Is Jesus Christ God? Is he a man? Is he both? Spoiler alert: the mainstream Church answered with the both/and, but the factions on the fringes tended to choose one or the other. For our first heresy, we take a look at the Ebionites, and their New Testament-era predecessors, the so-called Judaizers. These concluded that Jesus Christ was a mere human. A human who became a prophet perhaps, but just a human. Links For more information on Ignatius of Antioch, see Mike Aquilina's Episode 4: https://ww...
Dec 13, 2023•32 min•Season 4Ep. 2
I am honored to be picking up the Way of the Fathers podcast where my good friend, Mike Aquilina, left off. In season 4 of The Way of the Fathers, we'll be looking at the heresies of the early Church, and how the Church fathers confronted and refuted them. This first episode is the introduction to the series, where I define some terms and tell you what you can expect as we trace through the early centuries of Christianity, tracking chronologically the alternatives to orthodoxy that were proposed...
Nov 22, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 1
After 99 wonderful episodes by Mike Aquilina, Way of the Fathers is getting a new host! We are sad to see Mike go, but excited about his hand-picked successor, Jim Papandrea. In this conversation, Mike introduces Jim to the listeners and these two friends and collaborators talk about their love for all things Patristic. Please help CatholicCulture.org - and Way of the Fathers - to continue in the new year. Donate now and your gift will be matched! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio Jim Papa...
Nov 08, 2023•39 min
Christianity conquered cities one by one, not by arms or propaganda, but by the quiet witness of ordinary lives well lived. Worldly power yielded before the prayers of the saints and the blood of the martyrs. What can we learn from the first evangelization as we work our witness today? Links Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon.com/Rabbles-Riots-Ruins-Ancient-Evangelized/dp/1621646785/ Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christian...
Oct 25, 2023•22 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Western Christianity—Latin Christianity—began in Africa and made its way across the sea to Italy. All the great orthodox Latin writers of the first through third centuries were African. The distinctive western liturgy was likely a product of Roman Africa. Christianity came to Africa at a time of literary renaissance, and the Church is still the beneficiary of that particular Christian culture. Links Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized htt...
Oct 11, 2023•22 min•Season 3Ep. 12
From Rome to Milan to Ravenna, the Western capital moved—searching for the site least vulnerable to barbarian incursion. And wherever the capital moved, money followed. And where there's money, there's monumental art, science, and literary culture. In Ravenna there were great figures such as Galla Placidia and Peter Chrysologus. Today, the early Christian art and architecture of Ravenna are among the world's great treasures. It's one of the few places on earth where you can walk into a church an...
Sep 27, 2023•20 min•Season 3Ep. 11
In a short span of time, in the fourth century, Byzantium made the leap from a relatively insignificant harbor city to the de facto capital of the world. Constantine moved there from Rome and gave his empire a new (and Christian) founding. He also laid the foundations for a political milieu that made "Byzantine" a byword meaning complicated, bureaucratic, and corrupt. Constantinople's laws, for better and worse, circumscribed the movements and actions of many of the later Fathers. Links Mike Aqu...
Sep 13, 2023•24 min•Season 3Ep. 10
As if an interest in patristics isn't strange enough, in this episode we're getting still more exotic. We're entering the world of Armenian patristics. We're visiting the ancient city of Ejmiatsin—leaping over the barriers of language (and even alphabet) to encounter the heroes too often neglected in the histories. This is the story of St. Gregory the Illuminator and his contemporaries, and the Church they founded. Armenia also became a great center of learning and so houses translations of many...
Aug 30, 2023•21 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Faith came to France very early and very strong. It seems likely that traders brought the Gospel from distant Smyrna (modern Izmir in Turkey) to Lugdunum (modern Lyon). The blood of martyrs was seed. Blandina, a sickly slave, emerged from her trials an epic hero, honored forever. Irenaeus, the globetrotting scholar-bishop, arose as the second century's greatest theologian. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon.com/R...
Aug 15, 2023•21 min•Season 3Ep. 8
In Edessa—the borderlands of the Empire—we make our first encounter with Syriac Christianity. Its origins are shrouded in mist, and within the mist we meet the indistinct figures of heretics, saints, and a king who is both historic and mythic. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon.com/Rabbles-Riots-Ruins-Ancient-Evangelized/dp/1621646785/ Labubna, Acts of Addaeus (Addai), https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/libr...
