Prior to the eruption of World War II, between 1925 and 1935 a frantic France fortified the long border it shared with Germany. The “Maginot Line”—named after the man who conceived the idea—included a network of bunkers, forts, tunnels, and fortifications for thousands of soldiers. For all practical purposes, the Maginot Line was impenetrable. The French army had prepared to fend off a frontal assault by the Germans —and history proved that the defenses were successful.
But the Germans didn’t bother to penetrate the Maginot Line.
They went around it!
Because of a treaty with Belgium (which stood between France and Germany), the French had not anticipated that the Nazis would simply roll through Belgium to circumvent the Maginot Line. But they did. The Germans found the weakest point inFrance’s defense and exploited it. They found, as it were, an unguarded back door.
In its brief history as a distinct Protestant movement, evangelicalism spent over a century building up its fortifications first against the destructive skepticism of modernist liberalism and more recently against postmodern cynicism. To hold the line, they set guards on the borders of biblical inerrancy and secured the doctrines that directly related to the Protestant message of salvation by grace through faith. At the same time they sent forth an army of evangelists, missionaries, apologists, and teachers to take new ground. But in the process of fortifying the obvious points of direct attacks, they neglected their heritage in the ancient and Reformation eras.
The result? In the last few decades clever critics and sneaky scholars have switched their assaults from attacks on the Bible, theology, and personal faith to an all-out assault on the Achilles’ heel of evangelicalism: the history of Christianity. Their attacks have left evangelicals scrambling to defend a history they had forgotten and saints they had forsaken.
A line from the first thirty seconds of the movie Braveheart expresses summarizes the critics’ view of church history: “History is written by those who have hanged heroes.” These scholars say the early church fathers changed the real human Jesus from a controversial rabbi and idealistic martyr into a risen Savior and God who bears no resemblance to the historical Jesus. They claim the early catholic Christians browbeat those who opposed their agenda, selected Christian writings that agreed with their positions, and then rewrote history to make it look like theirs had been the original view of Jesus and the apostles. All other views were then unfairly declared to be “heretical.”
It all boils down to this: Did the early church fathers after the apostles preserve and defend the faith or did they pervert and destroy it? Did the Protestant Reformers restore Christianity to a condition similar to the early church, or did they create a new religion from scratch? Are the early fathers and later Reformers “heroes” or “villains”? Who are those people that we implicitly trust to have accepted the right Scriptures and rejected the wrong ones? How do we know they could discern the difference between correct teachings about Jesus and false doctrines? Most evangelicals have no idea how to respond to these questions in order to deflect the attacks and contend for the faith.
The time has come for evangelicals to refortify this vulnerable target, so when critics launch their inevitable attacks, we won’t lose the battle on our own soil. We need to strengthen our levee, so when the storms of controversy rise, we won’t be flooded with needless doubts. And we need to inspect our historical foundations, so we can adorn this two-thousand-year-old temple of the church with gold, silver, and precious stones instead of wood, hay, and straw (1 Cor. 3:12–13). Only by studying church history will we be adequately equipped to counter the claims of these critics.
37 replies to "Why Study Church History? Reason #5 – Studying church history will counter the claims of critics"
After wrestling for quite a few years now in my search for understanding of why God ‘required’ Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice for sin, when (for example) he commands us to forgive without requiring anything in return; (the best explanation (and yes I examined all I could find) for me was a honour-shame transaction in that we had shamed God (as his children/creation) by our disobedience, and Christ restored God’s honour by being completely obedient in submitting to a death that we ultimately deserved.) However after having read just recently “Moral Transformation: The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation”, the arguments put forward in there support a far more compelling systematic theology (and dare I say it – offers less harsh a view of God) that more adequately explains the purpose of Christ’s death. So unless somebody can offer a devastating critique, Belgium has been stormed and France is in ruins. 😉
Michael,
Do you really, honestly, and seriously believe that your Calvinist church is the closest thing we have today to the church of the 1st century?
