewitnesses. Then came the next generation, those who lived too late to have seen the events for themselves but to whom the original teaching was passed on intact from the first believers (the ancients being conservative folk and jealous that nothing would be lost in transmission, whether oral or written), and so on for the first few generations and then for the first few centuries.

No doubt, thought Jones, error crept in early enough—after all, that is how the Catholic Church started, as a promoter and repository of error—but it did seem that one should be able to find the real Christian faith in the writings of the post-New-Testament Christians. So Jones began to read the writings of the Fathers of the Church. While rejecting all the arguments I had made, he accepted my final suggestion—to use Augustine’s line, he followed the admonition "Tolle lege (Take and read"). Jones took up Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and the rest and found that the religion they adhered to was distinct from his own—and, distressingly, was identical with Catholicism. The result, a few years later, was that Jones, accompanied by many of his congregants, entered the Catholic Church.

Such is the power of the Fathers of the Church. Their writings more than compensate for the limitations of today’s apologists. I have used their words extensively in my own works. Several of my books are aimed, at least in part, at Fundamentalists and Evangelicals. I want them to embrace Catholic teachings, but I know that they demand proof of which teachings comprise authentic Christianity. It would do no good to prove the Catholic case from papal encyclicals and the decrees of ecumenical councils—people who reject the papacy and who do not believe in the existence of the episcopal office will not be persuaded by appeals to such authorities. For them the argument must be restricted to logical inferences from Scripture and early Christian history, the latter being found in the writings of the Fathers, who lived that history—who were that history.

Although the Fathers are powerful testimony to the truth of the Catholic faith, few Catholics know this because few know them. For many Catholics, ancient Catholicism refers to the time immediately preceding Vatican II. I know of one permanent deacon who boasts that he never reads religious books published before 1965. (I have not had the heart to ask him whether he reads the Bible.) This self-imposed ignorance is no better than that of the professional anti-Catholic who told me that he reads nothing except the Bible.

But how to get to know the Fathers? Their collected writings occupy a long bookshelf, and most of what they have to say, while valuable in itself, is not germane to issues on the minds of today’s Catholics and non-Catholics. To learn their teachings on a discrete topic, one must wade through much that is interesting if irrelevant. To know what the early Church thought about infant baptism—was it practiced and, if so, what was it understood to accomplish?—one used to have to flip through thousands of pages of the Fathers, hoping to stumble on the material one is seeking. Few had the time or inclination for such work. Fortunately for us, Fr. John R. Willis found the time and had the desire. The Teachings of the Church Fathers is arranged thematically, much like the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to which his book is a useful supplement. He has gathered key paragraphs from the Fathers, collecting them under 250 topics and providing extensive cross-references.

The result is a fat book that is an easy read. The Catholic who wants to convince non-Catholics of the antiquity of Church teachings and practices can find just the evidence he needs. The Fundamentalist or Evangelical who is curious about the beliefs of the first Christians will find his worst fear confirmed: They believed as Catholics and wrote as Catholics because they were Catholics.

Introduction

The aim of this book is to present a brief outline of Catholic doctrine as it appears in some of the more typical writings of the Church Fathers. It is based on the Enchiridion Patristicum of Rouët de Journel, but it departs from that work in two ways. It seeks to present the Church Fathers under topical headings rather than following a strict chronology, although a chronology is adhered to under the separate topical headings themselves. It also attempts to give the best English translation possible for the Greek and Latin texts taken by M. Rouët de Journel from the Migne Patrologia.

The idea for this book came from The Church Teaches,* a collection of Documents of the Church in English Translation based on Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum.

There has been no attempt to present an exhaustive selection of writings from all of the early Church Fathers on all the possible topics in Catholic doctrine. Rather, the intention is to present typical selections from the better-known sources and to include as many representative selections as time and space will allow. With a few exceptions, each selection appears only once in full, and then it is referred to later only by number if it should have a bearing on some succeeding doctrinal point. The numbers in parentheses refer to M. Rouët de Journel’s Enchiridion Patristicum, twenty-first edition, and a table of coordinating numbers will be found in the Reference Table at the end of this work.

Our intention is to let the Fathers speak for themselves, and so, apart from short introductions to each of the chapters, commentary has been excluded as well as any interpretation. Yet we have been very careful that each quotation shall be faithful to the context in which it is found.

