Early Church Fathers, Pt 2

The following is lifted directly from a blog entitled "From Protestant to Orthodox." It reflects one particular blogger's conversion experience; not necessarily mine. But it does give you something to think about. Enjoy.


I found the first group of documents I’d need, conveniently, in one little volume. The title of this quick, easy read is usually just The Apostolic Fathers and is available through many bookstores (or online here). There were several things that any good Baptist would take issue with within these men’s writings:

Baptism was seen as the moment when a believer is fully and truly born again

Infants were admitted to baptism

Worship was seen as liturgical and directly connected to Jewish ritual worship; spontaneous worship was nowhere to be seen

Obedience to one’s bishop and/or priest was seen as a direct measure of whether one was an obedient Christian

Salvation was seen as something that was a process and which the believer could, after having started it, forfeit through later unbelief

Fasting was outlined specifically before the end of the first century, and the way it was to be done was expected churchwide, not individually

The departed saints, as well as the angels, were seen as and sought as intercessors in prayer for those still in the flesh

The Church was seen as a single, visible body of believers that was guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from error; one of its chief characteristics was that its bishops (and, by extension, priests) could trace their ordination through the laying on of hands back to one of the apostles themselves

Salvation was never discussed in terms of Christ paying a debt to God the Father, but rather in terms of His defeating death by His Incarnation, transfiguration, death, and resurrection

The Eucharist was, time and again, referred to as the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ Himself

My journey into the first century and a half of Christianity had left me, then, not with comforting answers of Evangelicalism’s fidelity to the New Testament Church, but with many more issues to confront. The second century, with the insistence of Irenaeus and others on an intermediate state of the dead between the end of this life and the final Judgement, along with affirmation of the beliefs of the Fathers of the first century, offered little promise to aligning itself with my current beliefs. Either the Church had slipped dangerously “off the rails” immediately after the death of the last apostle, or my reading of Scripture—and that of Evangelicals everywhere—was dangerously off-base!