Michael,
Along these lines here is part of an article about N.T.Wright’s view of heaven and hell that just appeared in our local newspaper:
First-century Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah also believed he inaugurated the Kingdom of God and were convinced the world would be transformed in their own lifetimes, Wright said. This inauguration, however, was far from complete and required the active participation of God’s people practicing social justice, nonviolence and forgiveness to become fulfilled.
Once the kingdom is complete, he said, the bodily resurrection will follow with a fully restored creation here on Earth. “What we are doing at the moment is building for the kingdom.” Wright explained.
Wright says that Christianity lost contact with its Jewish roots. “Our picture, of heaven and hell simply isn’t consistent with what we find in the New Testament; A lot of these images of helfire and damnation are pagan images…
How much do you agree with what…
I’m curious what you think is the cause of this apparent neglect of historical heritage.
I think it’s not neglect. I think that there have been soldiers willing to guard this open back door to history. But when they see history out this door, instead of through the window panes of Protestantism,….they leave. So it’s not that the door is unguarded, it’s that the Protestants who attend to it end up walking out that door. Thus, what seems to be just a weak point in the house of Protestantism is actually a point of conversion to Orthodoxy or Catholicism.
Of course I write in generalities. But there is no denying this phenomenon.
“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” —John Henry Cardinal Newman
The problem with “heroes” is that most people like to give them a supernatural quality instead of understanding that they are people in extraordinary circumstances trying to do the best that they can. http://evilvonscarry.blogspot.ca/2012/05/problem-with-heros-and-icons.html
Pete: No. (Though I’ve never heard my church described that way.) The Reformation was trying to roll back a lot of the doctrinal and ecclesiastical practices that had accrued over the centuries to something that reflected the church of the fifth century (the mature patristic church, e.g., of Augustine). Modeling our churches after the first century church is neither possible nor desirable. Forgive me for cross-referencing the a chapter of RetroChristianity but under the heading “The Benjamin Button Syndrome (Extreme Primitivism)” I deal with this as an approach I disagree with. You can download a free PDF of that chapter here: http://static.crossway.org/excerpt/retrochristianity/retrochristianity-download.pdf.
Susan: Wright’s thesis is partly true, minus the strong emphasis on social action bringing about the kingdom.
Irene: You’re right to a degree, and I address this in the intro to RetroChristianity, but my 18 years studying the early church is what KEEPS me Protestant…
Thanks Michael, that’s the part that sounded most questionable, especially since he seems to suggest that once we’ve all done these kingdom building activities and thus brought the kingdom to completion THEN the bodily resurrection will occur….as if our social action will bring about the resurrection (second coming?).
But I think that in many ways Wright seems to negate the doctrine of hell. He says, “Our picture, which we get from Dante and Michelangelo, particularly of a heaven and hell, simply isn’t consonant with with what we find in the N.T. I’ve seen a youtube of Wright talking about hell and he seems to deny that there will be a separating of the sheep and goats followed by the ‘goats’/nonbelievers being cast to an actual place called hell. He describes hell as a ‘dehumanization’ which essentially involves a person experiencing the natural consequences of their sin (even here and now?). He seems to believe that heaven, hell and earth are all the same place.
Susan, what I mean by Wright be partly right with regard to heaven and hell, is that often when we read in the Bible about, say, “being saved from coming wrath,” people think “being saved from hell when we die.” Or when they think of eternal life, they think of dying and going to heaven. Actually, when the NT talks about the coming wrath, most of the time it refers to the coming Day of Wrath—the Day of the Lord or End Times judgment coming upon the earth sometime in future history. In other words—in this world (my tradition calls it the Tribulation period). When the NT talks about eternal life, the kingdom of God, etc., it’s talking about the restored earth that will be in this world after Christ’s return (whether you’re a premillennialist or amillennialist, it doesn’t matter). So, instead of dying and going to heaven, the NT emphasis is being raised in new, immortal bodies to live in the renewed, perfected world.