With the permission of the publishers, to whom grateful acknowledgment is here made, the translations used in The Teachings of the Church Fathers have been based on the following series:

Ancient Christian Writers. The Works of the Fathers in Translation. Edited by J. Quasten, S.T.D., and Walter J. Burghardt, S.J., S.T.D., and the late J. C. Plumpe, Ph.D. Westminster, The Newman Press, 1946—. Abbreviation: ACW.

The Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D., editors. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1873. Abbreviation: ANCL.

The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D., editors (American reprint of the Edinburgh edition). Revised and Chronologically Arranged, with Brief Prefaces and Occasional Notes, by A. Cleveland Coxe, D.D. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899. Abbreviation: ANF.

The Church Teaches. Documents of the Church in English Translation. The Rev. John F. Clarkson, S.J., et al., editors. St. Louis, B. Herder Book Company, 1955. Abbreviation: TCT.

Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum. 2 vols. Paderborn, 1905. Abbreviation: F.

S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena. G. S. Bickell, editor. Lipsiae, 1866. Abbreviation: BK.

S. Ephraemi Syri Hymni et Sermones. 4 vols. T. J. Lamy, editor. Mechelen, 1882-1902. Abbreviation: L.

The Fathers of the Church. A New Translation. Founded by Ludwig Schopp. Editorial Director: Roy J. Deferrari, Ph.D. Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1948—. Abbreviation: FC. A New Eusebius. Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to A.D. 337. James Stevenson, editor. Based on the collection edited by B. J. Kidd. London, S.P.C.K., 1957 (The Muratorian Fragment). Abbreviation: S.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Translated into English with Prologomena and Explanatory Notes under the Editorial Supervision of Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., and Henry Wace, D.D. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904. Abbreviation: NPNF.

Patres Apostolici. ed. 2, 2 vols. F. X. Funk, editor. Tübingen, 1901. Abbreviation: F.

Patrología Graeca. J. P. Migne, editor. Paris, 1857 sqq. Abbreviation: MG.

Patrologia Latina. J. P. Migne, editor. Paris, 1844 sqq. Abbreviation: ML.

Patrologia Syriaca. R. Graffin, editor. Paris, 1894 sqq. Abbreviation: PS.

Finally, it should be stressed that this work has no polemical intention. There is no attempt to prove or disprove any doctrinal point from the writings of the Fathers. The aim has simply been to correlate interesting and more or less pertinent writings under various selected doctrinal topics. These topics have been carefully chosen and kept to a minimum. Nor should the importance or relevance of a particular topic be judged by the number of citations which have been placed under it. Moreover, items upon which the Fathers may have written rather copiously, but which are of doubtful interest to the average reader, have simply been omitted. Practical considerations of size and utility have been the norms for determining what could be conveniently included in a volume of this sort.

The author wishes to thank the numerous priests and scholastics of Weston College, Weston, Massachusetts, who made valuable suggestions, comments, and criticisms. His special thanks go to Miss Madeleine Stotz of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who laboriously typed the entire manuscript. Any inadequacies, shortcomings, and faults of the book the author naturally accepts as his own.

I.

Revealed Religion

Man is by nature religious. The new revelation of God which burst upon the ancient world in the person of Jesus Christ was meant to be a culmination of all the divine aspirations which man had had since the ages began. Perhaps Tertullian expressed this idea most succinctly and memorably when he exclaimed that the soul of man is Christian by its very nature. Writing at about the same time in the late second century, Minucius Felix appealed to the common consent of the human race to establish the existence of God. Some years later, in the early part of the fourth century, Lactantius in his The Divine Institutes devoted some attention to the phenomenon of religion itself, and his ideas were further enlarged by the great St. Augustine himself in his On the Profit of Believing.

At the same time, it was necessary to show that the new revelation of God in Jesus Christ did not do violence to human reason, but merited its assent. Theophilus of Antioch addressed himself to this task in the latter part of the second century in his defense of Christianity in three books to Autolycus. Origen and St. Cyprian also touched on the subject in the first half of the third century, but it remained for St. John Chrysostom in his homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew to defend with eloquence (along with Augustine) the great profit of believing. Indeed, the famed Bishop of Hippo declared that revelation was morally necessary for man in his present condition, and in this he had been anticipated by Tertullian at about the turn of the second century, and Origen writing a short time later.

