The Early Church Fathers Teach Christian Truths
Earliest portrait of Augustine, from the 6th century
The Fathers of the Church spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, defended the Church in apologetic writing and fought the many heresies of the first six centuries of Christianity. These men, also called Apostolic Fathers, gave special witness to the faith, some dying the death of a martyr. Like Jesus who referred to Abraham as a spiritual father (Luke 16: 24) and St. Paul, who referred to himself in the same terms (1 Corinthians 4: 15), the Fathers were zealous for the word of God. Their writings are a testimony to the faith of the early Church, yet many Christians are unfamiliar with the work of Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Justin the Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, Athanasius, Ephraim, Cyril of Jerusalem, Hilary of Poitiers or Gregory the Great to name of few of the early Fathers. Periodically we will provide biographical information and examples of the writing of these great men of faith. This page will focus on the great St. Augustine, but you can read about all of these men by clicking on their names at the bottom of this page.
Biography: St. Augustine of Hippo (about 354-430 A.D.). He has been called the "most erudite" and the "most prolific" of all the Early Church Fathers and the greatest theologian, yet he was a convert to the faith and was not even ordained a priest until 391 A.D. at the age of 37 years old. He was born in Tagaste, Numidia, a small proconsular city recently converted from Docetism, on 13 November 354 A.D. to a Christian mother and a pagan father. Doubtless through the example of his saintly wife, Augustine's father, Patrick, became a Christian before his death in 371 A.D. At that time he went to Carthage to study advanced rhetoric and prepare for a forensic career and the next year a son, Adeodatus, was born to him by his concubine. Although he had been a catechumen, he postponed his baptism in favor of becoming instead a Manichean in 373 A.D. This sect preached material dualism, claimed to have found contradictions in Holy Scripture and promised scientific explanations for the most mysterious phenomena of nature. He subsequently returned to Tagaste to "teach grammar" where his mother deplored both his Manichaeism and his concubinage, but on the advice of a saintly bishop, did not keep him from her table. This was providential because his mother, St. Monica, helped to contrast the truth of Catholicism and her own virtue to the moral depravity and destructiveness of the dualistic philosophy of the Persian sage, Mani or Manichaeism (i.e., Satan was a bad god equal in power to the good God of the Christians). His disillusionment began when he met Faustus of Milevis, a Manichean teacher, in 383, only to discover his ignorance.
He went to Italy in 383 A.D. and fell under the teaching of the great Bishop of Milan, Ambrose. He finally converted in April 387 after bringing his son and his mother to Italy the year before. Monica had prayed for her son for thirty years and was overjoyed, but died at Ostia as they were preparing to return to Africa to the great sadness of Augustine, who expressed his profound grief in his Confessions. He returned to Africa where he sold his estate and material possessions planning to study Scripture and live in poverty and prayer. In 388 he wrote his work, On the Holiness of the Catholic Church. After his son died, he became a priest in 391 more because the people who knew him urged Bishop Valerius to ordain him than from his own initiative and he was allowed to preach (something usually reserved to bishops in Africa at the time), becoming an admirable foe of Manicheanism. He was appointed co-bishop of Hippo in 395. He subsequently made his episcopal residence into a kind of monastery, where he lived a community life with the clergy. Bishop Possidius names ten saintly friends of Augustine who were themselves elevated to the episcopacy as he became patron to the religious revival in Africa. He took on the Manicheans converting a great doctor of the sect, Felix, after a debate with him in 404. Having written eloquently on the problem of evil and the misunderstanding of the Manicheans in this area, he also took on the Donatists and the problem of sin. The Circumcelliones (i.e., brigands) met attempts to bring the Donatists back into the Church with violence and the threats against the bishops' lives, including Augustine. After some suppression by the Emperor of the Donatists and a major conference in 411 A.D. attended by 286 Catholic and 279 Donatist bishops, the heresy began to lose strength. Augustine had argued that the Church because of its intimate union with Christ (Eph 5) is holy and can tolerate sinners within it in the hope of converting them. Augustine's writings so beautifully developed the theory on the Church that he deserves the designation as "Doctor of the Church" as well as "Doctor of Grace." Finally, he effectively combat the Pelagian heresy and their denial of original sin and its consequences to man with his work "De naturâ et gratiâ." on the nature of grace. He played a pivotal role in the papal condemnation of this heresy in 417-418 A.D. This soldier of Christ spent his last years in combat with the Arian heresy, dying in Hippo in 430 after three months of fervent prayer at the age of 76 years with the city under siege by the Arian Vandals. Some of his prodigious output of writing is quoted below.