Jul 31, 2023•19 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Ephesus was home to one of the Wonders of the World; and it's the setting for one of the most dramatic moments in the itineraries of the Apostles: the riot of the silversmiths. It was also the location of one of the most dramatic moments in the age of the Fathers: the riotous council that condemned Nestorius. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon.com/Rabbles-Riots-Ruins-Ancient-Evangelized/dp/1621646785/ Socrates Sc...
Jul 12, 2023•21 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Alexandria was cultural capital of the ancient world — and the ancient Church. It had the greatest library on the planet and a state-subsidized community of scholars. It was the city where theology first developed as a science. The Alexandrians had their own distinctive way of interpreting Scripture, developed over centuries by giants: Clement, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril. Its influence on the development of Christianity was profound and permanent. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: T...
Jun 29, 2023•23 min•Season 3Ep. 5
No one would have guessed when Rome was founded that it would become anything important. But it became the capital of a vast empire and earthly center of the universal Church. It is the destination of the Acts of the Apostles — a place consecrated by martyrs' blood, a city to which the Fathers ventured as pilgrims, a city whose Church and bishop spoke with a singular authority. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon....
Jun 15, 2023•23 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Antioch, in so many ways, was the place where the lights first went on. It was the first city in the ancient world to have street lamps and unending night life. It was the city where the disciples were first called Christians. And it blazed brightly for centuries, in the lives and words of the Fathers: Ignatius, Theophilus, John Chrysostom. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon.com/Rabbles-Riots-Ruins-Ancient-Evange...
May 25, 2023•22 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Jerusalem, the holy city — a city built with compact unity and beloved by the Apostles — was the first home of the Christian Church. Sacred to the Jews, it was for the early Christians a pilgrim destination. Melito and Egeria and Gregory of Nyssa visited there. Cyril reigned there as bishop. John of Damascus moved there. In any consideration of Christian communities, it must come first, because it was the origin and the model for all that came afterward. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and ...
May 10, 2023•21 min•Season 3Ep. 2
For those who missed the YouTube livestream Q&A with Mike Aquilina on May 8th, 2023, here is the audio. It was a lively conversation where Mike fielded viewer questions about important cities of the early Church, early evidence for papal primacy, the role of charity in the early Church, Origen, the providential role of easy travel for the spread of the Gospel in the first centuries, and more. We're a week into CatholicCulture.org's May fundraising campaign. Generous donors have offered a $50...
May 09, 2023•1 hr 36 min
With this introductory episode we begin our exploration of the cities where the Fathers lived and taught. At first these were cities that raged against the Gospel and persecuted the Church. The Fathers brought them to faith. Each city was different from all the others—and each became more perfectly itself through its encounter with Jesus Christ. We can learn from the history. LINKS Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized https://www.amazon.co...
Apr 26, 2023•17 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Christianity is the odd religion that does not require pilgrimage, but Christians do it anyway, and in great numbers, as they have since the earliest days of the Church. Many of the early Fathers made the journey to the holy sites. They trekked to the Holy Land to walk in Jesus' footsteps and to Rome to honor Peter and Paul. How can we follow their example? LINKS Mike Aquilina's 2023 pilgrimage to Rome https://www.pilgrimages.com/mikeaquilina/ Margherita Guarducci, The Primacy of the Church of R...
Apr 12, 2023•14 min
'Twas the night before Easter, and all through the Church every heart was stirring. The early Christians kept a Vigil that made a lasting impression. The symbols were elemental: fire, water, darkness, nakedness, music, dramatic preaching, surprising chalices, and more-than-marathon endurance. Prepare for your Easter Vigil by learning about theirs. LINKS Melito of Sardis, Peri Pascha https://sachurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/On-Pascha-Melito-of-Sardis.pdf Melito of Sardis, Peri Pascha (anot...
Mar 22, 2023•15 min
Plato scorned manual labor. Aristotle believed that "no one who leads the life of a worker or laborer can practice virtue." Plotinus, Celsus, and Herodotus agreed that work was ignoble and contemptible. Pagan religion reflected these precepts of the philosophers. In such a world, Christianity seemed revolutionary. The churches were full of laborers, who worshipped a Laborer—and whose Scriptures preserved NOT the syllogisms of philosophers, but the stories of people who got jobs done. Implicit in...