The appeal to miracles to substantiate the divine truth of Christianity was largely the work of Augustine, although Origen in his work against Celsus declared that miracles offered an external criterion of revelation but were not sufficient of themselves to confirm the truth of any particular doctrine. The Fathers seem to prefer prophecy as a more certain external criterion of revelation, and we find St. Ignatius of Antioch as early as the first quarter of the second century holding this position. St. Theophilus of Antioch in the late second century, as well as Origen in the third and Lactantius in the early fourth, are also of this opinion. Later writers such as St. Basil in the fourth century and likewise St. Ambrose seem to prefer the affections of the soul as internal criteria of revelation, and it hardly needs to be added that St. Augustine expressed himself on all of these viewpoints.

The challenge of Marcion forced the Church to consider seriously the position of the Old Testament vis-à-vis the New Dispensation, and as early as the second century St. Ignatius of Antioch showed that the Law and the prophets pointed clearly to the Gospel. Not only was the old Law designed to prepare and prefigure the coming of Christ, but St. Irenaeus specifically declared that God was the Author of the Old as well as the New Testament. This position is echoed again and again up to the time of St. Leo the Great in the middle of the fifth century. But St. Ignatius of Antioch had also been careful to show that the old Law had been abrogated by the revelation of the new, and his position is mirrored in the Epistle to Diognetus, written by an unknown author, probably late in the second century. These positions are explicitated by St. Augustine in his celebrated Reply to Faustus the Manichaean.

That the four Gospels are genuine seems to be the unanimous agreement of the ancient writers. St. Justin Martyr (mid-second century) has a good deal to say about it, and so also does St. Irenaeus writing in the latter part of the second century. All of them have Marcion in mind as the chief opponent, and Irenaeus’s work Against Heresies is directed chiefly against him and the Gnostics. The Muratorian Fragment, about the year 200, is a valuable piece of evidence. The Against Marcion of Tertullian continues the assault, and we find the defense of the Gospels again in St. Clement of Alexandria as quoted by the Church historian Eusebius. St. Augustine deals with the more sophisticated problem of apparent contradiction in Scripture, and defends its inerrancy by saying that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or it has been misunderstood (Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Bk. 11, Chap. 5). The testimony of both Papias and Polycarp in the early second century is considered weighty proof that the witnesses who assert the genuinity of the Gospels are worthy of belief.

The central message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ truly came into the world as a divine legate and that His miracles and prophecies prove His divine mission, attested principally by the central fact of His resurrection. All of the major writers concur in this; one finds it as early as St. Clement of Rome at the end of the first century, and there is no major writer and hardly a minor one that does not allude to it in some way. Much of the writing is directed against the Docetists and the Gnostics, many of whom denied that Jesus had actually lived and suffered truly in the flesh.

To prove the divine origin of Christianity, St. Justin Martyr cites its wonderful propagation and perpetuity as early as the middle of the second century, and Tertullian in some famous passages dwells on this at considerable length a half-century later. So do Origen and Arnobius writing in the third, and St. Augustine mentions it in the City of God. The beautiful Letter to Diognetus, written probably in the late second century, contrasts the virtues of the Christians with the pagan vices, and Minucius Felix and Tertullian emphasize this point at about the same time. Thus the change of morals induced by Christianity argues for the divinity of its doctrine, as St. Justin contends. We can expect Tertullian to dwell on martyrdom as a testimony of the truth of the Christian religion, but St. Clement of Rome mentions it as early as the closing years of the first century, and so do St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Irenaeus in the second, Origen and Lactantius in the third, and of course St. Augustine in the fourth.

1. The notion of religion.

LACTANTIUS

[1 (631)] By these things it is evident how closely connected are wisdom and religion. Wisdom relates to sons, and this relation requires love; religion to servants, and this relation requires fear. For as the former are bound to love and honor their father, so are the latter bound to respect and venerate their lord. But with respect to God, who is one only, inasmuch as He sustains the twofold character both of Father and Lord, we are bound both to love Him, inasmuch as we are sons, and to fear Him, inasmuch as we are servants. Religion, therefore, cannot be divided from wisdom, nor can wisdom be separated from religion; because it is the same God, who ought to be understood, which is the part of wisdom, and to be honored, which is the part of religion. But wisdom precedes, religion follows; for the knowledge of God comes first, His worship is the result of knowledge.