Michael,
I read the RetroChristianity article, but I couldn’t find any specific 4th or 5th century Church beliefs or worship traditions that you are embracing, vs. any other 21st century mainline American Protestant traditions.
It looks like you want to add “gravitas” to your sub-tradition idea by quoting some of the church fathers, but you still give yourself an “out” to keep the cafeteria Christianity options open, allowing you to ignore any 4th & 5th century traditions that you personally disagree with…or that don’t match your personal interpretations of Scripture.
An obvious example is the Eucharist. There isn’t a 1st through 5th century father who didn’t believe in the Real Presence. I’m guessing you declared this to be a “fuddy duddy” or “benjamin button” tradition, so that you could jettison it?
Many definitions of inerrancy are anything but a defense; they are invitations to undermine the faith. I agree with the neglect of church history point, but please do not put too much stock in inerrancy.
Pete, I do with it was that simple. By “real presence,” do you mean transubstantiation, consubstantiation, presence of Christ as host of the eucharistic meal, active presence of Christ in the observance, or physical presence of Christ as the gathered body of Christ? Each of these can be found in the patristic period, not necessarily mutually exclusive of one another. The Zwinglian, “symbol only,” or “memorial view” CANNOT be found in the patristic period. I’m not really sure what or who you’re attacking in your responses—the Protestant Reformers or me. If me, so far I can’t identify with the apparent errors you’re attacking. The chapter you read is part of a larger sustained argument on the continuities, discontinuities, unity, and diversity in the history of Christianity and how that affects the way we think about the church today. I am NOT, for the record, a Zwinglian/memorial/symbol only adherent.
Matt: I understsand your opinions about inerrancy. Nevertheless, until the modern era, inerrancy was held everywhere, always, and by all, so 19th and 20th century evangelicals defended as one of the “fundamentals.” Probably because it was perceived as part of the unchallenged and unchanging core of the Christian faith from the beginning. True, the 20th century definitions of inerrancy are new, as they were responding to specific modernist revisions on the notion of inspiration. But the core assertion of the truthfulness of Scripture without error is as ancient as the church.
Dear Michael,
I’ve only recently stumbled across your blog, and because I’ve rarely (if ever) met an evangelical who is serious about systematic and historical theology, I’m eager to see what you do with it. (For the record, my field of expertise is medieval theology.)
So I’d like to raise the same question Pete has, but in a way that perhaps encourages more discussion and less accusation or confrontation. How do you understand sacramentality, and how does it figure into your theology?
Nathaniel, that’s a big question. Not to dodge it, but I tackle this in my book, RetroChristianity, chapter 10, in the section titled, “The Sanctifying Work of the Sacraments” (pp. 234-243). There I present a biblical, theological, and historical argument for restoring baptism and eucharist as the central sacraments of initiation and weekly covenant renewal, respectively, and argue that both sacraments actually DO something, that is, through the proper observance of sacraments we receive sanctifying grace that cannot be received in any other way.
For the record, I am not a medievalist! I am a patristic scholar (and professor of systematic and historical theology) who did a dissertation on second century catholic Christian identity, primarily Ignatius of Antioch, but my comprehensive exam work included the patristic period. So, I am more likely to be open to the kind of unity and diversity of beliefs/practices we see patterned in the patristic era.
Michael,
I mean “Real Presence”, as described by Ignatius of Antioch, in his Epistle to the Romans, 7, 110 A.D.: “I desire the Bread of God, the heavenly Bread, the Bread of Life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; I wish the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.”
You talk about “restoring baptism and Eucharist”. Why don’t you simply join a church that has consistently believed in these for 2,000 years?
What’s next, “restoring confession and infant baptism”?? Ignatius of Antioch: “All that repent will be forgiven by the Lord, provided they repent in unity of Christ our God and in front of an assembly of a bishop”. Augustine of Hippo: “The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything except apostolic.”
