#8 What Did the Apostolic Fathers Teach? | Mini Episode

What did the earliest disciples of the apostles actually teach? In this mini episode, Luke explores the writings of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp — men personally discipled by the apostles — and unpacks the core themes that unite their nine surviving letters: the person and deity of Jesus, love and gentleness under persecution, salvation as an enduring race, warnings of judgment, and a robust view of the Church and sacraments. A great primer before diving deeper into each of these early church fathers individually.

Transcript

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Ignatius was born in like 35 AD. So this is not a later edition by some pagan philosopher, but very early on the church from the beginning, from the apostles to their disciples. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Five Two Ministries Podcast. This is Luke, and we've been going through a series on spiritual anxiety, specifically how we relate to God and how we relate to church. Sometimes the place where we want to experience peace and clarity is a place that can bring anxiety and confusion. And we look at the church and we look at the scripture, how do we know for certain that what we are following is true? We've talked about how there's an element of this that is our own spiritual formation, but there is an element of this that evaluates how do we process the scripture, how do we process tradition, and we look at very denominious denominations, what are they actually rooted in? We've seen that there is a current movement in Generation Z of moving more towards ancient traditions, whether that be Catholicism or Orthodoxy or high church Protestant movements, and why is that? So we'll have a few more fun and exciting guests, experts in their field coming on the show. But before we do that, I wanted to look specifically at something that I always wanted to look into. I put off for a long time, but once I got into it, I was not disappointed. I was very pleased with how it encouraged me in my faith, and that was looking at what did the disciples of the apostles teach. I always wondered that if anyone understood what Paul was writing in the book of Ephesians or in the book of 1 Corinthians or the book of Philippians or the gospel authors, it was probably those who received them that remained faithful, right? Not those who maybe fell away or were confused in their faith like some of the people in Galatians, but instead the faithful men that Paul talks about in 1st and 2 Timothy and investing in faithful men who could teach others also. Who were those men and what did they teach? Well, we know that Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement were discipled by the apostles themselves, were contemporaries of one another, and were highly esteemed by the church then and continue to be to this day. Their testimonies have stood the test of time. And so today we're going to do a mini episode, but I want to specifically look at what did they all teach in common? And this can really, in a lot of ways, be summarized in the creeds. They don't teach anything that wouldn't be found in the creeds, but specifically in their writings, there are nine of them. Clement has one to the Corinthians, Polycarp has one to the Philippians, and then Ignatius actually has seven letters to various churches and leaders. And so, how can we summarize what was taught in these nine letters by the disciples of the apostles? I'm going to break it down in just a few categories, and then we're going to look at each author and some of their specific writings in later many episodes. So, number one was they all talk about Jesus, right? The core of our faith and hit the importance of his physical life, that he physically was born of a woman, that he lived a perfect life, that he was crucified, and that he was resurrected. Even in their day, there were people who were challenging this, just like there is in our day, just like there was in Paul's day. Um, and so this was a mark of orthodoxy that we see in the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, and we see in the disciples of the apostles. We also see an emphasis on Jesus being God, that even though the Trinity was not coined immediately, we do see these men pointing towards that Jesus was God. I find this really interesting because in many cults today, like Mormons or Jehovah's Witness, they will point to the fact that the Trinity isn't specifically found in the Bible or that it was a later development within Christianity. And it's just really not true. The the term Trinity was simply to summarize and unify the church on what was already being taught and what had always been taught and what was found in the scripture. So people were all seeing that the Bible taught and the apostles taught that Jesus was God, the Holy Spirit was God, and that the Father was God, but they all knew there was only one God. And so, how do we articulate this? And that is where the Trinity came about. So we see that Ignatius very, very clearly states on how Jesus was both born of a human nature and was not born, and that he was always eternally existing with the Father. And so he was both created and not created. And he talks about how he lived a true life as a human, but he was also God in the flesh, very explicitly. And again, Ignatius was born in like 35 A.D. So this is not a later addition by some pagan philosopher, but very early on, the church from the beginning, from the apostles to their disciples, they were all teaching the Trinity, three persons, one essence was the bedrock of who God is. So they all taught this about Jesus, life, death, resurrection, the Trinity. The next thing that they really focus on, which is just an encouragement to my soul, is love, is faith, is gentleness, is forgiveness. Ignatius says it's gentleness that destroys the works of Satan. Um, very powerful, very beatitude-like, really clinging to the writings and the teachings of Jesus. And I just, I really appreciate this because they were going through a time of persecution. And sometimes