Mar 08, 2023•22 min
To Plato it was an island paradise. To Cicero it was the beginning of the Roman Empire. To Basil it was a name synonymous with luxury. To Augustine it was a place of natural marvels: a mountain that burned perpetually, but was never consumed. To Gregory the Great it was a shrine to his favorite martyrs. Modern Christians know Sicily mostly from the Godfather movies, so they know nothing of its rich Christian history. Till now. Listen up. Links John Julius Norwich, Sicily: An Island at the Crossr...
Feb 21, 2023•20 min
As long as there's been Christian faith, there have been ascetics—athletes of prayer—and these athletes, both female and male, have sought ways to live in intentional community. Experiments in communal life went on in every corner of the Empire—in Egypt, Palestine, Rome, Cappadocia, Athens, Antioch, Africa—and involved the greatest names in the early Church. LINKS Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=1699 Ambrose of Milan, ...
Feb 08, 2023•23 min
Denis (aka Dionysius) the Great, in the years he was bishop, faced many of the terrors of the ancient world, all while the empire was persecuting Christians to the death. He saw his congregations reduced by death and defection. He saw the ranks of the clergy reduced to just a handful of priests. Yet he lived to see the day when the Church of Alexandria in Egypt revived to become a world leader once again. LINKS Eusebius, Church History Church History (Book VI) https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2...
Jan 25, 2023•12 min
Western Christianity is fundamentally African in the way that Eastern Christianity is fundamentally Greek. It was in Africa that a vigorous Christian Latin culture first developed. Carthage had a Latin liturgy for a full century before Rome switched over from Greek. Africa gave the Church great saints and Fathers such as Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius—and the greatest of all: Augustine. For a Western Christian, to know early African Christianity is to know one's own ro...
Jan 11, 2023•14 min
The calendar is a catechism. Every feast is a lesson in doctrine. The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, like Christmas, rose to prominence at a time of deep division in the Church, as some Christians disputed Jesus' true divinity. Both celebrations served as a kind of credal statement—and they still do today. LINKS Kilian McDonnell, OSB, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation https://www.amazon.com/Baptism-Jesus-Jordan-Trinitarian-Salvation/dp/081465307...
Dec 29, 2022•23 min
In Greek and Roman epics, the heroes are men who conquer by violence. But in early Christianity the epic heroes were often heroines — specifically those who had suffered violence rather than submit to a patriarchy that despised them for what they were. The virgin martyrs refused to conform to society's idea of womanhood. In a time of demographic winter, they refused to marry and bear children for the good of the empire. They consecrated their lives to Christ instead. Thus they were seen as a thr...
Dec 14, 2022•21 min
The questions arise every few years, and each time they're news. Who were the "deaconesses" in the early Church? What was their role? Why did the role vanish in the first millennium? Should the role be revived? The questions are never answered to everyone's satisfaction. Why must that be so? "Divergent expectations in the deaconess debate: Interview with Sister Sara Butler" https://angelusnews.com/faith/divergent-expectations-in-the-deaconess-debate/ International Theological Commission, "From t...
Nov 30, 2022•16 min
Many ideas that seem peculiarly modern actually have deep Christian roots. This is true of much of the terminology of addiction and recovery. Today we look for the roots of "intervention" in the Gospel and the works of the Fathers—and find applications for ordinarily life, even beyond the orbit of addiction. LINKS Joseph Carola, S.J., Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in Ecclesial Reconciliation https://www.amazon.com/Augustine-Hippo-Ecclesial-Reconciliation-Gregoriana/dp/8878390232/ "Fr...
Nov 09, 2022•24 min
The Fathers saw a profound connection between Eucharistic communion and social concerns — between liturgy and charity. It's evident in the works of the great saints of antiquity, from Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr to Tertullian and John Chrysostom. It's spelled out even in the ancient liturgical books. LINKS Tertullian, Apology XXXIX https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=1662 Justin Martyr, First Apology LXVII https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/libr...
Oct 26, 2022•25 min
The early Church initiated many struggles for the cause of social justice: opposition to slavery, capital punishment, and other institutions of pagan society. But the condemnation of abortion was singular in its consistency and vehemence, from the very beginning of the Gospel proclamation. LINKS The Church's original social justice struggle https://angelusnews.com/faith/the-churchs-long-fight-against-abortion/ Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roma...
Oct 12, 2022•16 min