To Michael: thanks for the speedy and remarkably succinct answer — you managed to squeeze into your 1000 characters an excellent summary of baptism and eucharist as sacraments. (And as I’ve had only cursory training in patristics [a total of two grad seminars], I hope I’ll be able to learn from your expertise.)
But I wonder if you mightn’t push it a little further and address the idea of sacramentality, not just in the context of baptism and eucharist, but as a way of understanding God’s interaction with creation. I’m approaching this from an Augustinian direction of sacramentality as the special relationship in which a signum effects the res it signifies. (And if the best place to go is your book, just let me know!)
Pete again, I’m sorry, but I prefer to engage in respectful, open dialogue and don’t want this to deteriorate into mean-spirited attacks. I’d hoped your tone would have become less belligerent during our conversation, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Even other contributors have noticed it (Nathaniel Campbell). Under less adversarial conditions, I would engage your uses of the sources (I am an Ignatius of Antioch scholar, after all), but I have a policy not to engage in debates with those who have an increasingly combative tone. So, I’m sorry, but I’m going to graciously bow out of our dialogue. If others want to engage your points, they can feel free to do so.
Nathaniel, no, my book doesn’t address that. But I understand. I read “sacramentalism” in your last post instead of “sacramentality.” The problem with speed-reading, sometimes you miss things! Honestly because I’m not a neo-Platonist, I do have some trouble personally relating to some of the discussions of Augustine’s sacramentality. I think if I shared Augustine’s philosophical foundations, I probably would agree with him. But it’s very difficult for me to think in those terms personally. I understand them philosophically and historically, but I have trouble understanding them in terms of my own idiom. So, when Augustine speaks of how a sign affects the thing signified (I’m thinking in terms of his On Christian Teaching), I’m not sure my underlying philosophical presuppositions are working the same way as his. Probably not. Does this make sense? Am I too postmodern?
My background is dispensational (the historic position of our church until the current pastor changed everything to a Wrightian framework). I understand what you are saying about heaven/eternal life, but certainly scripture refers often to heaven as somewhere apart from earth. My assumption is that that is the case now, until Christ’s return, when the New Heavens and Earth come down. Does that make sense? Will the earth as we know it be destroyed in some way? And is correct to say that those who die before His return are in heaven (elsewhere).
In his book, Surprised by Hope, Wright says that heaven is all around us now, on earth, but we can’t see it (I think). That seems very speculative.
Wright’s views on hell seem not to uphold a view of eternal punishment by God, nor a specific location. That is troubling. Doesn’t he stray quite a bit from the historic view of hell?
Susan, the historic view on hell is as you say. And yes, the historic view is that when Christians die, they will be absent from the body, but present with the Lord in Paradise, where He is, there we will be. But during our time separated from our bodies after death, we will be awaiting our resurrection, at which time we receive the fullness of our salvation—the redemption of our bodies (Rom 8). This is the inauguration of the “heaven on earth” or “new heavens and new earth.” The unsaved will be resurrected unto eternal condemnation, which is also the historic view of the church. The emphasis in the New Testament for salvation is resurrection-oriented, as this is the ultimate goal. The intermediate state between death and resurreciton, though we are to be with Christ, is not ultimately our “salvation.” It’s not what we are promised in Scripture; our promise is resurrection and life in the new heavens and earth.
they came in with these heresies as we were negligent of church history?
or because our fruit was such that we do not in fact believe the gospel. So the world will take its cue from us, because it is written “the name of god is blasphemed among the nations because of [us]”. MY point is this. If our lives show we do not believe they will deny what we profess to believe. and it will be our fault
my heritage is CHRIST, not the beliefs of dead men who quarreled like cats and dogs, who ran to emperors to exile their opponents (for example).
I disagree with the premise of this article.
