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Intel - Religion
Christianity - Church Fathers

"In God we trust.
All others we monitor."

• Born in Syria
• Tradition says he was one of the children Jesus took in His arms and blessed.
• St. Ignatius may also have been a disciple of the Apostle John.
• He was taken to Rome by ten soldiers.
• St. Ignatius wrote 7 letters during his time of travel.
• Burned at the stake under Emperor Trajan in Rome
  OR
  He was presumably executed by being thrown to the lions in the Roman Coliseum.
• Ignatius, a disciple of the Apostle John, wrote about Jesus' 2nd coming, "Look for him that is above the times, him who has not times, him who is invisible". In a letter to Polycarp he states "Jesus is God", "God incarnate," and to the Ephesians he writes, "...God Himself appearing in the form of a man, for the renewal of eternal life." (Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians 4:13)

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• “All these sufferings, assuredly, He underwent for our sake, that we might be saved. And He suffered really, as He also really raised Himself from the dead. It is not as some unbelievers say, who maintain that His suffering was a make-believe. In reality, it is they that are make- believes: and, as their notion, so their end: they will be bodiless and ghost-like shapes!” Ignatius of Antioch Before 110 AD
• Matthew is quoted by Ignatius of Antioch in 2nd Century
• Ignatius of Antioch: “God himself was manifested in human form.” (105 AD)

• CLEMENT OF ROME: HERETICS DESERVE THE DEATH PENALTY (!)And Clement, the bishop from 90-100 CE, argued that the God alone rules all things, that He lays down the law, punishing rebels and rewarding the obedient, and that His authority is delegated to Church leaders. Clement went as far as to say that whoever disobeys these divinely ordained authorities has disobeyed God Himself and should receive the death penalty. [source: Dark Side of Christian History, pp. 13] [quoting: Elaine Pagels, "The Gnostic Gospels", p. 34]

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• “Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sceptre of the majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although He might have done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding Him. “ Clement of Rome 96 AD
• Clement of Rome in 96 A. D. also taught Jesus’ divinity, saying, “We ought to think of Jesus Christ as of God.” (2nd Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 1:1)

• Little is known of his life, but he knew the Apostle John.
• A staunch defender of orthodoxy against Marcion and the Valentinian Gnostics.
• Martyred under Emperor Marcus Aurelius
• Polycarp, also a pupil of John’s, was tried before the Roman proconsul for worshipping Jesus as Lord. While the frenzied crowd shouted for his blood, the Roman judge demanded he proclaim Caesar as Lord. But Polycarp went to the stake, rather than renounce Jesus as his Lord, responding, "Eighty-six years I have served Christ, and He never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"

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• Irenaeus is the one who says Polycarp knew John, but he doesn’t say whether this means John the Apostle, John the Elder (who was probably not a real person anyway, since I think John the Apostle wrote the NT books ascribed to John), or another John. It is most reasonable to take this to mean John the Apostle.

• His Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord (his word for "sayings" is logia) in five books, would have been a prime early authority in the exegesis of the sayings of Jesus, some of which are recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, however the book has not survived and is known only through fragments quoted in later writers, with neutral approval in Irenaeus's Against Heresies and later by Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History, the earliest surviving history of the early Church.
• Irenaeus' statement, later in the 2nd century, that Papias was "a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time." (Adversus Haereses V 33.4)
• Eusebius describes Papias, for whatever the reason, as "a man of exceedingly small intelligence." (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.13).

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• About the origins of the Gospels, Papias (as quoted by Eusebius) wrote this: "Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could."

• And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter...And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire. (First Apology, chapter 21)
• Born in Nablus (Palestine), he studied philosophy
• Suffered martyrdom in Rome under Marcus Aurelius
• Justin was influenced by Greek philosophy, and formed many important concepts of later Christianity on the basis of Plato, the Stoics, the Peripatetics and the Pythagoreans.
• Justin Martyr spoke of Christ as "King, and Priest, and God, and Lord, and angel, and man, and captain, and stone, and a Son born, and first made subject to suffering, then returning to heaven, and again coming with glory, and He is preached as having the everlasting kingdom". He interpreted as Christ the Angel who spoke with Abraham in Genesis 18, and argued for the divinity of Christ.
• ...early Church fathers such as Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, 78), cited Jesus's birth in a cave, not a manger, stall or stable as in Luke 2:7, 12 and 16. (Man Made God, p. 307)