when the pressure's on, it's easy to get radical and fight back and to be hateful and spiteful. But instead, these men, their writings are steeped in gentleness and love and joy and forgiveness, steadfastness and endurance. Very encouraging. So not only are these men helpful for theology and to be grounded, but specifically for the Christian life, a lot of practical wisdom rooted in the scripture and the apostles' teaching. The next thing that I think I find interesting that is a very common theme is just salvation being a process or of a salvation being a race. They all specifically talk about and even rebuke the church of salvation is not about a one-time decision. It's not about a choice that you've made, but instead it is a covenant, it is a loving relationship with Christ and with his church, and that it is it requires endurance, it requires suffering, it requires to be a true disciple, as Ignatius would say. And so they were very encouraging, and that the forgiveness of Christ and the love of Christ and the grace of Christ, the righteousness of Christ is what sustains us. We need to cling to him. It wasn't about just work your way to heaven, but it was about clinging to, being steadfast, being faithful to the promises of Christ and clinging to him and him alone, loving him more than the world, not having any of the love of the world in us. So I really appreciate just the emphasis they put on being faithful, of counting the cost and clinging to Christ and His power and his righteousness. The other thing they all have in common is they warn us of judgment, strong warnings of judgment and of Christ's return. And they called each person to fear the judgment, and that if you are living in unrepentant sin, if you are dividing the church maliciously, if you are gossiping, if you are turning away from the truth, they lovingly called you to repentance, but they also lovingly warned the church of judgment, and that we would all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and be judged according to what has been done in the body. The other thing they all have in common, and there's others than just these, but I'm gonna finish it with this. One other strong theme within their writings is a very strong ecclesiology or their belief of the church. They all believed in a physical, visible church, not just an invisible church of just wherever Christians are there, the church is. There definitely was some of that belief, but they had a strong belief and articulated it vehemently that the church was made up of sound doctrine that was preached from the apostles, this core of orthodoxy or rule of faith. They believed that the church was made up of elders and bishops who taught that rule of faith, who clung to the word of God, and they believed the church was those elders with sound doctrine holding the church accountable both pastorally and with discipline. So they were loving the church, they were encouraging the church, they were shepherding their flock with humility and love, but they were also disciplining those who were outside of the lines of orthodoxy doctrinally, but also those who would persist in sin. And finally, there's a strong sense of the sacraments and the strongest in Ignatius specifically, but of baptism and of the Lord's Supper and of confession and public um penance or restitution through fruits of repentance, and that these things were core to the scripture. So they have a very high view of church and a very high view of gathering together, like daily, not just once a week, but that there was the weekly gathering to partake in the Lord's Supper or in the Eucharist, confess sins, to hear the apostles' writings read along with the prophets. There was this benefit of coming together and the grace of God that was given there. But there was also a strong emphasis of gathering daily and to encourage each other not to be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And these men were under intense persecution, Polycarp being martyred as well as Ignatius in climactic ways, you could say. You can read up more on their history. But any of these letters, 1 Clement to the Corinthians or Polycarp to the Philippians, or the seven letters of Ignatius, are free online with PDF files and various church history websites. So if you've never read them, you can give them a read. I have really enjoyed this book, The Apostolic Fathers in English, um, by Michael W. Holmes is a good overview of these books, as are letters that I've mentioned as well as other apostolic fathers. So, what did the early church teach? It was rooted in these truths of who is Jesus, his deity, his life, death, resurrection, love, faith, righteousness, the grace of God, salvation being a race to endure to the end, to be a true disciple, the warnings of judgment and the rewards of eternal salvation, and a strong ecclesiology and the importance of the church. So God bless you. I hope this can help if just understanding what did the early church really root themselves in. How did they understand the writings of Paul? Because these guys really valued, maybe one last thing, really valued the scripture. They really valued what had been written by the apostles and what had been taught by the apostles. So these aren't guys just making up things, but just like you would say, Man, I value the Bible. I want to do what the Bible says. That was that's what they said. And they these points is what they believed the New Testament authors were focusing on, therefore they focused on them as well. In the same time, same culture, same language, knowing them personally, these were the things they emphasize. And we'll break down more of the Apostolic Fathers and their writings. So God bless you, stay rooted. Again, chase assurance rather than certainty. We follow a God who's a mystery. Great is the mystery of godliness. We follow a faith that is rooted in the grace of God, working in mysterious ways through faith. So please, if you're struggling with spiritual anxiety, my encouragement to you, my call to you would be find assurance in Christ and have certainty very open handed. God bless you.