I know enough church history to view it as truly disgusting, and I know a fair amount as I am a history buff
All that you have said agrees with my understanding. I did have that one other question. Do you believe that the earth will be destroyed in some way. Wright seems to see it as a seamless transition, and some scholars talk as if we may go right on doing our same jobs after the resurrection–that nothing on earth will be destroyed (therefore we are building that which will remain). What is the historic view of these matters?
man1: I believe that I’m a vegetarian.
man2: But I just saw you eat a McRib.
man1: You are rude get off of my blog.
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man1: I believe that I love Kate.
man2: But you are married to Pam, have 3 kids, and you have never have contact with Kate.
man1: You are rude get off of my blog.
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man1: I believe in Jesus Christ.
man2: But you have attended a mosque all of your life and you are raising your kids Muslim.
man1: You are rude get off of my blog.
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man1: I believe in the Sacraments just like the Christians of the early centuries did.
man2: But the church that you attend does not believe and practice Sacramental worship. Why don’t your beliefs match your actions?
man1: You are rude get off my blog.
After Moses brought the people thru the Sea, the people made a golden calf…I believe that after Jesus went up into Heaven, in a parallel way, people made a giant golden calf. For there has been a lot of false teachings on Jesus and the Christian way. But although I absolutely believe that knowing Christian history makes a great difference in our knowledge and help to others as well, I do not believe it is imperative to our Salvation. Years ago, I realized this truth…does knowledge of doctrine save us? Does it really? Or does Jesus save us? Is not what WE do in this life that merely demonstrates our faith? It is like 1 Cor 1:20 Paul asks where is the wise man? Well, he died. He could not save himself; he was not so wise after all.Do we need to worry? Why does Jesus say it is our faith that saves us? Remember when Jesus talked about Lazarus carried to the bosom of Abraham:He said even if people are brought back from death in Miracle, people would not believe. I can vouch that.
Susan, rather than bog things down here, please forgive me for cross-referencing a four-part essay I wrote entitled, “Will God Annihilate the World?” It starts here: http://www.retrochristianity.org/2009/05/20/will-god-annihilate-the-world-part-i/. Short answer, in case you can’t get to the essay right away: I show that the Bible teaches an “extreme make-over,” but not an absolute annihilation and re-creation ex nihilo. This is also the view of the earliest church, both premillennial (like Irenaeus) and amillennial (like Origen). In fact, the ones who argued for an annihilation of this universe were the Gnostics, who believed the world was so inseparable form evil that it was unable to be redeemed. The “annihilation of the universe” view doesn’t clearly appear until after the Reformation.
Perfect. Thanks! I’ll look at that….
I read your essay, Michael. It makes perfect sense to me. It did also remind me of one more question I’ve had for a long time. Why are most scholars hesitant to suggest that hell really does involve fire? I know it’s a difficult thing to think of, and I suspect that this is the underlying reason for the hesitancy, but many passages make it seem literal vs. metaphoric. As I was reading what you wrote about 2 Peter 3 I was thinking that the judgment by flood is past and we know that the water/flood was literal, so how can we then say that the worse judgment, by fire, mentioned in the same passage, is metaphoric?
I know that some will say that since ‘outer darkness’ is also mentioned elsewhere, it must not be literal fire because fire gives off light. That’s a weak argument in my opinion. For one thing, who says that God can’t make no-light, or low-light fire? If it turned out that hell was in the center of the earth it would be dark and fiery.
Susan, I think mainly the idea of fire sounds mythological, pagan, and even crude to modern sensibilities. Please know, though, that the “metaphorical” view of hellfire is not the same as a denial on conscious, eternal suffering. The metaphorical view sees hell as a real experience that lasts forever, as an unsaved individual falls farther and farther from God, the source of good, and in response to the judgment of separation from God, the unsaved responds with more rebellion, incurring a greater separation. So, it wouldn’t be proper to equate “metaphorical’ with “unreal,” it’s just saying that “fire” and “darkness” are images for some kind of real indescribable judgment.
Michael,
First of all, I don’t think Pete is being combative, only pointed. There is a difference.