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• And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Ferseus. (First Apology, chapter 22)
• "The Four Gospels were unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of the New Testament; but none from the four Gospels. (The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read, Tim C. Leedom
• Justin Martyr: “The Father of the universe has a Son. And He . . . is even God.” (160 AD)
• Justin Martyr, writing in the 2nd century, wrote: “But Sunday is the day on which we all hold a common assembly, because it is the first day of the week on which God … made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.”

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• Clement was the mentor and teacher of Origen
• CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA TAUGHT SEX WITHIN MARRIAGE ONLY FOR PROCREATION "The gospel," as Clement read it, not only restricts sexuality to marriage, buteven within marriage, limits it to specific acts intended for procreation. To engage in marital intercourse for any other reason is to "do injury to nature."[source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 29]

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• Headed the Catechetical School of Alexandria
• He had a strong philosophical background and tried to turn Christianity into a consistent philosophical system in the model of pagan Greek systems.

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• IRENAEUS: MUST OBEY THE PRIESTS, WHO ARE THE SUCCESSORS TO THE APOSTLES Bishop Irenaeus declared: "It is incumbent to obey the priests who are in the Church...those who possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain gift of truth." [source: Dark Side of Christian History, pp. 9-10]
• IRENAEUS: ONLY ONE CHURCH AND NO SALVATION EITHER Bishop Irenaeus insisted that there could be only one church, and outside that church "there is no salvation." [source: Dark Side of Christian History, pp. 12]
• Irenaeus: “He is God for the name Emmanuel indicates this.” (180 AD)
• The early church father, Irenaeus (ca. 130) in his "Against Heresies" 3.1.1,states: "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church.”

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• “For if what they have published is the Gospel of truth, andyet is totally unlike those which have been handed down tous from the apostles, any who please may learn, as is shown from the Scriptures themselves, that that which has been handed down from the apostles can no longer be reckonedthe Gospel of truth.” - Irenaeus 180 AD
• The Church father Irenaeus said Jesus was crucified at age fifty!
  
  But, besides this, those very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ have most clearly indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad," they answered Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?" Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. But to one who is only thirty years old it would unquestionably be said, "Thou art not yet forty years old." For those who wished to convict Him of falsehood would certainly not extend the number of His years far beyond the age which they saw He had attained; but they mentioned a period near His real age, whether they had truly ascertained this out of the entry in the public register, or simply made a conjecture from what they observed that He was above forty years old, and that He certainly was not one of only thirty years of age. For it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that they were mistaken by twenty years, when they wished to prove Him younger than the times of Abraham. For what they saw, that they also expressed; and He whom they beheld was not a mere phantasm, but an actual being of flesh and blood. (Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 22, online Source)

• Very influential in matters such as the Antichrist, the 1000 years kingdom of Heaven, Rome as the decadent Babylon.
• TERTULLIAN REPUDIATES GNOSTIC MARCION, WHO WROTE GOD WAS LOVE, INSTEAD,TERTULLIAN EXPLAINED, GOD IS PRONE TO ANGER, DISCIPLINE, AND PUNISHMENT Christians, such as the second century Marcion, who stressed the merciful, forgiving and loving nature of God, found themselves at odds with the orthodox. In orthodox Christian eyes, God must be prone to anger and demand discipline and punishment. Tertullian wrote: "Now, if [Marcion's God] is susceptible of no feeling of rivalry, or anger, or damage, or injury, as one who refrains from exercising judicial power, I cannot tell how any system of discipline - and that, too, a plenary one - can be consistent in him." [source: Dark Side of Christian History, p. 6]
• St. Tertullian in his famous treatise 'On The Veiling Of Virgins' wrote, "Young women, you wear your veils out on the streets, so you should wear them in the church, you wear them when you are among strangers, then wear them among your brothers..." Among the Canon laws of the Catholic church today, there is a law that require women to cover their heads in church (Clara M. Henning, " Cannon Law and the Battle of the Sexes" in Rosemary R. Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974, p. 272.).