Letter of Augustine to Generosus [400 A.D.] on Apostolic Succession
[53, 1, 2] "If the very order of episcopal succession is to be considered, how much more surely, truly, and safely do we number them from Peter himself, to whom as to one representing the whole Church, the Lord said, 'Upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not conquer it .' Peter was succeeded by Linus, Linus by Clement, Clement by Anacletus, Anacletus by Evaristus, Evaristus by Sixtus, Sixtus by Telesphorus, Telesphorus by Hyginus, Hyginus by Anicetus, Anicetus by Pius, Pius by Soter, Soter by Alexander, Alexander by Victor, Victor by Zephyrinus, Zephyrinus by Callistus, Callistus by Urban, Urban by Pontianus, Pontianus by Anterus, Anterus by Fabian, Fabian by Cornelius, Cornelius by Lucius, Lucius by Stephen, Stephen by Sixtus, Sixtus by Dionysius, Dionysius by Felix, Felix by Eutychian, Eutychian by Caius, Caius by Marcellus, Marcellus by Eusebius, Eusebius by Melchiades, Melchiades by Sylvester, Sylvester by Mark, Mark by Julius, Julius by Liberius, Liberius by Damasus, Damasus by Siricius, Siricius by Anastasius. In order of succession not a Donatist bishop is to be found."
[54, 5, 7] "In the first place, I want you to hold as basic to this discussion that our Lord Jesus Christ, as He Himself said in the Gospel, subjected us to His yoke and to His burden, which are light. He has therefore obliged the society of His new people [New Covenant people] to the Sacraments, very few in number, very easy of observance, and most sublime in meaning. Such, for example is Baptism, consecrated in the name of the Trinity; the Communion of His Body and Blood and whatever else is commended in the canonical Scriptures, except those things which are read in the five books of Moses [Old Covenant sacraments], which imposed on the old people [Old Covenant people] a servitude in accord with their hearts and the prophetic times in which they lived. But in regard to those observances which we carefully attend and the whole world keeps, and which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition [Apostolic Tradition], we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the Apostles themselves or by plenary councils, the authority of which is quite vital to the Church [assuming here the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the Church].
Letter of Augustine to Jerome [405 A.D.--St. Jerome translated the Bible of his day into the Latin Vulgate, completing it in 405 A.D.]
[82, 1, 3] "I have learned to hold those books alone of the Scriptures that are now called canonical [The Bible canon or listing of inspired books was approved by the Council of Rome in 382 A.D.] in such reverence and honor that I do firmly believe that none of their authors has erred in anything that he has written therein. If I find anything in those writings which seems to be contradictory to the truth, I presume that either the codex is inaccurate, or the translator has not followed what was said, or I have not properly understood it . . . . I think that you dear brother, must feel the same way. And I say, moreover, that I do not think you would want your books to be read as if they were books of Prophets or Apostles, about whose writings, free of all error, it is not lawful to doubt. Let us not even think such a thing, in view of your great humility and your true opinion of yourself."
Letter of Augustine to Boniface, A Bishop [408 A.D.]