THE DIVINE INSTITUTES, Bk. 4, Chap. 4

ML 6, 456

ANF VII, 103

[2 (635)] For we are created on this condition, that we pay just and due obedience to God who created us, that we should know and follow Him alone. We are bound and tied to God by this chain of piety; from which religion itself received its name, not, as Cicero explained it, from carefully gathering.

THE DIVINE INSTITUTES, Bk. 4, Chap. 28

ML 6, 535

ANF VII, 131

ST. AUGUSTINE

[3 (1603)] It is true that Christians pay religious honor to the memory of the martyrs, both to excite us to imitate them, and to obtain a share in their merits, and the assistance of their prayers. But we build altars not to any martyr, but to the God of martyrs, although it is to the memory of the martyrs. No one officiating at the altar in the saints’ burying-place ever says, ‘We bring an offering to you, O Peter! or O Paul! or O Cyprian!’ The offering is made to God who gave the crown of martyrdom. . . . What is properly divine worship, which the Greeks call latria, and for which there is no word in Latin, both in doctrine and in practice we give only to God.

REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICHAEAN, Bk. 20, Chap. 21

ML 42, 384

NPNF IV, 262

[4 (1743)] [God] is the source of our happiness and the very end of all our aspirations. We elect Him, whom, by neglect, we lost. We offer Him our allegiance—for ‘allegiance’ and ‘religion’ are, at root, the same. We pursue Him with our love so that when we reach Him we may rest in perfect happiness in Him who is our goal.

THE CITY OF GOD, Bk. 10, Chap. 3

ML 41, 298

FC XIV, 121

ST. FULGENTIUS

[5 (2236)] True religion consists in the service of the one true God. That God is one, is truth itself. And just as without that one truth there is no other truth, so also without the one true God there is no other true God. For that one truth is one divinity. And so we cannot say truly that there are two true gods, just as truth itself cannot naturally be divided.

EIGHTH LETTER

ML 65, 365

ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS

[6 (2377)] We should certainly fall into error if we should make an image of the invisible God; since that which is not corporeal, nor visible, nor circumscribed, nor imagined, cannot be depicted at all. Again, we should act impiously if we thought images made by men were gods, and bestowed honors upon them as if they were. But we do not admit to doing any of these things.

AGAINST THOSE WHO DESTROY SACRED IMAGES, Or. 2, 5

MG 94, 1288

[7 (2378)] We adore only the Creator and Maker of things, God, to whom we offer latria since God is to be adored according to His nature. We also adore the holy mother of God, not as God, but as mother of God according to the flesh. We also adore the saints, the chosen friends of God, by whom we have easy access to Him.

AGAINST THOSE WHO DESTROY SACRED IMAGES, Or. 3, 41

MG 94, 1357

2. Natural religion exists in man.

MINUCIUS FELIX

[8 (270)] By His Word God calls into existence all things that are, disposes them according to His wisdom, and perfects them by His goodness. God is invisible, because too bright for our sight; intangible, because too fine for our sense of touch; immeasurable, because He is beyond the grasp of our senses; infinite, limitless, His real magnitude being known to Himself alone. Our intelligence is too limited to comprehend Him, therefore we can only measure Him fittingly when we call Him immeasurable. Here is my candid opinion: a man who thinks to know God’s magnitude diminishes it; he who does not wish to diminish it knows it not. And do not search for a name for God: ‘God’ is His name. There is a need for names when, among a crowd, individuals have to be distinguished by giving them their specific appellations. To God, who is the only One, the name ‘God’ belongs in an exclusive and total manner. If I should call Him ‘Father,’ you would think Him made of flesh; if ‘King’ you would infer that He is of this world; if ‘Lord’ you surely would understand Him to be a mortal. Away with these added names, and you will behold Him in His splendor. Besides, do not all men share my opinion about this point? Hearken to the common people: when they stretch forth their hands to heaven, they say nothing else but ‘God’ or ‘God is great’ or ‘God is true’ or ‘If God grant it.’ Is that the natural language of the common crowd or is it the prayerful profession of faith made by a Christian?

