If you missed Church History Focused on the Parts that Interest You 2, it’s because I didn’t know when I started the post that it would be a Church History lesson. Thus, the title does not have “Church History” in it. Part 1 has links to the whole series.

This post is about “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). We are supposed to “earnestly contend” for it, but mostly we don’t know what it was. Let me begin with a complaint about dodging the truth because it is unpleasant. (You don’t have to read this complaint, you can hop straight to my list of the things the churches believed when they were united.)

Complaining About Historians Hiding the Truth

I was raised Roman Catholic. It did nothing for me as far as my relationship with God, which I knew was lacking even in Junior High School, so I quit believing it even though I still had to go to mass (what the RCC calls their services) with my parents. When I was powerfully saved by Jesus (cf. Rom. 1:16-17), I was excited about joining the Protestants and adopting their concept that “the Bible is our sole rule for faith and practice.”

The problem was that the Protestants did not seem to know what their sole rule of faith and practice taught, so there was a lot of bickering and division in Niceville, Florida where I was saved. I started reading church history books–great big, fat books–trying to find out what the churches believed when they were united. I am sure I read at least 5 of them in the 1980s, but not a one of them told me anything about what the churches believed at the beginning.

How can you write a church history book and not address the elephant in the room?

The elephant in the room is that the churches I had fellowship with–Assemblies of God and Baptists mostly–held doctrines that strongly conflicted with the little they knew about the early churches. Their answer to this problem was to tell me, and everyone else, that the churches fell away into legalism very early on.

I knew that the apostles’ churches must have been significantly different from the churches I was attending because all I could get from them, and Protestant history books, is “their beliefs were bad.” They didn’t actually say “bad,” they used “legalistic.”

What they did not say was what those beliefs were. I am sure even the pastors did not know. They were just legalist, whatever they were.

Finally, in 1989 I ran across a book by a lawyer. Like me, he was frustrated with not knowing what the churches believed when they were united. Unlike me, he had access to the library of the Dallas Theological Seminary, and he began reading the earliest writings of the church.

Unlike a lot of cowardly Protestant historians, he wrote a book on what the churches believed at the time of the apostles. He titled ie, provocatively, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. One thing led to another, and I read both that book and all the writings of the early church fathers from the earliest in the late first century through the AD 250s.

The Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints

This is a list of some things all churches believed before they started dividing:

I am only going to cover these topics briefly here, but each has a link to quotes from 2nd and 3rd century Christian writings. When you get to the quote pages, you will find that each quote also has a link to the original writing so you can read the quotes in context.  

How the Churches are United

Very early on the churches were united by a common belief in the apostles’ teachings, which they described as “the faith,” “the truth,” or “the one tradition from the apostles.”

 As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. … But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shineth everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition. For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it. (Irenaeus, c. AD 185, Against Heresies, Bk. 1, ch. 10)

Note: Irenaeus is uniquely qualified to speak on this subject. He was raised in Smyrna (modern Turkey) under Polycarp, a bishop appointed by the apostle John. He traveled across all of Europe to Gaul (modern France) as a missionary, then settled there as a bishop. He became an advisor to the bishops of Rome and other churches.

Link: https://www.christian-history.org/unity-quotes.html

The Apostles Themselves Are Inspired

To the early Christians, the apostles were inspired. Thus, anything they wrote was also inspired. Our New Testament is the collection of writings that the early churches thought were written by apostles or by men who were companions of the apostles (Mark, Luke).

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. For it is unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed perfect knowledge … (Irenaeus, c. AD 185, Against Heresies, Bk. 3, ch. 1)

Note: I wrote about this in the first Church History blog post.

Link: https://www.christian-history.org/apostles-quotes.html

The Scriptures

The inspiration of the apostles, above, covers what the early churches believed about the New Testament. They accepted the Jewish Old Testament without change because the apostles were Jews. The Jews did not have an “official” canon, just a generally accepted one, until they approved an official canon in reaction to the growth of Christianity later in the first century. As a result, I am just going to give you a link to the quote page, rather than adding a quote here.

Note: The Jews list the very same Old Testament we Protestants have as 24 books rather than 39. This is because they consider 1 and 2 Chronicles to be one book, Ezra and Nehemiah to be one book, and the 12 minor prophets to be one book, etc. Thus, when you run across Origen’s list of 22 books in the link below, he’s just combining books like the Jews did.

Link: https://www.christian-history.org/scripture-quotes.html

The Trinity

The early churches taught that belief in the Trinity was a primary, central doctrine. They did not say the Trinity was “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,” but said there was “One God, the Father; one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit” (cf. 1 Cor. 8:6). To simplify this, they said, “One God, one Lord, one Spirit” (cf. Eph. 4:4-6).

The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets … (Irenaeus, c. AD 185, Against Heresies, Bk. 1, ch. 10)

Link: https://www.christian-history.org/trinity-quotes.html

Salvation by Faith and the Final Judgment by Works

The early churches taught that we are regenerated (born again, created in Christ Jesus for good works) by grace through faith and in baptism. This empowers us to live righteously so that one day, when we are judged for our works, we will be resurrected to eternal life in the kingdom of God.

Polycarp, from whom this next quote comes, was bishop of Smyrna, a church Jesus commended in Revelation 2:8-11. Irenaeus says he was appointed by apostles, and it is widely accepted by scholars that it was John who appointed him, since John was living nearby in Ephesus when Polycarp became bishop.

In whom, though now ye see him not, ye believe, and believing, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory into which joy many desire to enter, knowing that “by grace ye are saved, not of works,” but by the will of God through Jesus Christ [1 Pet. 1:8; Eph. 2:8-9]. … He comes as the Judge of the living and the dead. His blood will God require of those who do not believe in Him. But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; “not rendering evil for evil …  (Polycarp, AD 110-150, “Epistle to the Philippians,” chs. 1 & 2)

Note: I think this passage from Polycarp sounds remarkably like the contrast between Ephesians 2:8-10 and Ephesians 5:3-7.

Link: https://www.christian-history.org/faith-versus-works-quotes.html

This post is long enough I think. In the next Church History post I will cover at least water baptism, spiritual gifts, Sunday morning services, and communion.