Secondly, to say that inerrancy was held “everywhere, always, and by all” prior to the modern period is surely misleading. At least one of the great early church fathers, Origen, denied the contemporary understanding of the doctrine outright when he said about the scriptures that “the spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood.” Also, I think that Thom Stark has convincingly demonstrated in his work that when the early church fathers spoke about the truthfulness of scripture it was not always with a grammatical-historical hermeneutic in mind. According to him, if the early church fathers thought a particular passage of scripture was in error on what we might call a straight grammatical-historical reading then they felt like they should read it according to a more allegorical hermeneutic so as to preserve the truthfulness of the text.
Michael,
I also have to disagree with the heart of your argument in the above entry. If you go to exchristian.net and read the “deconversion” testimonies there then you will find that people are not so much struggling with conspiratorial historical reconstructions of early church history and the process of canonization so much as they are struggling with the usual modernist critiques that you imply evangelicalism is already well-prepared against. If those deconversion testimonies are anything to go by, and I think they are, then we are evidently not as well prepared against the old modernist critiques as you suggest. The bulwarks that evangelicals have constructed against these critiques are leaking water if they haven’t collapsed already for many people (e.g. young earth creationism and flood geology in the 60s, CSBI formulation of inerrancy in the 70s).
NW, I don’t disagree with you on Origen, though that statement needs to be read in its full context. He is trying to defend the absolute truthfulness of Scripture, saying that some things are written by the authors intending them to be taken “physically” (literally), but others were written intending them to be taken “spiritually” (allegorically). For those interpreting them according to a strict literal sense, they will present errors, but he spends several chapters defending the truthfulness of Scripture by showing that the apparent contradictions can be fully understood as presenting truth if read according to a non-literal interpretation. So Origen is actually defending the truthfulness of the intended meaning of the author; he is not correcting Scripture’s assertions, but explaining them. Origen is constantly misunderstood this way. I completely agree with you about the hermeneutical issue, which reinforces my point that they viewed the text as always true.
Michael,
Anyway, I suggest that we would do well to reformulate the epistemological foundations of our faith on a lower view of Scripture in order to neutralize the main thrust of these critiques.
Moreover, I would submit that no serious Christian is actually committed to the high inerrantist view of Scripture anyway. Consider the following thought experiment: Suppose the correctly interpreted autograph of Genesis says that all the days of Enosh were 905 years (cf. Gen 5:11) when in fact they were 915 years. A clear error according to CSBI, but I think it’s obvious that such a realization would not (or at least should not) upset our faith. Why? Because the number of the days of Enosh has nothing to do with Christian faith except as an incidental feature of Christian Scripture, which begs the question as to what parts of Scripture are important to Christian faith and what parts aren’t so important. But to raise this question is to already move beyond the doctrine of…
Michael,
Although you’re not saying this, I’m skeptical of the notion that the early church fathers defended the truthfulness of the original author’s intended meaning in every case. In particular, I’m thinking of at least one instance where an early church father allegorically read the book of Joshua in such a way that it spoke to the spiritual battle that waged in the hearts of individual Christians and not as the historical conquest of the promised land by the ancient Hebrews (evidently, in that sense the truthfulness of Joshua was preserved). And in other instance, Gregory of Nyssa flatly denied God’s involvement in the tenth plague against Egypt when he said, “How would a concept worthy of God be preserved in the description of what happened if one looked only to the history? The Egyptian (Pharaoh) acts unjustly, and in his place is punished his newborn child…If such a one now pays the penalty of his father’s wickedness, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is…
it is clear to me, from the examples of their thought given here, that the church fathers were as perplexed as we are, as carnal minded as we are and as carnal in their fruit (behaviour) as we are.
so why do we call them “fathers”?
as to a High view of inerrant scripture: I have a VERY high view of scripture because of what Jesus said about it. Even if i can’t prove it
But I have an EVEN HIGHER view of God the Almighty, Holy and Terrible, Judge Sovereign, etc
I don’t expect to defend any of these things to unbelievers. If they saw something in our lives they wanted and could not explain that would silence them on issues like this, for these questions are largely smokescreens.