LETTER TO OCTAVIUS, 18

ML 3, 290

FC X, 353-354

TERTULLIAN

[9 (275)] What we worship is the one God, Who, out of nothing, simply for the glory of His majesty, fashioned this enormous universe with its whole supply of elements, bodies, and spirits, and did so simply by the Word wherewith He commanded it, the Reason whereby He ordered it, the Power wherewith He was powerful. Hence it is that even the Greeks apply the appropriate word ‘cosmos’ to the universe. . . . And this is the gravest part of the sin of those who are unwilling to recognize Him, of Whom they cannot remain in ignorance.

Do you wish us to prove His existence from His numerous, mighty works by which we are supported, sustained, delighted, and even startled? Do you wish us to prove Him from the testimony of the soul itself? The soul, though it be repressed by the prison house of the body, though it be circumscribed by base institutions, weakened by lust and concupiscence, and enslaved to false gods, yet, when it revives, as from intoxication or sleep or some sickness and enjoys health again, names ‘God’ with this name alone because, properly speaking, He alone is true. ‘Good God!’ ‘God Almighty!’ and ‘God grant it!’ are expressions used by all mankind. That He is a Judge, also, is testified by the phrases: ‘God sees,’ and ‘I commend it to God,’ and ‘God will reward me.’ O testimony of the soul, which is by natural instinct Christian! In fine, then, the soul, as it utters these phrases, looks not to the Capitol but to heaven. It knows the abode of the living God; from Him and from there it has come.

APOLOGY, 17

ML 1, 375

FC X, 52-53

ST. AUGUSTINE

[10 (1841)] For this name of God, by which He is called, could not but be known in some way to the whole creation, and so to every nation, before they believed in Christ. For such is the energy of true Godhead, that it cannot be altogether and utterly hidden from any rational creature, so long as it makes use of its reason. For, with the exception of a few in whom nature has become outrageously depraved, the whole race of man acknowledges God as the maker of this world. In respect, therefore, of His being the maker of this world that is visible in heaven and earth around us, God was known unto all nations even before they were indoctrinated into the faith of Christ.

ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, Tract 106:4

ML 35, 1910

NPNF VII, 400

3. Revelation merits the assent of human reason.

ST. THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH

[11 (173)] When you have put off mortality, and put on immortality, then will you see God worthily. For God will raise your flesh immortal with your soul; and then, having become immortal, you will see the Immortal, if now you believe on Him; and then you shall know that you have spoken unjustly against Him. But you do not believe that the dead are raised. When the event takes place, then you will believe, whether you like it or not; and your faith shall be reckoned for unbelief, unless you believe now. And why do you not believe? Do you not know that faith is the leading principle in all matters? For what farmer can reap, unless he first trust his seed to the earth? Or who can cross the sea, unless he first entrust himself to the boat and the pilot? And what sick person can be healed, unless first he trust himself to the care of the physician? And what art or knowledge can any one learn, unless he first apply and entrust himself to the teacher? If, then, the farmer trusts the earth, and the sailor the boat, and the sick the physician, will you not place confidence in God, even when you hold so many and such great pledges from His hand?

TO AUTOLYCUS, Bk. 1, Chap. 7

MG 6, 1036

ANF II, 91

ORIGEN

[12 (514)] And why should it not be more reasonable, seeing all human things are dependent upon faith, to believe God rather than them? For who enters upon a voyage, or takes a wife, or becomes the father of children, or casts seed into the ground, without believing that better things will result from so doing, although the contrary might and sometimes does happen?

AGAINST CELSUS, Bk. 1, Chap. 11

MG 11, 676

ANF IV, 401

ST. CYPRIAN

[13 (562)] If an influential and reputable man were to promise you something, you would have confidence in his promise and you would not believe that you would be deceived or cheated by the man who you knew stood by his words and actions. God is speaking to you, and do you waver faithless in your unbelieving mind? God promises immortality and eternity to you leaving this world, and do you doubt? This is not to know God at all. This is to offend Christ, the Teacher of believing, by the sin of disbelief. This is, though one is in the Church, not to have faith in the House of Faith.