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• TERTULLIAN CONCERNED BECAUSE MANY GNOSTIC TEACHERS WERE FEMALES (!)Tertullian was appalled at the role of women among the Gnostics: "The...women of the heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures - it may be even to baptize!" [source: Dark Side of Christian History, p. 9]
• Tertullian (died circa 223) addressed himself to all women: "Dost thou not know that thou, too, art Eve? Even today God's judgment applies to all thy sex, hence thy sin must also subsist. Thou art the Devil's portal; thou hast consented to eat of his tree, and thou wast the first to renounce the law of God." (A history of women in the West, Volume 2, p. 20)
• "Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil's doorway. You led astray one whom the devil would not dare attack directly. It was your fault that the Son of God had to die; you should always go in mourning and rags."
• “There is no nation indeed that is not Christian” Tertullian (197)
• Tertullian: “Christ our God.” (200 AD)

• “I know a certain gospel which is called, “The Gospel of Thomas” and a Gospel According to Matthias, and many others have we read – lest we in any way be considered ignorant because of those who imagine they possess some knowledge if they are acquainted with these. Nevertheless, among all these we have approved solely what the church has recognized, which is that only the four gospels should be accepted.”
• "What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days, in which the evening is named and the first morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like a husbandman? I believe every man must hold these things for images under which a hidden sense is concealed." (Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth, pp. 2-3)

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• In the 2nd century, the polemicist Celsus (recorded in Origen's Contra Celsum 1.28–32) claimed that Mary had sex with a Roman soldier and then married Joseph who protected her from the harsh Jewish laws of the time which otherwise would have sentenced her to death by stoning for such an act.
• Origen: “No one should be offended that the Savior is also God. . .” (225 AD)

• Woman is the instrument which the devil uses to gain possession of our souls.
• Origen: “No one should be offended that the Savior is also God. . .” (225 AD)

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• North African
• Student of Arnobius (early rhetorician/Apologist: Ad Nationes)
• Taught rhetoric in Nicomedia under Diocletian.
• Later tutor of Crispus, son of Constantine

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• Lactantius: “We believe Him to be God: (304 AD) [Tutor to Emperor Constantine’s son}

• Eusebius of Caesarea (as opposed to Eusebius the bishop of Nicomedia) was born circa AD 260 and is best known as the "Father of Church History." He wrote a history of Christianity covering the first three centuries among many other important works.
• 313 AD - THE CREED OF EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA, AD 313. We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the LOGOS of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, SON ONI.Y.

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• In 367 CE, Athanasius named the 27 books that comprise the modern New Testament. He was very clear that only these were legitimate. He insisted that all other writings were heretical.

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• Basil was born probably in AD 329, of noble and devout Christian parents. His father, Basil, was a teacher of rhetoric, and by his wife Emmelia had ten children, three of whom—Basil the eldest, the third, Gregory, the tenth, Peter— became Bishops of the Church.

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• Gregory of Nyssa is the younger brother of Basil of Caesarea, born about the year 335 AD., and the third of the Three Cappadocians. He was known as the star of the Nyssa.
• Gregory of Nyssa was a married man, and was made a bishop.
• St. Gregory of Nyssa died around the year 395 AD and is revered as one of the greatest of the Eastern Church Fathers.

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• Gregory of Nyssa, in his exegesis of Genesis writes that God stamped His divine image on Adam, who represented all of humanity. Adam was not a particular male, but a being in whom was included the entire human race. This every human being generated from Adam thereafter would bear the image of God. (Women and the priesthood, p. 195)

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• According to the "learned Alexandrian Jew" and Christian bishop Epiphanius, "They who believed on Christ were called Essenes before they were called Christians." (Man Made God, p. 148)
• Mary...Epiphanius correctly identified her as God's primary rival for the affections of the people when he wrote, "Let the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be worshipped, but let no one worship Mary."  (Man Made God, p. 175)

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• Traditionally she was seen as bearing a greater share than Adam for Fall. Thus Ambrose of Milan (died 397): "Woman was the author of man's fall, man not of woman's." (A history of women in the West, Volume 2, p. 20)
• If the Jews do not believe us, let them, at least, believe their own writers. Josephus, whom they esteem a great man, hath said this, and yet hath he spoken truth after such a manner; and so far was his mind wandered from the right way, that he was not even a believer as to what he himself said; but thus he spake, in order to deliver historical truth, because he thought in not lawful for him to deceive, while yet he was no believer, because of the hardness of his heart, and his perfidious intention.