[98, 2] "It is this one Spirit who makes possible for an infant to be regenerated through the agency of another's will when that infant is brought to Baptism; and it is through this one Spirit that the infant so presented is reborn. For it is not written: 'Unless a man be born again by the will of his parents' or 'by the faith of those presenting him or ministering to him', but 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit' [John 3: 5]. The water, therefore, manifesting exteriorly the sacrament of grace, and the Spirit effecting interiorly the benefit of grace, both regenerate in one Christ that man who was generated in one Adam." [Baptism is a gift of God that forgives sin and makes one clean as Adam before the fall]
[98, 9] "Was not Christ immolated only once in His very Person? [sacrificed on the Cross] In the Sacrament [Eucharist or Communion] nonetheless, He is immolated for the people not only on every Easter Solemnity but on every day [in the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass]; and a man would not be lying if, when asked he were to reply that Christ is being immolated [the once, for all sacrifice is never ending or eternal]. For if Sacraments had not a likeness to those things of which they are Sacraments [outward signs] they would not be Sacraments at all; and they generally take the names of those same things by reason of this likeness. Just as the Sacrament of the Body of Christ is in a certain way the Body of Christ, and the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ is the Blood of Christ, so too the sacrament of faith is faith. To believe, however, is nothing other than to have faith. That is why [at Baptism] response is made that the little ones believe [infants or small children], though he has no awareness of faith. Answer is made that he has faith because of the Sacrament of faith. "
[98, 10] "Although the little ones has not yet that faith which resides in the will of believers, the Sacrament of that same faith already makes him one of the faithful. For since response is made that they believe, they are called faithful, not by assent of the mind to the thing itself but by their receiving the Sacrament of the thing itself." [Baptism makes them children and heirs: 1 Peter 3: 21; Jn 3: 5; Acts 2: 38]
Letter to the Catechumen Honoratus [412 A.D.--Catechumen is one studying to enter the faith]
[140, 3, 9 ] "This is the grace of the New Testament, which lay hidden in the Old, though there was no end of its being prophesied and foretold in veiled figures so that the soul might recognize its God and, by God's grace, to be reborn by Him. This is truly a spiritual birth, and therefore it is not of blood nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. This is called adoption...."Explanations of the Psalms [inter A.D. 392-418]
[73, 2] "The Sacraments of the New Testament give salvation, the Sacraments of the Old Testament promise a Savior."
[88, 2, 14] "Let us love our Lord God, let us love His Church, Him as a Father, her as a Mother; Him as a Master, her as His Handmaid; for we are children of the Handmaid herself. But this marriage is held together by great love; no one offends the one and gains favor with the other. . . . Cling, then, beloved, cling all with one mind to God our Father and to the Church our Mother."
Sermons [inter A.D. 391-430]
[20, 2] "If you want God to forgive, you must confess. Sin cannot go unpunished. It were unseemly, improper, and unjust for sin to go unpunished. Since, therefore, sin must not go unpunished, let it be punished by you, lest you be punished for it. Let your sin have you for its judge, not its patron. Go up and take the bench against yourself, and put your guilt before yourself. Do not put it behind you, or God will put it in front of you."
"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."
The City of God
Chapter 10, 6
"The wholly redeemed city, the assembly and society of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice by the high priest who in the form of a slave went so far as to offer himself for us in his Passion, to make us the Body of so great a head . . . Such is the sacrifice of Christians: 'we who are many are one Body in Christ.' The Church continues to reproduce this sacrifice in the sacrament of the altar so well-known to believers wherein it is evident to them that in what she offers she herself is offered."
Biography: St. Augustine of Hippo (about 354-430 A.D.). He has been called the "most erudite" and the "most prolific" of all the Early Church Fathers and the greatest theologian, yet he was a convert to the faith and was not even ordained a priest until 391 A.D. at the age of 37 years old. He was born in Tagaste, Numidia, a small proconsular city recently converted from Docetism, on 13 November 354 A.D. to a Christian mother and a pagan father. Doubtless through the example of his saintly wife, Augustine's father, Patrick, became a Christian before his death in 371 A.D. At that time he went to Carthage to study advanced rhetoric and prepare for a forensic career and the next year a son, Adeodatus, was born to him by his concubine. Although he had been a catechumen, he postponed his baptism in favor of becoming instead a Manichean in 373 A.D. This sect preached material dualism, claimed to have found contradictions in Holy Scripture and promised scientific explanations for the most mysterious phenomena of nature. He subsequently returned to Tagaste to "teach grammar" where his mother deplored both his Manichaeism and his concubinage, but on the advice of a saintly bishop, did not keep him from her table. This was providential because his mother, St. Monica, helped to contrast the truth of Catholicism and her own virtue to the moral depravity and destructiveness of the dualistic philosophy of the Persian sage, Mani or Manichaeism (i.e., Satan was a bad god equal in power to the good God of the Christians). His disillusionment began when he met Faustus of Milevis, a Manichean teacher, in 383, only to discover his ignorance.