ON MORTALITY

ML 4, 586

FC XXXVI, 203

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

[14 (1179)] Let us then in everything believe God, and contradict Him in nothing, though what is said seem to be contrary to our thoughts and senses, but let His word be of higher authority than both our reasoning and sight. Thus let us do in the mysteries also, not looking at the things set before us, but keeping in mind His sayings. For His word cannot deceive, but our senses are easily beguiled. His word has never failed, but our senses in most things go wrong. Since then the Word says, ‘This is my Body’ (Mt. 26:26) let us both be persuaded and believe, and look at It with the eyes of the mind. For Christ has given us nothing sentient, but though things are sensible, yet all are to be perceived spiritually. So also in baptism, the gift is bestowed by a sensible thing, that is, by water; but that which is done is perceived by the mind:—the birth and the renewal. For if you had been incorporeal, He would have delivered to you the incorporeal gifts bare; but because the soul has been locked up in a body, He delivers you the things that the mind perceives, in things sensible. How many now say, I would wish to see His form, His figure, His clothes, His shoes. You do see Him, you do touch Him, you do eat Him, And you indeed desire to see His clothes, but He gives Himself to you not only to see, but also to touch and eat and receive within you.

THE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW, Homily 82

MG 58, 743

NPNF X, 495

ST. AMBROSE

[15 (1321)] It is good for faith to precede reason, lest we seem to require reason not only from man but from God our Lord as well. For how unworthy it would be that we should believe human testimonies of another, and yet not believe the utterances of God!

ON ABRAHAM, Bk. 1, Chap. 3

ML 14, 428

4. Revelation is morally necessary for us in the present order.

TERTULLIAN

[16 (334)] We maintain that God must first be known from nature, and afterwards authenticated by instruction: from nature, by His works; by instruction through His revealed announcements. Now, in a case where nature is excluded, no natural means [of knowledge] are furnished. He ought, therefore, to have carefully supplied a revelation of himself, even by announcements, especially as he had to be revealed in opposition to One, who, after so many and so great works, both of creation and revealed announcement, had with difficulty succeeded in satisfying men’s faith.

AGAINST MARCION, Bk. 1, Chap. 18

ML 2, 266

ANF III, 284

ORIGEN

[17 (513)] And [Celsus] asserts that certain [Christians] who do not wish either to give or receive a reason for their belief, keep repeating, ‘Do not examine, but believe!’ and, ‘Your faith will save you!’ And he alleges that such also say, ‘The wisdom of this life is bad, but that foolishness is a good thing!’ To which we have to answer, that if it were possible for all to leave the business of life, and devote themselves to philosophy, no other method ought to be adopted by any one, but this alone. For in the Christian system also it will be found that there is, not to speak at all arrogantly, at least as much of investigation into articles of belief, and of explanation of dark sayings, occurring in the prophetical writings, and of the parables in the Gospels, and of countless other things, which either were narrated or enacted with a symbolic signification (as is the case with other systems). But since the course alluded to is impossible, partly on account of the necessities of life, partly on account of the weakness of men, as only a very few individuals devote themselves earnestly to study, what better method could be devised with a view of assisting the multitude, than that which was delivered by Jesus to the heathen? And let us inquire, with respect to the great multitude of believers, who have washed away the mire of wickedness in which they formerly wallowed, whether it were better for them to believe without a reason, and [so] to have become reformed and improved in their habits, through the belief that men are chastised for sins, and honored for good works; or not to have allowed themselves to be converted on the strength of mere faith, but [to have waited] until reasons. For it is manifest that [on such a plan], all men, with very few exceptions, would not obtain this [amelioration of conduct] which they have obtained through a simple faith, but would continue to remain in the practice of a wicked life.

AGAINST CELSUS, Bk. 1, Chap. 9

MG 11, 672

ANF IV, 400

LACTANTIUS

[18 (629)] [The philosophers] frequently approach the truth. But those precepts have no weight, because they are human, and are without a greater, that is, that divine authority. No one therefore believes them, because the hearer imagines himself to be a man, just as he is, who enjoins them.