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• "Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam... it is right that he whom that woman induced to sin should assume the role of guide lest he fall again through feminine instability."

• The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon.
• Christians may never cease vengeance, and the Jew must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews. It is essential that all Christians hate them.’
• JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: NEED FOR FEAR ON EARTH The fourth century St. John Chrysostom describes the absolute necessity for fear: "...if you were to deprive the world of magistrates and the fear that comes from them, houses, cities and nations would fall upon one another in unrestrained confusion, there being no one to repress, or repel, or persuade them to be peaceful through the fear of punishment." To the orthodox, fear was essential to maintaining order.[source: Dark Side of Christian History, p. 5-6]

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• He was ascetic and spent two years standing with minimal sleep (which damaged his health)
• He was the Archbishop of Constantinople,
• Actually he was not called “Chrysostom” until the 7th century (by Isadore of Seville) – and it is more of a nickname meaning “the golden mouthed”. Such was his eloquence, which still exists in his 600 written sermons.
• “Woman is an inevitable evil, an eternal mischief, an attractive calamity, a domestic risk, a charming and decorated misfortune”

• He is best known for his new translation of the Bible into Latin, which has since come to be called the Vulgate.
• The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary is an apologetic work of St. Jerome. It is an answer to Helvidius. Helvidius was the author of a work written about the year 383 against the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary (the mother of Jesus). St. Jerome maintains against Helvidius three propositions:1st. That Joseph was only putatively, not really, the husband of Mary.2d. That the "brethren" of the Lord were his cousins, not his own brethren.3d. That virginity is better than the married state.

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• The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.’
• AUGUSTINE ABANDONED HIS SON AND HIS MOTHER TO BECOME A CELIBATE CHRISTIAN Augustine later described his overwhelming relief when at last he gave up his career, his ambition, the woman who had lived with him and borne him a son, as well as his impending marriage to a wealthy heiress, for the freedom of celibacy and renunciation. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 79]
• "There is no way of preserving the first chapter of Genesis without impiety, and attributing things to God unworthy of him." (Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth, p. 3)

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• AUGUSTINE: HUSBANDS SHOULD RULE OVER THEIR WIVES St. Augustine wrote in the early fifth century, "we must conclude, that a husband is meant to rule over his wife as the spirit rules over the flesh." [source: Dark Side of Christian History, p. 7] [quoting: Elaine Pagels, "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent", pp. 113-114]
• After a fairly wild youth, under the influence of Ambrose of Milan he became a devout Christian.
• "Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God."

~ 430

• Presbyter Anastasius (fl. 428) said, "Let no one call Mary the Mother of God, for Mary was but a woman, and it is impossible that God should be born of a woman."

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378 - 444

• Cyril of Alexandria objected arguing that it was essential to maintain that God Himself had entered the womb of Mary; therefore she was "Theotokos" without qualification, against the writings and teachings of Nestorius in 429 CE.

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• Woman has the poison of an asp.
• Pope Gregory in the 6th century, the first pope to come from a monastic background, identified Mary Magdalene as a sinner in his sermon found in Patrologia Latina.

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• "Woman is a daughter of falsehood, a sentinel of Hell, the enemy of peace, through her Adam lost paradise"
• In AD 730, John of Damascus, a priest and monk who served as an advisor to the Muslim Caliph of Damascus, wrote his famous Apologetic Treatises against those Decrying the Holy Images.
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  Saint Anselm (1033-1109) said it this way, "For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe even this: that I shall not understand unless I believe."

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  "As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power...." (Summa Theologica,Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj. 1)

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  ‘God created Adam Lord of all living creatures, but Eve spoiled it all. Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house and bear children. And if they (women) grow tired or, even, die (from giving birth), it does not matter. Let her die from in childbirth; that’s why they are there.’

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