He went to Italy in 383 A.D. and fell under the teaching of the great Bishop of Milan, Ambrose. He finally converted in April 387 after bringing his son and his mother to Italy the year before. Monica had prayed for her son for thirty years and was overjoyed, but died at Ostia as they were preparing to return to Africa to the great sadness of Augustine, who expressed his profound grief in his Confessions. He returned to Africa where he sold his estate and material possessions planning to study Scripture and live in poverty and prayer. In 388 he wrote his work, On the Holiness of the Catholic Church. After his son died, he became a priest in 391 more because the people who knew him urged Bishop Valerius to ordain him than from his own initiative and he was allowed to preach (something usually reserved to bishops in Africa at the time), becoming an admirable foe of Manicheanism. He was appointed co-bishop of Hippo in 395. He subsequently made his episcopal residence into a kind of monastery, where he lived a community life with the clergy. Bishop Possidius names ten saintly friends of Augustine who were themselves elevated to the episcopacy as he became patron to the religious revival in Africa. He took on the Manicheans converting a great doctor of the sect, Felix, after a debate with him in 404. Having written eloquently on the problem of evil and the misunderstanding of the Manicheans in this area, he also took on the Donatists and the problem of sin. The Circumcelliones (i.e., brigands) met attempts to bring the Donatists back into the Church with violence and the threats against the bishops' lives, including Augustine. After some suppression by the Emperor of the Donatists and a major conference in 411 A.D. attended by 286 Catholic and 279 Donatist bishops, the heresy began to lose strength. Augustine had argued that the Church because of its intimate union with Christ (Eph 5) is holy and can tolerate sinners within it in the hope of converting them. Augustine's writings so beautifully developed the theory on the Church that he deserves the designation as "Doctor of the Church" as well as "Doctor of Grace." Finally, he effectively combat the Pelagian heresy and their denial of original sin and its consequences to man with his work "De naturâ et gratiâ." on the nature of grace. He played a pivotal role in the papal condemnation of this heresy in 417-418 A.D. This soldier of Christ spent his last years in combat with the Arian heresy, dying in Hippo in 430 after three months of fervent prayer at the age of 76 years with the city under siege by the Arian Vandals. Some of his prodigious output of writing is quoted below.
Letter of Augustine to Generosus [400 A.D.] on Apostolic Succession
[53, 1, 2] "If the very order of episcopal succession is to be considered, how much more surely, truly, and safely do we number them from Peter himself, to whom as to one representing the whole Church, the Lord said, 'Upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not conquer it .' Peter was succeeded by Linus, Linus by Clement, Clement by Anacletus, Anacletus by Evaristus, Evaristus by Sixtus, Sixtus by Telesphorus, Telesphorus by Hyginus, Hyginus by Anicetus, Anicetus by Pius, Pius by Soter, Soter by Alexander, Alexander by Victor, Victor by Zephyrinus, Zephyrinus by Callistus, Callistus by Urban, Urban by Pontianus, Pontianus by Anterus, Anterus by Fabian, Fabian by Cornelius, Cornelius by Lucius, Lucius by Stephen, Stephen by Sixtus, Sixtus by Dionysius, Dionysius by Felix, Felix by Eutychian, Eutychian by Caius, Caius by Marcellus, Marcellus by Eusebius, Eusebius by Melchiades, Melchiades by Sylvester, Sylvester by Mark, Mark by Julius, Julius by Liberius, Liberius by Damasus, Damasus by Siricius, Siricius by Anastasius. In order of succession not a Donatist bishop is to be found."
[54, 5, 7] "In the first place, I want you to hold as basic to this discussion that our Lord Jesus Christ, as He Himself said in the Gospel, subjected us to His yoke and to His burden, which are light. He has therefore obliged the society of His new people [New Covenant people] to the Sacraments, very few in number, very easy of observance, and most sublime in meaning. Such, for example is Baptism, consecrated in the name of the Trinity; the Communion of His Body and Blood and whatever else is commended in the canonical Scriptures, except those things which are read in the five books of Moses [Old Covenant sacraments], which imposed on the old people [Old Covenant people] a servitude in accord with their hearts and the prophetic times in which they lived. But in regard to those observances which we carefully attend and the whole world keeps, and which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition [Apostolic Tradition], we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the Apostles themselves or by plenary councils, the authority of which is quite vital to the Church [assuming here the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the Church].
Letter of Augustine to Jerome [405 A.D.--St. Jerome translated the Bible of his day into the Latin Vulgate, completing it in 405 A.D.]