They do not see this love in me so I don’t even have the right to speak let alone defend anything.
Am I the only one in the church like this?
Friends, remember Dr. Svigel isnt talking about whether or not knowledge of history is necessary, or how best to defend the faith; it’s about using history to give critics answers.
I’m inclined to think that having answers is not just for the good of the critic, but for the good of the defender as well. (As in, Help my unbelief). As we all know, critics are rarely satisfied whether we give them a good answer or not. And they just keep on coming, one after another, some reasonable and some not. Critics we will always have.
So speaking of answering critics, was there anything wrong with Pete’s source?
Irene, let me give just one example of how sources are often read with little sensitivity to contextual nuances. Several years back I presented a paper at the Oxford Patristics Conference on “The Center of Ignatius of Antioch’s Catholic Christianity.” The room was filled with the best Ignatian and Apostolic Fathers scholars in the world: Bergamelli, Ehrmann, Brent, Jefford, etc.: Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestants, as well as liberal scholars. The paper was well received. Then a guy in the back asked, “What do you think was Ignatius’s view of the eucharist?” The whole room turned to me to see what I would say. I knew right away it was a test: my career as a respectable Ignatian scholar could have ended right there if I answered this wrongly. Then I gave what I consider to be the best answer to any “exam” question ever: “I have no idea.” As soon as I did, the room relaxed. You see, honest Ignatian scholars know that poor Ignatius is often interpreted in late medieval and modern eucharistic categories, so he’s labeled a “eucharistic realist” or “transubstantiationist” or “sacramentalist” or whatever. The problem is, these are later categories read back into Ignatius. Clearly, Ignatius believed the eucharistic observance DOES SOMETHING to us (it’s a means of grace for sure), but what it actually IS—that’s not clear. When he said the docetists refused to “confess” that the eucharist is the flesh of Christ, this could mean literally the flesh (realism) or it could refer to the inability of the docetic heretics to “confess” (this is the language in the Greek, “homologeo”) that the eucharist is the flesh, that is, they rejected the central Christological confession of the eucharist: the true incarnation of God the Son with fleshly humanity. If Ignatius believed the eucharist was a participatory confession of the true flesh of Christ, this confession alone, regardless of any realism, would have been enough to keep the heretics away.
Irene, likewise, Augustine’s quote referring to infant baptism represents a selective reading of the tradition. Augustine lived and wrote about 300 years after the last apostle died. Not everything Augustine said reflected the apostolic teaching. Many things had changed by his day—some things that had been believed had been lost, others things that had not been believed had developed. This is indisputable and demonstrable, which has forced everybody to think through theories of doctrinal development to come to grips with this. As far as infant baptism goes, this is an historically difficult issue. Though I personally find evidence for its at least provincial practice in Irenaeus of Lyons around A.D. 180 (Against Heresies 2.22.4), the first explicit mention of it is from Tertullian around A.D 193 (On Baptism 18), where Tertullian argues against it: “And so, according to the circumstances and disposition, and even age, of each individual, the delay of baptism is preferable; principally, however, in the case of little children.” In fact, Augustine himself was not baptized as an infant; the practice of waiting until children grew through their adolescent years before pledging to live the Christian life through baptism was common even in Augustine’s day. Justin Martyr around 150 seems to rule out infant baptism when he contrasts the new birth of baptism to our original birth: “at our first birth we were born of necessity without our knowledge” but baptism is just the opposite: “we should not remain children of necessity and ignorance, but of free choice and knowledge, and obtain remission of the sins formerly committed, there is named at the water over him who has chosen to be born again, and has repented of his sinful acts, the name of God the Father and Master of all” (1 Apology 61). I personally think infant baptism developed in some places by about A.D. 150. Issues are simply not clear enough to be dogmatic and arrogant. We must discuss them with charity.