The Fathers Know Best - Teachings of the Early Church

452 Pages·2010·2.18 MB·English

by  Jimmy Akin

THE FATHERS KNOW BEST
Your Essential Guide to the
Teachings of the Early Church
Jimmy Akin
SAN DIEGO
2010
NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials presented in this work are free
of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane M. Carr, STL
5 October, 2010
IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC §3, permission to publish this work is
hereby granted.
+ Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego
5 October, 2010
With the exception of quotes from the Church Fathers, all Scripture selections
are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible,
copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by
permission. All rights reserved. If any copyrighted materials have been
inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one manner
or another, please notify the publisher in writing so that future printings of this
work may be corrected accordingly.
© 2010 Catholic Answers, Inc. All rights reserved. Except for quotations, no
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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permission from Catholic Answers, Inc.
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ISBN 978-1-93-391954-6
Contents
Foreword by Marcus Grodi
PART ONE
I. Introduction
1. About This Book
2. About the Fathers
II. The World of the Fathers
3. The World at a Glance
4. “My Witnesses in Jerusalem”
5. The Second Holy Land
6. Greece and Rome
7. The Far West
8. North Africa
III. Ad Fontes!—“To the Sources!”
9. Know Your Fathers
10. Know Your Councils
11. Know Your Writings
12. Know Your Heresies
PART TWO
IV. God
13. The One True God
14. God Has No Body
15. The Trinity
16. The Three Persons of the Trinity
17. The Divinity of Christ
18. The Eternal Sonship of Christ
19. Filioque
V. Creation
20. Creation out of Nothing
21. Creation in Genesis
VI. The Sources of Faith
22. The Canon of Scripture
23. Apostolic Tradition
VII. The Church and the Pope
24. The Catholic Church
25. Apostolic Succession
26. Peter the Rock
27. Peter’s Primacy
28. Peter in Rome
29. Peter’s Successors
30. The Authority of the Pope
VIII. Morality
31. Mortal Sin
32. Abortion
33. Contraception and Sterilization
34. Homosexuality
35. Astrology
IX. Sacraments and Worship
36. Baptism as a Means of Grace
37. Baptismal Regeneration
38. The Necessity of Baptism
39. Trinitarian Baptism
40. Infant Baptism
41. Confirmation
42. The Real Presence
43. The Sacrifice of the Mass
44. Confession
45. Bishop, Priest, and Deacon
46. Women Priests?
47. The Permanence of Marriage
48. Sabbath or Sunday?
X. Mary, the Saints, the Miraculous
49. Mary, Full of Grace
50. Mary, Mother of God
51. Mary, Ever Virgin
52. Intercession of the Saints
53. Ongoing Miracles
54. Private Revelation
XI. The Last Things
55. Salvation Outside the Church
56. Reward and Merit
57. Purgatory
58. Hell
59. Reincarnation?
60. The Resurrection of the Body
61. The Antichrist
Translations Used
Documents Used
Scripture Index
Notes
Foreword
For the first forty years of my life, it never crossed my mind that I needed
anything else but the Bible to know what I needed to believe to be a faithful
Christian. When I was in seminary and preparing to become a Protestant pastor I
studied the history of Christianity, but with a certain slant that skirted any
acknowledgment of the historical importance of the Catholic Church. For me, as
well as most of my fellow seminarians, the important history essentially ended
with the closure of the New Testament and picked up again with the sixteenth
century Protestant reformation.
I certainly knew of some significant Christian figures and events from those
“lost” fifteen hundred years, but for me and the congregations I pastored, all that
was important was the Bible—which had been “saved” from the clutches of the
“Whore of Babylon” through the courage of the Reformers. The few references I
had read from the writings of the early Christian writers (I don’t remember
referring to them as early Church “Fathers”) were selectively chosen to
demonstrate that the early Church was more like Protestantism than Catholicism.
Then, by God’s grace, my eyes were opened to the problems of Protestantism.
Without question, it was my discovery of the witness of the early Church Fathers
that most opened my heart and mind toward the Catholic faith. Fortunately, God
provided helpers to assist me in finding and working my way through the few
available collections of the Fathers, most of which were out of print and some
badly skewed by anti-Catholic translators. Through their witness, the
Catholicism of the early Church became so obvious that my family and I knew
that if we were to follow the truth then we had no option but to become Catholic.
After his Resurrection, Jesus gave his Apostles what has traditionally been
called the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19–20). What
they taught was the Gospel. This Gospel, however, included far more than the
minimalist outline of Christ’s saving sacrifice on the Cross preached by so many
modern Christian evangelists. It also included far more than what can be gleaned
from the New Testament Gospels and Epistles, which themselves allude to this
wider apostolic teaching.
In Second Thessalonians 2:15, Saint Paul exhorted his Christian brethren to
“stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by
word of mouth or by letter.” To the Corinthian Christians, he wrote, “maintain