THE DIVINE INSTITUTES, Bk. 3, Chap. 27

ML 6, 433

ANF VII, 96

[19 (644)] But if there had been any one to collect together the truth which was dispersed among individual [philosophers] and scattered among sects, and to reduce it to a body, he assuredly would not disagree with us. But no one is able to do this, unless he has experience or knowledge of the truth. And to know the true, belongs only to him who has been taught by God.

THE DIVINE INSTITUTES, Bk. 7, Chap. 7

ML 6, 759

ANF VII, 204

ST. AUGUSTINE

[20 (1557)] For, if the Providence of God preside not over human affairs, we have no need to busy ourselves about religion. But if both the outward form of all things, which we must believe assuredly flows from some fountain of truest beauty, and some, I know not what, inward conscience exhorts, as it were, in public and in private, all the better order of minds to seek God, and to serve God; we must not give up all hope that the same God Himself has appointed some authority, on which, resting as on a sure step, we may be lifted up to God.

ON THE PROFIT OF BELIEVING, Chap. 16, n. 34

ML 42, 89

NPNF III, 363

[21 (1746)] But since the mind itself, though naturally capable of reason and intelligence, is disabled by befuddling and inveterate vices not merely from delighting and abiding in, but even from tolerating His unchangeable light, until it has been gradually healed, and renewed, and made capable of such felicity, it had, in the first place, to be impregnated with faith, and so purified. And that in this faith it might advance the more confidently towards the truth, the truth itself, God, God’s Son, assuming humanity without destroying His divinity, established and founded this faith, that there might be a way for man to man’s God through a God-man. For this is the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Tim. 2:5) For it is as man that He is the Mediator and the Way. . . . Now the only way that is infallibly secured against all mistakes, is when the very same person is at once God and man, God our end, man our way.

THE CITY OF GOD, Bk. 11, Chap. 2

ML 41, 318

NPNF II, 206

THE NEW LAW: THE GOSPEL

5. The Gospel—Senses of the word: one and four.

THE DIDACHE

[22 (5)] And do not pray as the hypocrites, but as the Lord directed in His Gospel, ‘Thus shall you pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, ’ etc. (Mt. 6:9ff.)

Chap. 8

F 1, 18

FC I, 178

ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

[23 (60)] There are some whom I heard to say, ‘Unless I find it in the documents, I do not believe in what is preached.’ When I said, ‘It is the written word,’ they replied, ‘That is what is in question.’ For me, Jesus Christ is the written word; His cross and death and resurrection and faith through Him make up untampered documents. Through these, with the help of your prayers, I desire to be justified.

LETTER TO THE PHILADELPHIANS, Chap. 8

MG 5, 704

FC I, 178

ST. JUSTIN MARTYR

[24 (128)] There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to so be it. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread and when He had given thanks, said, ‘This do in remembrance of Me, this is My body’; (Lk. 22:19) and that after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, ‘This is My blood’; (Mt. 26:28) and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.

FIRST APOLOGY, Chap. 65, 66

MG 6, 428

ANF I, 185

ST. IRENAEUS

[25 (208)] We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. . . . [The apostles] went to the ends of the earth . . . proclaiming the peace of heaven to men, who indeed do all equally and individually possess the Gospel of God.

Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke, also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.

AGAINST HERESIES, Bk. 3, Chap. 1

MG 7, 844

ANF I, 414

[26 (215)] It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the ‘pillar and ground’ of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh. From which fact, it is evident that the Word, and the Artificer of all, He that sits upon the cherubim, and contains all things, He who was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit.

AGAINST HERESIES, Bk. 3, Chap. 11

MG 7, 885

ANF I, 428

TATIAN

[27 (659)] Tatian composed a kind of combination and collection of the gospels, I know not how, to which he gave the name Diatessaron, and this is in circulation even today among some.

Eusebius of Caesarea, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, Bk. 4, Chap. 29

MG 20, 401

FC XIX, 268

ST. AUGUSTINE

[28 (1825)] In the four Gospels, or rather in the four books of the one Gospel, Saint John the apostle, not undeservedly in respect of his spiritual understanding compared to the eagle, has elevated his preaching higher and far more sublimely than the other three; and in this elevating of it he would have our hearts likewise lifted up. For the other three evangelists walked with the Lord on earth as with a man; concerning His divinity they have said but little; but this evangelist, as if he disdained to walk on earth, just as in the very opening of his discourse he thundered on us and soared . . . to reach Him through Whom all things are made, saying: In the beginning was the Word, etc. (Jn. 1:1ff.)