[82, 1, 3] "I have learned to hold those books alone of the Scriptures that are now called canonical [The Bible canon or listing of inspired books was approved by the Council of Rome in 382 A.D.] in such reverence and honor that I do firmly believe that none of their authors has erred in anything that he has written therein. If I find anything in those writings which seems to be contradictory to the truth, I presume that either the codex is inaccurate, or the translator has not followed what was said, or I have not properly understood it . . . . I think that you dear brother, must feel the same way. And I say, moreover, that I do not think you would want your books to be read as if they were books of Prophets or Apostles, about whose writings, free of all error, it is not lawful to doubt. Let us not even think such a thing, in view of your great humility and your true opinion of yourself."
Letter of Augustine to Boniface, A Bishop [408 A.D.]
[98, 2] "It is this one Spirit who makes possible for an infant to be regenerated through the agency of another's will when that infant is brought to Baptism; and it is through this one Spirit that the infant so presented is reborn. For it is not written: 'Unless a man be born again by the will of his parents' or 'by the faith of those presenting him or ministering to him', but 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit' [John 3: 5]. The water, therefore, manifesting exteriorly the sacrament of grace, and the Spirit effecting interiorly the benefit of grace, both regenerate in one Christ that man who was generated in one Adam." [Baptism is a gift of God that forgives sin and makes one clean as Adam before the fall]
[98, 9] "Was not Christ immolated only once in His very Person? [sacrificed on the Cross] In the Sacrament [Eucharist or Communion] nonetheless, He is immolated for the people not only on every Easter Solemnity but on every day [in the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass]; and a man would not be lying if, when asked he were to reply that Christ is being immolated [the once, for all sacrifice is never ending or eternal]. For if Sacraments had not a likeness to those things of which they are Sacraments [outward signs] they would not be Sacraments at all; and they generally take the names of those same things by reason of this likeness. Just as the Sacrament of the Body of Christ is in a certain way the Body of Christ, and the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ is the Blood of Christ, so too the sacrament of faith is faith. To believe, however, is nothing other than to have faith. That is why [at Baptism] response is made that the little ones believe [infants or small children], though he has no awareness of faith. Answer is made that he has faith because of the Sacrament of faith. "
[98, 10] "Although the little ones has not yet that faith which resides in the will of believers, the Sacrament of that same faith already makes him one of the faithful. For since response is made that they believe, they are called faithful, not by assent of the mind to the thing itself but by their receiving the Sacrament of the thing itself." [Baptism makes them children and heirs: 1 Peter 3: 21; Jn 3: 5; Acts 2: 38]
Letter to the Catechumen Honoratus [412 A.D.--Catechumen is one studying to enter the faith]
[140, 3, 9 ] "This is the grace of the New Testament, which lay hidden in the Old, though there was no end of its being prophesied and foretold in veiled figures so that the soul might recognize its God and, by God's grace, to be reborn by Him. This is truly a spiritual birth, and therefore it is not of blood nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. This is called adoption...."Explanations of the Psalms [inter A.D. 392-418]
[73, 2] "The Sacraments of the New Testament give salvation, the Sacraments of the Old Testament promise a Savior."
[88, 2, 14] "Let us love our Lord God, let us love His Church, Him as a Father, her as a Mother; Him as a Master, her as His Handmaid; for we are children of the Handmaid herself. But this marriage is held together by great love; no one offends the one and gains favor with the other. . . . Cling, then, beloved, cling all with one mind to God our Father and to the Church our Mother."
Sermons [inter A.D. 391-430]
[20, 2] "If you want God to forgive, you must confess. Sin cannot go unpunished. It were unseemly, improper, and unjust for sin to go unpunished. Since, therefore, sin must not go unpunished, let it be punished by you, lest you be punished for it. Let your sin have you for its judge, not its patron. Go up and take the bench against yourself, and put your guilt before yourself. Do not put it behind you, or God will put it in front of you."
"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."
The City of God
Chapter 10, 6
"The wholly redeemed city, the assembly and society of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice by the high priest who in the form of a slave went so far as to offer himself for us in his Passion, to make us the Body of so great a head . . . Such is the sacrifice of Christians: 'we who are many are one Body in Christ.' The Church continues to reproduce this sacrifice in the sacrament of the altar so well-known to believers wherein it is evident to them that in what she offers she herself is offered."
