The Gospel and the Sacraments (NOTE: I have a history with this commentator. See here) This is a deeply ironic comment. “Sacraments” are historical anachronism. The Apostles and the early church preached the gospel alone. The church knew nothing about sacraments, a concept that would only begin to be formalized …
In Part 1, I briefly mentioned how the early church did not teach the Roman Catholic doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. As I covered in some detail during my series on “The Eucharist,” this is closely related to the development of the sacraments. Regular readers here know that I regularly quote …
In “The Eucharist, Part 9: Tertullian” (2024-04-06), we discussed how Tertullian was the first early church writer to refer—in the first decade of the third century—to baptism and thanksgiving as sacraments. He did so a century before anyone else did, so his writings constitute the most important evidence. Consider the new …
Over at Anabaptist Faith, commenter Seeker gives the standard objection: We’ve heard this before: But regarding the question “what is truth?” this objection is a non-sequitur. All that the varied disagreement of denominations proves is that people will always try to disagree with each other, for whatever reason. This has …
The New Sacrifice In the midst of my series on the Eucharist, I discussed the prophecy of Malachi and concluded that what God wanted most was followers who love him: Cyril had identified the incense and pure sacrifice spoken of by Malachi as the blessings, praise, and glory that the church—congregation—offers to …
This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism. See this index. In “Living Voice,” I discussed the official Roman Catholic position on scripture and teased the upcoming series on justification by faith. But, before we delve into the new series, I want to continue setting up the background for …
Summary The chart above summarizes what we’ve found throughout this series. First, the ancient liturgy… Dismissal Eucharist Oblation Epiclesis Lord’s Supper …is strongly attested to. Sixteen out of seventeen writers that we examined in the first 300 years affirmatively assert an ancient, non-Roman liturgy. They don’t always discuss all aspects …
Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) Augustine became a Roman Catholic Christian in 386, so he is unique in this series in that he was of-a-sorts fully Roman Catholic. And yet he is known for holding a lot of Protestant positions. It will be interesting to discover his views on …
Hilary of Poitiers (310-367) Let’s start immediately with the quotation that FishEaters provides: Hilary is writing about the Trinity and how the elements of the Last Supper pertain to it. It is a bit vague from this clipped paragraph precisely what is being discussed. Let’s back it up a paragraph: …
Ambrose of Milan While we have seen a number of writers altering the ancient liturgy—Cyril in 350, Serapion in 353, Apostolic Constitutions in 375, Chrysostom in 400—it is Ambrose writing in 389 that is most blatant in embracing the doctrinal innovations of the newly risen Roman Catholic Church. Ambrose joins …