ON THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN, Tr. 36:1

ML 35, 1662

NPNF VII, 208

ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

[29 (2291)] I confess that I receive and revere, as the four books of the Gospel so also the four Councils: the Nicene, in which the perverse doctrine of Arius is overthrown; the Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted; further, the first Ephesine, in which the impiety of Nestorius is condemned; and the Chalcedonian, in which the depravity of Eutyches and Dioscorus is reprobated. These with full devotion I embrace, and adhere to with most entire approval; since on them, as on a foursquare stone, rises the structure of the holy faith; and whosoever, of whatever life and behaviour he may be, holds not fast to their solidity, even though he is seen to be a stone, yet he lies outside the building. . . . But all persons whom the aforesaid venerable Councils repudiate I repudiate; those whom they venerate I embrace; since, they having been constituted by universal consent, he overthrows not them but himself, whosoever presumes either to loose those whom they bind, or to bind those whom they loose. Whosoever, therefore, thinks otherwise, let him be anathema.

LETTER TO JOHN, BISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE, AND THE OTHER

PATRIARCHS, Bk. 1, No. 25

ML 77, 478

NPNF XII, 81

6. The genuineness of the four Gospels was acknowledged by Christian antiquity.

ST. JUSTIN MARTYR

[30 (129)] And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. . . .

FIRST APOLOGY, Chap. 67

MG 6, 429

ANF I, 186

[31 (139)] For when John remained by the Jordan, and preached the baptism of repentance, wearing only a leathern girdle and a vesture made of camels’ hair, eating nothing but locusts and wild honey, men supposed him to be Christ; but he cried to them: ‘I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying; for He that is stronger than I shall come, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.’

DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO, Chap. 88

MG 6, 688

ANF I, 244

[32 (141)] And since we find it recorded in the memoirs of His apostles that [Christ] is the Son of God, and since we call Him the Son, we have understood that He proceeded before all creatures from the Father by His power and will (for He is addressed in the writings of the prophets in one way or another as Wisdom, and the Day, and the East, and a Sword, and a Stone, and a Rod, and Jacob, and Israel); and that He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, ‘Be it done unto me according to your word.’

DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO, Chap. 100

MG 6, 709

ANF I, 249

[33 (143)] For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying, (Lk. 22:44) and saying, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass. . . .’ (Mt. 26:39)

DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO, Chap. 103

MG 6, 717

ANF I, 251

ST. IRENAEUS

See No. 25.

[34 (214)] So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and starting from these [documents], each one of them endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine. For the Ebionites, who use Matthew’s Gospel only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord. But Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those [passages] which he still retains. Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified. Those, moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John, to illustrate their conjunctions, shall be proved to be totally in error by means of this very Gospel.

AGAINST HERESIES, Bk. 3, Chap. 11

MG 7, 884

ANF I, 428

[35 (216)] These things being so, all who destroy the form of the Gospel are vain, unlearned, and also audacious; those, [I mean] who represent the aspects of the Gospel as being either more in number than as aforesaid, or, on the other hand fewer. The former class [do so] that they may seem to have discovered more than is of the truth; the latter, that they may set the dispensations of God aside.

AGAINST HERESIES, Bk. 3, Chap. 11

MG 7, 890

ANF I, 429

THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT

[36 (268)]. . . but at some he was present, and so he set them down. The third book of the Gospel, that according to Luke, was compiled in his own name on Paul’s authority by Luke the physician, when after Christ’s ascension Paul had taken him to be with him like a legal expert. Yet neither did he see the Lord in the flesh; and he too, as he was able to ascertain events, begins his story from the birth of John.

The fourth of the Gospels was written by John, one of the disciples. When exhorted by his fellow-disciples and bishops, he said, ‘Fast with me this day for three days; and what may be revealed to any of us, let us relate it to one another.’ The same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John was to write all things in his own name, and they were all to certify.

And therefore, though various ideas are taught in the several books of the Gospels, yet it makes no difference to the faith of believers, since